There are many tales where dragons are victims of misunderstanding, fearful, and glory seeking humans.
This is not one of them. Dragons are covetous, grasping, and their intellect and cunning belies their savage brutality with which their claim their hordes and protect them.
There are many stories were dragons are cute and cuddly and as offensive as the average stuffed animal.
This is not one of them. Dragons are engines of destruction. Claws, fangs, wings, tail, and fire breath make dragons armies unto themselves.
There are many tales were dragons and other natural beasts become terrified or cowed by humanity as humanity's power to destroy increases exponentially (around the 1940s).
This is not one of them. Dragons are covetous and grasping. They wanted this power for themselves. Many dragons had upgraded their bodies and their holdings with the works of man.
Dragons saw how grasping and driven by desires humans had been, were, and would be. Not as much as dragons per-say, but they clearly had the potential. And dragons were IMPRESSED by humanity's increased ability to have more and more and yet never be satisfied in the post industrial consumer culture. Not to mention all their new weapons of mass destruction.
Dragons did not FEAR humans... as is the true Dragon Way, they wanted humanity for themselves. They wanted humans to be dragons.
There are many, MANY tales where transformation becomes ultimately about choosing, about it ultimately coming down to the person if it's their choice to be transformed by the growing changes in the world.
This wasn't one of them. Dragons did not ask, they took.
Dragons were dumb founded that for all of humans new strengths and desires, magic had eluded them. Then again, dragons themselves had only limited use for magic themselves, why cast a fireball when you can just breath one being a simple example.
But now magic would be of great value for the dragons to claim their new prize.
Dragons are one other thing, fiercely individualistic, they would come together into flights on rare occasions for migrations, or form families for the sake of raising the next generation so their greatness would not be lost to the world. But they lacked the sense of teamwork to bake a cake, let alone coordinate a war (which is likely why dragons didn't rule the world), and were prone to turning on each other in the heat of battle.
Some dragons concluded their sense of teamwork was something else of humans they wanted, if enough just so they could reach for greater treasures and greater power.
Even with the strongest dragons keeping the lesser ones in line, it took over fifty years for the dragons to come to anything resembling an agreement with all the infighting and brawls.
One thing that was agreed upon was that several billion new full sized dragons would be too much both for territory to individually hold and for the amount of wealth upon the world to claim for their own. While humans had opened up the idea of traveling to NEW world to claim more treasures and more territory, the humans were a far, far way off from this. The dragons concluded that with the dragons' grasping desires and human ability to function as a group, the creatures of Earth would reach the stars much quicker, if only to add their treasures to their hordes.
But that would still be a ways off, and with that many new full sized dragons, the resulting blood bath from claiming territories and treasure would be unpleasant, normally for a dragon this a thrilling thought, but with the 'original' dragons would be so out numbered by the 'new' dragons that the law of averages wasn't lost on the majority of the dragon flight.
Food wasn't so much an issue, dragons can feed off pretty much anything up to things that would kill most creatures from food poisoning, and in worse comes to worst some could in a pinch feed off rocks (though they hated it), but they much prefer flesh.
So incredibly rare among even two dragon, let along an entire flight, a compromise was reached.
There would be humans would be transformed into 'true' dragons, and those who would be transformed into humanoid dragons. With the humanoid dragons of course instinctively driven both to individually find ways of becoming a true dragon, and in the mean time serve the true dragons they sought to become to the best of their ability.
Humans were already divided among the 'haves' and 'have nots' with a promise of advancement with enough hard work so that at least would ironically not be that big a chance for them.
Ironically, there were dragons (either the extremely old and learned, or the young and not resistant to the new) now who held holdings of an immaterial sort, holding large stocks of the world's major companies via several layers of aliases and dummy accounts. How they accomplished this was a closely guarded secret. Theory among dragons who didn't ran from shape shifting to enscrolled humans to anything in between.
There was one element left to decide. How to bring about the grand dragonification of the world. There were plenty of ideas, dragons were very intelligent after all if savage and greedy when provoked and with egos that would make even the most arrogant human balk.
But deciding on which one was best was the real trick.
Some female dragons suggested just using enchanted dragon eggs and sealing humans inside them to transform them. But this was deemed too slow.
Dragons with modern holdings suggested releasing several products at once around the world set to enchant and transform any human that used them from diapers to hair spray to iphones.
Others suggested, to keep most of their prizes intact, to create a self replicating spell that would transform one human, then transform any human that new dragon had contact with, distorting their memories and reality so it would be as if they were born as such.
It was generally agreed a obviousness or acceptance spell WOULD be best regardless of the method, the dragons didn't want humans panicking and destroying their new dragons or deciding to just nuke the planet to deny the dragons their prize.
As for the new dragons... their new instincts and drives would be much stronger than anything a human had experienced as instincts before, and this would not be some voice whispering in their head, their new dragon nature would be as natural as breathing.
And still other suggested the idea was to take note of the few humans in the world would have eagerly become dragons willingly... and give them the power to magically transform OTHER humans into humanoid dragons, with the contract that they themselves would become a True Dragon if were able to transform a certain number of humans.
And yet still others wanted to create enchanted locations like subway tunnels, road tunnels, buses, and island resorts, so that those who passed through would be transformed.
Other suggested the simple idea that those transformed would become dragons and dragonoids not in context to their growth, but to their age, resulting in countless child and infant level dragonoids and dragons with most of the knowledge intact... them surviving wasn't a concern, considering a infant dragon could wander through a war zone and come out the other side unharmed, but it would leave them more open to the dragon way of life and combining the traits of humanity the dragons wanted for themselves.
Other wanted to do every plan at once since one was bound to succeed as the human who would notice would be looking for a single vector or cause, not several from different sources and different methods.
Eventually the agreement was...