The Draconic Wizard Workshop

Becoming the Dragon

By Caspian Citana

Originally written on October 31, 2025.

Once upon a time, I was a half-elf.

It seems strange to say. I still am, or… I'm not, not at all anymore. Half half-elf, half dragon, or perhaps half-elf, half-human, half-dragon. I don't know. My draconity came upon me only after arriving in the system—I was not a dragon at all in my source, a D&D game in which I was a pacifist half-elf bard. I knew of dragons, and met a few, but had no real connection to them, myself. My closest friends were not dragons. My partner was not a dragon. I was not a dragon.

I wasn't even a dragon when I got here. It took three and a half years for that to happen. But happen it did—when I arrived in the system in the middle of 2021, I sustained critical damage when I was only days old. We underwent a traumatic medical procedure, and in an attempt to protect my new family, I threw myself in front of that when I wasn't ready to handle a situation that stressful. It rendered me foggy and nearly incapable of speech, and regardless of what I or anyone else did, it only got marginally better as time went on. I became a background figure in my own life; what else was I supposed to do? Fronting was exhausting. Trying to talk to anyone was exhausting. I could barely rustle up enough energy to front for a week once a year. It just wasn't feasible to be out and about.

And then, in early 2025, I woke up.

It was as if, overnight, I had been fixed. I could put full paragraphs together, when even our maintenance administrator, Blame the Carrier, had only been able to restore my ability to do individual sentences with immense amounts of effort. I could think about myself, and other people, and not just passively like or dislike things. I could recognize in myself an inner strength, a fire, a… distinct difference.

The scales were my first clue. The horns, the teeth, the claws, the predator instincts—those sealed it.

Somehow, while I had slept after my last bout of exertion, I'd become a dragon. All of my cracks and splinters, all of my missing pieces, all of the damaged parts that could not be salvaged—all had been filled in or replaced by dragon. I knew it to be a benevolent change, and understood its source immediately: we, the Draconic Wizard Workshop, are collectively a dragon. Either the system itself or my headmates, subconsciously, had filled in my damage in an attempt to help, and our default material seems to be dragon.

It… worked.

No caveats. No hesitations. It worked. It scared me, yes, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but it worked. I could talk. I could think. I could do introspection. I could be a person again, like I hadn't been able to since before I arrived in the system. But what was inescapable is that I was different. I was scaled, horned, filled with instincts and urges I was totally unfamiliar with experiencing personally. I'd seen them in my headmates, but I'd never been so feral before.

Alarmed by this change and some rocky realizations I'd made in the days of introspection following, I went to my partner (who exists in another system, having made the jump from fiction as well) for help and advice. She rejected me, harshly, and was incredibly cruel besides. I broke it off with her and have not spoken to her since, but that caused serious damage again; I was not ready to face that kind of adversity. How could I have expected it? I trusted her to support me through this difficult time, and instead she tore into me.

It took me months of loosely floating around behind the front, seething and filled with anger, to eventually come to the conclusion that being angry about things that I can't change isn't going to help, and I might as well just play with what I am. Fuck what my ex thinks: I'm a dragon now, and I should be allowed to determine what that means and how I feel about it for myself. The damage that I sustained from her essentially obliterated all of my pre-introjection memories (what few I had, at least), so now I only remember things that happened from the body's perspective as the person playing character-me… but it left more room for the dragon to take over, and here we are.

What is it like? What kind of dragon am I? Nothing that exists in my source, that's for certain. I am some kind of aquatic dragon, blue and green, with webbed feet and slick scales. I have wings that fold flat against my back while swimming or that can carry me in the air. I am long, sinewy, with a long snout for catching fish. I am finned, possess gills, and like the idea of lurking in lakes as an ambush predator.

…But I'm also not. What's curious is that I know that is what I should be, but in headspace, I do not take that form, and do not know if I could even if I tried. I'm in this between state, caught in a partially-scaled half-elf form. (Those of you familiar with dracthyr in World of Warcraft would recognize me as looking almost identical to a dracthyr's visage form.) It's like a transformation into a full dragon was interrupted partway, or like I have a kintype of my full dragon form while not quite being able to reach it. I know what I should be, but I'm not. Not yet, or perhaps not ever. I like my strange between-form, with its partial scales, horns, claws, sharp teeth, and intense eyes. Occasionally, I'll get spikes on my back or a tail. Rarely, I'll get wings.

I can't account for these changes. Are they shifts, and just manifest visually in headspace? I don't primary front enough to be able to tell the difference, because I am, admittedly, afraid of getting damaged again. You get hurt like that twice, reducing you to not speaking for months or years, and you're cautious about risking it again.

And yet, I do want to risk it. I've always been an extrovert, friendly and gregarious to a fault, and my draconity gives me confidence and pride that may be unearned. I know that I am a fucking delight when you get to know me, if you can dodge my melodrama and anger at my general situation, and I want to be friends with people. I've missed friends. I've missed people. I've missed being social, trapped in my hell of communicating with feelings (to my headmates) and emojis (to friends outside of this body).

I want to be myself—and, yes, myself is the dragon, too. It's inescapable. It's like ignoring that you have skin. I am angrier than I used to be, because the dragon I am cannot stand to be mistreated or disrespected. I have given up my pacifism, because it is a luxury for those who do not need to hunt to survive, who do not crave the taste of blood on their tongues. (It is also a luxury for those who have rogues, wizards, and paladins to blast their enemies for them while they sing little inspiring songs in the background. Those days are gone.) I am rougher and cruder than I was, because the dragon has no time for how nobles talk and dance around each other, political and social niceties that don't actually matter.

And I fucking love it.

The man I was wouldn't. He would be horrified by what he'd become—and I was, at first, in those first few difficult days. But when I was rejected, instead of doubling down on it, I bared my teeth, snapped and snarled and dug my claws into what I am now. How dare someone throw me away just because of this! How dare someone not see me under my own scales, as much a part of me as everything my ex used to value about me! It was like I had been bitten by a werewolf, turned into something else but still myself underneath—and I was thrown out of the door. "Fine," I said, "fine. You hate the dragon I am? I will become it more just to spite you. I will make others like me just to prove to you that I can. That the problem is you, not me."

Perhaps it's not the best motivation to love yourself, but it's worked—I do love myself. I love my scales. I love the desire for the taste of blood. I love the thought of my powerful body swimming through a lake. I love flight. I love being me! I love the dragon I am now! Why turn away from myself? Why despise what I am when I can embrace it with open arms? I am the dragon! The dragon! THE DRAGON!

I am Caspian Ciana, dragon of the lake, and I'd rather be this than anything I was ever meant to be.