Mobile Fortress Isabella by the Spanish Empire set up shop not too far off the shores, followed by the British Sussex Aerodrome and the French Hundred-Gun Station, and the Japanese were considered a joke for many years thereafter. Through the 18th to the 19th Century, things continued with various areas set up for refueling and reprovisioning away from the "beknighted savages."
The Chinese, for their part, adapted and adopted different standards and in 1842 their dragonships commenced the invasion of Japan. Far friendlier to England and the West due to the trade agreements that imported Western Magic and exported tea and raw materials, their trade partners didn't raise a finger to protect a group of "barbarians" who were known to routinely kill (and rumored to butcher and eat) shipwreck victims who washed ashore.
When China conquered Japan, it wasn't thorough - they mainly concentrated on the cities and especially the port areas. Japan became part of China for all intents and purposes. There was some underground rebellion, mainly settling into the mountains, but the more populous settlements were quashed by the Chinese who had added a French innovation to their arsenal.
Airships (lighter-than-air craft like the dirigibles such as the German Kriegwalke class of ships) could carry a fair amount of bombs and drop them with a fair degree of accuracy on areas that didn't have anything capable of striking back.
Aircraft (heavier-than-air vehicles like the British Reliant class of cargo carriers) were less accurate due to their inability to hover - but their speed and manueverability were greater.
When a credible defense was made and attacks on the Fujii Airfield were made by a resistance movement, the Chinese unveiled a development that they had been keeping secret from their own allies and trade partners.
Magic was an energy that was reactive with life-energies. This had been known for some time, but infusing magic to nonliving things was more easily controlled and precise. There had also been a treaty made between France and England, with others signing on as time passed, to limit the attempts to magically infuse energies into human hosts.
The Chinese fielded a new sort of aircraft, bred for battle and with advantages and disadvantages over those employed by the West.
Dragons.
It took some time for word to get out, but it DID get out, and a new arms race began. Each country wanted to exploit this new concept to their own advantage or at least work out appropriate defenses.
The dragons of China were at first fairly small, not that intelligent, and could only breathe flame with the assistance of magical devices fastened around their throat. The other countries translated the name of this breed as the 'Smallwing' - which of course had everyone convinced that there were bigger and nastier breeds that the Chinese were keeping hidden.
The British were next, with the Ridgeback dragons. The French and Germans quickly acquired and bred some Smallwings to develop their own breeds - the Fastwing and Longclaw varieties. The Americans, for various reasons, lagged behind dragon development and concentrated on aircraft. That didn't mean there weren't enthusiasts and others who saw advantages in the breeding of species.
The use of magic to alter species was imprecise and involved many variables that could not be easily worked out. Sharing of information occurred in times when tempers and friction cooled, and details scarce when tensions were running high.
In 1884, a group of Japanese who had settled in America for the specific purposes of breeding their own dragons (and eventually ousting their Chinese oppressors from their homeland) celebrated the hatching of the first Japanese dragon breed - the Miryu.
In 1890, things were further complicated by:
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(Posted Wed, 05 Apr 2006 09:17)
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