Dragons in Metahuman Form, Can they Speak Aloud? Options

[IcyCool]

This is slightly off-center but..

Mountainshadow is rumored to have a "representative" that speaks for him. But everyone is pretty sure that said Representative is actually MountainShadow, in metahuman form. And noone can tell the difference.

If I recall correctly, Mountainshadow's "representative" was named Dark Tooth (aka: Dunkelzahn).

[sabs]

If I recall correctly, Mountainshadow's "representative" was named Dark Tooth (aka: Dunkelzahn).

This is why we always assumed it was really him.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

it seems silly that Great Dragons are incapable of speaking normally when in Meta-human form.

That's just downright silly. They're freaking Great Dragons.

In Never Deal with a Dragon Haesslich could speak in human form.

[Manunancy]

Not a game mechanic, but more of a character quirk. They might simply not like speaking in such a mortal and mundane tongue. Pure ego. They ARE (great) dragons, after all. It would be like learning cockroach, or something. Ick.

A good possiblity there - in a Stormbinger game I had a melnibonean §NPc who never spoke to teh players in common, though he understood it just fine. When asked about his answer was 'do you bark when speaking to your dog ?'.
Depending on how exactly their native mindspeech work, it's likely they find spoken languages as any comniation of slow, clumsy, unpleasant and innacurate.

[Ryu]

This is why we always assumed it was really him.

Dragons of Barsaive supports that theory, if indirectly. The Outcast considers him to be an experienced drake, and a comment states that this is underestimating Dark Tooth.


A dragon in Metahuman Form gains the physical abilities of that body, which includes speech. A language skill would still be required, and Dragonspeech would still work.