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[Bohandas]

In many fantasy settings that I have encountered (and particularly in Dungeons and Dragons campaign settings), dragons, as well as powerful otherworldly creatures such as angels and demons, have the capacity to crossbreed and produce viable/fertile offspring with nearly any kind of corporeal creature. From this, certain results in the world at large in these settings might be expected.

This trait of omnifertility, combined with the clear/massive advantages to survival (and, in the case of descendants of beings from the celestial realms, appearance/attractiveness) conferred by their supernatural bloodline over typical members of their mundane species (advantages which might persist in being passed down to some dergee over several generations of crossing only with the mundane species of the original cross) would mean that semi-dragons, semi-demons and semi-celestials (et cetera) would have an evolutionary advantage over their fully mundane (or rather more fully mundane, as I will explain presently) conspecifics. As a result, their draconic or extraplanar genes might be expected to be spread far in the genepool, while at the same time being diluted (or at least, as a rule of thumb, not significantly increased) down to a certain limit depending on the overall size of the genepool and the frequency of supernatural crossbreedings, with the end result being that eventually most (or more likely, all) living corporeal creatures' genomes, regardless of species (more or less; although it could be (most likely validly) argued that sentient species might be expected to contain a significantly higher percentage of celestial genes on average than subsentient species), would contain some percentage of both draconic and otherworldly DNA, without the overall appearance of those creatures being significantly altered (EXCEPT in the cases of small isolated populations with small gene pools, and/or populations situated in close proximity to a dragon's lair or extraplanar portal and in which crossbreedings could thus be expected to occur more frequently)

Additionally, inheritence, in whole or in part, of the panfecundity trait enabling these crosses in the first place could go a long way towards explaining such anomolies as half-elves and half-orcs

[Chandos]

Err... what?

[Bohandas]

This essay grew out of a combination of boredom and D&D. I was idly flipping through the D&D (Edition 3.5) Monster Manual one day and I had this brainwave regarding the half-dragon, half-fiend, and half-celestial templates and what they would mean in a campaign world if taken to their logical conclusion.

This is the kind of thing that I think of in my spare time...

[Frumple]

Six-limbed or four-limbed, there's not supposed to be any science, they're just goddamn dragons. They're made of magic more than nearly every other creature. Their ability to fly stems not from their wings, their firebreath stems not from their mouth, and their ability to impregnate every creature in existence stems not from their loins.

Dunno if this sort of discussion fits better into creative projects or here in other games, though. Mentioning in the OP that it's in the framework of a P&P scenario might make it fit in better

E: Anyway, there's nothing remotely scientific about the sort of cross-breeding that goes on in most fantasy worlds. Magic genetics only has passing (if that) resemblance to actual genetics, in most cases. The stuff being passed down is probably less like DNA than it is something along the lines of a passed down curse. Which would probably be terribly more interesting, in a general sense. What happens if the curse gets removed from a body that's become dependent on it to survive?

[Viken]

I like it.  Nicely thought out and intuitive given the amount of cross-breeding of fantasy/demonic/celestrial races we see in all manner of games.  Its a logical conclusion to say that specific species are omni-firtile.  Even in real-life mythology, we've had Heroic offsprings of gods, deities, and demons to contend with for years.  Herculeas is only one example, while demonic offspring like succubi and incubi were a popular demonic myth in times past. 

Even in gaming, we have half-vampiric half-human heroes and villians, and even in non-modern settings, like Shadowrun, you can run across half-ghoul and half-elven creatures, or half-spirit, whatever. 

Just a quick suggestion: Keep this in Other Games.

[LordBucket]

trait of omnifertility,
clear/massive advantages to survival

That depends on how you look at it. As you've laid it out, omnifertility may prvide a "suvival advantage" for those specific genes, but not significantly so for the organism possessing those genes.

semi-dragons, semi-demons and semi-celestials (et cetera) would have an evolutionary advantage over their fully mundane (or rather more fully mundane, as I will explain presently) conspecifics.

How? Why? That I'm aware of, literary "omnifertility" is limited to initial breeding only. A dragon may breed with anything, but a half-dragon / half-anything probably can't. The obvious implication being that omnifertility is not a genetic trait. It's can't be given to offpring. It is more likely a non-physical attribute. In particular you mention angels, demons and celestials. These beings are probably not confined to a physical form. In D&D specifically, creatures of this sort when "killed" simply return to their plane of origin and form a new body. In all sources I'm aware of in which dragons are implied to be able to breed with humans, those dragons are also capable of shapeshifting into any form of their choosing. All of these creatures are implied to have some sort of magical, spiritual or otherwise diect conscious control over their physical form.

I suggest that omnifertility is not a genetic trait. It is an implied ability of any "spirit creature" which is in the practice of consciously and deliberately creating physical bodies to occupy. It seems not unreasonable to suggest that a creature capable of doing this would be able to involve itself in the fertilizaion process. If it can think up a new body for itself to occupy, it can probably think up some biologically compatible sperm. I see no reason to assume that a spiritual creature capable of conjuring bodies would be limited to only creating a single shape. More likely these creatures have a deep understadning of the physical processes and are consequently able to think into existence physical forms that suit them. They look like they do because that's what they want to look like. They can build and design genetic forms of a desired configuration as they please. Thinking up a half-human / half-nonhuman form is not significantly more difficult than creating either or.

evolutionary advantage

I suggest that there is no evolution of physical form for creatures of this sort. They make whatever kind of body them want to occupy. Again, these are not physical creatures. They're spiritual beings occupying temporary forms that they have created.

[Biag]

That may be true, but a half-dragon is mortal and has a distinct advantage over most other creatures. The OP postulates that this advantage will dilute itself throughout the gene pool given enough generations- and this postulation is supported by the "bloodline" mechanic detailed in Unearthed Arcana, as well as the popular conception of angelic and demonic bloodlines. Oh, and tieflings.

[Knight of Fools]

I thought it was a game where we tried to use as many parentheses as possible... 

Seriously, though, that has potential for a pretty solid D&D campaign.

[IronyOwl]

While all cases I'm aware of are highly supernatural in some sense, most omnifertile beings I've heard of cannot change form at will, and almost never on the scale of minute details. Most are also considerably less knowledgeable than would be expected to have conscious control over minutiae like reproductive compatibility, so that doesn't seem likely at all.

The notion that their elemental/alignment-infused nature acts as some sort of glue or blank slate might work, but isn't specified or required.


That said, the OP's conclusions depend on a couple assumptions.

The first is that half-X creatures are indeed objectively superior to mundane ones, which is likely untrue. Things like maturation time, dietary requirements, and other traits beyond a stat block can have a massive impact on the creature outside the dungeon- their odds of getting the food and care they need to wind up as an elite adventurer rather than a malnourished bandit, for instance. Otherwise, you would expect the most successful races to be those that were the most powerful- like dragons, celestials, and fiends, obviously, but at the very least trolls or somesuch.

Since all the world's greatest legends don't concern said creatures (or at least, not them winning), and indeed since mortal races still exist at all, rather than having been shoved aside by stronger beings, it can probably be inferred that powerful creatures often have limiting factors that prevent them from steamrolling anything else they come across. Given that information, there doesn't seem to be any reason a half-fiend or dragon-touched would be immune to those principles either, and would likely find their unique gifts rather less impressive than at first glance.


Secondly, it makes the critically flawed assumption that being good for the individual is good for the species. Even if a half-celestial were considerably superior to its peers, it might be too self-sacrificing to breed especially well, for instance. As mentioned earlier, dietary and environmental needs, length of reproductive cycle, and other such factors can make an otherwise imposing race (dragons, for instance) not especially successful as a species. The "if that were true the whole world would be dragons by now" principle is arguably even more true here.


Third, it makes the assumption that severe dilutions are at least as strong as pure samples; again, this isn't necessarily the case. Aside from whatever bizarre and not especially rational results having a hint of fiend blood might have, there's more logical issues that might come to the fore. Someone with a pinch of dragon blood might have hoarding tendencies beyond what's strictly productive, for instance, without having any advantages to pull it off well or compensate for it.


Short Version: There's no reason to assume it'd be that ubiquitous while being that faint; either the whole world would be dragons (or half-fiends, if hybrids have some critical advantage over their stronger parents), or there's some reason why it doesn't work that way.

[Bohandas]

Even in real-life mythology, we've had Heroic offsprings of gods, deities, and demons to contend with for years.

And, since its been brought up, offspring of offspring; As in the case of Hercules' six sons, the Japanese imperial family supposedly being descended from the Shinto sungoddess Amaterasu, or Charlie Sheen supposedly being descended from Adonis

and this postulation is supported by the "bloodline" mechanic detailed in Unearthed Arcana, as well as the popular conception of angelic and demonic bloodlines. Oh, and tieflings.

Precisely!

(And also the Draconic Creature template that appears in several D&D 3.5e supplemental rulebooks)

[Greenbane]

it makes the assumption that severe dilutions are at least as strong as pure samples

This is the crux of the matter. I don't know much about D&D, but from my point of view, unless the higher races constantly and massively crossbred with the more mundane species (very unlikely), the genetic advantage would rapidly dilute (and by definition weaken) to meaninglessness within a handful of generations. Half-dragons are mostly a shadow of real dragons, even being merely a generation away. Assuming an optimistic 50% of dragon genetic structure in the first hybrid generation, breeding with a pure mortal being would create a second generation that's a hopeful 25% dragon. Third gen would be around 12%, and fourth 6%. And this is all assuming all dragon genes are dominant enough not to be pushed aside by those of 'lesser' species, which needn't be the case.

But really, by the fourth generation your hybrid would be 6% dragon if they're lucky. And what's that 6%? Is it really a flat, objective 6% improvement across the board? And even if it were, would it really be enough to positively set you that much apart from the mundane population?

And as IronyOwl pointed out, you could inherit flaws and not necessarily advantageous traits. That 6% might entirely correspond to an isolated, pathological hoarding behaviour, or perhaps a mix of that, a minute increase in muscular strength and a tendency to like being surrounded by shiny things. Maybe another such hybrid would have sliiiiightly tougher skin, a preference to sleep snuggled to his life savings, and farts slightly more reactive to flame.

[Viken]

Another selective case of all of this is the 'sleeper' genetics you find in D&D, as well.  As a Fiend, you weren't born to a demon father and human mother, but are a 'down-the-bloodline' re-activation of the hidden genetic data.  The Celestrials can be like that as well. 

A real-life example of that exists today, even, with the DNA modern humans have inhereted from our exstinct neanderthal homo genus.  A certain genetic trigger can be activated that causes a modern human to re-create genetic traits that were otherwise dormant; either from environmental factors or parental inheretances.  Its one of those lovely genetic loopholes we keep stumbling apon.

Then again, if an ape has 98% of the genetics of a human; how big of a difference is it from a human and a dwarf? Or a human and an elf? Troll or orc? Lol.  Half-and-lower breeds are compatible with the rest of humanity according to D&D, so why not anything else? Lol.

[Mr.Person]

If the fantasy creature is in all ways superior (or at least better at breeding, say hello to rabbitmen) and said creatures breed with humans more often than never, yeah, that creature's DNA will migrate through the gene pool. That makes sense.

The big issue is simply that in most fantasy settings, humans tend to hate nonhumans. Demihumans are no exception. Entire towns will probably consider the demihuman to be, well, a monster and attempt to murder him/her. Humans sleeping with the nonhumans is really, really rare. There's a reason most demihumans are half-orcs (hint: the human was probably female and the sex probably wasn't consensual).

A more minor problem that I think others are bringing up is simply that the ideal DNA balance is not necessarily the biggest, baddest, nastiest human form. If everybody was, say, more like a red dragon from the D&D universe, everybody would be big schemers only in it for themselves, all trying to get as much money and other valuables for the sole purpose of sitting on them. Sure, one such individual in this situation migh t benefit, but a whole city of these bastards would be full of crime with constant power struggles, murders, and assholes generally being dicks to each other. Basically, it would be New Jersey.

So I'd say the best nonhuman DNA to migrate around would actually be dwarves. Being industrious and societal means, well, a productive society. Gnomish DNA would also probably travel around quite a bit. I'd also think that most celestials would be beneficial to society. A little bit of some huge brute like a troll would also probably be quite popular so we wind up with overall stronger humans. That's just my opinion though. It's entirely possible for a setting to revolve around the fall of an empire and how a great leader fighter unites all the barbarian clans. In such a world, I'd sure as fuck want to be as much like an ogre, troll, orc, or any other big, stupid bruiser as possible. Having some demon, dragon, or even celestial influences would be great, though, since those would all help with taking over and being leader.

[mendonca]

I like this thread. I was hooked when I saw the use of the word 'panfecundity' and shall endeavour to slip that one in to 'normal' conversation.

As you were chaps ...

[ECrownofFire]

I believe the lore of sorcerers in D&D are that they have draconic blood in them, so there's that. There's also a "spellscale" (I think it's called that...) draconic race in one of the dragon books that rarely shows up when two sorcerers get together or something.