Do the dragons in your setting have an afterlife?

[MonkeySage]

I've come to the conclusion that in my setting, dragons do not have an afterlife.

To a dragon, good or evil, the ultimate reward is a satisfying end to a long and satisfying life. And when that end finally comes, their body and their essence become one with the land.

When a dragon has not lived a satisfying life, they'll seek lichdom, but even dracoliches want to die a satisfying death at some point.

Metallic dragons in my setting see the ultimate reward as a heroic sacrifice.

Chromatic dragons want to bring the hero down with them.

[BWR]

In Mystara, according to Dragon #158: Dragon spirits travel to the planes of the Sun, Moon, or Star Dragon, depending on their alignment. The most elect travel to the plane of the Great One instead. Dragon spirits resemble transparent, incorporeal versions of their living selves, but they can temporarily take on solid form once every 20 hours. Their memories of their former lives are hazy, unless they're reminded by visitors they knew when they were alive. They can be reincarnated.

(Rip's words, not mine)

[Maglubiyet]

Strangely, it's never come up in any fantasy campaign I've run. I've had dragons on the Outer Planes, but they weren't petitioners.

Since one of the defining traits of a dragon is avarice, I think they're fairly tied to the material world. They generally don't seek any sort of higher goals other than self preservation and satisfying their personal cravings. I can see no afterlife being a good option.

[Zalphon]

My setting uses the Great Wheel Cosmology, so yes, they do in fact have an Afterlife.

[YossarianLives]

In my setting dragons are mortals, powerful ones, but definitely mortals.

So yes they do have an afterlife.

[Vrock_Summoner]

This actually has a different answer across all three of my favorite settings.

In AM, dragons don't have souls. They have none of the divine in them that humans have, both because they're part of the Magic realm and because they're animals. So when they die, unless they've arranged something else (there are lots of options, none of which are easily accessible) they pretty much just become corpses, no fancy "where does the X go" business.

In Soul, dragons are immortal spirit gods. In the supremely rare circumstance that one is destroyed, they'll usually reform over the course of anywhere between 90 and 90,000 years, unless slain by another god. Of course, they spend most of their time in everyone else's afterlives, so that might count.

In my usual D&D settings, dragons have an afterlife... The same as everyone else's. Based on their alignment if not strongly religious, their god's plane if extremely devout.

[BWR]

This actually has a different answer across all three of my favorite settings.

In AM, dragons don't have souls. They have none of the divine in them that humans have, both because they're part of the Magic realm and because they're animals. So when they die, unless they've arranged something else (there are lots of options, none of which are easily accessible) they pretty much just become vis
.

Fixed that for you

[Vrock_Summoner]

Fixed that for you

Yeah, okay, you win on that one. "That's not a corpse, it's a source of power!" How very Hermetic of you.

[Karl Aegis]

Dragons aren't truly gone until you completely obliterate their essence. Mortals want to capture their essence for powerful rituals, immortals want to consume their essence to augment their own and reality itself doesn't want to accept the fact that they even exist. If they did have an afterlife they could come back to life. Nothing wants a dragon alive.

[Bad Wolf]

The Spheres of Concordance (I think) seem to be a good place.

[Vitruviansquid]

I never like settings where too much of the metaphysical is known.

So to answer your questions, in my settings dragons might or might not have an afterlife but since it's a lot easier to live when you think you have an afterlife, that's what dragons think when the setting doesn't have them just being big dumb lizards.

[Milo v3]

In my setting, dragons become petitoners like everyone else. Which generates abit of dissonance in the minds of the dragonkind, they were creatures of immense power and strength... and now they have 2 HD and no powers.

[Arutema]

In the setting I'm working, all souls reincarnate unless they've been particularly exemplary of an alignment. (In which case they have a chance at becoming an appropriate outsider.) Dragons are no exception.

Of course, the fact that they've been extinct 700 years means there are no new dragon bodies to reincarnate into. Maybe they're reincarnating as other mortals, maybe not. I intend to keep whether souls reincarnate across races as one of the mysteries of the setting.

[Zaydos]

In my current setting dragons have an afterlife, but no one is sure what it is. The dragons believe instinctively it exists, they can almost feel it beyond the periphery of their senses, but they don't really know any details and just have guesswork. They do believe that it's better than godhood. Then again in this same setting dragons worship their unborn descendants in the form of a mass of pre-incarnate dragon souls (Tiamat is merely a dragon who ascended into godhood and the other true dragons think of as a fool worshiped by kobolds and lesser creatures blessed by the blood of true dragons), and their afterlife might just be reincarnation.

[Jay R]

If one of my players asked me this, I would respond with, "Who is your character asking?"

[Vrock_Summoner]

If one of my players asked me this, I would respond with, "Who is your character asking?"

Considering what I usually play nowadays, my answer would probably be "a dead dragon."

[Anonymouswizard]

I still need to write up in the rules, but in my world dragons aren't giant scaly lizards (unless they want the lizard look, it's the one form they can all take, but they don't have to shift into it). Dragons are humans who have managed to become immortals, gaining extreme elemental power in exchange for protecting the world. Dragons don't have an afterlife, because nobody has managed to permanently kill one, they always regenerate and wake up within a couple of hundred years. The exception to this is if they give up their immortality, at which point they become normal humans and reincarnate as normal, or they ascend into becoming a pure spirit, at which point they aren't dead, but they don't actually have the biology to do anything.

This is a GURPS setting where the average dragon has about 30 DR, fast regeneration, and possesses a cosmic power modular ability. They are the only supernatural beings capable of going toe to toe with angels, and nobody has actually seen one since the 1800s. It's a major villain's goal to become one, although a lack of mana means he has to sacrifice the population of a major city to do so.

[Mr.Moron]

My setting has no afterlife at all. With some partial exceptions for elves all souls decompose entirely into raw creation energy after death. That energy then used in any number of ways for the upkeep of reality. Dragons or otherwise when something dies nothing of it remains in any meaningful fashion.

[Jay R]

I avoid knowledge about the afterlife in general. Some things should not be known. Like Resurrection and Raise Dead, knowledge of the afterlife turns what should be the greatest risk of all for characters into something no more annoying than waiting for a bus.

[Gracht Grabmaw]

I sure hope they do because they're almost extinct.

[Frozen_Feet]

As much as all other living things.