Free quiz · 12 questions · no account

Which Dragon Would You Ride?

Twelve questions about how you behave when something has gone wrong, and eight dragons that behave the same way. Answer honestly rather than heroically — the dragon can tell.

How it works, and what it is measuring

Twelve questions, none of them about dragons. That is on purpose: a quiz that asks which dragon you like tells you which dragon you like. This one asks how you behave when something has gone wrong, and works out the dragon from that.

Three things are being measured, independently, and every answer moves at least one of them:

Fury — how fast you move. Not how angry you are; how short the gap is between deciding and doing.
Guile — whether you would rather be understood or underestimated.
Cold — how long you keep the account open after somebody closes it.

Eight dragons, one for each combination of the three. That is why every result is reachable: there are exactly as many outcomes as there are corners, so no dragon is a decoration. There is no scoring in the middle and no tie-breaking against a "most popular" answer — you get the corner you actually landed in.

Nothing is sent anywhere. There is no account, no email, no sign-up, and no server involved at all: the questions, the scoring and the verdict all run inside your own browser, which is why it still works if your connection drops halfway through. Your answers do not leave the page and are gone when you close it.

The eight dragons

These are the eight aspects a petrified dragon egg can show by firelight in this site's strategy game — read out of the game's own data rather than invented for the quiz.

The Emerald-Veined

Warm, clever, and always three questions ahead.

The emerald-veined would rather win the argument than the fight, and usually does. It is the dragon that turns up where the negotiation is happening rather than where the battle is, on the correct assumption that the battle was decided in the negotiation. Riders of this one are rarely the strongest lord on the map and disproportionately often the one still holding land at the end.

The Bronze-Banded

Steady, warm, and where it said it would be.

Every host has one and every host underestimates it. The bronze-banded is not the fastest or the most frightening; it is the one that is still flying on the fourth day, carrying the wounded, holding the line nobody thought needed holding. Riders of this one get remembered late, by people who had time to think about it.

The Midnight-Black

Arrives before the warning does.

Anger with a schedule. The midnight-black hunts at the hour when a sentry has stopped believing anything will happen, and it has learned that terror does more work than fire. Riders of this one are dangerous less for what they do than for the fact that nobody can predict when they will do it.

The Frost-Pale

Patient, plain-spoken, and impossible to hurry.

The frost-pale is the dragon of the long siege — the one that will still be circling in six weeks, when the food is gone and the argument inside the walls has turned. It does not bluff, which is why it does not have to. Riders of this one are usually the last person in the room still making sense.

The Ember-Flecked

Fast, hot, and entirely without a plan.

An ember-flecked dragon does not brood. It goes. It is the one that lands in the middle of the enemy camp because that is where the enemy is, and it has never once been on the losing side of an argument about whether to wait. Riders of this one tend to be forgiven a great deal, because whatever went wrong went wrong quickly and in the open.

The Storm-Grey

Furious, direct, and impossible to talk down.

A storm-grey rides weather the way other dragons ride wind, and it has the temperament of the thing it flies through: enormous, indifferent, and finished with you long before it has noticed you were there. Riders of this one are not cruel. They are simply operating at a scale where your objection did not register.

The Copper-Swirled

Cold-blooded, quick-tempered, and genuinely inventive about it.

A copper-swirled treats a war as a problem with an elegant solution it has not found yet, and it is prepared to be quite unpleasant while it looks. It is the dragon that burns the bridge rather than the army, the granary rather than the wall. Riders of this one are the ones other lords write letters about.

The Sea-Green

Cold water, long memory, no announcements.

A sea-green does not attack; it arrives, some weeks after the thing that provoked it, in a place nobody connected to the thing that provoked it. It keeps a ledger. Riders of this one are excellent company and terrible enemies, generally in that order and generally to the same people.

Every question it asks

Written out in full, partly so the page says something to a reader without JavaScript, and partly because there is nothing to hide — knowing what is being measured does not make the answers less true, it just makes them more deliberate.

The war council has been arguing for two hours. You have said nothing. Now they look at you.
- “We ride tonight.”
- “We ride when their grain does.”
- “We do not ride. We wait for them to come to us.”
- “Nobody rides until somebody tells me what we do if it fails.”
Somebody who wronged you badly, years ago, is now in a position where you could ruin them. Nobody would ever know it was you.
- Ruin them. Slowly. It has been a long time.
- Ruin them now, loudly, so they know why.
- Leave it. It cost me enough already.
- Do nothing, and let them find out I could have.
You are given one hour alone in the enemy's map room.
- Read everything. Take nothing. Leave it exactly as it was.
- Take the one map that matters and burn the rest.
- Copy the supply routes. Wars are won in the wagons.
- Wait by the door for whoever comes in.
Winter is coming in hard and the granary is short. Somebody has to be told there will be less.
- Tell them yourself, plainly, with the numbers.
- Tell them there is enough, and quietly find more.
- Cut your own household's share first, then announce it.
- Take what is missing from the neighbours who have it.
A rival sends an insult so precisely aimed that it is, honestly, quite good.
- Laugh. Then answer it better.
- Answer it with a rider and a torch.
- Say nothing. Write it down.
- Have it read aloud at dinner. It is funny.
Which of these would genuinely keep you awake?
- Having been slow.
- Having been obvious.
- Having been cruel.
- Having been wrong in front of people.
Your dragon is grown. What does it do all day when there is no war?
- Hunts, constantly, well beyond what it needs.
- Sleeps somewhere high with one eye open.
- Follows me around like an enormous dog.
- Disappears for days and comes back knowing things.
An ally breaks a promise. It cost you, but not catastrophically.
- Break one back, the same size, immediately.
- Say nothing and never rely on them again.
- Ask them why. There is usually a why.
- Make sure the rest of the alliance hears about it.
You can have one of these, permanently.
- Every rumour in the realm, a day early.
- The fastest host on the map.
- Walls nobody has ever taken.
- The absolute loyalty of everyone under your banner.
A village on your border has been raided. It is not, strictly, yours to defend.
- Ride now. Sort out whose it is afterwards.
- Ride, and make sure it becomes yours afterwards.
- Send grain and no soldiers.
- Leave it. Borders exist for a reason.
How do you want to be described by somebody who dislikes you?
- “Impossible to surprise.”
- “Impossible to stop.”
- “Impossible to bribe.”
- “Impossible to dislike, which is the problem.”
The war is over and you have won. What is the first order you give?
- Take down the banners. All of them, including ours.
- Hold the ground and fortify before anyone celebrates.
- Find whoever started it.
- Send terms to the next one along, while we still look terrifying.

It names the dragon too

Every result comes with a name, rolled from the same engine behind the dragon name generator. Re-roll it as many times as you like; the dragon is yours either way, and so is the name.

Can I use my result?

Yes — for anything, including commercial work, with no permission and no credit required. Short strings like a name or a two-word motto are not the kind of thing anyone can own, and the crest you compose is your composition, not ours. Take it to a novel, a tabletop campaign, a stream overlay, a band, a boat, a business card.

We ask for exactly nothing in return: no account, no email, no sign-up, no watermark. Nothing you type or click here is sent anywhere — every one of these tools runs entirely inside your own browser, so there is no server that could keep your design even if it wanted to. If you want to tell somebody where it came from, a link back is kind, but it is not a condition.

More free tools

The heraldry forge will design your arms and hand them back as a PNG or an SVG, and there are five name generators for houses, castles, lords, mottoes and dragons. Everything is on the tools index.