MORE ABOUT DRAGONS

Dragons like dogs, come in a variety of temperaments. While it is true that they share some common characteristics, each animal is an individual. Some may have the most basic of instincts - avoid others, protect those close to them, fight when threatened. Others may be more.. interesting. It's been evidenced that certain breeds are more inclined to be hoarders, to steal up anything shiny or precious to decorate their elaborate nests. Likewise, some breeds are more viscious hunters, scouring the skies for a suitable victim, while others are more lazy, preferring to scavenge and acting more as opportunistic killers. There are rumours there may even be some who've reduced their diets to very little or even no meat, though these claims are scoffed by most. (It is true that dragons will eat almost anything in times of famine, like wolves. Vegetation, eggs, etc, normally a supplement or occassional snack, may become the main food source when prey is scarce. However, it is suspected that this diet is lacking in many essentials a dragon needs to remain healthy and strong, and that a prolonged lack of meat may result in a sickly or weak beast.) For those serious in the natural study of dragons, it is important to refer to them correctly: a female is a hen, a male is a drake, and the young are usually called chicks (until they're old enough to leave the nest without mom's supervision and start flying, at which they become "adolescents.") A group of dragons travelling together is referred to as a flock, whereas a family unit is usually called a brood.

One trait shared among almost all dragons is a fierce protectiveness of their kin. While there are some instances of a mother dragon abandoning her young for her own survival and the like, it seems that most breeds are fiercely loyal to and protective of their families. Most dragons, it seems, will mate for life, often remaining single in the event of the death of their partner. Dragon young also seem to stay with the parents for a rather long time, usually until they themselves find a suitable mate. It is not generally in a dragon's nature to be alone, unless it is out on the hunt or else very, very old. Dragons, like elephants, seem to be able to sense their own deaths, and will remove themselves from their loved ones when the time is nigh. As such, legends of adventures taking place in so-called "dragon graveyards" abound.

Not much else can be said uniformly about dragons; some breeds exhibit traits that seem to border on playfulness, roughhousing with each other and toying with the humans they encounter; some are more cat-like, remaining aloof and regarding their prey with a cruel, calculating eye; others may be affectionate, or intelligent, or excellent trackers. Essentially, a wide variety of traits have been exhibited in the animals by those foolhardy enough to get to know them. There is much debate about the effectiveness or ease of training a dragon - many say it can not be done, others claim it is possible but more difficult than training a particularly resilient ass, while others claim as long as you from a bond with the creature from the start, training will be a snap. It seems to vary from dragon to dragon, or perhaps from person to person.

In any case, they are not creatures to be taken lightly or treated with even the slightest amount of disrespect, as they are a proud and generally aggressive race, and it is important to keep in mind that their teeth and claws exist for a reason.

I can not stress enough that dragons are not, by any stretch of the imagination, tame. Dragons have not been domesticated, have not been seen by man for hundreds of years, and have never been closely studied. Succinctly put, they're wild animals. Unpredictable, potentially dangerous, and, as some would charge, untrainable. An individual dragon's temperament depends largely on the temperament and training of his master. Still, even being raised by the most loving of humans, dragons are still wild animals, and very large and lethal carnivores, at that. Just as it's dangerous trying to own any wild animal from a wolf to a tiger to a particularly grumpy badger, raising a flock of dragons will certainly lead to a few injuries.

 INFORMATION ABOUT EGGS

Dragon eggs are fairly unusual; in the wild, they can hatch in as little as a couple of weeks, or as much as a year. An egg has even been documented hatching three years after it was laid. Dragon eggs seem to have a peculiar sensitivity to their environment, and seem to wait for the "right" time to hatch. (Acacia uses a spell, however, to make sure the eggs stay in "hibernation" mode until she matches them with an owner.) Dragon eggs seem to be easily imprinted – they seem to know whohas spent the most time with their egg when hatched, and will generally ignore claims of ownership by people who just showed up in time for the hatching in favour of the person who spent the most time with them prior to hatching. They mark out this person as their "mother" (or "mother" and "father" if there were multiple people) and, depending on how they are treated in their first days and weeks of life, can bond very strongly with this individual. In most instances, obviously, this individual is another dragon, but instances of a dragon egg "bonding" with a member of another species are not unheard of. In the old days, there were quite a few tales of dragons who had bonded to dogs, horses, and even humans.

Dragon eggs are sensitive in another way. Much in the way that a turtle egg's environment determines its gender, the environment a dragon egg experiences determines much of the dragons characteristics. Subspecies of dragons, like most creatures, have extremely similar genetic material – their DNA is almost entirely identical, with a few tiny changes here and there. So a dragon may be predisposed to have a longer snout that usual, smaller wings, a nastier temper, etc, but a large part of its physical appearance depends upon the environment surrounding the egg. In the wild, this means a dragon egg cared for and hatched by a surrogate mother will share many characteristics with its adoptive parents as well as its biological parent. This is entirely practical – dragons, though they were large predators themselves, were hunted with ferocity by humans, and if they had a bird's mentality, numerous eggs would be wasted. This pattern of evolution encouraged dragons to adopt others' abandoned or orphaned eggs, since they would be imprinting their own characteristics and would hatch a child they could truly call their own. This also meant that dragons were always consistently well-suited to their environments, even if the egg had ravelled hundreds of miles. An egg hatched in a swampy environment would produce a dragon astonishingly well-suited to swamps, who would change and adapt even more as he matured. Most dragons were masters of camouflage and seemed tomatch perfectly with their environments. It was even reported some would change subtley if they were forced to move permanently from one terraint o another – for example, if a woods was cut down, the woodlands dragon may be seen some months or years later to be a bit browner and a bit more suited to the rockiness of the mountains to which it had fled. Dragons were also very sensitive to the "magical aura" of a place or person, and a dragon hatched by a witch was said to be a terrible, powerful creature.

What does this suggest for Hearts? Simply put, if a knight is magically inclined, their dragon will reflect this. If the knight's specialty is, for instance, water magic, they will be surprised to discover their dragon is remarkably aquatic. If his specialty is fire magic, he may end up with a firedrake. You get the idea. If the knight has no magical abilities, the dragon may pick up on certain other more subtle properties, but it's unlikely a dragon who has grown in an area with no magic in possession of an individual with no magic will have much magic of its own. It will likely make up for this in other ways, however – there is no such thing as a weak dragon.