QUOTE (Fuchs @ Feb 22 2008, 04:52 PM)

Indeed. I just wish that Great Dragons would be just one power among many, not the official no-one-can-ever-hurt-them top dogs. Reading how they are supposed to be able to walk all over the military - and by extension, over anyone else not being a great dragon, no matter if megacorp or not - really makes the setting poorer, and more one-dimensional.
Do not confuse dragons with the handful of Great Dragons out there. That said there's 7 billion of us against twenty something of them and most of them don't get along.
QUOTE
To the devs: What exactly can stop a dragon, apart from another dragon? The military can't, mages can't, blood mages can't, spirits can't. Science can't, and their magic is superiour to anyone else's.
You must have misread what I posted. At no point did I say a prepared military couldn't take out a great dragon.
I noted some of the ways
Ghostwalker could have executed his takeover of Denver. A lot of fuss is being over something that should be obvious: Ghostwalker in
Ghost Stories was playing for the cameras... He could have done everything he did without ever showing his snout. He did it in public to make a statement - and because he's that kind of guy. Great dragons don't go one on one with the military unless they've got a good reason and have stacked the deck in their favor.
I also noted that I considered your exercise futile (especifically playing off the premise that a prepared great dragon would face a modern military in a battlefield environment). I still believe it is,
because no great dragon is
that stupid - and the average great dragon is more intelligent and savvy than the most intelligent human being on Earth, and, with a few honorable exceptions, all the greats have several hundred years of fighting human forces, studying human psychology, and working on (or paying someone to work on) responses to those vaunted advances the military have been making for the last 60 years.
Modern militaries, most corporate armies, and some extremist groups, would be prefectly able to take down a great dragon (and its army of spirits) in a standing fight or if they were holding a hardened target. In those instances it is simply a question of pumping enough heavy firepower, spirits, spells, and distractions at it until its defenses collapse and its spirit backup is taken out. There's no doubt in my mind that in a standing battle, with control and knowledge of the field of battle, a prepared military would (eventually) win. Which in turn is why such a stand up fight is
never going to happen.
In Amazonia the three great dragons had the help of free spirits and paracritters as well as thousands of metahuman allies. Tehran was only levelled because the Iranians had no significant magic to back them up.
Magically speaking, had the Blood Mage Gesalt not been caught unprepared by the attack, Ghostwalker would have been in for a serious fight. Were modern militaries willing to target a great dragon in a stand up fight with a significant cadre of combat magicians (let's say 40-50), their maxed out great form bound spirits, and backed by ritual magic sendings they'd also pose a significant challenge. The Black Lodge and Mystic Crusaders are other potential menaces with the resources and power to take on a GD (not without serious losses but them's the breaks).
More importantly though, a highly trained, exceptionally well equipped, high power black ops unit like a Firewatch team or a Wildcat unit stands a pretty good chance too.
If, on the other hand, a great dragon choses to involve itself in urban guerrilla warfare, employs hit-and-run and terror tactics, attacks mostly soft targets, and applies its superhuman intelligence to maximize surprise, seed chaos and misdirection while doing so - a modern military (national or corp) fighting in an urban environment (even if it is its homeground) is pretty much screwed.
QUOTE
So - can anyone tell me, from our dev posters, what exactly keeps dragons in check, apart from other dragons or the dragons without scales but pointy ears, aka Immortal Elves?
The fact that if modern metahumanity (or a portion thereof, such as a nation or major megacorp) were to percieve them as a threat and put the concerted effort into making their life miserable (targeting lairs, killing its allies, undermining it's powerbase) and/or eliminating them - the puny humans would (eventually) win (and the other GDs wouldn't help since they'd percieve anyone requiring help as a loser).