Sometimes things just go your way.

I chose the portrait of Sssra, Myrran, Artificer, Runemaster, 2 books each nature, chaos, and death.

Since this was an A/R build, I knew exactly how to proceed. I got The Amazon hero quickly, and juiced her up with good artifacts as quickly as I could crank them out.

As it happened, I was alone on Myrror, and there were six or seven neutral cities. But this is where things get fun: every single one of the neutral cities was Draconian! Snapped my fingers and I had a massive empire. It was a short but fun game.

I am curious why did you choose Death over Life?

I mean Death can be useful but it's mostly useful for cranking out cheap summons on the surface for defense/offense. Unlike Life with which you can start with either Heroism, best imho, or Healing only slightly worse. Both of these spells will help out a A/R build more I think in the short and long run.

It was for fun, just to run with it and see how it goes, that would be my bet.
This comment was also for fun.

Yeah, Tervvo's right. It was just for fun and I didn't put all that much thought into it. I suppose I was thinking of the potential artifact traits from Death, and maybe hoping to find some trolls to Black Channel. Ultimately though, the point was to try out draconians, and I went with an A/R build because I knew it would work regardless of which books I chose.

Draconians have a lot to recommend them, BTW. Flying units (including colonists) is a nice advantage. I haven't decided what I think of their units overall yet. The airships flies and has 4 movement, so that's nice, and doom drakes seem like a good choice too. I'll have to try them again.

Still, every city on Myrror was draconian! How great is that?