6/9
Azuregos lounged on his side, looking into the water bubble sent by Malygos. Inside was a projection of a room at the hatchery in Mazthoril, where a suspiciously satisfied looking matron Haleh was laying a few eggs with a voiceover provided by the Blue Aspect himself. He sounded more lucid than Azuregos had heard him in quite some time, but Haleh had a new necklace on and… yep. Even through the scrying link, Azuregos could recognize the energy signature of those strange necklaces. Mom was compromised.
"Now. As you all know, only one in four of the fertilized eggs being laid here will prove viable in ideal conditions. Of those, less than half will reach sexual maturity due to being incapable of channeling the necessary level of energy to ensure growth. Perhaps one of these twelve eggs will reach adulthood. While methods exist to accelerate growth and ensure birth," the image shifted to several dozen eggs being kept in the crystal gardens, bathed in arcane energy, "this presents its own problems. While each of these will almost certainly hatch, the results are similar to that of mating with dragonspawn. The overwhelming majority will be dragonspawn or draconids; of those who are born as true dragons, the same proportion will not reach adulthood, and those that do have a high occurrence of infertility, mental instability, mutations, or intellectual regression to our pre-titanic state. Such individuals are all still highly valued members of our flight, but we can not deny that a disservice was done to them in the pursuit of personnel."
What the hell was going on here? Those of the Blue Dragonflight were well aware of the reproductive cycle; everyone still had a sex drive, and the majority asked their mothers at some point for an explanation of where babies came from and why there were so few dragons, given the size of a clutch.
"The need for additional genetic variance has led to the practice of being inseminated by mortals. This, obviously, leads to its own drawbacks. The resulting dragons are indeed full dragons as often as not, particularly if the donor species is one whose evolution has been touched by the Titans, such as elves, humans, dwarves, gnomes, or giants. The overall likelihood of an egg progressing to adulthood is unfortunately no higher than in dragon-dragon pairings, and female mortals tend to produce very small and usually non-viable eggs due to their species' proclivity for live birth." The image shifted again to Malygos himself.
"To usher in a new era for this flight, I am starting a new initiative with this in mind. While I know many of you have your own lovers and some of you are even nursing your own clutches of eggs, the numbers are in. Relying on the libido of the blue dragonflight to guide our resurgence is simply not viable. As of our most recent census, the red dragonflight outnumbers us nearly four to one. Their higher fertility rates are of course partially responsible, but they also prioritizereproduction. It is one of their values. Whereas from the reports I've been reading, some of you seem to be going out of your way to find mates that have zero genetic compatibility with our species. I'm not naming names, but among you are those who have entered into sexual relationships with a magical construct and a Kyrian." Azuregos rankled at that. How dare he bring Anara into this! They were happy together.
"As such, I will be scheduling in time slots for each of you to return to the Nexus over the course of the next few weeks to participate in a formalized mating ritual. These are not optional. If you have a prior arrangement, contact me and we can see what we can do. In the meantime, I actively encourage you to engage in sexual conduct. Consider the production of eggs to be at all times a secondary mission objective. We want genetic diversity, so especially you ladies should be pumped full of seed and pushing out eggs. This is about the survival of the species. We can't guard magic with a stagnant population."
"Finally. I have developed a new spell that allows me to instantly transform into a woman. I have confirmed that I am able to produce eggs in this form, including with seed donated from a non-dragon." Malygos became a she-elf dressed to impress. "Afterwards I returned to my male body and mated with both of my consorts, producing eggs as expected. I strongly encourage any males among you, especially any attracted to the masculine mortal form, to at least consider transitioning into a form that allows you to serve your flight's interests while you enjoy a good dicking. It's a surprisingly enjoyable experience I intend to repeat. Setogosa, please stand by for retrieval. The rest of you, our current schedule will be posted upon your scrying orb, when your time comes I order you as your aspect to be ready to serve your flight."
Azuregos checked the schedule. He'd be brought in by the end of the day. Nope. Not happening. With a deep sigh, Azuregos went about the rather elaborate process of going silent. He created several simulacrums that could spoof his appearance, and placed the anti-scrying wards around his lair. He didn't magically hide the entrance; that's a rookie mistake, mages can sense that. Instead he just teleported directly to the airtight underground cavern, checked the air recycling enchantment was in place, and entered the stasis chamber. It would place him in a near-death state and allow for astral projection into the Shadowlands, where he could in all likelihood crash with Anara until this all blew over. Maybe he should have tried to do something about all this madness, but honestly he couldn't be arsed.
••••••••••
Tony was feeling pretty good about his life. In a few months he'd gone from a nobody a few mistakes away from death into an archdruid who had a cushy job resurrecting the dead. He'd even started dating his coworker! They both had classes to teach of course, but that was only for a few hours a day; a ton of their time was spent on standby, brewing potions from the communal herb stash. Tony was surprisingly good at it, so Sally had started asking for pointers.
They started out with talking shop, but when you've got hours and hours you just start talking about whatever. You wouldn't know it looking at her, but Sally Whitemane was a country girl. She'd grown up on a farm near Southshore, going in for priest training when she'd been around thirteen. It's hard to see a girl as unapproachable once you start swapping stories about when the pigs got loose.
The two of them were having a late lunch when a corpse winked in. He finished his sandwich quickly, figuring it was going to be another handful of filthy Centaur raiders. Instead it was one of Valeera's; a dwarf this time. One of the grey ones. After a quick game of Rock Paper Scissors, Tony helped the guy up and started in on the explanation.
"Hey buddy. You're gonna be alright. Probably a bit of a shock, but don't worry about it. You're with friends now." There was a whole script about things he needed to explain, security protocols, campaign goals, reassurances, whatever. It kept getting longer every couple of days. They'd tried just uploading the memories into new recruits, but that was pretty inconsistent unless you typed in the whole briefing, which didn't take any less time than actually talking through the whole thing. "Alright, that should cover everything Senator. I think you're good to head back. Remember, just because you have to support Thaurissan now doesn't mean you have to like him. That just gets suspicious." They sent him back, no muss no fuss.
When he turned back, Sally was cleaning her plate with the light. "Ah, dammit."
"Sorry Tony. I have to get back to my acolytes. If we get lucky, one of them will finally be able to do what we can soon. They're certainly growing faster than I expected."
The experiment of giving a half dozen girls nearly exact copies of Lividia's personality was panning out. Tony didn't know about this whole swapping personalities around thing, but apparently ops had gone through the profiles of just about everyone in the retinue and found out who was most unhappy and liked themselves least. All teenage girls, if you'll believe it. If you're gonna do it, might as well change people who wanted to be changed. Plus just about every single one of them had immediately turned around and confessed some kind of long held crush on someone or other. The guys (and one girl) in question were pretty damn happy about it, from what he'd heard.
Well now Tony was just bored. He put together a few more potions for the med kits. He read through the news bulletins that ops were putting out, and the lessons on offer. He didn't have a lot of spare time, and spent a lot of that with Sally, so he probably wasn't going to be attending many classes. There was a wanted ad for people to "help repopulate the blue dragonflight" which already had a waiting list given that the requirements were that you have a cock and be willing to use it to impregnate attractive women.
He added himself to the list anyway, putting his availability down during Sally's shift. She wouldn't mind. As far as he could tell nobody in the whole damn retinue was capable of jealousy or sexual hangups anymore. It wasn't some non-stop orgy, he'd managed to strike out repeatedly for a month and a half after all, but people weren't uptight about anything.
Tony hung around for a few hours before Anduin showed up. He said hi, but Tony didn't linger the way Sally did for his shifts. Good kid. Thinking of Anduin, Tony idly made sure to point out to ops that they needed to check everyone's ages for that Dragon thing. It wasn't hard to look older with an amulet, and Tony absolutely would have at least tried to get on that list when he was twelve.
Meeting some girl his own age and losing his V-card? Sure, why not. The prince being brought in specifically to get a grown woman pregnant would be really light damned creepy. Then again, a dragon his own age would be like… definitely an adult. Whatever; if he's gonna get with some dragon girl he can do it himself. He's a prince. He should develop some game.