“Dragons” in the world of Tanesh are avian, not reptilian. I’m not an artist by any definition of the term, so there are no drawings of them; but in my mind’s eye they’re heavily inspired by the bearded vulture, genus Gypaetus. They never stop growing from the day they “hatch” to the day they “burn” (more on this process below), reaching sizes of several dozen metres in height and wingspan, and vary in colour from deep, rust-hued browns and reds to vibrant, oceanic blues.

Dragons are the oldest of the corporeal races of Tanesh. While being corporeal means that they are technically mortal, their innate magical power makes them extremely difficult to injure, and a single individual can live for upwards of 10,000 years.

Dragons also use a unique form of propagation that predates the sexual reproduction used by the younger races for procreation. As a dragon nears the end of its life, they enter a phase referred to as “the Burn”. Over the course of a few hundred years, they begin steadily shedding their feathers, and their bodies begin to shrivel and decay — a dragon in the final days of the Burn is a terrifying sight to behold, like a moving, speaking building sized corpse. Finally the dragon’s body ignites, reducing it to an incredibly fine, immensely dense ash. Over another thousand years the innate aetherial nature of that ash causes it to condens on itself, eventually forming a jewel-like stone of impossible colour and clarity. This stone will eventually “hatch” into a new dragon, which while possessing the full memory of its predecessor (and those that came before it) has a distinct personality and mind of its own — while the memories themselves are passed on, the new dragon may or may not share the same feelings and thought processes associated with them.

Any of the materials generated during or remaining from the Burn are extremely powerful alchemical reagents. A single flake of Burnash has the power to destroy a building; a feather could level a whole city; and an entire Burnstone could wipe the Continent itself from the face of the planet. This is part of the reason dragons are so radically reclusive, to the point that they have passed to the realm of myth and legend amongst the younger races.

The Burn occurs whether the dragon’s death was natural or otherwise. This makes properly, outright destroying a dragon in a manner that legitimately reduces their population all but impossible. The only being capable of killing a dragon once and for all is another dragon, which is exceedingly rare — not only because most dragons go hundreds of years without meeting another of their kind, but because conflict between them simply doesn’t occur.

This is due to the aetherial connection between them, an aetherial “latticework” so to speak, that binds beings like the dragons to each other and to the powers beyond them as well (the other mortal races worship these powers as gods). While it doesn’t serve as a group consciousness or hive mind, it does lead to a paraconscious connection between each member of the race, allowing for a a unique level of understanding that other races simply can’t achieve. It also means that two dragons who have never met before would seem to interact as though they were old friends, or could begin a conversation for the first time as though they were simply continuing after an interruption.

As I mentioned, the younger races of Tanesh now consider dragons to be the stuff of myths and legends. To believe that they really exist is considered childish and fantastical, and often met with incredulity at best and condescending derision or outright ridicule at worst.