Lesser Draconids

True Dragons are horrid things, at once evoking a hint of the hirsute beast while still thoroughly bound to their scaled, primordial features. There is, some think, a time when such creatures ruled, when an even crueler and more inhuman set of Pagan Gods held sway. But that was a long time ago, and they are not the ones man knew. We can only infer their existence from the things that are left behind. The dregs of scale and fang and wing which do not belong to the order of life which is kin with man. Each and every one represents an "other", a road of life traveled once, but not again. Small wonder that their forms so often evoke fear in us. Perhaps some primordial memory of the days when we germinated from the earth as pale, wriggling animalcules, and then vermin huddling in trees or burrows, while those terrible monstrosities claimed dominion over the earth. 

Serpents

A common name for innumerable crawling things which slither, fly, skitter, or swim. Some have two, four, even six legs, others have none, or have wings, or a combination. They may be as small as rats or as large as cattle. Innumerable and unpredictable, each serpent is, if not unique, prone to chimerical mutation, Multiple heads, terrible venoms, various forms of locomotion, none can be quite certain of what any serpent may be capable of. 

Asps

 

A particular breed of scalesome worm, segmented and spiteful. The least of the reptilian order but no less deadly. They may be confused for a particularly slithery serpent, save for their fangs, which drip bile and venom. An asp's bite is always venomous, and always terrible. Be it paralysis, agony, rot, or simply death, they are living traps waiting to be sprung. No common serpent's venom can compare. The price, it seems, is their lack of limbs, their singular heads, their lesser size, though some might be hooded, have rattling tails, or distinctive arrow-shaped heads. Even the greatest of them are at most the size of a man. Often, they die at the hands of their bitten victim. But rarely ever is that victim saved.

Drakes

 

A splay-legged hulk with a thickened hide often sporting some defensive or camouflaging adornment. Some have keratinous branches like mighty oaks, others a thick shell of blunted burls or thin, reedy spines. Some have four legs, others six or even eight. Many consider them a kind of proto-dragon or close offshoot, but they lack the intellect and grace of even a young dragon, their minds dim and guided purely by instinct, their movements lumbering and clumsy. Even so, few Worldly things are more terrifying than a drake rising from the water.

Salamanders

 

The least of serpents, perhaps. Not armored in spine and plate, not bearing terrible fangs, not multitudinous in their variety, no. They are squirming little things with at least two legs, often found near water but resistant to both great heat and great cold. Often they come writhing out of damp logs tossed in a fire, but so too can they crawl from snow during a spring thaw. Most are small, but some can match a drake in scale. Though predatory, such beasts are less belligerent, and may leave you alone if left in turn. Their true danger is to the environment they dwell in. Tenacious and voracious, they can deplete the crops and soil of a land in addition to its cattle. Thus the hunting of them is a common trade.

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It is little wonder that true dragons ruled whatever era spawned these four kingdoms of ancient life. They bore the serpent's mutability, the asp's toxicity, the caucatrix's power, the salamander's tenacity. One cannot help but wonder how they were birthed. A great cauldron of life and change, which murdered all but the most suited to survival? A world redder in tooth and claw than we can imagine? Or was it primitive Gnosis? Did some race like our own, in that lost, primeval epoch, seek to transcend themselves as we did through the Titans? Are the dragons a failure? Or a success?

There are many mysteries in this world, and this one is unlikely to be solved. But through knowledge, some harm may be avoided.

Mind the ground, and keep an eye to the still waters.

One never knows what yet lurks. 

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This is as much for my benefit as for the reader. I have taken the entire order of reptiles (and salamanders, which here shall be distinct from the humble newt, toad, olm, and frog), and turned them into a primordial order of four rough categories which existed in a more brutal, less defined age. You may recall the Monster classes of some days ago. Consider that they, too, face a terrible mutative future as their gifts take them further and further from Worldly life. Could it be that they are to us what dragons were to whatever race they descended from? Maybe not. Maybe this is all idle speculation. I wouldn't worry about it.