Modern Day: A Dragon Scours the Land

[Mr. Mask]

Inspired by the the few threads about modern day military monsters, I want to discuss in some detail the idea of the classic of a dragon terrorizing the land, but in modern day.


Premise:

A group stumbles upon the long forgotten horde of a great dragon (archaeologists? Militia? Corporations? Oil drillers?). Taking care of a dragon didn't seem too hard. Get a few missiles, some artillery, maybe a helicopter, and it should die. It really, really should have...

After having its horde thieved, and its long slumber ended, the dragon goes berserk, turning the surrounding area into a literal firestorm. A large military force is assembled to combat the dragon, and it's figured it should be easy this time, other than the issues of the firestorm. It did not work out as planned. Being magical in nature, modern equipment fails to kill the dragon, and it scatters the army which assembled to fight it. Its wrath kindled more than ever, the dragon attacks several cities, putting the event among some of the greatest massacres in history.

Once the dragon's wrath has cooled somewhat, chooses a place to return to its rest--a nuclear weapons facility. Dumbfounded as to why the dragon would choose such a place to rest, and that it knew of the place's existence, the nations of the world felt paralysed to act. With its strange powers, could the dragon launch a nuke? And is that why it took the facilities?

With the existence of the dragon, and the Armageddon it unleashed, the whole nation and in particular the surrounding area was left in a vacuum of chaos. Deserting soldiers, people turned bandit, monsters(?), desperate survivors, and looters, mercenaries, and corporations flooding in to profit. An adventurer's haven.


Questions

Several questions arise from this premise, both for how to improve it, and for details as to how this could or would work.

High Fantasy?: Would the setting work better as high fantasy with monsters, or as a mostly real world with the exception of a dragon?

Dragon Capabilities: Seemingly the dragon would have to be highly magical to pull this off. They can start a pretty good firestorm before others can reaction, I'd figure, which would complicate things. But to prevent being targeted by satellites and long range missiles, or even an ICBM if it really became a threat, it would need something like the ability to disguise its presence, perhaps by summoning a hurricane. There's the question of its personal combat abilities. Is it armoured like a battleship, with flight rivalling modern bombers, with a small volcano-like flamethrower (like, when it breathes fire, there is a shockwave that'll deathen those close by)?

Nuclear: The dragon could instead take refuge in a natural or designed nuclear bunker, without the nuclear weapons, and then the nations of the world may not wish to blast it for fear of inspiring another attack while suffering from fallout. The idea of taking a place with nuclear weapons just to confuse governments is interesting, but it may result in them having an itchy trigger finger instead.

Chaos: Would the adventurer friendly scenario likely arise from the chaos? It's true that the collapsing of great powers has lead to large amounts of banditry and mercenary work, but the dragon's actions may be more akin to a very terrible natural disaster. If other elements cause the local government to lose control of the region, it ought to still have the effect.


What are your thoughts on a campaign/setting like this? Anything you would add, or discuss what has been presented.

[noob]

First question why would the dragons have dissipated if human weaponry who is better now than in the past can not do anything against him?
Do you have consciousness a small missile is already devastating and that some huge missile can basically entirely destroy anything less than 44 tons no matter of what it is made?
Also an hurricane does not deflects that easily missiles and that a missile who blast everything in a 1000 feets radius(not even a nuclear weapon) does not care about hurricanes when you want to blast things.
I seriously thinks that nothing short of a force wall or a prismatic wall or a more than 3000 feet radius super intense huricane who is so intense it digs deep in the earth or other ridiculously epic magic can protect this dragon.
But if he have a so big hurricane all his other fighting abilities are negligible compared to moving the fastest possible for destroying any built thing in ridiculous areas.
I do not think he should use tornadoes.
If he have powerful defenses like the ones I referenced and that explosives does not works only magic can since I do not know better weapons than nuclear explosives.
Then there is the question: how fast is it destroying things if it only kills one person per second it is manageable by the humanity but if it kills 1000 persons per second it is not manageable and nuclear weapons will be used the fastest possible even if there is citizens nearby.
And also things just destroying for destroying are really weird.

[Mr. Mask]

First question why would the dragons have dissipated if human weaponry who is better now than in the past can not do anything against him?

A god-like figure among its kind, I figure. Possibly kept in line by deities and magic, or its just been getting stronger as it slept or such.

Do you have consciousness a small missile is already devastating and that some huge missile can basically entirely destroy anything less than 44 tons no matter of what it is made?

"Do you have any consciousness of X" sounds pretty rude, but I figure you didn't intend it.

The no matter what the target is made of part sounds interesting. Have they done experiments to this effect? I always wondered what'd happen if you could hit a blackhole or the core or a star with explosive force.

Also an hurricane does not deflects that easily missiles and that a missile who blast everything in a 1000 feets radius(not even a nuclear weapon) does not care about hurricanes when you want to blast things.

I'm not sure about this. Storms and clouds still cause trouble for satellites and other forms of detection as far as I'm aware. If missiles are no longer effects by interference from storms and high winds, that's pretty impressive. I'm not familiar with cases of trying to hit military targets inside hurricanes, so I can only guess as to this.

I seriously thinks that nothing short of a force wall or a prismatic wall or a more than 3000 feet radius super intense huricane who is so intense it digs deep in the earth or other ridiculously epic magic can protect this dragon.

Well, you don't need to tank everything like DnD. If the dragon is concealed, if they have any magical anti-missile capabilities, or if they simply go to populated areas where the military is unwilling to fire, they can negate the effectiveness of long range missiles much the way modern militaries do.

But if he have a so big hurricane all his other fighting abilities are negligible compared to moving the fastest possible for destroying any built thing in ridiculous areas.

Well, many hurricanes are survivable, even though they wreak terrible havoc. A hurricane followed by a city-consuming firestorm would be that much worse. but really, it depends on the hurricane powers of the dragon.

I do not think he should use tornadoes.

Dragons have been associated with storms in various mythology, so it would be fitting for the dragon to have storm powers.

If he have powerful defenses like the ones I referenced and that explosives does not works only magic can since I do not know better weapons than nuclear explosives.

Well, nuking your own countryside would be an extreme action, so it may not be a matter of a nuke not being enough as the dragon successfully denying an opportunity to use one.

Then there is the question: how fast is it destroying things if it only kills one person per second it is manageable by the humanity but if it kills 1000 persons per second it is not manageable and nuclear weapons will be used the fastest possible even if there is citizens nearby.

That's not really an answerable question. If the dragon gets into a city and starts a firestorm, it could be killing several million people over the course of a few days. If it's out in the country, it won't be killing so many people.

And also things just destroying for destroying are really weird.

Common to monkeys, humans, cats, foxes, and water moccasins. It is pretty weird.

[noob]

"The no matter what the target is made of part sounds interesting. Have they done experiments to this effect? I always wondered what'd happen if you could hit a blackhole or the core or a star with explosive force."
It weights way more than 44 tons.
I said that thing about things weighting 44 tons I did not spoke of volume.
Black holes are not made of something particular it is just that they are incredibly heavy so much that things can not get at the middle of a black hole because time freeze before.
Stars are also super heavy and the missile will never go to the core of the star it will explode long before reaching it because of the heat the sun is radiating.

[Mr. Mask]

Yes, but I'm curious about what happens to the section of the core's mass affected by the explosion. How resistant super dense material is to explosive force.

[Aliquid]

I think mostly real world would work better for the sake of the story.

You could have the dragon be magical, and immune to all non-magical damage. That's why nothing that the military sends out can hurt it. So really, it doesn’t have to be super powerful in the damage it does… it is just impossible to stop.

Magic can be something that existed historically (way back in the days of yore), but modern man has completely forgotten about it, and considers it to be nothing but fairy tales and folk-lore.

One of the first quests for the players is to re-discover the old magic. Maybe a highly intelligent PC can decipher ancient texts about spell casting… and actually get it. Maybe they PCs can discover that some ancient weapons and armor are actually magical in nature (getting possession of these items might be a chore). Maybe the PCs somehow get their hands on part of the Dragon’s original hoard, and they are the only ones that clue in to its magical nature (rather than just the cash value).

Then the PCs will be able to use these new found magical abilities to face the Dragon in face-to-face combat. Although there needs to be lots of stories and quests to deal with before reaching that battle.

Maybe the PCs are dealing with a different issue when they discover magic. Maybe they are dealing with revenge associated with the chaos (their community was destroyed by bandits and they want to get the bandit leader). Maybe they are trying to restore order. Maybe they are profiteering on the chaos. Maybe they work for the military and simply have to follow orders (but keep their magical knowledge secret).

[noob]

If pc can rediscover magic just by finding some books and that it works why do the scientists did not discovered it?
And why is the government not knowing it if there is still books about it?
And if it can not be found by any scientist research how was it found at the beginning?
Magical entities teaching magic to humans?

[Mr. Mask]

Real world settings with alternate histories where magic existed are challenging for those sorts of reasons. You can come up with some rather creative answers, from aliens to other dimensional superbeings to time travel, but generally the easiest solution is to hint at the answer and not explain it explicitly, as the players have no reason to know the answers.

You could have it that the dragon's hoard has some of the only surviving magic, or even have it that dragons generate magic and it disappears without them, and so the last dragon is extra powerful as it has all the magic to itself. Or something else which can range from silly to cool.

[goto124]

I figured that Dragons don't need gold, they just love it a lot, like how some humans can get really greedy...

[Erth16]

If pc can rediscover magic just by finding some books and that it works why do the scientists did not discovered it?
And why is the government not knowing it if there is still books about it?
And if it can not be found by any scientist research how was it found at the beginning?
Magical entities teaching magic to humans?

They could somehow translate the Voynich Manuscript and have it teach magic to those who can decipher it in the setting. Of course the answer to how the pc's do it when no one else can is simple,it's a story and they are the main characters. Maybe they have special eyes, or one could only speak in tongues for a few years.

[NRSASD]

I'm not sure that the nation where the dragon is uncovered would still be around, or even inhabited. Something like that would provoke a Chernobyl-style reaction, where everyone and their goat got the heck out of dodge initially, and then only the crazy or desperate returned to settle it. There would definitely be refugee-associated problems in the surrounding regions though, which could see the rise of far-right political parties, economic troubles, general racism, and social unrest. Just take a look at the chaos that's been caused by all the fighting in the Levant and Iraq recently.

As far as the dragon goes, having it settle in a nuclear facility would make the rest of the globe very nervous, but unlikely to act. They could most assuredly hit the facility if they wanted to, but I think they'd be more worried about the ensuing nuclear fallout or provoking the apparently peaceful dragon into conflict again. I'd imagine that there would be a military cordon surrounding the facility about ten miles out, not to mention every anti-air and anti-missile system they could get their hands on laying in wait.

Why the global military could hit the facility pretty much without fail is that unless the "hurricane" disarms incoming explosives, no amount of interference could prevent the missile from hitting its mark. The facility's location is already known, so all one would have to do is punch in its coordinates and let the missile do the rest. A hurricane can and does cause serious interference with aircraft, but missiles are orders of magnitude faster than even the strongest storms.

As far as ancient magic goes..... yeah, it's hard to explain why it was abandoned. One reason that just came to me is that the dragon was "sealing" the magic in, like the explanation for magic in Shadowrun. It had left the world, and now it's back. Short of that, practically any other explanation for magic necessitates the invention of secret societies who have suppressed public knowledge of magic for millennia, and even still there are almost certainly government projects studying magic somewhere. From the 1930's to the 60's the US did all sorts of crazy experiments trying to determine if magic was real, and if the setting is modern day I don't see how it would be different.

Hope this helps!

[GloatingSwine]

The problem is that the dragon has to be arbitrarily invincible, vulnerable to only things which don't exist, to be able to slightly survive.

If the dragon isn't arbitrarily immune to anything not "magical" then it gets its wings shredded by the first stinger missile fired at it, and probably dies of the shrapnel wounds anyway, but even if it doesn't then it can't fly any more and gets killed by antimateriel rifles.


Even if the dragon is arbitrarily invincible to nonmagical weapons this only lasts until someone manages to make a +1 stinger missile.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

The problem is that the dragon has to be arbitrarily invincible, vulnerable to only things which don't exist, to be able to slightly survive.

If the dragon isn't arbitrarily immune to anything not "magical" then it gets its wings shredded by the first stinger missile fired at it, and probably dies of the shrapnel wounds anyway, but even if it doesn't then it can't fly any more and gets killed by antimateriel rifles.


Even if the dragon is arbitrarily invincible to nonmagical weapons this only lasts until someone manages to make a +1 stinger missile.

Maybe just remotely detonating the nukes in that facility is enough to overcome its damage resistance?

I think the story could be pretty cool if not taken too seriously, but it really needs some cool way to work the heroes in. If they are the only ones that can hurt the dragon, where did they get that power? Is the military trying to take the magic away from them to study it and make the aforementioned +1 stinger missile? Or is the government actively trying to support the heroes with helicopter rides, demolition jobs and covering fire? Maybe their powers even come from the government, a bunch of top military, law enforcement and espionage agents were dipped in a magical fluid found in the lair of the dragon and gained powers weirdly fitting their personalities.

As an alternative, you might be able to solve the "the military can't hurt it" problem in another way. The dragon was found in a small country ruled by a dictator nobody likes or something. Look at the military numbers for Luxembourg or Iceland, than imagine a fictional country 10 times poorer and 20 times crazier. The local military may have some land cruiser mounted .50's, a respectable amount of cheap handheld anti-tank weapons and a bunch of old Russian flak cannons plus one museum piece of a tank which is the pride of their army, but nothing more than that. I'm not sure if that would work together with the nuclear angle, but at least there'd be some excuse for the military not beating it other than being just completely immune to nonmagical damage. The heroes in this version don't even need magic, they could just be better armed than the local military. They're probably mercenaries hired by the dictator or a special ops team from a larger nearby country that doesn't want to talk to this dictator but also doesn't want to be next.

[LokiRagnarok]

If you have the patience, you may want to get your hands on the manga "Gate - Thus the JSDF Fought There!". It is about a gate to a high fantasy world appearing in midst of modern-day Tokyo (because everything always happens in Tokyo) and contains, among other things, one or two fights of modern military corps against dragons.

[GloatingSwine]

As an alternative, you might be able to solve the "the military can't hurt it" problem in another way. The dragon was found in a small country ruled by a dictator nobody likes or something. Look at the military numbers for Luxembourg or Iceland, than imagine a fictional country 10 times poorer and 20 times crazier. The local military may have some land cruiser mounted .50's, a respectable amount of cheap handheld anti-tank weapons and a bunch of old Russian flak cannons plus one museum piece of a tank which is the pride of their army, but nothing more than that.

On the other hand, they've also probably got a hell of a lot of surplus RPG-7s.

Which have the slight disadvantage of being unguided and relatively short range, but dragon's gotta sleep sometime, and it won't be any happier about a HEAT warhead than it would about a magic sword or noble knight's lance. (Considerably less happy, probably, considering the massive subsidiary tissue damage that such a high pressure copper jet will inflict).

Again, the dragon still needs to be arbitrarily invincible to not be extinct pretty damn quick.

[noob]

I think that maybe the error is to choose to have a dragon there is other interesting stuff like for example you could put instead a ghostly necromancer who is able to regenerate other-were each time he is killed and flying underground and erupting inside of random cities and creating a wave of undead from the cemetery(or a giant undead made from thousand of bones and souls) then getting back into the underground.
He would not need to be invulnerable since he can get underground very easily and have 300 meters of earth above him in some seconds.
The resurrection is optional if he is enough good at surprise attacks and stay underground when creating undead.
He could even manage to make people not know he exists if nobody sees him.
He could create all kind of interesting undead who might get blasted fast but who will have made thousand of dead in few time with necrotic novas and other stuff of this kind.
And it would be barely different at all from a dragon.

[Khedrac]

The easiest way to make the dragon very difficult to kill is to give it some form of contingent insubstantiability - i.e. it is only there when it is hitting you - when you hit it it's not actually there so your attacks pass through harmlessly.

A variant on this (which ties in with some East Asian mythological dragons I think) is that it lives in the earth. It doesn't burrow, it "swims" through the earth. Yes it may be fairly vulnerable to modern weapons when out of the ground, but it could quickly learn from a few panicked near misses when it first wakes not to let itself be caught.
This is also the same sort of dragon that supposedly controls earthquakes...

[5ColouredWalker]

Biggest thing. Even assuming the Dragon somehow suddenly gained all the knowledge and ability to fire the nukes, nukes are designed not to go off so strenuously that blowing them up with other explosive weapons is a standard way to disable them. You could nuke the nuclear silo it was sitting on, and only the nuke you launched would detonate.

Assuming the Dragon survived the nuke we dropped on him [If we decided to], it's just survived the biggest force we can bring to bear on it [Drop a bigger nuke? What for, it'll do nothing but make a slightly larger and prettier explosion.], at this point we just compare how many casaulties it causes to how many people die due to [chosen common cause of death] yearly and go 'You know what, it's not really a problem. If we need we can send some bulls in it's direction to keep it fed.'.

[Incanur]

As mentioned in the other thread, I'm fond of a storm dragon with lightning that functions as point defense against missiles. Such a dragon would not need to be overwhelming physically durable to be immune to even nuclear attack because of the lightning point defense. Thus the heroes might be able to slay the dragon if they could figure out a way approach it without getting fried.

[GloatingSwine]

As mentioned in the other thread, I'm fond of a storm dragon with lightning that functions as point defense against missiles.

Bear in mind that a modern anti air missile has a kill radius of about 10m. They don't actually need to connect with a target, just get close enough and explode where the shrapnel produced by the warhead and casing shreds the target.

(Also, not effective vs. antiaircraft cannon fire or other large bore weapons, armour piercing rounds not particularly affected by lightning)

[Incanur]

Bear in mind that a modern anti air missile has a kill radius of about 10m. They don't actually need to connect with a target, just get close enough and explode where the shrapnel produced by the warhead and casing shreds the target.

(Also, not effective vs. antiaircraft cannon fire or other large bore weapons, armour piercing rounds not particularly affected by lightning)

Magical lightning (or perhaps high-tech particle beams that mimic lightning) doesn't necessarily care about such issues. Dump enough energy into any projectile and it'll be knocked off course or vaporized. Particle beams travel at nearly the speed of light, so it's theoretically viable in that sense. It would require impressive reflexes for the dragon, however, unless it just generates some sort of electrical field that fries everything in a certain area.

[Segev]

The issue I have with this as presented (that is, as a forum topic of discussion) is that it establishes early on that we don't know why the dragon is as tough and unbeatable as it is. "It's magic" is not sufficient to build a discussion around.

The centaurs in modern day discussions rely on only a little bit of potential magic to accept that they do, indeed, survive in the real world.

This hypothetical dragon needs rules, whether codified in game mechanics, based on game mechanics, or simply clearly laid out narratively (see Brandon Sanderson's works for good examples of how to do this).


Now, one way we could approach this as presented is as a hypothesizing contest: develop a set of rules that hypothetically govern this dragon and his abilities, given what we've seen. The more nuanced and interesting, the better. The more broad-brush ("he's a god and just wins") or the more convoluted (e.g. random additions of powers and weaknesses with little connection to root biological or rules-of-magic causes), the worse.

[noob]

if you have a field of lightning enough strong for vaporizing the missile you are going to have problems if someone sends 1000 tons of metal since if you vaporize 1000 tons of metal the gas from metal will probably kill you(and the energy used for vaporizing such a thing risk to create an really huge explosion and potentially be more destructive than the explosion of the same amount of explosive I do not know but the amount of lightning involved could create nuclear reactions) if you are made of organic stuff but if you have a dragon without organism working only with magic it might survive it it have a melting point higher than titanium.
But then the metal risk to cover it entirely and to entomb it and then it will solidify blocking it.
If he have a huge field of lightning he might melt the projectile far enough but then it would mean that he have a so much huge radius of devastation that using a nuclear weapon is surely a good idea since everything is already condemned in a range of some kilometers around him.
The nuclear bomb can be detonated at pretty high range and still obliterate him.
The fireball radius of the current power-fullest nuclear weapon is 3.5 kilometers and the destruction radius is of 35 kilometers so basically it is possible to detonate a nuclear weapon at a good range from the dragon and to obliterate him.

[Maglubiyet]

What if there's no magic and this "dragon" is really an ultra-powerful alien being composed of exotic particles and Dark Matter. Its physical body and senses extend into hyper-dimensional space, giving it god-like awareness.

Its senses along with its profound understanding and control of physical laws give it what appears to be supernatural abilities. "Force field" generation, weather control, etc.

Of course it looks like what we call a dragon. It's here because it mistook some research in elementary particle physics to be a signal from its long lost masters. Now it's pissed because it can't find them and there's all these lesser beings around gumming up the electromagnetic spectrum with useless signals.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

On the other hand, they've also probably got a hell of a lot of surplus RPG-7s.

Which have the slight disadvantage of being unguided and relatively short range, but dragon's gotta sleep sometime, and it won't be any happier about a HEAT warhead than it would about a magic sword or noble knight's lance. (Considerably less happy, probably, considering the massive subsidiary tissue damage that such a high pressure copper jet will inflict).

Again, the dragon still needs to be arbitrarily invincible to not be extinct pretty damn quick.

Maybe molten metal counts as fire damage and this type of dragon has an extreme resistance to that being a fire breathing creature and all? If it makes it more believable, let the bugger be awakened when the dormant volcano it had been holed up inside becomes active again.

Or maybe the dragon has little helper creatures (think flying JP-raptors or something), or can dominate animals or people and let them keep watch? Or it sleeps really light? Or it attacked the countries main military base first and ate their weapon storage? Or maybe there are D&D-style heroes in this world, more than exceptional human beings who are just so much better at dealing with invincible dragons that yes their punches hurt it more than a bunker buster would. It's silly, but that would just mean it becomes a silly story.

I'm fine with just declaring "no, you can't hurt it with non-magical weapons", but it's a fantasy story either way, and it's not going to end up as one you can take very seriously. As long as it stays more believable than the movie Reign of Fire (Dragon singlehandedly throws humanity back into the stone ages, repopulates its race, is taken out by normal non-magical non-superpowered people on foot using exploding arrows) that's a win as far as I'm concerned.

Or, to put it differently: I think your objections are valid and good points to consider, I also think that handwaving them a little (or a lot, or more than that) should be considered.

(Or at least, that's how I read the opening post, as less "could this really happen?" and more "could this be a cool story/campaign?")

[noob]

if this is an alien stuff made of high technology
1:There is absolutely no reason for it to look vaguely like a dragon as it is a completely under optimal form who have no use.
2: "Its senses along with its profound understanding and control of physical laws give it what appears to be supernatural abilities. "Force field" generation, weather control, etc."
is just an stupid idea there is no reason it would do those things it would rather just create an antimatter explosion for destroying the entire earth and other kind of simple and efficient use of technology since generally with superior technology you have superior firepower and that doing weather control is not something you put on standard issue machines.
3:Dark matter is just a theory for explaining a phenomenon with gravitic influence and there is alternative theories working without dark matter like many alternate gravitation theories
4:Dark matter is not necessarily more resistant than other matters and anyway the problem is that our explosives are so strong that it would need to be super ultra dense and heavy for resisting and your dragon would end up being crazily heavy if it can face-tank a nuclear bomb so much that in fact its gravitic influence might be felt when you are at some meters and that it would end up collecting dust and dirt and rock around it.

[Incanur]

if you have a field of lightning enough strong for vaporizing the missile you are going to have problems if someone sends 1000 tons of metal since if you vaporize 1000 tons of metal the gas from metal will probably kill you(and the energy used for vaporizing such a thing risk to create an really huge explosion and potentially be more destructive than the explosion of the same amount of explosive I do not know but the amount of lightning involved could create nuclear reactions) if you are made of organic stuff but if you have a dragon without organism working only with magic it might survive it it have a melting point higher than titanium.

The inverse-square law makes vaporizing things at distance not so dangerous - especially if we're talking about lightning breath or controlled storm lightning that can hit incoming missiles at miles away. But the lightning wouldn't have to completely vaporize incoming missiles to knock them out of the sky. Solid rounds could be deflected by vaporizing only a small amount of material.

The nuclear bomb can be detonated at pretty high range and still obliterate him.
The fireball radius of the current power-fullest nuclear weapon is 3.5 kilometers and the destruction radius is of 35 kilometers so basically it is possible to detonate a nuclear weapon at a good range from the dragon and to obliterate him.

Current nuclear weapons don't "obliterate" things at 35 klicks. Overpressure and heat, sure, but it's not hard to imagine a dragon that could survive that.

[VoxRationis]

I am going to second the opinion that incredible storm powers would make the storm the primary threat, not the traditional draconic claws and teeth and breath and whatnot.

[Lord Torath]

The inverse-square law makes vaporizing things at distance not so dangerous - especially if we're talking about lightning breath or controlled storm lightning that can hit incoming missiles at miles away. But the lightning wouldn't have to completely vaporize incoming missiles to knock them out of the sky. Solid rounds could be deflected by vaporizing only a small amount of material.

Bullets are FAST^{[Citation Needed]}. They will be in and out of the bolt so quickly it has no effect on them(http://what-if.xkcd.com/16/ bottom of the page). Now this is Magic Dragon Lightning, so the natural laws may not apply. But your storm dragon is going to need to be able to detect hordes of small, very fast-moving projectiles, and then be able to precisely direct lightning bolts at them and keep the bolts on them for a second or so if it's going to rely on lightning as point defense.

[noob]

"Current nuclear weapons don't "obliterate" things at 35 klicks. Overpressure and heat, sure, but it's not hard to imagine a dragon that could survive that. "
I did not said that we would explode a bomb at 35 kilometers but that we were going to explode it at the limit of the storm and so if you have only a 15 kilometers storm nuclear weapons can kill you rather easily but if you have 35 kilometers storm then people are just going to build a bigger nuclear weapon and some year later there will be a 350 kilometers radius of annihilation nuclear bomb(who will be crazily huge and will have like 6 stages of explosion instead of 3) and if you have such crazy storm the fact that it is a dragon does not change anything it is like speaking of an infinite spaceship and saying there is a potato deep inside: nobody cares.
"The inverse-square law makes vaporizing things at distance not so dangerous - especially if we're talking about lightning breath or controlled storm lightning that can hit incoming missiles at miles away. But the lightning wouldn't have to completely vaporize incoming missiles to knock them out of the sky. Solid rounds could be deflected by vaporizing only a small amount of material."
Do you understand that a lightning is extremely light?
A lightning can not deflect.
It is as simple as that if a lightning had enough energy for weighting enough for deflecting a 1000 tons steel missile the resulting nuclear explosion would end in the destruction of the earth and of the moon.
So lightning can not change the trajectory of my missile who have already a huge speed and stopping its propulsion will not change its trajectory enough for making it not splatter the dragon.
Except if that dragon can explode the earth and the moon all of a sudden but then the rp is just going to be weird.