Dragons

I'm not putting dragons under races because they don't exactly qualify. Don't expect there to ever be a playable variety of dragon, but do expect dragons and drakes to show up on occasion. Oh, and if the information on this page doesn't make much sense that's because I pieced it together from things I'd written previously.

Hierarchy of Dragons

1. Great Dragons: Four Great Dragons inhabit a class above all others. On rare occasions, they assemble, and their decrees apply to all dragonkind. Officially, they only have authority as a group, but in actual practice ordinary dragons and drakes will obey any Great Dragon. The Great Dragons are Red, Black, White, and Gold, respectively.
2. Lesser Dragons: The various varieties of Lesser Dragons are all capable of speech, although not always in languages people understand. No two Dragons are the same color, although the differences may be too slight for non-dragons to identify. Shades of greens, brown, and grey are common, but Dragons may also be jewel or metallic colors. Although it has never been confirmed, scholars speculate that a Dragon could be almost any color, with the exception of red, black, white, gold (the colors of the Great Dragons), blue (dragons cannot be blue), and silver.
3. Drakes: Drakes are to Dragons what animals are to people. Dragons can communicate with them to some degree, depending on the intelligence of the drake. Drakes common in a variety of colors, usually confined to earth-tones, particularly shades of green and brown.

I imagine by now you're wondering where exactly the Great Blue Dragon fits into all of this, and for that you'll have to go to the next section.

The Great Blue Dragon

The GBD is a low-ranking Eshilar Loyhala (ooh, check out the masculine singular), known for being unpredictable and disinclined to work. If anyone knows his name, he or she hasn't shared. For reasons of his own, he chose to take charge of the dragons. (The dragons and only the dragons, one notes.) Dragons tend to fend for themselves, which suits him just fine. It amuses him to be blue, since dragons aren’t blue.

The dragons themselves know they have their own patriarch, but they don’t necessarily associate him with the GBD, and dragons often ascribe to some other higher power. It is part of the nature of dragons that things draconic are of much great concern than anything else, so even a dragon who was theoretically under the Mountain Lord, would listen to the Great Dragons first, and the Great Dragons themselves would certainly defer to the GBD. Still, the relationship is not like the divinity-subject relationship of other creatures—there’s not any element of humility or subservience.

The relationship (or lack thereof) between dragons and the Great Blue Dragon works well because dragons are eminently independent creatures who are highly skeptical of any authority outside of themselves. They have a complex, hierarchical society and every dragon knows exactly where he fits in only because otherwise communal action would be impossible. They are very conscious of power, and it would be entirely out of character for one dragon to oppose another who is significantly higher in the hierarchy.

The GBD associates with the Blue Dragon Mage School because it amuses him and suits him. He'd never admit that he has a decidedly un-draconic affection for "his" mages.

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