Dragonborn

The Elder Wyrms were created to take the place of the Primordial Dragons as defenders of Aiaos, as the latter put more and more of their power into the World itself. Later, mortal Dragons were created as the vessel by which time entered the World.
When the Colossus War claimed the Elder Wyrms, however, the Primordials saw that their mortal Dragons would not be enough to hold together the world, and so they created the dragonborn. Created by the Fifteen - the original, first generation Elder Wyrms - the dragonborn were forged in their creators' image and in fifteen groups, differentiated by the colour of their scales. Originally, the fifteen groups were called the Phalanges and served as military forces. After the war, and especially after the Cataclysm, the structure of the Phalanges broke down, and they became known as the Clades. As the phalanges became known as clades, the islands became known as the Cladelands, or the Ten - later twelve - Islands of Ladonia.
The dragonborn blended draconic heritage with the eladrinate form and scale, with the intention that they would be an efficient, easily deployed work force, able to support the dragons in their work. As one of the oldest mortal races, the dragonborn naturally promote an origin myth that less directly regards them as slave labour, instead telling of manifest destiny and the inheritance of the Elder Wyrms who died in the Colossus War.
Alas, the schism of the Primordial Dragons, the Fall of Ladon and the subsequent civil conflict across Ladonia meant that the Ten Clades of dragonborn were outstripped by the other mortals before their reconquest could even leave the archipelago. In some ways, however, the Cataclysm was a blessing for them. It shattered their homeland, but only fuelled their sense of superiority. The deaths of so many senior dragons gave the dragonborn the chance they needed to shape their own destiny. They seized Ladonia - the archipelago that was all that remained of Ladon's northern domains - and built their own society, enslaving its non-draconic population and developing bitter, inter cladistic feuds in the process.
Dragonborn are expected to uphold the honour of their family and to accept death before dishonour or betrayal. A part of this honour lies in conforming to cladistic expectations, as well as accepting one's place in the dual hierarchies of blood and clade.
The clade is the core of the social order, seen as deterministic of potential, and influencing everything from access to education to employment prospects. A dragonborn’s clade is determined by scale colour, and passes from parent to child. The child of a mixed pairing will join the clade of the parent whose colouring comes through strongest, and be educated in the academy on that clade's island. Dragonborn who do not fit their cladistic destiny are those most likely to leave Ladonia to travel in the outside world.
In addition to cladistic differences, the dragonborn have a caste system, based on the strength of draconic traits.
The winged and the wingless dragon born were created for practical reasons only, but as the phalanges became the clades, the winged began to assume a superior position in society. They seized the dragon's share of wealth and power in Ladonia and took upon themselves the name 'highborn'. Simply by extension, the wingless dragon born become 'lowborn'. Either caste may have tails, but these are always rare.
The highborn consider their 'blood caste' to be more important than clade, and so they often blend traits of mixed heritage: colour and shape of scale, shape of horn and body, eyes and height and build. Any mixture suits the highborn, so long as their wings are inherited by their hatchlings, and long, powerful tails are prized.
For the lowborn, on the other hand, clade is all. They rarely mate across clade, prizing those traits that the highborn disregard, and maintaining their own sense of superiority over mixed clades. They claim - without much evidence - that mixing clades weakens the gifts of their creators: the skills of their phalanx, and the fury of their breath.
Highborn and lowborn alike look down on the impure. These are the dragonborn of mixed heritage, usually part-human or petri, or more rarely part-elf or orc. They tend to have smaller, smoother scales, smaller or absent horns, and whether they come from high- or lowborn ancestors, lack tails and wings. Some even have mammalian skin or hair, but so long as they retain their breath weapons, they can claim the name of dragonborn.
In addition to these three castes, the islands each have a large. population of Petari, known as the coldfolk. They lack social status, and although they are not slaves - by law, cold folk have freedom of movement and must be paid for their work as a dragon born or foreigner would be - they face limits on their right to own property or to engage in commerce beyond strict financial limits. While not a part of the law, there are also practical barriers which prevent the cold folk leaving Ladonia.

Dragonborn and Identities

The dragonborn are raised to be supremely arrogant. They know that they were forged to be the master race, and tend towards the authoritarian, with those of evil temperament often downright fascistic, and the best among them likely to favour the word of the law above its spirit. Much of this arrogance is directed towards the lower clades and castes of dragonborn, seeing them as a weakness in the perfection of the race. As the children of the Primordials, they will not lower themselves to worship the Young Gods, instead praying to Hrabram, Malcidis and those few Elder Wyrms believed to have passed beyond the Web to live as Gods. A handful of cults worship Abyssal Elder Wyrms, or Tropos the Undying.
Dragons do not recognise gender, because dragons do not, although unlike dragons they have a definite and identifiable, largely binary sexual component to their reproductive cycle. They deliberately suppress all sexual expression, including outward gender, helped by the fact that there is little in the way of secondary sexual characteristics among dragonborn. They are, however, typically highly-sexed, and more than most races are prone feel attraction towards races very different to their own. They mask their drives beneath strict codes of social propriety, scorning open displays of desire or affection. As a result, they have something of a reputation for hypocrisy and even perversion.
According to convention, dragonborn offspring arrive by means of a ritual process, involving months of isolation for the parental cluster, and managed by a specialised clerical caste who maintain a record of familial and dynastic lines (including biological sex.) Informal liaisons can, of course, result in offspring as well, and it was in part the emergence of these unplanned and unoptimised children which lead to the emergence of the stratified caste structure.