Golden Treasure Q&A: Part 2

When/where will the story of Golden Treasure take place?

On Earth! There may not be many (physical) dragons here right now, but most ancient civilizations agreed that there at least used to be. The game is set around 3000 BCE, in the Bronze Age, when humans were just beginning to claim supremacy over the planet. The mythological record of that time paints a portrait of a beautiful but uncertain world in which Nature was still the greatest power and spirits and fantastic beings still roamed the land.

As humans unlock the secrets of things such as metal tools, dragons continued to survive in the deep, wild places of the world. As a young dragon, you will have to compete with other sentient beings to survive, but may also be able to use them as resources. Perhaps you may even get to influence history: will dragons fade toward extinction, or become stronger yet, and live to touch future ages?

What will the dragons of Golden Treasure look like?

As is mentioned above, most Bronze Age civilizations agreed that dragons existed, but exactly how they saw them differed from culture to culture. Do we take the feather-winged serpents of South America, the semi-aquatic wingless snakelike dragons of East Asia, or the six-limbed quadruped-with-separate-wings European vision of the dragon?

In the world of Golden Treasure, each of these would be a different culture's take on the reality of dragons, accentuating certain aspects of their form, and while none of them are completely correct, filtered as they are through human fears and wishes, none of them are very far from the truth, either. Dragons have long, flowing bodies which may be reminiscent of serpents, but also have four legs and claws which can grasp, though not with the same fine motor control that human hands have. They are mostly reptilian, with most of their bodies covered by scales, but also having something like feathers in places.

The above concept art by our lead artist Rachel Seeger shows some of our early ideas about dragon morphology. There has been some refinement since then, and several subspecies of dragon bring even more variety to the table, but the adult dragon shown above may give a general impression of what you can expect of your character as far as appearance.