About the world

Dragon culture

Kedran F'Calne is the current High Mena, the absolute leader, of the dragons. She is advised by the Draconi Council, elected by the dragons at large when a vacancy comes up. Offices are held for life.

Dragons mate for life, and usually only have one or two clutches. Each dragon clutch contains anywhere from one to ten eggs, with the average clutch size being four or five. Dragons come in all sorts of colors. For instance, Tenea is a pure blue, but her sister Srenda is forest colored, with dark green and brown mixed into her scales. No dragon color has rank over another.

Names come at birth, with the mother choosing. You know how mothers can be, they just name their dragonets whatever sounds right. Their "last" name comes from their mother. Tenea F'Calne means Tenea, daughter of Calne. Ruban M'Lekane means Ruban, son of Lekane. Tenea's father is Lekane, and Ruban's mother is Calne, but their names do not reflect that.

Dragon powers

Dragons are magical beings, they have magic born into them. One way that magic manifests itself is in their tears and their flame. Dragon tears contain healing magic, and they can switch their flames from healing to destructive. Some dragons are able to heal with their minds as well, and those are the healers. Dragons are, however, strongly discouraged from experimenting with magic to enhance themselves in any way. The mages, keepers of magical tradition, enforce this with their lives. All dragons are bilingual, they speak the human language, and the ancient tounge of the dragons. The ancient tounge conveys feelings more than actual thoughts or ideas. It makes a lot of sense to someone who's grown up speaking it, but if it was learned as a second language, the subtle nuances of the language would go completely unnoticed. Mainly the human language is used, as some time ago the dragons realized what a hassle the ancient tounge really was. They still speak the ancient tounge, it can be handy at times. Plus if you speak it in front of humans, it confuses the hells out of them.

Religion

The dragon gods are the Sky Lords. There are approximately 1,124 Sky Lords that exist in the heavens. Most Sky Lords are dragons who, in their mortal lives, excelled in one area of dragonkind. When they died, they were deified, and now reside in the sky with the other Lords. There's a Sky Lord for just about every minute detail of dragon life. Some examples include Anek, Lord of Thinking; Darnai, Lady of Movement; Wiev, Lord of Nourishment; Giikle, Lord of blood, and Nimeal, Lady of Feeling. The Prime Sky Lord is Ralamik, and he is the arbiter and moderator of all the other Sky Lords. His judgement is the ultimate word on everything. Cross Ralamik, and you'll wish your soul never came into existence.

Aging
Dragons live for thousands of years, sometimes even longer. They are born and die in bunches. If one member of a clutch dies of natural causes, it is likely that the other members will follow suit quickly. Despite the large clutch numbers, the population is usually stable. A chart of age terms follows:

Dragon Term / Human equivalent
Cub / Infant
Beginning-young / Toddler
Middle-young / Adolescent
End-young / Pre-teen
Rebellious / Teenager
Maturing / 20-30 year olds
Parenting / 30-50 year olds
Wisdom / 50+ year olds

Technical notes
Whenever a word is green, it means that it is being spoken in the ancient tongue of the dragons. A translation will usually be provided shortly after.

When text is like this, the dragon is thinking to themselves. No other dragon can hear them. However, if the text is *like this*, that is conscious mindspeech, and other dragons can hear them.

A brief history of the world

The mountains where dragons live have been given many different names by the humans that have known about them. In the time period of "Invalid Item" , they are known as the Emerald Mountains, to the north of the kingdom known as Hibisca.

Human history has treated the dragons in the Emerald Mountains as monolithic giants who are best left alone, as they prefer to dwell without human interference. The dragons have constantly supported this human belief by staying in the mountains and venturing out rarely, almost never coming into contact with humans of any kind.

For the humans, this behavior is easy to understand. Dragons are fearsome creatures, and in a one-to-one combat, the dragon has several advantages over the human. However, the dragons have records that stretch much farther back than those of humankind, and remember when humans and dragons clashed, and the dragon lost. This dragon, whose name and line have been obliterated from dragon records, was experimenting with human magic to try and make himself immortal. He had also brought several human kingdoms under his rule, and was only stopped by the efforts of his son and a large group of human mages.

Because of this and other events, dragons have made it a point of keeping tabs on all their children. Leaving the Emerald Mountains is strongly discouraged, unless the dragon in question leaves to join one of the other draconic civilizations throughout the world. For this reason, draconic civilization in the Emerald Mountains is stagnant, and day to day life has not changed for generation upon generation.

More recently, the father of High Mena Kedran F'Calne was killed by humans just before her mother, Calne F'Eneal, laid the eggs containing Kedran and her siblings. Most dragons feel that following the death of Lekane M'Darhien, Calne should have taken another mate to help raise her five children. The wandering tendencies of Tenea and Quads F'Calne support that consensus, but Kedran's gift for oration made her a strong and vibrant choice for High Mena after her predecessor's death.

Cooperation with humans was one of the first things to come from Kedran F'Calne's reign, a move borne out of necessity. Kedran successfully argued that without the aid of King Trayan of Hibisca and his peers, efforts to reclaim the stolen egg belonging to Ruban and his mate Selane F'Sareen would prove fruitless, and the dragon in the egg would simply be abandoned to whatever horrible fate the egg-nappers had in mind.