Last week I turned into a 250 foot dragon and swallowed a dwarf whole.
Shortly afterwards I turned back to my heartbeast (a bear), and then into a human.
So what happened to the dorf?
If I'd chewed him up, then i'm sure he'd have become food, and part of my body, so would change with me.
But I swallowed him whole. I'm sure eventually he'd suffocate and get eaten away by my stomach acids, but not immediately. So if he was still alive when I became human.. what should actually happen to him?
I'm not sure what the knowledge of the human digestive system was at the time, specifically on the dissolving properties of stomach acids, but I'm sure there are tales of heroes getting swallowed whole by dragons and then fighting their way out of the stomach, or of whales swallowing boats whole, and elderly carpenters living for years inside of the whale before being rescued by a wooden boy. So.. in Ars.. what would happen to the dwarf?
Is it as simple as: The dragon has eaten him, he's gone.
Or should I stay as a dragon for a half hour after eating to allow my stomach acids to do their thing
Or should I follow my mothers advice and chew my food before swallowing it
As SG I would do what produces the best effect/story. Letting characters explode because their players did not state they chewed on their dwarf does not make a good story in my opinion. Vomiting an entire dwarf who is still alive and very confused on turning back could be interesting.
Meeting other people inside a monster sounds familiar and could be part of a nice story (or a disgusting one...)
So, do what seems appropriate to you.
As ASG for the game Ryce plays in, I'm quite interested in this too. I don't like the exploding stomach idea either, its not very mythic. A raging belly ache might be appropriate.
At the time i believe i said something along the lines of "Maybe its best we don't know what happens to the dwarf"
On the other hand, Ryce is perhaps the sneakiest player i've ever gamed with and i'm sure his tricksy little mind is already working out ways to use a disintegrating stomach. No doubt what happens i shall rue the day that Ryce Mageslayer ate a dwarf.
I can easily him eating anything big and nasty that is about to affect him or the party negatively, and insta-turning to mage to destroy it. Destroy a boulder doing that, for example. Or the Tower of London.
But maybe belly ache dependis on how much and how fast you eat stuff? Maybe it all shows up suddenly in the middle of that tense situation of life and death challenge? or maqybe you start to transform into what you eat and become a NPC....?
What kind of spell level was imposed on the spell to allow growth to a 250 foot dragon??? That is already well beyond the size of even the largest known Ars dragon (we're talking size 10 minimum and I would venture upwards of size 12-13). This would require 4 magnitudes for size to start with, notwithstanding the Vi requisite (MuCo(An)(Vi)) for another magnitude.
Even with a generous ruling of a base 20 MuCo(An)Vi starting point - Although "turn human into a mythical creature" could well be ruled as a higher base level than "bird or fish" - We are talking about a R:Per D:Diameter T: Ind casting level of 45 minimum. Given that Creation of mythic beasts is base level 50, Id say this would be extremely generous for such an off the scale sized dragon.
Allowing for the above, why would anyone want to eat a Dwarf (of all possible meal options)??? They are tough and taste horrible. Surely if youre going to go the extreme of molesting the fae, at least show some good culinary sense and eat a Sidhe.
Following on from 2, I would be more worried about what is likely to happen to your magus both from the Quesitors and the Fae court when they each get round to deciding on a response for your clear breach of the Code.
Ryce has a spell to change him into a dragon about the size of a large person. He then has another spell to make him really really big. If i recall correctly an elephant is about size +4, a dragon size +7, i think clocks in at about +8. He doesn't need corpus to do it since he changes from heartbeast form, i.e. he only uses animal.
The offending dwarf had stolen our magic rose bush (which constantly weeps vis, we get about 6 pawns a year out of it atm) and was capering around the bush and generally having no idea about how upset we were about it all. Eating him was less a culinary idea and more a means of expressing to the Fae exactly how annoyed we were.
We were merely recovering our lost property and expressing our displeasure to the local fae. When we finally met the local Fae ruler, we demanded the heads of the 5 Fae who had actually done the pilfering. Instead she gave as a rather tasty magic blanket and her abject apologies.
Ironically, the bush itself came from a destroyed covenant called the Covenant of the Bleeding Rose (appropriately). This covenant had a vast rose bush (of which ours is merely a cutting) that produced a queen of vis every year. Such vast magical wealth led the magi there to become powerful and prideful, in their arrogance they angered the Fae greatly and caused a massive faerie backlash. A small army of Fae knights slaughtered everyone in the covenant and then Sidhe magic cast it outside time. It pops back every now and then, in different locations, and can be explored for a day or two. Its haunted by ghosts of the magi and coven folk and there is still on maga alive and well (although totally crazy) in her tower, protected by a ward of obscene strength.
So magi find magic bush, get very wealthy, annoy fae, fae kill magi, magi find bush, fae steal bush, magi take back bush and kill fae. Everyone lives happily ever after
Size +7 is a small Dragon, Stellatus (an ancient dragon) clocks in at +8 and even he is NOWHERE near 250 feet long. My god man, the largest mammal on the face of the panet, the Blue Whale, is only around 100 feet long and that is enormous. +8 would be something on the order of 60-70 feet long. You are talking about a dragon so large it could swallow two ancient dragons whole!!! A beast that would stand roughly 100 feet high if reared up on its hind legs. That is just preposterous, sorry.
Having though about my initial level suggestion above, I am more inclined to suggest that any character who proposes such a monstrosity should be prepared to cast a Ritual spell of roughly 12th to 14th magnitude and would most likely have to be of Archmage ability to do such a feat.
Sorry but its just wayyyy too D&Dish for my taste. Normal Dragon, fine... 250 foot mega dragon... please
Hum... Dragons not being so small naturally, I wonder if such a spell would actually be easier than changing into a normal dragon, since you'd have to actually make him smaller than he should be.
Nonetheless, I'm curious as to what base level you used to change into such a thing: As boxer noted above, it should be quite high, probably making the spell a ritual nonethelless: Even changing into a raven is already level 30, and we're talking about a dragon
As storyguide for this particular outing, I can confirm that this is what the magi assumed, but they were wrong.
The poor defenseless dwarf was merely a gardener assigned to look after the rose bush and keep it alive after other fae nicked it. It was all part of an elaborate practical joke contest, and the mean ass magi completely overreacted and killed a poor defenseless dwarf who was actually doing them some good...
Maybe the dwarf got sent "someplace else" and next time you change into a dragon it will reapear, since the dragon ate him not you, and try to climb out
Was the "Dwarf" you ate a human with the Dwarf Flaw or a Faerie?
If the latter, I'd probably rule that he suffers severe abdomenal pain while in human form forcing him to remain a dragon culminating in a Little Red Ridinghood scene. Alternately, voiding the dwarf through copious vomiting (or diarrhea) could also be suitable.
For a Human dwarf, I'd probably let it go, the Bjornaer chapter of HoH:MC doesn't mention any problems for shapechangers regaining human form after eating sizable quantities of hay or raw meat, so it should be OK for a magus using Muto Corpus too. My contrived solution is that once the dwarf was entirely within Ryce it became part of him and, as such, he went whereever the rest of Ryce's dragon-form's mass came from...
