The Warmblooded Scaled: Dragons, and Dragonkin including Kobolds and Dragonborn

Dragons and Dragonkin

The dragon is one of the oldest creatures in Tys, having existed in the far past including the great Aelthi Velassian Empire and beyond. They are quadrupedal, scaled, winged beasts with the wisdom and intelligence of sapients and the power and strength of great monsters. They are also inherently magical, possessing control of Aeth almost from birth, and their anatomy and physiology seems to be imbued with the magical stuff in a way that is more logical and natural than the aeth-born monsters of Rokita, Kishi, and the like. Their coloration often denotes their breath weapon, with red dragons breathing fire, silver dragons breathed an almost nitrogenous freezing gas, black dragons being able to spew acid, and so on. They are warm-blooded and have slitted eyes. They can see in the dark and have hawk-like vision. They seem functionally immortal with dragons being able to age over 1000 years. Their development takes longer than other kinds with an analogous infantile baby state of a human lasting for five years as hatchlings, youth taking twenty years, and their adolescence not occurring until they are thirty years of age. Dragons tend to be solitary creatures with many happy to be alone and sleep on hoards of gold and jewels and goods. They do seek mates from time to time and the dynamic of those relationships change from simple matings that part with both parties satisfied to be able to reproduce, to political unions formed from cultural or individual wants or needs of power, to longer companionship and friendship that sometimes creates eggs, to full blown loving marriages. Dragons produce 1-10 eggs in a clutch. Dragons also are very prolific in being able to reproduce with almost all kinds. This ability seems magical rather than physiological in nature and the mother's species often determines the child's. Their heritage can be passed on through innate magical ability or physical signs like scales or wings. Dragons can be found in most places of the world, but often not in great clustered numbers aside from a few exceptions. Their solitary lifestyle tends to change with culture, like the Samdirians, Zethites, and Skalovian dragons. It seems as though these are not natural homelands of dragons but rather places they settled or conquered.

Zethite dragons seem to be of the same class that other dragons are but they differ physically. Their faces and snouts are more box-like and rectangular, with whisker-like tendrils upon them. Their bodies are longer and they are covered with fur with an underside of armored scale. They also seem to lack wings and fly via magical means rather than physical ones. Their dragonkin reflect this with furred bodies and boxy rectangular heads.

For much of history, a standard dragon had these things: A hoard and a cave. They built their hoard either through trade, raiding, extortion, and gifts. Over time, the wants and needs of dragons grew and they needed servants and companions to do things they could not. Interestingly, the rise of sapient kinds like men, celotl, cuetzpali, bestials, xhenon, avians, and the like seemed to have coincided with the first recordings of kobolds and dragonborn being seen. Duerthi, Aelthi, Dragons, and Xhenons existed before these types. Their dragonkin in some societies have looked upon their forebearers as gods. Dragons also found themselves participating in societies they lived on the peripheries of. They acted as advisors, as tyrants, as businessman, as agitators, and other roles. It was much, much rarer to find them found societies. However, three examples them doing as such in the form of Samdiria, Skalovia, and Zeth have happened and each of these nations are influential in their own right.

Dragons have no set morality like all kinds on Tys and their coloration tends to be born from magical or physiological effects. Culture is what often influences their morals and thought. Samdiria's libertarian culture often produces dragons that live in a sort of half-way state between their old traditional living and the societies they encountered. Property is of paramount importance along with a celebration of selfishness. However, that celebration of selfishness also acknowledges that aiding others can increase the quality fo life for the self. There is a deep vein of competition, but not to the murderous ends of the old pre-Uhlionic Skalovian regimes. The scale princes were often the worst examples of the callousness, pride, and vanity of nobility. They build their great hearthsholds as city state hoards where all their subjects were personal property like their many jewels and gold pieces. Skalovia's extremely harsh but bountiful landscape made it profitable to cultivate subjects and have their chosen classes of subjects, dragonborn, rule over the others in a strict hierarchy with the princes at the top, followed by their thrawl-regents, followed by the pureblood dragonborn nobility, followed by the myriad of kinds under them like humans, dwarves, elves, and the like, and with the smaller, weaker kobold masses that made up their workforce of enthralled slaves that worked the fields, mined the quarries, and died by the hundreds to millions based on their overlords' whims. Zethite dragons take a much more harmonistic approach. Although their society and nation is isolated by the great Ichor Peaks, they see themselves as not above anyone. Their separation from the world is to maintain harmony in their place. They rule themselves as a hereditary oligarchy and spiritualistically imbued nation that seeks peace amongst all else.

Kobolds have not had a prosperous time on Tys for most of the species' existence. They are often given servile positions or treated as outright slaves, are generally weaker than other kinds, are smaller and average four feet in height, and seemed to have been created (or at least taught as much) that they are to serve. The kobold mortality rate remains high until the creation of the Uhlionic Republic begins curving it. Their mortality came from their young curiosity and weak forms being preyed upon by monsters and their rulers, their use as fodder for their patrons and overlords, and their overworked nature in Skalovia and as servants for dragons. The invention of the Danilovsky musket and the creation of the Uhlionic State was a giant step up for kobolds in terms of equalling other kinds in political and violent power to remove tyrants and deter would-be conquerors and increasing their quality of life by having them form an egalitarian society that respects their rights as kinds (and three-day weekends help). The natural superiority of the dragon is called into question and can be denied when cannons, piercers, and the musket can be used to kill their "natural betters". Then this idea of "natural betters" not deserving their inherited power and having it taken from them spreads when it comes to naturally weaker kings and princes, although harmonism and its more liberal forms attempts at forming egalitarianism will become the majority over time over equitianist thought being put into action in Skalovia.
Dragonborn ten to have humanoid shapes and grow near the same size as humans. They have tails as often as not and are blessed with weaker forms of breath weapons as the dragons they resemble.
Kobolds mature quicker than other sapient kinds, reaching adulthood at 10, seemingly a design in their forms to create servants faster. They can live for up to 168 years in many cases, however, which may be a minimal form of inheritance from the dragons they resemble. Dragonborn tend to resemble humans on Tys and live around 100 years with the spread of divine will and aeth-based magic being used to purify their food, drink, and remove microbes and diseases that would cause faster mortality.
Dragonbortn and Kobolds do not have the ability to procreate with other races like dragons, although interestingly there are viable and potent mixtures of them and cuetzpali lizardmen. They can also reproduce with eachther as kinds and similarly to dragons, the resulting fruit of their union often relies on the mother but they can produce either dragonborn or kobolds with traits and characteristics of each parent. That goes the same with lizardmen where often young take after one parent or the other in the majority of their phenotype but still acquire the minority inherited parent's traits to a degree.
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