Draconic Customs

All races have many unique customs, peculiarities of their culture, history, and way of life that are specific to them and their sense of racial identity. This article lists some that are unique to the draconic race, in no particular order.

For more basic information about this race, see Dragons.

Lairs and Treasures

A dragon's lair is a permanent home, and a place that will serve as their sanctum for thousands of years; they're valued accordingly, and many dragon lairs are as lavishly decorated as any human or elven palace. Always underground, they can be either naturally occurring caverns or great burrows carved and shaped with magic. Volcanic lands are favored due to the natural proximity of heat and natural energy, but any spot with strong locational magic is highly desirable. Lairs are generally composed of a long entrance tunnel leading to a single large chamber; both are large enough to accommodate a dragon's potentially enormous size, but are well-considered in their layout to keep out wind and weather.
Dragons have a great love of beauty, and their lair is a point of pride. It's common for the stone to be worked with elaborate carvings and sculpture, done with magic over the course of centuries or millenia, but they're also fond of decorating with reflective metals and precious gems. Dragons are too large to physically manage the fine details of craftsmanship but deeply enjoy work well done; during the Cold Years many would engage in raiding or semi-coercive exchange with elven smiths and artisans, providing raw ore and gems and claiming the worked results. Those who aren't fortunate enough to have access to this sort of arrangement will decorate with great masses of metal they've excavated themselves, or use their breath to gild the stone of their lairs with molten metal.

Mating Cycles

Occurring once every hundred years or so, female dragons mate on a regular cycle that varies only slightly with the availability of resources and local population density. Mating itself is straightforward with little emotional involvement; male dragons are generally widely spread territorially, and most track the mating cycles of females in their region so they can prepare accordingly. Despite their lack of competition, male dragons are older and well-established by merit of their protogynous development process and are therefore expected to spend a month or so providing hunted game to prospective mates in order to ensure a strong, well-nourished mating flight. While it's not as strictly required, it's also an unspoken expectation that males gift prospective mates with offerings of precious materials and worked goods for their lairs as a token of respect and admiration.
Once mating has occurred, female dragons will take up to a year gestating before laying a clutch of 10-20 eggs in a location they've selected beforehand. This location serves as their temporary home for the several additional months the eggs take to incubate; the mother will return to her own lair shortly before hatching, meaning that selecting a site where her offspring will be able to survive their first solitary hundred years of life is of grave importance. While this time of separation is important to foster independence and survival skills in their young, dragons always hope that their children will thrive and will often make surreptitious flights overhead to try and get a vague idea of how their brood is doing.

First Century of Life

Their first century of life is a time that most dragons have little memory of; they haven't yet developed intellectually into sentient beings, and live in a feral, animalistic fashion that has little in common with their later lives as a proper part of society. In spite of this, they're still very much apex predators. Dragonlings are born approximately three feet in length and grow steadily over the decades, typically reaching about twenty feet before an abrupt growth spurt at approximately a century of age puts them at their initial 'adult' size of 50-60 feet. While they're born with wings, they're not capable of true flight until reaching sentience due to the necessity of magical involvement.
Dragonlings rarely prey on their broodmates even in their feral state, and will typically disperse over a wide area once their increasing size puts them in too much direct competition for food. They're carnivorous, and while their metabolism only requires them to eat every few days these early years are enormously important in terms of establishing their potential size and strength later in life. Successful dragonlings in these earlier years can gain a significant advantage over their broodmates, setting them up for dominance as adults.