History Main / HereThereWereDragons

** Giant Flying Lizards are just really big bats with no fur and a few less fingers right, and as for the other two, Elephants and Giant Squids should about cover it. Things were bigger in those days, but I doubt they were really weird.
*** It [[http://shotnottaken.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/dinosaurs-attack-39.jpg all depends]] on [[http://0.tqn.com/d/dinosaurs/1/0/l/-/-/-/suchomimus.jpg your perspective]] in many cases, since what's weird to one person may not be so weird to someone used to seeing them.

* Played with in ''TheFirstLaw Trilogy''. There WAS an Age of Wonder, where demons walked amongst men, monsters roamed,and great magic was wrought by the Magi... but that was a long time ago, and as far as the 'civilized' people of [[TheFederation The Union]] knows, may well just be myth and legend. And indeed, they're not entirely wrong - according to Bayaz, First of the Magi, the magic is literally leaking out of the world - and even those that remains of the Magi of old, are slowly growing weaker and weaker. Still, more remains of the old world than most people realize... which could come back to bite a lot of people in the ass. [[IAmAHumanitarian And the rest of their anatomy, for that matter.]] Ultimately, most of the problems that appear has to be solved through mundane means - politics, violence, or both. Attempts to call upon ancient magics or find forgotten artifacts of power tend to either backfire badly, or just fail outright.

* In DwarfFortress this can happen in world gen if you choose a long enough amount of time for all of the worlds Megabeasts and Forgotten beasts are dead. Ironically Dragons dont need to be extinct for the age of myth to end.

-->"''Dragons.'' They have not stopped; since they are active in far later times, close to our own. Have I said anything to suggest the final ending of dragons? If so it should be altered." (Letter to Naomi Mitchison, 25.4.1954)

* " In TheGodsOfArrKelaan, it is revealed that the Earth no longer has magic or gods outside the Christian faith because [[spoiler: for some reason all the magic power is running out of our galaxy, so they cannot even get to earth without a VERY large outside source of energy, which the gods who started Christianity have. By the end of the stroyline they lose it though, so magic is completly gone.]]

->"The trouble with humans is that it's all or nothing with them. They seem to think that anything impossible could happen in the old days. And just because these are new days, they tell you none of it is true."

* Pretty much the whole premise of Terry Pratchett's GuardsGuards novel. Big dragons can no longer exist right...
** The first two Discworld books exhibit this in general. In TheColourOfMagic Rincewind encounters dryads in a tree and says he thought that TheFairFolk were all extinct (which they are shortly afterward). They encounter dragons later in that same book, but they are imaginary and can only exist inside the Wyrmburg's magical field. In TheLightFantastic it's implied that trolls are also on their way out, many of them having already become immobile. Later books drop this, save for the case of Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde, who are the last of the {{Barbarian Hero}}s and somewhere in their 80s.

-->"''Dragons.'' They have not stopped; since they are active in far later times, close to our own. Have I said anything to suggest the final ending of dragons? If so it should be altered."

** The effect actually happens within the Lord of the Rings; at the time of the War of the Ring the magic was almost completely faded from the world. For a random example, at one point there were so many Balrogs they had their own army instead of only one, and the current dark lord is only a pale imitation of how strong he was while a lieutenant to the old one, who was order of magnitude stronger still.
** The trope also applies literally: the last dragon died in TheHobbit. Not that this is considered a bad thing, mind you.

** Then again, given the number of demons absorbed by Naraku or exterminated by Inuyasha's group, it's entirely possible that demons will be a critically endangered species before the show's over.

* The opening narration to the first episode of ''{{Carnivale}}'' says that man "forever traded wonder for reason" on the day of the A-bomb test at Trinity.

* ''VagrantStory'' centers around the last place of magic left in the world - Lea Monde. The trick is that we've ''seen'' what the world looked like with magic; it was called ''FinalFantasyTactics''. What happened in the intervening centuries between the two is unknown. (Funny enough given the trope name, there are ''lots'' of dragons in ''VagrantStory''.)

*** It [[http://shotnottaken.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/dinosaurs-attack-39.jpg all depends]] on [[http://0.tqn.com/d/dinosaurs/1/0/l/-/-/-/suchomimus.jpg your perspective]] in many cases, since what's weird to one person may not be o weird to someone used to seeing them.

* This is the setting of ''BrutalLegend'': The giant mythical beast has been dead for millenia, titans had born, built a civilization, kicked ass and AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, the landscape is littered with their giant relics and the rebellion against the demons has already failed. And then TheHero shows up and inspires some.. well.. legends of his own. SoYeah.