Hey folks!

So I think im gonna go ahead and use this picture here to talk about a broader topic but first the worldbuilding in the picture.

This is an ambush by a northern Mexican cult known as “Las Lagrimas de Babicora”, an aggressive ascensionist cult that has seized an opportunity to ambush a group of human explorers from AOP #394, a rural outpost 20 miles North of Babicora, and to show the weak humans how to embrace the mystical tears of La Madre de la Laguna.

That guy in the corner has been drug off and is currently being drekified whilst the rest duke it out with the human force with a mix of humans and already drekified operatives.

So Human-Drekir conflicts!

Generally humanity’s presence is hardly felt in the DragonScape outside of their primary colonies, with even their outposts being barely noticeable. Humanity is pretty much physically stopped from pushing inland due to the mana laden lands and the risk of drekification, if they wanted to conquer the Americas, they wouldn’t do it as humans so they stay within their filtered bases and behind mana masks. Instead they focus on economic gains from the rich natural resources of the Americas rather than empire building.

Combined with humans generally not having fond opinions of drekir due to many reasons, but least of which being thoroughly uncomfortable with something that was human or, if natural born is very much similar to a human in terms of their intelligence, but at the same time nothing like a human. Worse yet the fact that they may become these things. It’s a rather tense situation.

And on top of that, the local drekir may not take kindly to these invaders, humans that only the 1st generation of drekir know about and that the natural borns have only heard of in tales of the past. They look weird, they look spindly and lanky and alien to everything in the DragonScape.

So conflict eventually will break out, now this won’t talk about any particular conflict but more the skirmishes, tribal wars, and other such small scale conflicts that make up the bulk of fighting in the DragonScape.

Why do Humans and Drekir fight generally?

In more isolated situations it could be for a few reasons

Human attacking drekir has a few causes

The most common cause is that drekir are in the way of something the humans want. If it’s economic reasoning then perhaps it’s an large bit of the downtown of an abandoned city they want to harvest, or a large spread of forests the humans want the lumber from, and the locals are exploiting those same natural/prepulse resources and don’t want to surrender them.

It could be because the humans are on scientific ventures and keep running into problems with the locals who don’t like the humans interfering in the business of the drekir or the surrounding world.

Or if the drekir attacked the humans first.

Drekir attacking humans also has a few causes

The attacking drekir are cultists of a more ascensionist persuasion, believing that all life should be draconified for any number of religious or ideological reasonings that depend on the cult.

The Drekir do not like the humans interfering with their business, etc. etc. covered above

The Humans attacked them first

In any situation, these conflicts are uncommon, moreso than with conflicts between drekir groups or drekir-sivilāo conflicts. Humans are in a very fragile position in the DragonScape and drekir tend to be wise enough to avoid conflict where possible to save their own populations. But sometimes it does break out.

So do humans win because they have machine guns?

Not quite, drekir have a lot of advantages, they may be technologically more primitive, but they don’t need automatic weaponry to win the day.

Firstly drekir are very imposing to a human, they may be vibrantly colorful and whatnot but, from a human perspective, you are dealing with a large, intelligent velociraptor like creature. Drekir are much faster runners than humans so it’s difficult for a human group to successfully get away from a drek group that is actively chasing them, unless that human group has vehicles that can move faster than 30mph on usually unfair terrain. Drekir are also big enough to easily tackle a human to the ground and, with their maws and claws don’t even need a weapon to win a hand to hand fight. Drekir also have very keen hearing and smell so it’s also difficult to hide from them, and lastly they are mana vectors which is just in of itself dangerous to humans.

Drekir often use their mobility in these sorts of fights to surround and outmaneuver their superiorly armed opponents rather than bumrushing them, drekir are not stupid and clever tactics are not beyond them by any means.

Secondly is mana and drekification. Humans have to go through a lot of effort to not get mana on them, they can’t touch it, breathe it, consume it, or really do anything with it safely and as such they have to wear a lot of mana protective equipment on top of combat equipment. Even if mana splashes onto ones safety clothing they will need to take time to wipe it off or it will start slowly bending their bodies. Drekir (especially radical cults focused on drekification) know this and tend to use that to their advantage, a drekified colonist is basically a noncombatant seeing as they are physically not there for several minutes and then what is left is a drek that can’t do anything. So mana, magic, and mana exposure are commonly used by drekir to chase humans away, though their drekified colonial partners will need different methods to handle them.