Dawn of Hope: On Dragons

[PhoenixPhyre]

Still souls of different races are different.
So it is a whole new level of racism that is even more racist than previous kinds of racism.
Usually racist people says "this person is inferior" but not "this person is inferior and its soul is inferior too"

Also a simulacrum is by default a creature:
So while it is partially real it is still a creature so logically true polymorph would work on it as on a creature unless in your setting simulacrums are less creatures than in the spell description(rewriting spells for a setting is a logical thing).

That's not a racial thing as much as it is an individual thing. Not all individuals are the same. I speak in generalities, because there are trends. Bigger usually means more capacity. This does not equate to moral worth, intellectual capacity, or any other such thing. You can just hold more raw anima (because you have to to keep your body together). Dinosaurs are big and strong, but that doesn't make them better. Goblins are small, but that doesn't make them worse. Just different.

And the capacity needed for spell-casting, to be precise, isn't about raw power. There are lots of very big, very powerful creatures who can't cast a cantrip. Even a tiny, weak fey being (such as a sprite) can cast spells, because the total energy involved is small. But those connections are intrinsic and take time to develop. Just like sexual maturity, a hatchling just doesn't (always barring exceptional cases here) have that potential developed yet. It's blocked behind the rest of the things that must happen to develop.

As for simulacrums--the nature of a simulacrum is not as easy as simply quoting the rules. Because those are not the rules of the world. They're the game abstractions--things that are creatures (by the rules) are not necessarily ensouled beings (in the world) and vice versa. I'm leaving that one open and not deciding anything about it yet.

Someone who talked enough to learn 2 languages probably have a name and a significant identity.

Not inherently. I know lots of kids (3-5 year olds) who can speak very well but have loose concepts of me vs not-me. More precisely, they don't really believe that others are real. A name, for a hatchling, is a label. Like a name for a human. As they grow, their names become them (and they become their names). To a post-hatchling dragon, their names define who they are and they are bound by their names. Hatchlings have arbitrary labels that mean me, but not NAMES.

Or you could convince a high caster to protect you from the problems of not molting such as asking a wizard to turn you into a younger hatchling(since you do not want to be turned into an older dragon since it creates tons of problems you mentioned) or even into an entirely different specie altogether. so trying to get to be a friend of one of those high level wizards that just sits there alone in a tower studying magic could be an alternate way of surviving.

That's possible, but that requires finding a high level caster. And those are rare. For example, in all the main play area nations, there are maybe 1-2 people who can cast 9th level spells. One's a cleric, one's a wizard. And he doesn't care about such things (being old and senile). He doesn't even know True Polymorph.

So what prevents a dragon from trying to learn magic in the same way as a mortal such as a dragon that is extremely pious and try to study clerical magic in an human church.

They can, but they usually don't. Again, I'm speaking of the general case--there are always exceptions. In fact, there's one particular green dragon who is beginning that process. He's also clinically insane (disassociated personality disorder) and was never part of draconic society. Exceptions always exist, but they're exceptional cases.

And the question of if it is possible to true polymorph someone into an "human with the potential to hold ninth level spells" stills stays and if it is possible then we could imagine that enough organized wizard could start making a great school of wizardry.

I don't think the current God of Magic would look favorably on that situation. First, people who can cast that are really rare to begin with. Like single digits on a continent. Second, that requires messing with a spark. And that runs the risk of dealing with the demonic if things go wrong. And that would be a bad thing.

The current Demon Prince of Black Magic (sort-of) would also not appreciate shenanigans of that order.

Plus the risk of a dispel magic...

As a DM I would say no to trying to change the potential of a person in that way.

Dragons are often close to maximum capacity and have a capacity depending on the body size so does it means that if I shrink a dragon it then explodes?

If I use Imprisonement: minimus containement onto the biggest dragon how big is the explosion?
Could it be used to destroy countries?

The spell takes care of that. The current God of Magic (who sets exactly what the spells can do) looks badly on spells of mass-destruction and so the spells have safety valves built in.

And it's not that size sets capacity but that size sets minimum required capacity. You have to be able to handle X anima to have a body of size Y. Polymorph-type (or shrink) spells provide temporary extra capacity (in either direction) as a buffer.

were you the one with the liches that drains the content of the spirits?
Since hatchlings produce spirit at an astonishing rate and can die from excess of that could a lich possibly feed from the excess of one or two hatchlings thus keeping them and the lich alive for longer?

Or maybe a healer that saw many people die of old age and that use this thrauma to evolve into a lich could then set up a small shop where it sells anima draining(which did help humans to live longer if I remember well) thus not only helping people but also feeding itself and getting richer and once that gets enough well known others might follow the example and become liches for the same purpose(or just by greed).

In principle, yes. But liches tend to fight a bottomless hunger. So it's possible but not probable.

It's not so much that "once people fill up with anima, they die", it's like they're a balloon. Each one can hold a certain amount of air before it pops. But if you fill it too far, it starts to stretch. Pulling the air out of a balloon that was near its limit (past the elastic limit) is permanently deformed. It's a homeostasis in the short-term, but growing on the long scale. And since anima is associated with memory and skills, traumatically losing anima tends to leave people disoriented, amnesiac, or more prone to sickness or more vulnerable to lasting injury.

So in general, lots of what you suggest is possible. It could happen, but it's not the norm (or even widespread). You might have one or two hatchlings that have "escaped" the molt. But they'd be rare because the forces (both physical and social) are just that strong.