dragonspride | Headcanon Notes, Writing Bits

((OKAY I AM TRYING TO GO WITH CANON WHERE POSSIBLE but old-school RPG = worldbuilding and filling in details is kind of a thing there's more negative space than some of the newer games, so this is probably going to get long.))

- Current working idea of climate: Taking the world map and view from space's lack of polar ice caps as canon, which means a pretty different climate; using Late Cretaceous as a template, which means mountainous areas and some polar areas DO get winter (and Baron seems to fit that description). Equator is something where I'm still figuring it out but I don't think it's straight across the map, even assuming things like influence of the Crystals on, say, the Damacyan desert.

- He's got a necklace strung with scales and teeth worn under his clothes; it's passed down in the family, and it's first-sheds and baby-canines from the partner-wyverns going back generations.

- Currently using 15th Century as a basic template for the armor/dressing underneath and probably other daily-life things besides the airships/magic, and going by how complicated the armor IS, although it's actually a little more intricate than anything we came up with. This is complicated some by acknowledgement of them having been jumped a little with magic instruction from elsewhere, some other bits of knowledge, and the technology for the airships, where things tangentially related to any of the above + some basic concepts without the technology to have reached them may be a thing. I'm going off of what's said about Kluya's ideology for what they got jumped on, which means it's mostly going to be things like health and welfare education, besides the canon-stated magic and some of the technology that went into the airships. I don't think the airship cannons were something he'd intended.

- ~~I am HEAVILY assuming~~Confirmed from supplemental stuff that there is gameplay and tech limits of the original game vs. story segregation on actual population/city sizes/etc., as well as the nations in general; basically, assuming Baron and the capitals as fairly large cities for their day. Baron headcanon is the city being fairly large at 15,000, for example. Assuming also that there's some other small villages and things that aren't on the game map related to each of the city-states; basically, the towns on the map are the plot-important ones or the ones that're event important, but there's other small villages scattered out that would realistically be there but had no reason to exist in game. Baron's economy mostly on farming/livestock, mining, and metalwork, as well as other trades basically doing the can-be-self-sufficient thing.

- (CANON CONFIRMED ON HOW THE DRAGOON'S POWERS FUNCTION THANK YOU WHOEVER BARFED THINGS FROM THE SETTING BOOK ON THE WIKIA) The whole thing with working with dragons included a sort of semi-supernatural fighting style that was trying to mimic a dragon's power and abilities; the dragoon "Jump" is an extension of that, and is both an attempt at mimicking a more aerial set of abilities and something adapted for cooperating with a dragon on a battlefield. It's harder to learn without at least having some dragons around to work with, another reason the dragoon order sort of faded with the dragons being driven out. *In fact arguably both the "Ninja" arts of Eblan and some of the techniques of Fabool would be using some of the same basic energy reserves that would be devoted to magic if someone had taken up magical practice, directed into other forms and channeled physical augmentation instead. Honestly, it's not that hard to extrapolate from some of the other games where there's been dragoons with more elaboration that it is a cultivated connection to the dragons.

- This is also a contributing factor, as the dragons have stopped being as much of a thing, to the Dragoons dwindling down to just a few hereditary families. The weird crap they did to themselves CAN be passed down some, but it's a fuckload harder to learn the abilities without that background connection to dragons in the family.

- His father's wyvern had taken some injuries during that last flight in the apparent recent war that rendered him grounded and crippled; the dragon survived until a little after Kain had gained command of the dragoons before finally passing away.

- Most of his field action has been against bandits and stray monsters, with an occasional skirmish with a few actual hostiles of some form.

- He does periodic hunting expeditions keeping some of the larger monsters away from inhabited areas, and some of them are an excuse to blow off steam/get away from the castle; when the engagement was announced, he spent a little over a month out hunting Zuu in the mountains. The Zuu population did not appreciate the announcement. He'll also comb the mountains sometimes looking for nests or signs of wild wyverns.

- Rank is not entirely hereditary! The heir to the throne's clearly expected to go through training and military service through the ranks like anyone else, including the trials. A named heir that hadn't probably wouldn't be recognized/accepted, and in Kain's case, being the son of the previous captain did not guarantee he'd inherit the post, it just meant there'd be watching to see if he had the same skill and a lot of pressure to measure up. Essentially, if your father was someone in important rank, you kind of have the opposite of an easy ride in some ways, because the bar you're expected to hold to is higher than everyone else and while you're in training, part of the military WILL be testing you to see if you can hack it. (This isn't even headcanon exactly, since it's pretty much the described background arc for both Cecil and Kain in the military, and you actually see Ceodore going through it in After Years.)

- After the earthquake at Mist, he'd thought Cecil might be dead, but figured Rydia was probably alive because it'd been her summon that caused it. He gimped back to Baron, stopping long enough to give Rosa some idea that it'd gone badly and there was a child (and that he didn't know what'd happened to Cecil but that it likely wasn't good); he went back to the castle to try to make sense of what'd happened and figure out WHY the king was going off the deep end, Rosa left to try to find Cecil and/or the kid. He had originally intended to not start a confrontation and to lurk and hide to see what he could overhear; unfortunately Golbez was out and Cagnazzo was not that easy to skulk around without notice. He got too smart for his own good and tested something the King would've known was false, and on confirming that he was dealing with an imposter, he tried to attack.
This went poorly; Kain was well-trained and skilled enough to handle anything in his experience, but "Elemental Archfiend" was not on that list. He got beaten down and nearly killed; his relative rank and connections to Other Problems was recognized as something with some potential use, so when Golbez god back from Damacyan, he was presented as a Look-What-We-Caught and had the bright idea to try to bargain his way out of it.
This was A Very Bad Life Choice, and did not work out anywhere NEAR what he'd intended.

Doors In The Tower Of Zot: 1, Kain Highwind: 0