Melanie Nilles

Everyone loves dragon stories! (Well, maybe not, but for sake of conversation, I’m assuming everyone reading this has at least a passing interest.)

In Legend of the White Dragon, you have drakes of three types and you have drakin, which aren’t dragons at all. In fact, they’re little more than flying lizards with simple minds and the single magical ability to communicate their thoughts through mindspeech, since like all dragons, they don’t have the right vocal mechanics to actually speak as humans do. Trust me in saying that you don’t want one of these berry and insect eating, playful drakin as a pet–they talk too much! In fact, they love company so much that they will talk nonstop and interrupting them is the only way to shut them up. They will tell you stories of every detail of their lives and love to offer their help just to have a reason to tell more stories. Don’t depend on them too much, however, as they have a tendency towards distractions. Their innocent curiosity can be an annoyance to more intelligence creatures and a threat to them. Combined with their small size (adults stand only about 16-18 inches upright on their hind legs with a tail just as long that tapers) that curiosity can make them targets for predators. While they prefer to play away their days, a few have been known to faithfully serve the magi.

These are fictional creatures, which I’m sure you’ve figured out. They were a pleasure to create and more fun to write, especially letting the writing loose with run-on sentences. When they talk, it’s like a child telling a story–conjunctions joining every trail of thought to another. Like I said, they’re simple-minded.

As for true dragons, they are immortal and with age comes intelligence and wisdom. Because of this, they are more often than not amused by the ways of humans and other mortal creatures. The true dragons are also benevolent. They were created before humans to fight the Darklord, the servant of Chaos. They were once respected as the noblest creatures to ever live, until the Darklord made the Red Clan. They aren’t likely to impart their wisdom, however, in a straight manner. They speak in rhyme and riddles, which test the patience of those without it and challenge the intelligence of those willing to rise to their level.
The Red Clan, also known as wyverns (hind legs, wings with claws and no front legs, a vicious temper, and less intelligent) are related to the true dragons, but it is a distant relation. Their kind arose when the Darklord exposed stolen eggs to the forces of Chaos that spawned him/it (no gender but those kinds of leaders tend to be considered male). The hatchlings were all red, no matter whether their firedrake parents had been blue, gold, or green. That is how they came to be known as the Red Clan.

I have created a more detailed appendix, which will be included in the first book of the series, Dragon Prophecy. As the release date (January 2008) draws near, I will post the information on my website.

I love dragons as much as I do other fictional creatures and always saw them as terrible and noble at the same time. I think I have done that vision justice in my Legend of the White Dragon series.

For those interested, there are as many visions of what a dragon should be as there are admirers. For instance, in the Pern novels, they have a purpose that saves the planet and are bonded to a single human rider for all their lives and the lives of those riders. In Richard Knaak’s series with Shade and Darkhorse, the dragons were once a magical race known as the Vrad who, through unforseen magic, were transformed into dragons. In the Deathgate Cycle, dragons have good and bad personality traits. These are a few examples of the different visions of what dragons are. Each story uses them to fulfill a different purpose, just as I do.