Is Dragon City on Earth?

Perhaps some would say that seems like a silly question, but it's never mentioned in the show what planet the action is taking place on. As far as I'm concerned, that means we're free to speculate about the possibilities.

So what do you think? Are the events we're watching taking place on Earth? In our own future? In our own past? In an alternate reality? On another planet in a galaxy far, far away? Or another possibility you can think of?

What's your theory and what evidence can you pull from the show to support it?

As far as I'm concerned, there is no right or wrong answer here. The fun part is looking for clues and seeing where they lead.

To help get to the more interesting parts of the discussion sooner (assuming anyone's even interested in such questions besides me), let's discount a few things:

First, let's ignore the fact that Artha and his friends refer to themselves as humans and let's not assume this automatically means they're on Earth. We'll use the same rationale for this as George Lucas uses for Star Wars. His official comment is that even though Luke Skywalker and his buddies refer to themselves as humans, they have no relation at all (past or future) to humans on Earth. They look like us only because they're the product of convergent evolution on another planet.

Second, let's ignore the fact that everyone's speaking English with mostly American accents. As Lucas says, Luke Skywalker doesn't speak English and actually speaks his native language, but the movies we watch have "merely been dubbed" into English for the convenience of the audience. So let's assume the same thing applies to Dragon Booster.

Similarly, let's ignore the fact that there's a one-to-one correspondence between their alphabet and ours.

Finally, if the characters use the word "earth" (note lower case "e") when they're clearly referring to dirt, we won't take this as proof the action is taking place on the planet Earth.

So other than those four things, what data can you pull from the show to determine where (or when) Dragon City is?

For some reason I always thought of Dragon Booster occurring far, far in the future on Earth. Never analysed that too deeply, but I'll do my best. An extremely interesting question.

The main reasoning, I suppose, is the names. Badly-spelt versions of mythology/history from OUR world. Bucephalus, Arthur, Mordred, Lancelot, Merlin, (Grim) Reaper, Cain. Surely this could speak of some beyond-ancient past? Also, Kitt, named for an animal that does not appear to exist any more. Pyrrah, whose name reflects the Latin root for 'fire'. Also that the world roughly obeys Earth laws of physics--gravity, time, etc.--and has devices equivalent to our modern age. They even have reporters. Which reminds me very much of our Earth, and makes me want to believe it's our planet.

The world is described as 'Atalantean' on the official, which I suppose could actually mean it's placed somewhere in our PAST. However, I don't believe this, mostly because I'm assuming that their entire world is NOT going to be destroyed any time soon, in canon anyway. Hence, with the 'Atlantis' reference from our world, I'm going to instead place Dragon Booster in the future, which also suits the rather high level of technology they display.

Against that argument, there's the fact that the technology wielded is NOT our mislaid nuclear weapons by any stretch of the imagination (though I suppose after the nuclear-war-devastating-our-planet dragons could have come into being by X-Men-esque fortituous mutation). And the Old City is suggestive of a long history which has dragon-marks rather than weaponmachines--which means that they're VERY far in our future, if at all.

I'm still going with, "very very far in our own future", simply because the whole place reminds me of Earth too much (mag-technology appears to be TECHNOLOGY rather than magic-from-a-different-universe), and at least this way I get SOME explanation for those stupid names.

Parm refers to the planet or whatever it is that they are tryingto save as 'the world', but I'm not inclined to believe it is our own.

If this Dragon City is in our future, what is the explaination for the ancient Old City? I don't really think we are going to start re-building temples and ancient animal-based religions, only to 'rise again' into sky scrapers and vid screen technology that is so similar to what we have today. I'd say this is present time in another world/reality.

Analogous, not similar, I think.

The only explanation I can really come up with for the Old City goes something like, "After the nuclear holocaust, dragons came into existence and a new religion etc. was founded on them thus gradually leading to Old City and everything flowing from that". Which, I admit, is extremely shaky. I'd still like to believe it's set on our planet, because of the similarities, such as laws of reality and the names, but I admit there isn't much of a backstory.

And, to be honest, I'd LIKE it to remain ambiguous in that respect. To explain exactly how it relates to our world would...cheapen it, somehow, IMO, (further) destroying some of the 'magic' of the fantastic setting.

Yes, the mystery of location is the only hope of explaination for some of the many plot-holes, and lends a certain charm to the city. Is it the only city on its planet, is that why it's so crowded? Is Dragon City in its entirety what the planet is? Are there other civilizations? Countries?

It doesn't seem to be part of a country--most likely it's a city-state, and it seems that the draconium empires are long-gone--but I'd certainly buy the existence of other cities, especially ones who might manufacture food and other supplies to sell to Dragon City.

Well one thing is that there's no fossil fuels. I think that either puts them on another planet or perhaps on earth, in the future, when all the fuel has been used up. It's at least in the same universe cus all the physics seem to be the same as for us. The mag-tech seems to me to just rely on magnetism and Draconium sounds like its supposed to be a type of metal, probably with magnetic propeties.

The structure of Dragon City says to me that perhaps they don't have a lot of space to build. So everything's just been piled on top of everything else.

It's interesting that they seem to have built the Old City in a big underground hole, and then gone up from there. Maybe they were seeking shelter from wild dragons, or maybe you're right and they really DON'T have a lot of space to build.

Then again, without other cities, how would they get food? Dragon City doesn't appear to have a very well-developed agricultural system. I suppose it could always be synthetically manufactured using more mag-tech... Good point about the fossil fuels, too. I read a rather interesting book, Oryx and Crake, which pointed out the probable extreme shortage of fossil fuels and other metals in the future...

I always thought a different planet, but not actually specifically, like I never really thought lands in fantasy novels as differnet planets, theough they obviously are becasue their continants are completely different.

My major reasoning, as silly as it is, is their hair. Its seems natural that it comes in vivid and quite impossible colours, Kitt's bright electric blue for example with natural pink stripes- I hardly think she's got the spare cash for hair dye. Artha's could be excused for earth natural, so could Lance's, Connor's and more debatably both Moordryd and Word Paynn's but the others seem to be going a little over the top, fashion trends or not, there has to be more then a tiny minority who don't want to be part of it.

There's also the lack of any other form of animal, most noticably vermin, which no matter the nuclear wipeouts, I'm pretty sure would have made it.

Not sure why they built up though... it's not really in the earthling psyche. using the nuyclear wipeout idea, I'd sugest it might be because it's the only inhabitable area

Otherwise, I dunno it just seemed logical that it wasn't here. The Dragons remind me of another worldly form of dinosaurs

This is actually an interesting side question about their world. So if you will allow me to digress slightly from the main topic for a brief moment:

My belief is that there could be fossil fuels on the planet, but if you've got creatures like dragons around that will happily provide transportation and do all the heavy lifting for you, why bother developing an engine to burn other types of fuels? I noticed in the first episode I watched that there were no vehicles which I found intriguing, and I always thought that made an interesting statement about the mind set of people on that world (though it's not without some holes).

If you've got a dragon that can sustain speeds of over 100 MPH without breaking a sweat and is intelligent enough to get you from point A to point B on its own, why bother to invent the car? As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, but if the need is already filled, then the saying can work the other way, too. Namely, if there is no need, then a particular item won't be invented. Hence cars and fossil fuel engines don't exist in this world because there was never any need to develop them. All their technology runs on energy derived from draconium. Draconium energy is clean and apparently limitless, so all the oil that might be on the planet would simply be ignored.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the idea of a futuristic society that never saw the need to develop any powered vehicles is kind of cool. It says a lot about the culture of the planet. A good science fiction story is not so much about the technology it introduces, but how the presence of a given technology impacts the culture and human behavior, and I think this is one of the things that makes the show interesting.

Anyway, just a little aside to our present discussion.

What do people think about the parallels in culture and architecture? These areas are fair game for deciding where Dragon City is.

Their culture is of course nearly identical to ours including things like family structure and the pleasantries people exchange. Is it likely, for example, that humans on another planet who happen to look like us due to convergent evolution would also develop the same culture? Would humans in our own distant future maintain our present culture? Or would the culture change into something unrecognizable to us after thousands of years?

The architecture we see, particularly around Penn Stables, is unmistakably Japanese influenced. Would this mean Dragon City would have to be on Earth or could the Japanese motif emerge elsewhere independently?

General sci-fi questions like this always seemed interesting to me.

I think with most fantasies writers tend to steal from Earth culture on a semi-random basis--for example, a lot of fantasy novels are set in pseudo-medieval worlds, where the cultures ae very similar to our own though the presence of magic makes it very clear this is not our world, and most Star Wars 'alien' civilisations steal from one Earth culture or another.

On the official website, I believe Mid City is described as "a kluge of different architectures and styles," which could suggest, I suppose, that the Japanese-equivalent culture in Dragon City has been around and had its effect on the architecture...but we don't have any character other than Parm whose features really suggest 'ethnic minority' (though Kitt looks a little oriental) and Parm seems to be from the same culture as all the other characters.

Re the 'is Dragon City the only thing on the planet,' in 'All Is Not Lost,' I caught several references to 'the entire planet' and 'conquer the planet', which, I think, implies that Dragon City is not the whole world.

I think that the answer to your question, 'would a parallel universe develop the same kind of culture' depends a lot on personal beliefs, actually. For example, some Christians appear to believe that the one-father-one-mother thing is wired into our genes as the best way to be and anyone rebelling against that is stupid/deviant. And to a certain extent I suppose that's right--two different genders, takes two to make a baby, it's not hard to make the appropriate assumptions here. Though Earth cultures, of course, developed polygamy and other, completely different, family structures, which there is no good reason why a fantasy world should not...

Maybe, assuming Dragon City is a parallel universe to Earth, we could put a lot of it down to 'translation;' as with Star Wars, they don't really speak English or have that many cultural similarities, it just 'looks' that way.

By the way, have all the parents we've seen so far been single? Maybe that means there's a different culture regarding marital relationships and one parent takes any children at the end of a bonding period of a certain length of time. Probably I'm wrong, though. Pity.

Yes, you would THINK that the culture would evolve into something entirely different over thousands of years, wouldn't you? It's also surprising that a large percentage of people in Dragon City are very concerned about a three-thousand-year-old war. Bit silly, really, but that's the same for most of the pseudo-medieval-fantasy worlds--culture's almost directly lifted from Earth culture and the plot isn't anything to write home about.

Yes, I agree completely. In practical matters, the writers are stuck not being able to deviate too far from a culture the reader is familiar with since otherwise half the book would be just explaining the new culture and they'd probably lose most of the readers. But it's also interesting to consider if other unrelated groups of "humans" on other planets would independently gravitate towards certain common cultural elements, perhaps just because certain modes of behavior work better for society in general than others.

There is Khatah of course, who's clearly Japanese all the way down to his accent and how he bowed when introducing himself. And we'll meet Kwake in an upcoming episode. The presence of different ethnic groups implies people must be spread out enough for them to form, most likely across the whole planet. So that can be evidence that most of the planet must be populated.

I tend to think so as well. It's always possible that Dragon City covers the entire planet as do the cities on the main planet of the Empire in Star Wars and Asimov's Foundation novels, but more likely Dragon City is to rest of the planet what New York City is to the rest of the state of New York.

Word and Conner are the only parents we've been shown so far. Parm mentions his mother is a teacher in one of the early episodes (either 3 or 4) but so far hasn't said anything about his father. I chalk this up to the typical omission of parents from animated series aimed at kids. It's more fun for young kids to watch and identify with characters that get to operate independently of any parental authority. So I don't know if I would want to draw any conclusions based on this.

I guess that's because it was a very big war. It was supposed to be planet wide and threatened to kill everyone. The flash backs they show us look pretty nasty, so I think I could buy that the memory of that would linger for a long time.

But in our own time, we can compare the great dragon-human war to the Cold War and World War II, where about 50 million peole died and then the world nearly got destroyed by nuclear weapons (put in very simplistic terms), and today, not twenty years after? Most people don't worry about it, even though the nuclear threat technically still exists. I think you're underestimating the power of public apathy.

I guess my problem sort of stretches to the genre-in-general--if all these interesting things happened thousands of years ago and the story is focused on resolving these, then why not set your story those thousands of years ago and have done with it? Or why does everyone trust all the ancient legends? Who knows, maybe the prophets were smoking something they shouldn't have that night or maybe someone copied it down wrong and instead of the Dragon Booster it's Dragon Brewer with the mystical power to serve drinks or maybe the point was just to have good PR or maybe the priests wanted to write something exciting or maybe those ancient prophecies were even just fiction written at the time. Nobody seems to THINK about these things in fantasy. Prophecies and such seem a pretty common preoccupation of fantasy authors, and I'm just wondering, why? Is it just to use a prophecy as a plot device making the hero undefeatable? It's an easy way out, I think, and a boring one.

Khatah (his name sounds Arabic, I think, though I agree with you on the Japanese influences) is supposed to be a successor of the Blue Draconium Empire, right? And the Inner Order Crew has been winning the Horn of Libris race for three-thousand-odd years, right? (Never mind the implausibility of THAT. You know, I had a family, once, in my earlier days of imagined worlds, who passed a special ability and a duty on to the eldest child for a thousand years. And then I realised how STUPID that was and cut it.) Which means his people have been around Dragon City for a long, long time. Sure, their cultural roots would have their place in the Blue Draconium Empire, but they're not foreigners to Dragon City (though I suppose maybe at the time it was built they had their influence on the architecture).

Oh, I'm sure that canonwise nothing other than the one-dad-one-mom family is going to be presented; it's just that from the 100% single parents we've been shown, one could not be contradicted if one made other assumptions. It's a pity, really, that the culture is so similiar to our own. Surely there should've been more differences than dragons-instead-of-horses.

Or maybe he really WAS a Dragon Booster. You 'boost' something, you steal it. Technically speaking, Moordryd is a Dragon Booster.

My read was the dragon-human war was a war with fighting everywhere, not just in places an ocean away to most people. Dragons were everywhere, so every town and village in the entire world would have been a war scene. My assumption from reading the mythology and what's been shown in the episodes was that there was no place untouched by the fighting, so I feel it would be reasonable for people to remember a 3000 year old war of that magnitude.

I do agree with you about human apathy though. So even though they may remember the war, they could well be too lazy or apathetic to learn from it. Which I think is the rationale for Dragon City heading back down the path towards war again. The humans are practically enslaving the dragons which is certainly going to lead to a revolt at some point if that doesn't change.

Did you mean in fantasy stories in general or in Dragon Booster specifically? At least in the case of Dragon Booster, I don't think I would say everyone trusts them. Pretty much it's just Word and Mortis/Connor who believe the legends and are both acting on them. Everyone else in Dragon City seems to be non-believers. For example, Kitt won't believe Artha when he tells her not to go after the bonemark of the Furox. And it's not until the end of "The Stand" that Moordryd finally admits that Word was right about the black and gold dragon when he tells Cain "My father was right. Control that dragon, and you control the world."

As as aside, the best use of prophecy in a story line I've ever encountered was in the Babylon 5 TV series. The show had a five year continuing story arc that was meticulously planned out from start to finish. Anyway, in the first 3 years of the show, one alien race has this ancient prophet named Valan who a thousand years ago made all these predications about what would happen and they all came true during the first 3 years of the show. There were believers that Valan was really a prophet and lots more people who were non-believers and said it was just coincidence. Then in the third year, there's a big two part episode where one of the main characters is able to travel back in time 1000 years with the help of a more advanced alien race (since time travel is otherwise unheard of) and he becomes the prophet Valan himself. So he basically just has to predict what was history to him. It was very well written and I had no idea what was going to happen until very last minute of the second part. It's difficult to describe how well it was pulled off but it brought together all sorts of story points from the first 3 years of the show and made it all fit together so nicely. It was the perfect sci-fi explanation for prophecy. Anyway...

I don't think we're supposed to take it that literally. Word says that people have forgotten what the horn is, so I believe the way it happened was that at first everyone knew what the horn could do and it was probably kept protected somewhere, perhaps for 1000 years or more, until it's actual function was forgotten or dismissed as ancient nonsense. I would image the horn then languished as a curious artifact for a long time, and at some point in more recent history, perhaps just within the last hundred years or so when dragon racing became sufficiently popular, the horn of Libris challenge was established and they pulled the horn out of storage to use as the trophy. The Inner Order was apparently the only crew that still believed what the horn could do and probably couldn't convince anyone else, so they took it upon themselves to win it every year. My interpretation anyway.

I would tend to think so as well. I think I could believe that people would always group together and form societies starting with tribes and working their way up to nations eventually, but it seems there would be plenty of room for other things (family structure and what have you) to diverge.

That Babylon 5 thing sounds excellent.

See, thing is, ancient legends shouldn't be completely reliable (which so far in Dragon Booster they have proved to be). I know it makes life a lot easier for the writers, but if on this world prophecies three thousand years old are coming completely true, then there's a problem somewhere. There's so much room for: human error, the wrong texts being preserved, incorrect prophecies being made, information deliberately suppressed from future generations, bias in those who passed it on, copy error, etc. And some of these could even have led to plotlines, eg. the Furox might not have been quite as evil as portrayed leading into a whole examination of pacificism and the point behind it.

There's a whole world of moral dubiousness behind Dragon Booster (cough*Mortis*cough) which the writers don't seem like they're going to examine. Gundam Wing, for example, was a decent anime series which got into the whole question of war and peace, and they had a main character who was into Absolute Pacifism. Like Artha, she was very annoying at the start of the series (though to a certain extent I believe she was supposed to be) and over time she matured and her ideals developed. See, most wars are declared because both sides think they're right and most people think that sometimes wars are necessary, and there's just SO MUCH ROOM for debate...

I agree with you that there are a lot of problems with prophecies being passed down across the ages. There also isn't a good justification in the show's mythology as to why the dragon priests of 3000 years ago predicted the return of the gold star dragon and second dragon-human war. I suppose, knowing human nature, that it's always a safe bet to predict a war sometime in the future, but I would have liked to be clued in a bit more about what the dragon priests were basing the prophecy of the second war on. Unless... the show's creators watched Babylon 5 and in a future episode, intend to send Mortis back in time 3000 years to make the prediction himself. Or maybe at the end of the series after Word is defeated and the second war averted, Artha and Beau go back with Mortis and it turns out that Artha is the original Dragon Booster and Beau is the original gold star dragon and they're the ones that stopped the first war... Now that would be cool! B)

Actually, that does sound awesome, and would explain how Artha knows so much. Perhaps a bit too much to hope for, but I will anyway. :)

Yes, but then, how would the gold star artefact come into being in the first place? And wouldn't that make Beau his own great-to-the-nth-power grandfather? And wouldn't that mean that whatever entities worked the time travel could have used their uber-powers in a less complicated scheme?

Time travel has a nasty tendency to hurt the brain.

I would have Artha leave the amulet and armband in the present with a worthy person, then travel back in time to the point 3000 years ago where, according to the mythology, the amulet and armband were first forged. He could then pick them up and he'd be all set to be the Dragon Booster again.

Regarding the relationship between the two Beau's, it wasn't my interpretation that the present day Beau had any particular genetic relation to the Beau of the past. My read of the mythology was that any gold dragon could have done what Beau needed to do, and so Connor just had to manage to breed any gold dragon. So let's say people lost interest in German Shepherds and they stopped breeding them. And then at some point in the future someone decides they want one again, then all they have to do is repeat the selective breeding that originally lead to the creation of the breed. You could get a dog back that was virtually the same even though it was not a direct descendent of the previous set of German Shepherds. Connor just needed a dragon with pure gold draconium bones. According to the mythology, a worthy Dragon Booster combined with the amulet and armor would then be able to release the full power of the gold dragon and fulfill the prophecy.

As for whether there's a less complicated way to accomplish all this without time travel, I'm sure there is. But I don't know if it would be as cool as finding out that Artha and Beau are destined to go back into the past and fight the first war as well. It could be a whole second series! :D

That would be very interesting, though it still wouldn't explain why all those ancient legends are exactly, completely true. Me, I'm still going with the "Stupid Writing" theory. 'Tis not logical to have all these oh-so-reliable prophecies.

But I'd LOVE to see some flashbacks or something of the ancient days. They sound a lot more interesting than recent times.

*swings feet* I never saw the reliability of the prophocies beign a plot hole in any way. I guess my favourite book series is based on a totally conflicting prophecy anyway- the outcome is supposedly totally fifty fifty whether the hero or the villain will win, (Like we ever believed the hero would, COULD lose) yet the second part ofg the prophecy after the hero/villian fight mentions the hero's son will be kidnapped... which wouldn't've been possible if the villian won- unless the villian take over th erole of hero, but even then it's pretty shakey

So I take it with a grain of salt. At least this one makes sense.

I never really thought the wars reflected any of our wars in anything more then psyche. War is the ultimate man made disaster, so it's a powerful word to describe a threat. I mean I never really saw how Word could gain world domination with a war anyway if he wasn't directly leading it, which from the way his sneaky backhanded dealsings seem to suggest, he's not. It's just a threatening word. it immeditately gets a big rubber stamp to stamp on Word "EVIL"

I've wondered about this myself. The best I've been able to figure is that Word plans to take advantage of the ensuing chaos that a war between humans and dragons would cause. I think he's the kind of person that would let both sides simply fight it out for a period of time while he waits in the wings. Then when both sides are sufficiently weakened, he moves in with some sort of advantage he's been hiding that would let him win the war. That would fit his sneaky, backhanded and manipulative style. The question is what's the advantage that would enable him to win at that point. It would have to be something fairly strong, but not so strong that he could just stage a coup right now. So I think we can infer that he needs the chaos of war for whatever he's got up his sleeve to work. So far they haven't given us any hints as to what his advantage might be (unless maybe it's just that by that point in the war he'll be the only one left with a supply of working combat gear which he's been stockpiling and he'll just be able to out gun everyone else once there are fewer people to fight and those who are left are sufficiently weak, but I'd like to see something more devious than that). I hope we find out more as the series goes on, but I tend to think the writers haven't worked it out to this level of detail since I tend to doubt they'll bring the story close enough to the point of war where they would have to start filling us in on these things. As things are, the writers can continue to wave their hands and just say "Word's got a plan up his sleeve" and leave it at that.

Yes, he probably would pull something like that...but for him to want to start the wall is fairly inexplicable.

And a dragon-human war would ALSO mean that his gears would no longer affect, oh, let's say fifty percent of the dragons (assuming that the remaining dragons are still going to be used by humans to fight on). Which means he'd be out of some business. There would be lots of better ways for to him to conquer the world--handing out wraith-control gears to racers like candy, turning as many dragons as he could into wraiths (which, remember, most humans wouldn't mind as long as they still had control), subtle political intrigue, etc. Having him start a war is stupid. IMO it might have been better if they'd presented him as trying to STOP a war. Because the dragons are sort of human slaves, right? And it might take a war and a dragon-empire to prove that dragons are in fact sentient (American Civil War, even WWII to a certain extent). It would make it really interesting to watch if we had pacifist!villain!Word trying to stop a war so the dragons remained under human control, and warmongering!morally!ambiguous!heroes trying to start one for the sake of the rather abstract ideal 'freedom'.

In this one case, they actually give a reason why he doesn't do that in a future episode. Without giving it all away, basically the black draconium from which the control gear is made is rare enough that he doesn't have all he wants, and despite the immense wealth he must have, he can't simply buy it either. He has to use one of his usual plans of deception to try and acquire a relatively small amount.

As to whether war is his best course of action, I agree that there would be alternatives. Word is ruthless, so he should be choosing whichever path gets him to world domination with the least effort to him regardless of who else might get hurt or suffer along the way. Whether the path that leads to war is the best choice for him will depend upon what the ace up his sleeve is. Until they give us a glimpse of what that might be (assuming they ever do), it's difficult to decide if it all makes sense or not.

In any event, I still would like to see the story develop further towards the war and hope to see what his plan might be (but I'm not going to hold my breath).

To round things out here, I'll just throw in my opinion on where Dragon City is located:

I prefer to think it's located here on Earth, but Earth with a different history. Basically, everything about the planet was the same early on, except at some point a minor variation occurred that allowed for the formation of draconium (which I think is most likely a molecule instead of an element in case anyone wants to have a geeky science discussion about that). The presence of that substance allowed for the evolution of the dragons which in turn caused things to diverge from our own known history. So none of the events, civilizations or wars that we know of occurred. Instead a completely different history as recounted in the show's mythology happened in its place.

There's no proof in the show so far that Dragon City is on Earth (like a picture of the night sky with a recognizable constellation) so I'm taking this on faith, but there's also no proof that it's not on Earth. So in the meantime, I'd like to believe it's on Earth.

According to the show's mythology, humans spread out across the planet beginning 10,000 years before the events in the show. That's enough time to allow for separate cultures and races to form. I'm going to allow that the forces that propel convergent evolution would also allow for certain similarities in culture and architecture that we recognize in the show to form. I'm also going to allow that whatever confluence of events caused someone to pick the name Mordred for example at one point in our history might also occur in a parallel history and someone might pick a similar sounding name. So I will allow convergence to produce similarities in culture, architecture, names and so forth.

There's one odd thing in the description of Dragon City that doesn't really fit any model: that the city is supposed to be 20 miles high. The problem is there's no air that high up. In order to have the atmosphere extend that high, physics or the size of the planet would have to change so much that I don't think the result would be anything we could recognize. I'm just going to look the other way on this one.

Any interesting side question is what year is it now in Dragon City relative to our calendar. Their technology is more advanced, so one would like to say it is most likely in the future relative to us. Technology might develop at different rates, so there could be variation here. There's probably no way to resolve this question though since without a common history, there are no reference points except for things based on geological time frames which wouldn't give enough accuracy to make a determination.

In any event, I like to think they're on Earth somewhere in the future relative to our time, but with a completely different history.

What effect do you think the war would have had on developing technology? On our world a great deal of technological development occurred due to war and hostility, though in the mythology of Dragon City it appears to imply that war produced the opposite.

What I really don't like about the Dragon Booster names, though, is that, convergent evolution aside, they bear few signs of being from the same culture. Most inhabitants of Dragon City appear to be from roughly the same cultural background--what division there is by skin colour seems inconsistent (ie. pale Word and Moordryd are upper-class, when really the more tanned people should be)--and yet their names differ vastly, from Word to feline Kitt (a common connotation for Mary-Sues, by the way) to gen-fantasy Parmon to the Arthurian contingent to Greek-influenced Pyrrah to Biblical Cain. Khatah aside, there doesn't seem to be anyone in the city with a different culture, which makes the names...jarring. Whatever the history, it seems very inconsistent on this particular level.

You know what would be good? If a war actually started. Now that would be interesting.

Wouldn't that be great? I'd love to see the story turn in that direction. It would raise the stakes and increase the tension and urgency of the stories, and give the heros a greater obstacle to overcome. That would definitely be something to see.

But it'd kill the series in the end- it'd have to end sometime and What kind of interesting plot full of action and adventure can you do post war? I mean it'd be pretty fair to say Word would be put out of action, even if not, his warmongering wouldn't be sucessful at all right after one.

I think given a choice between a series with a definite ending (eg. Harry Potter) and a series that could drag on forever (the sort of TV shows that press the 'reset' button after every ep), I'd choose the former. The former tends to be more progressive and well-structured, and it also leaves some reader satisfaction in a resolution. Yes, it's a pity when a good book or series ends, but I think that everything needs to have an ending (though at the moment I'm reading a rather good fanfiction sequel-type work). I also agree that a war (not even necessarily between the dragons and the humans, maybe even some uprising of the lower cities) would provide some excitement, and also hopefully reveal just WHY Word has been planning the dragon-human war. And post-war stories may not have exciting battles, but they can be just as interesting in exploring the emotional and social effects of a war.

Yes, but that's not the point with a cartoon series, now matter how devoted the animators are, it's there to sell, and th emore they can make, the better.

I like things to wrap up as well. We know the series will end at some point, so why not have it go out with closure. There's also ways to continue past a conclusion in the current conflict. Let's suppose for a moment that the heros are successful in neutralizing whatever the ace is that Word has up his sleeve to win the war. I'd say someone like Word would have a plan B ready that he could execute instead, some completely different path to world domination. Or maybe Word was suppressing some of his weaker foes behind the scenes all this time, and once he's out of the way, they can rise to be a new threat. I don't know. Maybe those are lousy ideas. But I think someone more skilled than I could come up with something new to challenge the heros if there was demand for more episodes.

Do I expect this to happen? No, not really. But it's still what I'd like to see.

The technology in use at the time of the original war 3000 years ago seems incongruous in itself, so it's difficult to say. The depictions we see of the war show the humans fighting with spears, swords and shields. I'm not sure how those would be effective against a dragon that can mag-blast you before you could get close enough to use your sword. And if you do manage to get close, the dragon can always kick you or just bite your head off. Seems like it would have been a rather one sided war and over pretty quickly, wouldn't it. The only possibility might be if the humans outnumbered the dragons by at least 100 to 1 or something and were able to overwhelm them with shear numbers. But that doesn't seem likely as humans and dragons seem to be in a fairly even ratio. Also, the mythology says the dragons who were sympathetic to the original Beau forged the Dragon Booster armor. So it looks like the technology edge is on the dragon's side as well.

Did anyone else see how the first war was supposed to have played out given the primitive weapons they've shown the humans using?

(It occurred to me once that the perhaps the weapons were draconium based and perhaps had some kind of power, but that doesn't seem to fit. If it were so easy to make such weapons 3000 years ago, then how come no one in Dragon City is outfitted with the equivalent weapons today?)

I always thought that it would make more sense if the war was between independent dragons and humans-with-dragon-slaves, which could partially account for why it took so long. It would also, I think, be more logical for the war Word's trying to start be run along similar lines, between gear-controlled dragons and independent dragons. You're right, humans would be rather inadequate against dragons.

I could also actually buy that the draconium empires of thousands of years ago had greater technology than today, which was somehow lost in the devastation of the war. It says that humans "built an almost 'Atlantean' world" seven thousand years before the war, which gives us seven thousand years between human building and the draconium empires, which could and probably would lead into a level of technology GREATER than our own (5,000-5,500 years of recorded history, unless Wikipedia plays me false). So perhaps the swords and spears depicted were in fact super-weapons, the technology for which has been lost due to the horrible stress of the war. And perhaps, in the peace immediately following the war, a lot of weapons and technology pertaining them were destroyed, many people not wanting to risk another war, which led to them being lost for three thousand years (a bit long, but let's just let that slide and assume that they took several thousand years to develop anyway).

That makes sense. Now that I think about it, the Furox is shown with a human rider in the flash-back sequence to the war. So if the humans had enough of the warrior dragons that have been mentioned on their side, then that would give them some leverage and even things out. From what we saw of the Furox, it's probably safe to assume the warrior dragons were insanely aggressive enough to fight whatever their riders pointed them at, even other dragons. (And I'm pretty certain the writers got the name Furox from the French word furax which means livid, so there seems to be some fit.)

I wonder if the war had two or three sides in it. The humans with warrior dragons that wanted to continue enslaving dragons would be one side. There's the Dragon Booster with some number of dragons on his side (minimally the ones that made the armor). In an upcoming episode it's mentioned that he had "many" dragon and human allies, so that should be enough to represent a second group. A third group would possibly be the remaining dragons that were so fed up with humans that they wouldn't ally themselves with the Dragon Booster and would fight against the previous two groups. It would be fun if we could see more of the original war.

I suppose it's also possible as you say that there were draconium based weapons that could have be used against the dragons and that the knowledge of those were lost or destroyed on purpose after the war. It certainly fits the standard Atlantean legends where there always seems to be lost technology. I suppose since the Dragon Priests hid away all the bone marks, it's possible they did the same with all the weapons (or just destroyed them).

I think there would have been at least three sides: the Dragon Booster and his human and dragon allies (peace), the humans-with-dragon-slaves who thought they could win the war and wanted to keep fighting, and the free dragons who thought THEY could win. Who knows, there might even have been a few splinter groups as well.

You're right, what went on about three thousand years ago sounds infinitely more interesting than the present gang of boring teenagers. It's set up so that modern-day seems a shadow of the ancient times and omg why don't they just set the bloody thing three thousand years ago and have done with it?

I'm placing my bets that more super ancient weaponry and assorted Mystical Artefacts are going to turn up in future eps, though I don't think much of this rediscovered tech is actually going to be implemented in Dragon City at large.

I would bet you're right about splinter groups. The mythology says humans had divided themselves into the various draconium empires and were already fighting each other sporadically when the dragons revolted. The revolt would cause the majority of humans to unite, but there would almost certainly be a few zealots in each empire that would refuse to unite. So that makes three main sides, plus one or more splinter groups from each draconium empire all fighting it out. Quite a war.

If you've seen faster than fear, you would see that the planet has two moons, so definetley not earth.