Reasons a Hidden Elf Village would stay hidden in a modern-day setting

For context, a major plot point in my Shared Universe is that dragons allegedly went extinct a thousand years ago. This is a lie, as most of them were placed in temporal stasis and sealed away, while the remainder went into hiding in isolated communities. Fast forward to the 21st century. Not only does magic exist alongside smartphones, it's common for an average Joe to know a few basic spells. However, the dragons have still refused to reveal themselves to the wider world, even though the rise of the Internet has made it harder to uphold their secrecy. With that said, What practical reasons would there be for them to stay hidden?

Well, one thought that springs to mind is fear of humans, especially in their numbers.

Dragons may be powerful, but traditionally they can be slain. Furthermore, they have a reputation for both evil and wealth for the taking, and thus might be targeted. With human combat technology and sheer numbers having skyrocketed, dragons may fear that they'll be decimated—or wiped out.

Conversely, depending on their perspectives, they may fear being used by powerful humans, coerced or bribed into doing things that they'd rather not do, becoming what they'd rather not be.

And finally, if humanity might gain something from them—e.g. increased magical power—and especially if it's simply from their presence, then they might feel that humankind isn't ready for that thing.

My Games & Writing

Dragons are extremely arrogant so they believe the human world has nothing to offer them. They considered exterminating humanity but found that too bothersome so instead they just used spells to keep humans away. Even now when humanity's power rivals the Dragons the Dragons believe humanity to be nothing but a nuisance and just cast more spells to repel us.

These are all good points. I don't think dragons are exactly arrogant (at least not in the present day), but they could be distrustful of humanity. Dragons were also a Higher-Tech Species in their prime. A lot of problems in my setting can ultimately be traced back to their Magitek, so maybe they're ashamed of that, and they hide themselves out of fear that a human will force them to reactivate their superweapons?

There's a lot of different kinds of dragons, so yea i think you need to flesh out what the dragons were (evil? good? neutral?), what type (beasts? forces of nature? divine?), their role in history, etc.

From that it's a fairly short hike to why they'd want to hide in the first place and why they'd want to remain hidden.

Given the prevalent trope of dragon hoards, i think you could make a fun modern allegory with the dragons going into hiding to protect their hordes of magic and technology.

The why is obvious. Humans fear that which they do not understand, while also reached the Apex of the food chain. Any magical being will see them as monsters to be avoided if that is the angle you want to go with.

The how will be tricker. You'd have to go with pocket dimensions, or very secluded uninhabitable areas where man dates to tread (like say the bottom of the oceans)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Feb 9th 2024 at 10:00:44 AM

A way to hide in a world of humans.

The dragons uses the magitech in their hoards to travel through time and space and setting the destination to a time were they think humanity have gone extinct by that point and where nobody can bother them anymore or abuse the tech the humans could steal from them.

Essentially removing themselves from the planet all together in-between the moment they leave and the moment they appear far into the future.

Unfortunately, they miscalculated regarding how utterly tenacious mankind can be regarding survival, leaving them to reappear in a modern-era world utterly dominated by mankind rather than the quiet place they expected.

And the reason for them not using their tech again to leap even further into the future, is due to it running on a rechargeable power-source that went empty by this first leap, forcing them to wait and hold the fort for an unspecific amount of time until the power-source have charged up again for another leap.

Until then, the dragons have their work cut out for them to keep these humans from getting their tech, as in contrast to the past, these people are far more savvy with magitech and how to use it for their own various ends.

Maybe this is how they could have remained under the radar for so long? (from mankind's perspective, that is.)

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."

Neither would be true if dragons existed. They would, by their nature, very much be a known quantity. And by the nature of dragons, we wouldn't be the top of the food chain either.

Timetravelling dragons can be a cool idea but this is the sort of solution that will be a gigantic pain in the ass. Not yet convinced this is what you want. Time travel has the tendency to take over any sort of story you were planning.

A pocket dimension of some sort is a fairly standard thing: maybe the dragons can use space magic on particular gems to build their hoardes in, and then just go and hibernate. For that matter, it's not uncommon for Xianxia protagonists to self-cultivate for a couple of thousand years to achieve enlightenment. I mean in one particular novel i read the protagonists spends 30000 years in unbroken meditation. A single gem will easily be overlooked in a dragons' hoard of literally piles of gold. The good old "pocket dimension in a single grain of sand" trope.

So maybe the dragons are just busy meditating, occasionally taking a glance outside and thinking "eh let's give it another 500 years" before eventually realizing that actually things aren't getting more in their favor.

Dragons tend to be solitary. As a reader I would want an explanation for why the dragons are in communities, not why they are hiding.

Could they have made the choice long ago to simply "pool their hoards" together into a single massive treasure due to realizing that there are greedy humans everywhere and the odds of losing it just kept getting higher and higher until they reluctantly and at the end of their ropes gathered together and made the choice to make what can only be described as "THE Dragon Hoard", and protect it together using strength in numbers as well as superiority of their individual abilities?

And for how big this ultimate dragon hoard is?

Let's just say that if it ever were to be introduced to humanity's society, the global economy as a whole would absolutely with a 100% certainty collapse beyond salvage.

The "diamonds would sink to the value of sand" and "gold would be as worthless as a toothpick" levels of economic-destruction.

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."

The drop in price of gold and diamonds would not cause economic collapse. Some instability yes, collapse no. It of course depends on how big a role gold and diamonds played in the economy in the first place.

People often underestimate the prevalence of gold money. Silver money was much more common and most money was made of less precious metals like copper. Anyway, in the present fiat money would be the norm, so just people with large amounts of their savings in gold would be effected, and goldmine owners. This means a some people would lose their nestegg and a few treasure related industries would disappear.

Alternatively, they came to realize the damage mankind did from stealing some of their fantasy-tech in their hoards and then to their fridge horror came to the realization that if mankind EVER got their hands on some of the really dangerous tech in them, came to an agreement to form a draconic-community in order to protect that tech together from all of humanity through their strength and powers combined.

Which would make them overcoming their own paranoia regarding letting anyone else get "their" hoard by doing this a major case of serious business and underscore how dangerous the stuff is they're holding onto.

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."

Thinking of what kind of elves... I will center in Middle Earth elves.

They can live for hundred of years without getting old, imagine a human trying to catch and elf and investigate the secret of their longevity, and finding it would mean a big opportunity to cash in the secret to stay young and pretty.

Elves would end persecuted by hunters hired by Chinese millionaries that are looking for that secret... just like it happened with the rhynos...

Well, Rhinos don't shoot back, but yeah.

Western dragons are, but Asian dragons are social.

This seems quite similar to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty IRL.

"Enshittification truly is how platforms die"-Cory Doctorow