Dragons
The mortal dragons are the third and least iteration of their kind, after the divine Primordial Dragons and their firstborn scions, the immortal Elder Wyrms. They are both like and unlike their immortal progenitors.
In form they are similar to the Elder Wyrms, if smaller still than even the second generation. Their power is a fraction of that wielded by the elders, but still great, as is their pride, wrath, grief and mirth. Nothing about a dragon, or its actions, is ever permitted to be small, perhaps precisely because they are so much smaller than their antecedents, and know it only too well. When the Elder Wyrms were all-but destroyed in the Colossus War, the mortal dragons were left to try to be the custodians that their parents were raised to be, each clade hewing to its original purpose. The schism and the Fall of Ladon shattered any remaining cohesion.
Like the second generation elder wyrms, mortal dragons are sexless, but reproduce via a rite requiring two or more dragons, which gathers dzenmisa to create an egg. This egg then waits, sometimes for decades, for the right circumstances to hatch, for which the egg itself determines the criteria. Even at this early stage, a dragon is intelligent, self-aware and capable of using both language and Magic.
From birth they are solitary, at least as regards other dragons. The violent deaths of half of the Primordials, and the immortal fury of the survivors, drove the race of dragons apart and ensured that they would never again be a single civilisation or polity. As Ladon broke apart, the mortal dragons scattered, across the World and across the planes. In place of their old duties, they found more personal motivations. Many make friends among other mortals, but fellow feeling and parental caregiving are rare. The only exception to this relates to the Healer's Curse. Ever since Jalaen the White tried to save the dying Ramad, all dragons who share eir blood are afflicted by a consuming pain and rage. They often struggle to survive beyond the hatchling stage, but other dragons will often adopt them and try to ease their suffering.
Although mortal, the dragons are so powerful that they rarely worship anything or anyone, although they do have a reverence for their divine ancestors. While the Dragonborn in particular maintain the perception that dragons are divided into metallic, chromatic and geodic clades, the truth is that all dragons are singular. They can be divided and classified by scale colour, physical structure, by the formation of their crests and wings, and most especially by their elemental affinities, but in the fullest analysis, the only thing that a dragon is truly like is itself. To judge a dragon by its scales is pure folly; you must take each one for itself and no other, or pay the price of your error.
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