Draconic Life Cycle

Dragons have neither biological sex, nor gender. While their reproductive cycle does require more than one dragon to generate offspring, it is not strictly biological, but rather a mystical process with dramatic elemental side effects. Storms, earthquakes and wildfires may all be the result of the draconic reproductive process. Draconic reproduction is extremely rare, and with the vulnerability of the young and the value placed on their body parts by unscrupulous sages and researchers, their numbers are vanishingly small.
As a dragon ages, it goes through different stages of physical and behavioural development. From hatching, most dragons can speak the languages used around their egg. They possess inherently a shrewd intelligence and a rudimentary control over the the universal force known as dzenmisa, which both grow ever keener and more focused as it grows.

• Egg - Dragon eggs are 'laid' - the process is actually more akin to the parents cooperatively fashioning the eggs from precious materials, elemental forces and raw dzenmisa, all of which are gathered in their fabled hoards - in clutches of one to three. Dragon eggs are almost indestructible, resistant to all but the most overwhelming force and completely impervious to elemental effects. The eggs can lie dormant for many years, only quickening and hatching when the dragon within senses an amenable physical and social environment.
• Hatchling/Wyrmling - Dragons are born with both intelligence and self-awareness, speaking the draconic tongue and any other language used commonly around their egg during its gestation, and capable of rudimentary dzenmistic manipulation. For the first five years or so, dragons have a childlike, playful character. Most young dragons take very little seriously, tend to be trusting, and are physically vulnerable.
  Very few dragons have any contact with their parents at this age, and instead wyrmlings often bond with mortal creatures from whom they learn the foundation of their future morality and philosophy. This is also the only part of their life in which a dragon must consume material food as their primary source of sustenance. They eat ravenously, some favouring meat, others fish or fruit, and grow rapidly.
  At birth, they are four-to-six feet long, but as thin as a whip. They rapidly gain in mass and their legs elongate, to reach the dimensions of a large dog within two months, after which both their growth rate and appetite become more restrained. After five years, most dragons will have rached around the size of a draught horse, and it is at about this age that they stop eating, save occasionally for enjoyment.
• Dragonet - For almost a century after this, the dragon goes through an exploratory phase, learning about the world and developing their own personality. As their need for material sustenance is replaced by feeding on dzenmisa, the ambient energy of creation itself, they are able to grow continuously without depleting the game of an area or drawing unwanted attention to themselves. In addition to simple concealment, many dragonets develop abilities which allow them to better mingle with other creatures: invisibility, shapeshifting and illusion magics are common.
  Through this phase of their life, a dragon will grow to be between fifteen and twenty feet long, including their tail. It is also during this phase that marked physiological differences become visible between different clades and individuals.
  At this stage of life, dragons are almost compulsive collectors, at first indisciminately gathering trinkets and objects of value, before beginning to focus on a specific subject. Some will immediately begin gathering these collections in caves or other hidden places, while others will find or create bags to carry them in.
• Adult - After a hundred years or so of life, the dragon's growing need for immaterial sustenance leads it to settle in a place with a regular flow of dzenmisa, one of those cracks in the harmony of creation through which divine energy spills into the World, or to seek a lair within one of the other planes which lie closer to the realms of creation. They also bond with their lair and the land around it, transforming the region into a domain of the uncanny, a connection mediated through the assemblage of magical items, precious metals and gems which become the dragon's hoard. While this behaviour is often seen as greed by outsiders, in truth the hoard forms an anchor for the dzenmisa which the dragon needs to survive and to breed. At the core of the hoard is the collection that they began as a dragonet, and the nature of that collection can often be seen in the physical form of the dragon.
  In this adult phase, a dragon continues to grow, reaching up to forty feet in length. The dragon also begins to develop unique and distinctive physical traits and abilities. While two dragonets of the same clades are recognisably of the same kind and might even be mistaken for one another, no adult dragon, having been seen, could be mistaken for any other.
• Archaedrake - The dragon's connection their hoard, lair and domain deepens as their age increases and the hoard grows. Those ancients who have survived more than eight centuries are as much a part of their landscape as a mountain. They may walk abroad in their domain, openly or in disguise, but they never stray far from their lair, or lairs, and defend their hoard with righteous fury and an arsenal of unique abilities.
  Archaedrakes continue to grow as long as they live, although at a much reduced rate. The largest recorded dragons are described as being between up to one hundred feet in length, of which about one third to half is the tail.
• Ancient Wyrm - There are very few young dragons in the world, but rarer still are the truly ancient wyrms, whose power is so great that it leaks out into the world around them. These 'greatwyrms' suffer if they leave their own land, but still possess a power capable of decimating legions of lesser mortals.