Dragon

Gifted with nigh incomprehensible mystical abilities, physical prowess, mortal longevity, and intellectual acuity, dragons are among the most powerful and fearful beings in this world or the next thanks in large part to their innate connectedness with Anima. Though they may not be Deity / Gods, to most humanoids they might as well be. It is said, though, that, particularly among the most ancient dragons, some members of the draconic race are so phenomenally interwoven with Anima itself that their might could rival even that of a god.

Basic Information

Genetics and Reproduction

Dragon reproduction varies depending on the family, kind, or individual nature of the dragons involved. Humanoids observing dragons have long assumed that their reproductive cycle resembles that of mundane reptiles—that two dragons of different sexes mate and produce a clutch of eggs. Sometimes this is true, but dragon reproduction covers a wide range of other possibilities, including but not limited to spontaneous reincarnation (the spontaneous production of an egg in the corpse or ashes of a deceased dragon) and magical crafting (the crafting of an egg through painstaking labor and the breathing of the gift of life into that egg). Regardless of how an egg is formed, dragons will often not have in any given clutch more than two offspring at a time, and the average dragon often has approximately two clutches in its lifetime. Once an egg comes into being, it must mature before it is ready to hatch into a wyrmling. Typically, an egg thrives only in an environment appropriate for a dragon of its kind.

Growth Rate & Stages

Some dragons can live for over a thousand years, outlasting the rise and fall of nations—or even civilizations. A dragon's perspective of time is naturally quite different from that of more short-lived folk. That being said, even dragons move through a cycle of maturation typically similar to that of folks who are not as long-lived.

Egg

Like reptiles, dragons must mature within eggs before they are ready to hatch as wyrmlings. The incubation period for any egg might range from 6 months to several decades or longer depending on environmental variables and the kind of dragon to be hatched.

Wyrmling

Dragons within their first five years of life after hatching from their egg are called wyrmlings. Though most dragons at this age are unable to polymorph into a human form, the approximate mortal age equivalent of a wyrmling would be 8-14 years old. Like mortal young, wyrmlings are still figuring out their capabilities and their place in the world. Thus, wyrmlings often rely on adult dragons or other companion creatures for safety.
Wyrmlings most often think on a local scale—an area no larger than might be covered by a few farmsteads or villages. If adult dragons are rearing a clutch of wyrmlings, the younger dragons often divide the adults' territory among them. A single wyrmling might thus hunt an area covering only a few square miles, but the presence of one wyrmling indicates that more might be nearby. On the other hand, wyrmlings without adult dragons in their lives might become allies or captives of other kinds of creatures. Such wyrmlings are more likely to be scattered from their nest mates.

Young Dragon

Young dragons in their first century of life are beginning to come into their own among the most powerful creatures of the world. Most dragons this age tend to be able to polymorph into a mortal form and often appear as an approximately equivalent age in a mortal body, i.e. about 15 - 21 years.
This stage tends to be when most dragons establish their own territory and lair. A young dragons' territory covers an area of about 50 miles across. This is also when dragons start to form the magical bonds that tie them to their hoards and the regions around their lairs.
Hunting dragons typically fly on a more-or-less circular path out to one edge of their territory and back in a day, traveling about 75 miles in total. Young dragons also use their hunting flights to keep tabs on happenings within their territory and are keenly aware of other creatures whose territory neighbors or overlaps their own. A young dragon can become a significant threat to a city or kingdom, either through overt violence or subtle manipulation.

Adult Dragon

After their first century of life, adult dragons are mighty beings and able to seamlessly polymorph into a mortal form of an equivalent age, i.e. about 22 - 40 years, though due to their increasingly profound connection to Anima, their aging slows and they appear in or around their prime. An adult dragon's influence can be felt across a whole region and possibly a continent.
Most adult dragons establish additional lairs to expand their territory. These lairs are usually set 50 to 75 miles apart so the dragon can fly from one to the next in a single day's travel. An adult dragon typically hunts the area around one lair for about a month or more, then moves on to another lair. The dragon's mystical connection to a lair can transform the surrounding region.

Ancient Dragon

Dragons are considered ancient ones once they reach 800 years of life, and many live for centuries more. Ancient dragons are among the mightiest creatures in universe. They are powerful enough to alter the fate of continents and upset the balance of power therein. When they adopt a human form, they typically appear at an age of their choosing.
An ancient dragon typically has several lairs, each one suffused with powerful magic, causing the dragon's effects on the natural world to be felt for hundreds of miles. In addition, the dragon's presence can have a profound impact on the region's ecosystems, populations, and politics.

Greatwyrm

The oldest ancient dragons sometimes transform into mythic creatures of godlike power. They are nearly perfect avatars of draconic nature and are so suffused with Anima that they are all but immortal. Their influence can alter the fate of the world and upset the balance of power across planes of existence. Most greatwyrms are at least twelve centuries old and have hoards worth millions of gold pieces, but they are otherwise similar to other ancient dragons in their goals and perspectives.

Dietary Needs and Habits

The dietary needs of dragons vary from kind to kind, but generally dragons are obligate carnivores and hunt their territories daily for prey, adopting hunting strategies not unlike big cats and raptors. Despite this, though, dragon diets are highly adaptable, and so it is not uncommon to see some dragons dieting upon precious metals and gemstones rather than meat if meat is in short supply. Even though dragons tend to be quite massive beings, they do not require the same proportional amount of sustenance that other large beings do. This means that, on average, an adult dragon eats approximately 1,400 lbs of meat (or about 2 ponies) per day even with how much energy dragons expend in flying and fighting. The relatively small amount of sustenance required of dragons is likely due to the fact that, as beings intimately connected to and constantly absorbing Anima, the mystical force itself comprises a large part of their daily intake of energy.

Biological Cycle

Dragons are more intimately bound up with the fabric of Anima that undergirds reality than most other creautres are. As a result, the death of any dragon is an event of tremendous significance—and those who bring about a dragon's death are often changed forever.  
Some sages describe dragons as being akin to knots in the fabric of Anima—concentrations of power in material form. When a dragon dies, that knot is undone, sometimes resulting in a surge of mystical energy. Because a dragon's presence tends to alter the regions around its lairs, when a dragon dies, those changes to the environment typically begin to fade away. A particularly traumatic death can cause and extend certain negative effects on the environment, such as fouling water, troubling the sleep of nearby creatures with persistent nightmares, quaking the earth, plant death, wildlife migration or behavioral changes, and weather anomalies.
When a dragon dies, the power enfleshed in the dragon doesn't just disappear from the world. Over time, it disperses, but in the moments immediately surrounding the dragon's death, it can be passed on to others—or claimed. Sometimes a dragon's death gives rise to an egg, transferring the dragon's power directly to a new generation. In other cases, a dragon at the brink of death invests power into another creature—usually a dragon, but sometimes a sovereign, a sage, or an otherwise worthy and heroic humanoid. Moreover, those who slay a dragon could seize the dragon's power.

Additional Information

Social Structure

Most dragons are solitary, living alone or keeping company with only a single dragon companion or a tight family group. Occasionally, though, dragons form associations with other dragons in pursuit of a common purpose. These associations center around goals broader than a single dragon's territory or concerns. Rarer yet are dragons who seek out companionship with members of other species, such as humanoids or any number of beasts (most commonly felines who are very distant biological relatives).
In the context of the heavily dragon-populated continents of Edhelen and Drakkar, dragons live in a social structure in which adult and ancient dragons possess territory on which they hunt, fiercely defend, and occupy individually or with mates and children. Each of these territories, though, ultimately fall under the loose purview of a regional greatwyrm who functions as something like a king, queen, emperor, or other form of monarch that oversees the broad security of the region, polices its denizens, and—if the greatwyrm is benevolent—ensures that balance and harmony is maintained. This ideal is sometimes more difficult to maintain in practice than it is in theory, though. So long as the greatwyrm's rules and decrees are held and followed, the adult and ancient dragons under it are generally allowed a considerable degree of autonomy and agency.

Geographic Origin and Distribution

Dragons, as a species, are an incredibly territorial and possessive lot. From the moment they hatch, dragons are driven by an instinctive compulsion to hoard resources, territory, and items it deems treasures. As dragons age, their sense of territory expands, and many establish multiple lairs across the region they call home. The larger a dragon's territory is, the more likely it is to edge up against or overlap the territory of another dragon. The territory of an adult or ancient dragon often encompasses the territories of younger dragons, as long as the older dragon doesn't feel threatened by the younger ones.
An area that is about 50 miles across, such as a barony or a small forest, might include the territory of a single dragon who's younger or older. And area about 300 miles across—a kingdom or a large geographical region—can contain the territories of two or three dozen dragons, as long as most of them are young. Only three or four adult or ancient dragons are likely to occupy such a region. A single adult dragon might range over a region that includes the territories of up to six or eight young dragons (which might include the adult's offspring), but adults typically share territory with other adults only as mates or as members of a special alliance or organization. A whole continent, about 3,000 miles across, might include the territories of hundreds of young dragons and dozens of adults, but rarely more than a handful of ancient dragons.

Civilization and Culture

Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals

Religion

Unlike humanoids who are often quite religious as a species, dragons are not religious by nature. To really embrace religion, one must believe one needs help, and seeing as how they can grow to become some of the most formidable creatures in the known realms without relying on any external power and how they learn self-sufficiency and self-interest from the moment of their hatching, dragons are extremely unlikely to think themselves in need of any sort of help. Ever. They do not appeal to divine powers for aid, nor do they beseech them for mercy. That said, some dragons could be described as spiritual. A dragon might cultivate an awareness of the interconnectedness of all that exists and strive to nurture the health of the whole or to exploit that connection. But even the most spiritual dragons have a keen sense of their own importance. For humanoids, this can sometimes be difficult to conceptualize, especially in the rare instances in which they come into contact with greatwyrms who, for all intents and purposes, they sometimes consider to be dragon gods due to the sheer magnitude of their power and connection to Anima. Dragons, though, frame greatwyrms differently, understanding and treating them as monarchs or sovereigns rather than deities, thinking of them as being worthy of pledging allegiance, respecting, paying tribute to, and striving to emulate, but none of these attitudes and behaviors bear any resemblance in a dragon's mind to the worship that mortals offer to their gods.

Shape-Shifting

Most dragons can change shape to take on a humanoid or beast form by the time they reach young or adult age and certainly by an ancient age. Dragons typically use their shape-shifting ability to move about in the world without drawing attention to themselves. Dragons like to know as much as they can about the lands around their lairs and the inhabitants of those lands, and posing as a more innocuous creature is an easy way to gather such information. 
The propensity of some dragons to spend long periods of time in humanoid form has led to numerous bits of folklore, including tales in which these shape-shifters are erroneously identified as other beings and entities. Stories sometimes speak of "weredragons" or "muse dragons," which are variously described as "beautiful humanoids transformed into dragons" due to a hag's curse. Other stories tell of "marble dragons," dragons who are said to favor life among humanoids in the hustle and bustle of great cities, walking among humanoids without a trace of their true nature, capable of being anyone and everyone at any given time. There are indeed some dragons who seem to prefer humanoid form to their own and delight in surrounding themselves with companions who can answer their endless questions about humanoid art, culture, history, and politics.
Famously, Valumar, Emperor of Edhelen, traveled his lands for decades in the guise of a humanoid sage, guiding the peoples of that land as they prepared for war against the forces of a rival dragon. In the same way, some dragons use their humanoid forms to influence people. Since they can remain in humanoid forms indefinitely, dragons often create false identities and mundane lives for themselves. Thanks to their keen intellects and strong personalities, shape-shifted dragons can easily end up in positions of leadership—either overtly as mayors, high priests, the heads of knightly orders, or crime bosses or behind the scenes as advisors, activists, or the spouses of rulers. 
Of course, years of careful scheming can be quickly unraveled if a shape-shifted dragon's true nature is discovered. As a result, such dragons are careful to avoid being seen in their true forms. They show great caution in dealing with anyone who might have the mystical ability to perceive or reveal their true nature. And dragons who need to revert to their true form are careful to do so out of sight—or to leave no surviving witnesses.
Some dragons believe that if they remain in a shape-shifted form for too long, they'll lose the ability to revert to their true form. This is probably just superstition, but many dragons claim to know of others of their kind condemned to spend the rest of a very long life trapped in humanoid or beast form. Because of this belief, dragons who spend prolonged periods in the guise of other creatures often find periodic excuses to venture into the wilderness, letting them stretch their wings away from prying eyes.

History

For countless lifetimes both draconic and humanoid, dragons dominated the vast northern continent of Edhelen, populating it from coast to coast, ruling its skies, seas, and lands. Under the purview of a handful of greatwyrms that some myths allege to be the children and grandchildren of the first of their race, dragons flourished, the lands prospered, and the natural world was held in a delicately kept balance for many years. Humanoids held the greatwyrms to be gods and dragons their divine children and/or servants, living in awe and occasional fear of their much more powerful neighbors. Prosperity invites hubris, though, and many dragons eventually took the natural balance for a given, expanding their territories and populations beyond what the resources of Edhelen could manage. By circa 400 BDE, the writing was on the wall that dragonkind had overextended itself and its homeland's resources, depleting the latter as the former continued to increase at exponential rates. Disputes and bloody clashes over territory and resources broke out, plunging the continent of Edhelen into barely checked disorder and chaos. Humanoids died by the thousands, dragons by the hundreds, and no end seemed to be in sight. In a desperate bid for the survival of their kind, two greatwyrms, Valumar and Honophoth, the Emperor of the West and the Queen of the Sunderlands, united their kingdoms and peoples to attempt to ride the worst of the travails. After over a century of this, the political climate of Edhelen became too much and they traveled with their kith, kin, and subjects along with the shattered kingdoms of two other greatwyrms who had fallen in the tumult to the nearby continent of what would come to be called Drakkar, abandoning their former home in favor of a new one. Under the rule of Valumar and Honophoth, the conquest of Drakkar commenced: lacking native dragons, the recently-arrived immigrants faced little serious resistance to their claiming of the land. In a span of a swift two decades and a some odd years, they had driven any foes into extinction or hiding and had set a clear precedent to the native humanoids, many of whom chafed at and feared their new rulers who, in the style of Edhelen dragon-human relations, attempted to style themselves gods for humanoids' benefit. But the native humanoids already had gods, and old ones at that, who shielded them and aided them in fleeing their homelands to avoid subjugation. These humanoids, the pre-Etherians, would also strike a devastating blow to their invaders prior to their ultimate exodus from Drakkar: a small coven of great mages, embittered after the deaths of their peoples, captured the eldest child of Valumar and Honophoth, the Crown Prince Yndreth, binding him and transmorphing him into and trapping him within a heavily enchanted and untraceable cloak before taking the prince with them as a living trophy. It is said that Valumar never recovered from the abduction of his only son and died some time thereafter, having given up the will to live without his precious child even after Honophoth bore their second child, Crown Princess Bala. After the Emperor's death, not much is known though it is surmised that Bala took her father's station and ruled alongside her mother. Recently, rumors have begun to swirl that an ancient cloak has been discovered and recovered from being lost to the sands of time in a ruin older than Etherian civilization itself.

Interspecies Relations and Assumptions

Even among their own kind, dragons are highly solitary, territorial, and individualistic. As a result, they do not often associate with or foster warm relations with many other beings, particularly if they are near the dragon's position near the top of the food chain.
Outside of their own kind, dragons will associate with Drakes, their lesser cousins. Their perceptions of drakes, though, are not very high and can range from paternalistic superiority to contemptuous disdain and unease—after all, the only thing that truly separates a drake from a dragon is intellectual ability, longevity, and a profound connection to Anima. In drakes, many dragons see evolutionary shadows of themselves and the dreadful possibility of what a life without power might look like, and they shudder.
Dragons are known to hold more favorable sentiments toward felines, their even more distantly related kin. The genetic distance between themselves and felines, though, since it is farther than that of dragons and drakes, facilitates such relations. Felines, therefore, are considered with respect and sometimes adopted as pets or familiars. It is somewhat uncommon though by no means rare to see a colony of cats—big and small—residing in or around a dragon's lair.
Mortals, both humanoid and fey, are treated differently depending upon the dragon's personality, culture, and kind. Some dragons interact freely and positively with mortals, seeing in their short lives great ambition and limitless drive. Other dragons see them as little more than pests and occasionally food or playthings. Regardless, as a superior being, any dragon will approach its interactions or thoughts about mortals from its own lofty vantage point, coming across as proud, condescending, or infinitely better in every imaginable way. It is an extreme rarity for a dragon to be jarred from such a mindset, especially so if the dragon ultimately comes to see mortals as a genuine threat to its own safety and wellbeing.
Dragons host a ferocious antipathy toward other beings of a similar stature, whether physically or metaphorically. Fairies, in a dragon's limited interactions with them, are often perceived as foreign invaders best kept in their own parallel dimension; giants are mighty but often incredibly ignorant foes that heed not the boundaries of a dragon's territory; and Deity / Gods are curious though deadly oddities of mortal interaction with Anima that rarely provoke dragons if dragons do not provoke mortals.