Drakons

"...These are our descendants?"
- Ruus

Drakons are an unusual type of wyrbeast in that they are not an original species. While other kinds are created by animals who encounter a mage's careless casting, the drakons are descendants of an original species - the dragons. While their ancestors died out, this branch encountered a different casting which reacted with their inborn magic, removing their wings and much intelligence in exchange for thicker hides and faster running. Wild drakons still bear the fearsome reputations of their ancestors, and domesticated ones are used the world over for transport.

Upon the Earth

Creation

The dragons of old were powerful - which was both their greatest strength and their greatest weakness. While their presence could send humans or ikayal scattering, they were still vulnerable in the way that all wyrbeasts and ikayal are: their reliance on wyr to survive and thrive. For most of their existence, this hardly mattered, as no one and nothing had the ability to sabotage wyr in any meaningful way. But then the Endsworn arrived, rampaging across the lands and disrupting the currents of magic. And the strength of the dragons meant they could not be ignored. While most dragons fought or were hunted down, one family came into contact with a unique set of castings. These enchantments, hidden within a ruin in old Ara, had been infused into living plants, and therefore had spent centuries growing and mutating with the growth of their hosts. The dragons, likely desperate for the wyr they could gain by consuming the plants, weakened the ruins' seals enough that the enchantment could take hold of them, as well. But, against all previous expectations, the castings intermingled with the dragons' innate magic, and changed them into their current forms. (These ruins would later become the site of the Fall Herald's first sighting, and were the cause of the Westerwoods' current form.) These mutations gave the drakons several advantages. Firstly, without the wing membranes so useful to hunters, they were of far less value to their mortal predators. Their comparative lack of intelligence, meanwhile, made them insignificant as a threat outside of their still-sharp talons and teeth, leading the Endsworn to leave them in peace. Over time, as dragon populations dwindled, the wild drakons would share the dragons' place in the food web with kaiares and other high-level predators.

Additional Information

Domestication

The domestication of drakons was at first thought impossible - after all, the dragons whom they descended from were on the same level of independence and intelligence as the bipedal mortals (i.e. humans and the ikayal variants). It took decades for the first tamers to tentatively reach out. 'Tame' drakons have stronger, longer legs and tails, allowing them to move faster and bear greater weights. Attempts to breed less fatal talons and teeth have mostly failed - in addition, the fact that drakons are useful in a fight actually makes their weapons ideal for those with dangerous occupations, like messengers and merchants The specifics of drakon training are surprisingly simple. Drakons inherently trust food providers, so bringing it food and live prey to hunt over the span of about a month can give a trainer enough time to accustom it to saddles and reins. A calm trainer is even more necessary than usual: though drakons have no salient psychic abilities, they are highly sensitive to their handlers' states of minds, more so than most other animals, and will grow aggressive or disobedient should their handlers not seem in control of a situation.

Genetic Ancestor(s)