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[vkiNm]

Hold on a second, guys. Why do we want to kill the Coast Guardians? They can hold many valuable information alive. Such as where the cows are kept so we can eat, or whom we demand tribute from.

We are an ancient, intelligent Dragon, if we can make our life easy and simple, we should totally do that and not complicate ourselves. Plus there's little that threaten us, anyway. We've already had a taste of the human's new weapons that barked louder than it bites and I can safely say that we are not impressed.

[TheBiggerFish]

Hm.
Yes.

[LordBucket]

Second contact

"how do your devices communicate with each other? what force allows it to exchange this information without heed to distance"

Clearly they're calling out to each other. You can hear them. But it would be useful to know their limits.

"AT WHAT DISTANCE ARE YOUR DEVICES ABLE TO COMMUNICATE?"

She glances at her phone.

"Ehh, I don't know what the actual limit is. A few kilometers for a phone, probably. But we use towers to relay signals. So even if I'm out of range, a tower probably is and it sends my message on to the next tower and so on, until eventually it gets where its going. Plus I think satellites carry messages too. A phone can't reach those if you're out on the ocean, but if you're near a tower, those can send to satellites which cross oceans, so really there's no limit."

That explains much of the buzzing. These devices speak their own language, and then translate for humans. There are probably many hundreds of humans using their devices at any given moment. You're unsure of the distance represented by kilometers, but simple observation of the sounds all around you and the apparent lack of visible speakers suggests that it is not trivial. And what is this thing that speaks across oceans?

"SATELLITE. I DO NOT KNOW THIS  WORD. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?"

"Things that fly in space? They orbit the earth and relay message across oceans."

"SPACE?"

"Yeah, you know...that big empty black stuff where the stars are."

You do know of that which she speaks. There comes a point when flying very high, where the blue daylit sky begins to darken and eventually becomes as black as the night. A point where the air becomes less thick, much like the air is less thick than water. A point where, try as you might, the air cannot support you and flying higher is beyond your ability no matter how hard your wings beat.

Have mere humans, creatures without wings, crossed that barrier?

"AND THESE SATELLITES, THEY TRAVEL THROUGH SPACE AND RELAY MESSAGES ACROSS THE ENTIRE WORLD? HOW LONG DOES THIS TAKE?"

"I don't know. Seconds?"

Everything about her manner, her scent, her posture, her speech, tells you that she is not lying. There remains the possibility that she is incorrect. But you have seen and heard too much to dismiss her claims.

"SHOW ME."

She shrugs and taps her screen several times. Then frowns, and taps a few more times. Then waits.

"Ok, I guess it's kind of slow. Oh, wait..." one more tap of her finger. Then a pause. "Ok, here you go."

She shows you the phone again. It now shows a red banner at the top, two human males in suits shaking hands, and a great many symbols you do not recognize.

"That's the chinese government's website. It's on the opposite side of the planet."

You've seen the earth from vantage points where the sky turns black. There is an ocean to the southwest so vast that even at that height, you cannot see its end. You have never seriously considered attempting to cross it. It appears that human devices can speak not only sound, but even pictures across that distance in but a moment.

Inquire about the human that we ate, offer condolences if they are related. We may have made a pregnant widow.

As a noble dragon, we must show respect to the little things that keep us alive by being our food, after all.

"YOU ARE PREGNANT."

"WHat?!!?!?"

"YOUR SCENT MAKES IT APPARENT. THE HUMAN THAT I ATE, THE ONE WHO POINTED HIS CELLPHONE AT ME, THE ONE ON YOUR CELLPHONE, HE IS THE FATHER?"

"...I...he...we..."

She breaks down in tears

"I OFFER MY CONDOLENCES FOR YOUR LOSS."

Clearly we'll need to get rid of the phone, if it can lead the coast guardian here. We should fly off out to sea and drop it in the ocean, then circle back here after we're sure we're not being pursued. take her along and make her do it if we can't easily carry the thing ourselves.

The device may well be a threat. It is, however, entirely too small for you to handle. A single one of your talons is as long as your human is wide. If she refused to drop it you would have difficulty taking it from her gently.

You could of course remove it from her person, perhaps limiting the damage to the loss of no more than the half or her arm between wrist and elbow...

i kinda want a pet human...

+1 Let's get a pet human.

the one we have seems nice. Keep her.

+1

I WANT A PET HUMAN!!!!!!!!!!!

...but you decide not to do that, for now.

Get altitude on the thing and investigate.

we should be prepared to attack it

We should move to see it before it can see our base.

You leave Sophie to her grief and rise up out of the alcove, attempting to remain hidden. Before your rest, the idea of needing to be careful to confront a human would have been laughable. Now, having seen some glimpses of that which they're now capable, you decide that caution is appropriate. There is also is the possibility that the Coast Guardian itself might not be human.

Turning to the north you scan the skies for the source of the hummingbird noise. You find it without difficulty. It is a creature that is bright red and white. It's wings are curiously placed on its dorsal side. They beat so rapidly that it's difficult to make sense of their motion. It has lights, and among its other sounds it is emitting one of those peculiarly regular bird chirp noises. Having never seen such a creature before, you have very little idea of how large it is, which makes it difficult to judge distance against nothing but clouds for background. Watching it briefly, listening to its approach, it is clear that it is approaching very quickly. You think that are you faster. But you're not completely certain, and you don't know if its current speed is the limit of its capability.

But it will be here soon.



You suspect that it is not a bird.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Confront the Guardian, and challenge it to a duel!

[Nunzillor]

Confront the Guardian, and challenge it to a duel!

+1

[Insanegame27]

See what the coast guardian can do. There may be more of them, and we need to know if we can beat them.

TOY WITH THE COAST GUARDIAN

[vkiNm]

That is certainly no dragon.

Yes, let us toy with the Coast Guardians! See of their capabilities. Their bravery. Will it be cowed if we simply stare at it? How much is required before it is established that we are the master and superior being? Perhaps tributes and such can be demanded without much effort if it knows for certain that we are the Master?

[Baffler]

Nah, we already know they're pathetic. What we need to do is remind them of that. Defeating their champion will prove our superiority in all things quite nicely.

Confront the Guardian, and challenge it to a duel!

+1

+1.

[Dustan Hache]

The creatures and devices these humans control are absurd and alien, like the boats made of metal. What if the chirping noises are related to the "phone" that the young woman spoke of? does that mean that the coast guardian is merely human in a flying machine?

Let us toy with them, but keep them alive. if they fall out of the sky, perhaps we should catch them and bring them back to accompany the woman. Humans are social creatures, after all.

[VoidSlayer]

They need to know where they stand.  They may be many but we are a dragon.  Destroy the machine, interrogate survivors.

They need to take us seriously.

[NRDL]

Confront the Guardian, and challenge it to a duel!

+1

[endlessblaze]

Let's talk first

[LordBucket]

Confrontation

Confront the Guardian, and challenge it to a duel!

+1

+1

+1

Destroy the machine

You fly out of your alcove, over the island and begin your approach. The creature, or perhaps machine, doesn't immediately react. It would be tactically advantageous to attack from above, but for now you keep to the water line to hide your approach. After covering roughly half the distance between you, you manage to pick out a human voice speaking in a pitch well beyond the human vocal range, from the direction of your prey.

Voice: "Base, this is HMC-09, we're picking up something moving fast in the water on FLIR, are you getting this?"

You've been seen. Not wanting to start the fight from a disadvantage you climb to higher altitude in a burst of speed.

Voice: "What the devil is that??!?"

"COAST GUARDIAN, I CHALLENGE THEE TO A DUEL!"

The reaction is immediate. Two voices begin simultaneously shouting to a third party you can't distinguish from the background noise. The creature itself tilts its entire body up and backwards to slow its forward momentum in a ponderously clumsy and inefficient manner. You yourself are built for more for speed and power than tight maneuverability, yet whatever this creature is, it makes you look graceful in comparison.

Curious, you examine it as the distance between you is rapidly closed by your mutual trajectories.

It is nearly as long as you, yet proportioned very differently. At your thickest, you are more wide, but its bulk continues in a squarish manner long past the point where your body tapers to a tail. Its tail is short and angled upwards, and it seems to lack legs, paws, hands or claws. It smells of metal, and of something else both strange and unpleasant. Its wings are equally peculiar. Rather than a single pair of wings, it appears to have several: large ones sprouting from its back, and smaller ones at the tip of its tail. Rather than beating downward in the manner of birds or dragons, they seem to be very thin, entirely too short for its size, and spinning quickly in one direction only. So quickly that it is difficult to count their number.

Where its face should be is a transparency revealing two helmeted humans inside its body. A flying machine.

One of its lights swivels upward and catches your tail in its beam for a brief moment, just as you close the protective translucent membranes beneath your eyelids and reach out with your claws for the device's dorsal wings.

Which more or less disintegrate into a cloud of shrapnel on contact.

Your momentum carries you through the exploding bits of metal and your claws effortlessly tear through the metal hull of the machine...and out through its back, allowing it to continue sailing in its original direction opposite yours rather than tumbling with you into a spin as you intended. You came prepared to fight something as strong as a dragon, but this poor creature has turned out to be less durable than even the stone from which you carve your lairs, much less dragon scale. As for the device, with its wings destroyed it begins to plummet to the ground, still carried forward by its scarcely diminished forward momentum. You flare out your wings, but before you can catch it the machine has smashed into the water, where it bounces a few times like a skipped stone due to horizontal velocity.

You hadn't expected it to be quite so delicate.

keep them alive. if they fall out of the sky, perhaps we should catch them and bring them back to accompany the woman. Humans are social creatures, after all.

interrogate survivors.

You turn about and dive to the water where the machine has come to rest. You attempt to lift it as you did with the boat, but it is entirely too heavy. And yet surprisingly, it seems not to be sinking. Tearing through its shell, you find two human males apparently tied down to a pair of chairs. They are not moving, and you smell blood. A voice from somewhere near them is asking over and over for them to respond. Wasting no time, you rip both chairs and their occupants from the machine and turn back to where your pet waits.


"I'm not crazy, it was a dragon!" she wails. "No, he even told you he was a dragon! Weren't you listening?!?! He ate my boyfriend and two of our friends, destroyed their boat and now I'm stranded on some island somewhere!"

It seems Sophie has not been idle. You descend into the alcove

"And now he's back. With two more...oh my god, are they dead?"

"THIS ONE IS. THE OTHER IS SILENT, BUT HIS HEART BEATS STILL."

You deposit the two humans, one alive one dead and both still in their chairs, to the ground.

A voice from the cellphone speaks: "Sophie, we've lost contact with the rescue helicopter. Have you seen it?"

Sophie looks at you. "You destroyed the helicopter they sent to rescue me?"

Helicopter. So the flying machine had a name.

"YES."

She gives you a reproachful look.

"IT WAS FRAGILE."


What do you do?

Spoiler: GM comment (click to show/hide)

i spent way too much time researching it, but apparently helicopter blades hit with considerably less force than one might guess.

[ATHATH]

"I DID NOT INTEND TO DESTROY IT, ONLY TO CAPTURE IT. UNFORTUNATELY, IT WAS WEAKER THAN I EXPECTED."

[IronyOwl]

Spoiler: GM comment (click to show/hide)

i spent way too much time researching it, but apparently helicopter blades hit with considerably less force than one might guess.

((Ceiling fans are also not nearly as vicious as one might expect, from my experience.))


Well then. Not to underestimate humans, but Helicopter (the Coast Guardian?) at least doesn't appear particularly scary. Hopefully their advancements are limited to farspeaking and flimsy transportation.

Speaking of which, we have now defeated their first champion and thereby hopefully proven ourselves not to be taken as a fool. Explaining these facts to Sophie's talking square might get us a more serious response than "hold still while we come find you."

Unfortunately, I don't think we actually want a serious response. Sophie's probably about as useful a source of information as they are, we were leaning towards keeping her as a pet rather than ransoming her back, and unless we're hoping to escalate the situation to see what they're really capable of there's no particular reason to antagonize them.


So I say we offer the still living rescuer for a small amount of gold (or other hoardables), if they're interested, then get Sophie to find us some cattle. We'll feel better with a full stomach.