Melanie Nilles

As promised, this week we focus on firedrakes, at least those within the world of Gairdra and featured in the Legend of the White Dragon series.

(Please remember that if you use any portion of this, proper credit should go to “Melanie Nilles, author of the Legend of the White Dragon series” and I ask that you link back to my website, as I own the copyright. Thank you. Now, on with the show…)

Last week we talked about the Dragons of Light in general terms. This week we have specific facts about one type of dragon, the most common in mythology, firedrakes.

Firedrakes

Firedrakes were the first kind of dragon created. With fire as their main weapon, they need to consume certain ores on occasion to maintain the chemical reaction. For this reason they are fond of the mountains or rocky areas.

The high cliffs of the mountains also provided protection for the nesting matriarchs, or breeding females, before the Second Realm came to be. They may have up to three matriarchs, usually two green or light blue and one gold. Although this can vary, at least one is always gold. Female firedrakes reach breeding age around a hundred years, males at around seventy. The other females help to incubate the eggs and guard them or bring food for matriarchs and any new hatchlings.

Firedrakes range in color from gold to a deep blue. Any color in the blue spectrum ranging from less than deep blue to an almost yellow-green are a mix of the two primary colors and may be either male or female. True blue or dark blue dragons are always male, gold dragons are all female, and green or lighter blue dragons are of equal gender. Gold is a rare color as it can only mix with the others and gold dragons always have smooth scales. Green and blue are the most common dragon colors with the texture of their scales ranging from very rough and spiked to almost smooth.

*****

Be sure to return next week to learn about waterdrakes.

This information is also available in a PDF file with updates posted with each informational blog post. This is from Appendix B for Dragon Prophecy (Mundania Press, March 2008–definite). To learn more, you can read the opening chapters, download a PDF of all the character interviews posted to my blog, and download Appendix A from Dragon Prophecy. Thank you for reading!