Dragons
Although Dragons are among the most famous creatures in Realmgard and feature prominently in art, folklore, and heraldry, in real life, Dragons are rare to the point that some particularly pessimistic naturalists contend that they are now extinct. This is a minority position, however, and although Dragons are often seen alone, Dragons sightings are not especially uncommon.
While the most common notion of a Dragon is as a large, winged reptilian creature that breathes fire, Dragons are, in fact, a diverse class of creature. Not all Dragons are winged, nor are they all associated with fire. In fact, “Dragon” is sometime understand as a purely conventional term applied to any large and vaguely similar creature, rather than a strictly taxonomic term.
In fact, some scholars believe that the various kinds of Dragons are not actually closely related and a magical, rather than biological origin, has been posited.
While Dragons are markedly intelligent animals, they do not seem to be truly sapient or capable of speech, as they are often depicted in folktales. That Dragons are also said to be able to adopt Human form is viewed as a garbled reference to the distant ancestors of Dragon Wilderling, who magically learned the ability to shapeshift into Dragons.
Present-day Dragon Wilderlings retain this ability, but are otherwise Human like all Wilderlings.
Again, there’s not really much to expand on here. Dragons are pretty self-explanatory.
What I will say is that while Dungeons & Dragons really codified, and maybe even invented (? I don’t actually know) the whole “different Dragons have different elemental affinities”, I’m not really directly going for a DnD angle.
I’ve had the idea for Lightning Dragons being wingless and at least vaguely horse-like for a while now, and my may influential for that was the Qilin (Kirin in Japanese; like the beer), which aren’t really associated with lightning in the actual folklore, but commonly are in video games.
Though I will say that I’m consciously choosing to avoid some of the traits of DnD style Dragons — mainly that mine are just big animals and don’t have to ability to take on Human form. Originally, I had the idea of a Dragon Wilderling character who hatched from an egg, which I think I’ve rendered implausible, if not impossible.
Though, for what it’s worth, my approach to this whole thing is “what I say is canon is canon until it isn’t”…
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