“What defines and makes a Dragon a Dragon is Immortality, Calamity, Indomitability, and Supremacy.”


    “A Dragon isn’t a Dragon if it is not Immortal. The Tyrant is eternal, demanting subservience and destruction for all time. When you hunt your Dragon in the Ash Wastes and take in its power, that power of Immortality is passed to you in the boon of healing.”


    “A Dragon is defined by its thirst for endless, perpetual destruction. Nothing satisfies; everything must burn.”


    “Indomitability is to have a body that defies the strongest attacks and most debilitating injuries. The Tyrant will shrug off anything that is unworthy of its might. When you succeed, the boon that will be passed to you is a resistance to plague and poison.”


    “The final element of the Tyrant is Supremacy. Supremacy of the sky, supremacy of all that lay beneath it, the absolute defiance against any authority that is not itself and the indomitable will to refuse any authority that does not come from itself.”


    In the Redstone Valley, there are a number of clans of people that venerate Totem Animals, and above them all is the Clan of the Dragon.


    For the purposes of this document, and in keeping with the lore of the world, there are two types of Totems: Greater Totems and Lesser Totems. The Clans of the Redstone, in keeping with their cognitive bias, recognize this in a specific way that may or may not reflect how the rest of the world sees things.


    Your mileage may vary.


    What separates a Greater Totem from a Lesser Totem to the Redstone really boils down to “How far are you willing to travel?” For the Dragon Clan, children trap dragon whelplings/ hatchlings/ pups, and then as they grow, they challenge the juvenile dragonlings until they’re ready to make a perilous journey to the Ashlands, where they challenge an adult Dragon.


    For Lesser Totems, like the Timberwolves, they hunt Timberwolf pups and juveniles until they’re ready to hunt an adult timberwolf, and then they do so- there is no journey to the Ashlands, they simply hunt their Totem in their own territory.


    How far are you willing to travel?


    Setting that aside, the gifts that a Clan Member receive from their Totem Animal are boons and take the form of Greater and Lesser Boons.


    Davian, because he is operating on what he has been taught and what he has learned, believes that Calamity, Immortality, Indomitability, and Supremacy are all that are received from the Dragon. His grandfather taught him that, his great-grandfather taught him that, who in turn learned from their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers (and mothers, there’s no distinction in gender).


    Really, those are Greater Boons, and just as there are Greater Boons and Lesser Boons, the Dragon passes down Lesser Boons as well.


    With the exception of one clan- and since it has nothing to do with Dragon, we can ignore it- only Lesser Boons are inheritable.


    So let’s talk about that, for a second:


    When you’re born to a clan, you hunt and make your kill and you get abilities. Cha-ching. These are not inheritable. You can’t pass them down to your children. What isnt known is that Lesser Boons are.


    There’s some flexibility there, too: Boons are not distributed equally! We can use RPG mechanics and say that they’re given a strength of 1-6 for each Boon.


    How it’s determined really boils down to the hunter’s aptitude for particular Boons and the quality of what they hunted.


    For instance, there are several different types of Dragons, based on maturity. The more mature, the stronger the Boon rewarded.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    We''ll use a 1-6 scale:


    Young Dragon: 1-2


    Adult Dragon: 3-4


    Tyrant Dragon: 5-6


    The Greater Boons for Dragons are:


    Supremacy- You could characterize this as the old D&D Dragon Fear that came with dragons- just the sight or presence of a dragon would inspire dread and terror. Just being near something as dreadful and terrifying as a dragon would cause you to crap your pants. You could also characterize this as the old anime standby, ‘killing intent’. It’s a fear so intense it overwhelms everything. There’s more to it than just fear, take a look at Chapter 26 when Sheilah uses Supremacy. It can also be directed at a specific person or thing.


    Calamity- Breathing fire. This fire can differ in intensity.


    Immortality- regeneration and increased pain tolerance.


    Indomitability- immune to toxins and disease.


    The Lesser Boons for Dragons are:


    Healthy Body: less likely to be born with defects, able to extract more useable and essential material from foods, scarred areas are able to be restored to an unscarred state, and a slightly longer lifespan.


    Strengthened Senses: Dragon Clan members are able to see a little further and with greater detail. Hear smaller sounds, and can distinguish individual sounds from each other- can sort out a single voice from a crowd- can theoretically track by smell, though this isn’t something that’s conscious, they just think they’re better trackers. They also have a stronger vestibular sense.


    Inherited Memory: some memories are passed down generationally, and so rather than something being learned, they’re remembered.


    Water vulnerability: This hasn’t been covered yet.


    There’s also the razor sharp/ hard as steel fingernails you get as you eat whelplings, but this is not inherited.


    Neither is the constant “I want to be as high up as possible so that I can look down on things”.


    Neither is the addiction. I’ve mentioned it before, but Dragon blood is a powerful drug.


    Now we get to Sheilah, and by extension, Fialla.


    Sheilah’s abilities:


    Sheilah has all of the Greater and Lesser Boons, as befitting a member of the First Blood of the Dragon Clan. There’s some juggling going on behind the scenes, however.


    Since she wasn’t born to the Clan of the Dragon, she initially didn’t start out with the Lesser Boons, but she gained them throughout her childhood and teen years through eating whelplings and dragonlings.


    Sheilah doesn’t have any inherited memories, since she wasn’t born from the Dragon Clan. This is mitigated by being taught things she should have “remembered” by her family, and her encounter with the spirit of Adlan.


    If there were stats, Sheilah would be 6’s across the board- she killed and ate two dragons, after all. Fialla would be straight 4’s across the board, which is actually really remarkable given her disposition and the dragon she hunted. Someone else like her (an elf) would normally be twos and threes, but because she pushed herself to “do whatever Sheilah can do” her whole life, she gets a stat bump across the board.


    Sheilah has gained two Draconic Abilities that are not Boons. In fact, to the Dragon Clan in general, they would be considered taboo to have.


    Parallel Processing- Her mind is dividing up to focus and concentrate on different things simultaneously. Sheilah can pay attention to her meal while watching someone else eat while paying attention to her surroundings and holding an engaged conversation with someone without losing focus on any of them.


    Spatial Perception- A sense beyond human senses. Something like a passive sonar or radar that allows her to be constantly aware of things around her in a set radius. It also allows her to remember which directions she’s taken- she can backtrack perfectly- and gives her a general sense of direction. She can also distinguish things- She can tell whether or not Fialla or Magdalene or Andrea were behind a door or wall.


    Fialla has Spatial Perception, but it’s smaller than Sheilah’s. She lacks Parallel Processing, but she does have a stronger memory in a general sense.


    The Dragon Clan of the Redstone- all of the clans of the Redstone- are a little more than human. Or less than human. We can say that if the average person is 100% “human”, then someone from the Dragon Clan would be 97%- 95% human with 3%-5% being Dragon. It’s a minor but important distinction. You have to give up “being human” to be a Clansman, to a degree.


    For the most part this is fine. It’s a small percentage. Your hair and nails turn black. You heal quickly. You can breathe fire once in a while. You don’t get sick. Not a bad tradeoff.


    But if you go beyond that small percentage, then it gets serious. You start becoming less and less human, both physically and mentally. Dragons have their own desires and impulses and they may not align with human desires and impulses.