Shapeshifting and You

So, you’d like to immigrate to the Northern Union. Great! We accept pretty much everyone, on one condition: you are, or want to become, transhuman. If you’re not already a transhuman, we’ll help you become one, but it’s up to you to decide what you want out of the process.

With that out of the way, let’s get into the different types of transhumans.

Draconics

Draconics are shapeshifters that can change between a human and dragon form at will. The vast majority of transhumans alive today are draconics, though they are often other kinds of transhuman in addition to being draconic. Draconics can be created in three different ways. The first, and most common, is being born as one, either in human form or in dragon form. Draconicism is inherited, even if only one parent is a draconic. The second is bonding, a process where a dragon (or draconic in their dragon form) transfers a small seed of their natural magic to the human’s body. The third is via Hodgson ritual, a modern thaumaturgical technique that can be used to replicate the effects of bonding, among other things.

We recommend that most people use the bonding method, as the changes will take about a year to manifest, giving you time to acclimate to transhuman society. Your bond-partner will be able to act as your guide throughout the process. (Most Unioners volunteer for the bonding pool at some point in their lives— we’ll be able to find someone you’ll get along well with, don’t worry!) Additionally, bonding will cause some changes in your brain during the process, which will make learning a new language significantly easier.

If you strongly agree with any of the following statements, you are likely experiencing species dysphoria, and we strongly recommend using the Hodgson rituals instead, as these will give you access to a dragon body instantaneously:

• I wish I was born as a different species.
• I wish I had scales instead of skin.
• I think I would be happier if I had large fangs, claws, and/or wings.
• I feel like I have a tail, but there’s nothing there.
• I want to curl up and sleep in a remote natural location, like a mountaintop, sand dune, or snowy tundra.
• I can’t breathe fire, and this is distressing to me.
• My body feels too small for my sense of self.
• I feel a strange sense of longing when I think about dragons.

If you choose this option, it will be necessary to have a strong idea of your desired form. If you still desire the bonding experience, Hodgson rituals will allow you to leave your human body unchanged, and then later go through the bonding process while still having access to a dragon body.

Bonding

Draconics are created by sharing a piece of a dragon’s biothaumic system (the network of cells that produce a dragon’s innate magic) with the human body. This is traditionally done by having a human-dragon pair make physical contact while thinking about something they both feel the same way about. The shared emotional state and physical contact causes small fragments of the dragon’s biothaumic system to jump over to the human, beginning the progression of changes as the system tries to make its new host more dragon-like. This requires the human body to burn significantly more calories while the changes are happening, so you may experience unexpected hunger and/or weight loss.

If done with a wild dragon, the first change is that the dragon will experience an extremely rapid expansion of their intelligence, matching that of a human. The mechanism behind this is poorly-understood, but its occurrence is very well-documented. Historically, this is why so many wild dragons chose to bond; human intelligence is quite ordinary to humans, but fascinating to wild dragons. While humans and draconics don’t get any changes to their intelligence, they do experience a huge boost to neuroplasticity, particularly in the language center of the brain. This makes learning a new language very easy, and is one of the reasons that many draconics are eager to bond with new immigrants. The neuroplasticity isn't permanent, and usually only lasts six months to a year.

The next effect occurs after about a month: humans will begin to hear dragonspeech. Dragonspeech is produced by vibrating the Weave, much like how sound is produced by vibrating air. Dragons can naturally speak and hear it because of their biothaumic system; having a biothaumic system lets you hear it too. (You won’t be able to speak it in human form, as humans lack the musculature to vibrate their systems like dragons can in order to speak.) Dragonspeech has a small built-in vocabulary that is language-agnostic, but modern dragonspeech makes extensive use of loan-words from human languages.

The next change is the development of a dragon’s magical temperature insulation in the human body. This can take anywhere from six to eight weeks after developing the ability to hear dragonspeech, but when it does happen, the change is instant— you will be unable to burn or freeze. This does not mean you are totally immune to high or low temperatures. The insulation limits the temperature of any part of your body to the same range that it does for dragons: between 12 and 49°C (50-116°F). Prolonged exposure to these temperatures has the same effect that it would on a baseline human; heat stroke is still a possibility. (Dragons are mesotherms, and their healthy body temperature is the same range that their insulation provides.) Because the insulation works on the entire body, it also has some minor medical implications: cryotherapy or cauterization will no longer work on you.

The last change to the human body is the development of a dragon’s senses, which takes another two or three months. For all new draconics, this means that their eyes will change to resemble a dragon’s, both aesthetically and functionally. This will induce severe headaches for several hours as the new optic nerves grow. Draconic eyes have extremely good distance vision (enough to read this text from 100 meters away), but can experience eye strain or headaches from near-focus tasks like reading. You’ll want to get a pair of reading glasses. Additionally, nearly all dragons also have some form of secondary “hunting” sense, which is also shared with the human body. The most common form this takes is the ability to see certain parts of the infrared spectrum, but different species can have extremely good night vision, acute senses of smell, electroreception, or magnetometric senses; what gets shared with your human body depends on the species of dragon you end up with.

The final change, which takes about a year after the initial bond, is the ability to shapeshift. Draconic shapeshifting works by holding an entirely separate body in a magical pocket dimension; changes to one body do not necessarily occur to the other body. Generally, eating, aging, and sleeping are shared, while injuries and illness are not. Because the body is pre-formed, the shift occurs almost instantly, visually appearing as swirling motes of light and twisting space as the forms swap out. This process allows you to “store” anything on your person as you shift, including things like clothes, wallets, and backpacks.

Therianthropes

Therianthropes, often just called therians, are a type of shapeshifter that can change between human and animal form at will. Historically, they were limited by the availaibility of specific magically-active strains of bacteria, which could be transmitted by sharing blood. These strains were limited to specific animal species; no more than two dozen different therianthropic strains existed throughout history. Today, however, modern biology and thaumaturgy has broadened that quite a lot, and therians can be made out of most non-domesticated species larger than a housecat.

Because therians rely on the interaction between a bacteria with the human body, removing the bacteria can remove your ability to shapeshift. Therianthropic bacteria are also universally vulnerable to common antibiotics, which means that caution must be exercised before starting any antibiotic regimen. Most therians will withdraw and preserve a blood sample, then reinject it after finishing their antibiotics. Additionally, while these bacteria are transmissible by blood contact, many people in countries with essentialist laws are vaccinated against them as children, and will need to use an engineered strain to evade their own antibodies.

The progression for therians is much faster than draconics, though you won’t naturally see any changes to your human form. After initial transmission, the ability to shapeshift develops within one to three weeks. Like other shapeshifters, your consciousness and sense of self remain unchanged across forms. Unlike draconics, a therian’s animal form is not stored at the ready; shifting physically transforms your human form into the animal, or vice-versa. This process typically takes ten to thirty seconds, and can be gruesome to the unprepared. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t usually destroy clothes— most clothes are strong enough to block the shift instead of tearing.

Most therians are also draconics, simply because access to a dragon’s flight is very useful. Because the bacteria and dragon biothaumic system only exist in their human form, therians cannot change directly from animal to dragon or vice-versa; they have to pass through their human form first.

Post-Hodgson

Post-Hodgson transhumans get their name from Ernest Hodgson, the mathematician and thaumaturge who developed the mathematical theory behind shapeshifting magic in 1755. Knowing the math has allowed for total control over the shapeshifting process, including creating new forms from scratch, adding on more forms, and modifying existing forms. Originally, the workings described in Hodgson’s papers were only possible with very expensive thaumaturgical equipment, but they were quickly simplified, and today they can be performed in a few hours by most amateurs. This form of transhumanism is rapidly becoming the most widely-used, as it offers more personal control over your form without any downsides. Transhumans who use the rituals typically identify as draconics, therians, or just plain transhumans; “post-Hodgson” is typically used in academic or cishuman settings.

There are only a few limits to what is possible with the Hodgson rituals. At the moment, exceeding ten forms is effectively impossible due to computational complexity, though this will likely increase as computers improve. Currently, very few individuals have more than seven forms, simply because the supercomputer time required for more becomes prohibitively expensive. Additionally, forms must be produced by starting with a “seed” form and then modifying it, with a maximum amount of modification dictated by available computing resources. Aesthetic or genetic changes are typically quite simple, but functional biological changes (without a known genetic path to achieve them) are very resource-intensive to compute. Fortunately, once a desired seed/modification set has been developed once, this can be turned into a “schema”, a mathematical package that can be used by anyone to reproduce that form for themselves. Schemas are typically built to be tweaked slightly by their users before use, so it’s rare to see perfect copies of a form outside of military or industrial uses.

Performing the initial Hodgson ritual to become a transhuman requires access to three things: an Internet connection, some way to produce a detailed symbolic diagram, and a source of potential roughly equivalent to sacrificing a goat. If you will be traveling through countries that discriminate against or outlaw transhumans, it is strongly suggested that you wait until your arrival in the Northern Union to perform the ritual. If you have already done so and will need to exit or travel through a hostile country, please see the Travel Guide.

Most transhumans today have used the Hodgson rituals at some point, for a variety of reasons. Some use it for cosmetic modification, some use it because they strongly identify with more than just two forms, and some just like having the extra options. Many people use Hodgson rituals for access to engineered forms that don’t exist in nature, like the Shatterscale, SIB, or HP-series forms that were used extensively during the war. Some people use the rituals without establishing a non-human form at all, though this is not recommended for living in the Northern Union due to the importance of flight.

Legal Considerations

Until recently, many countries had legal restrictions or outright bans on transhumans. However, following the surrender of ODI last year, this number has dropped significantly. Today, only a few countries still outright ban transhumans (France, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, and Turkey), and some other nations with small transhuman minorities require transhumans to register with authorities and restrict where they present as non-human. If you leave one of these countries and become transhuman, you may find yourself unable to legally return. While you can use the Hodgson rituals to remove forms, they will not remove the magical signature of shapeshifting, which is typically what gets checked at border crossings. For more information, see the Travel Guide.