Blue-Banded Dragons are found primarily in mountainous regions with lots of precipitation. Although terrestrial, they are most often sighted near running water and feed mostly on fish. Females are very social and form tight-knit family groups, while males are strictly solitary and will fight any other dragons that enter their territory outside of breeding season. For this reason, females tend to drive males away when they are not ready to mate, or when they are caring for hatchlings. The amount of striping varies greatly from individual to individual, with some dragons having only faint dark streaks on their sides and others appearing to be almost entirely dark blue with paler markings.

Dragons are highly-intelligent reptilian creatures that—from a human perspective, at least—appear to live forever. Many different varieties of dragon exist, each with their own unique qualities, habitats, and behavior. Adolescence in dragons is usually marked by the growth of a hatchling’s wings, although not all breeds of dragons grow wings and some breeds have other traits that indicate the beginning of maturation. In Galsreim, dragons and humans coexist peacefully.

As was done every year, the maturing Blue-Banded dragon males were cast off from the group when they'd learned to fend for themselves. However, one young dragon male refused to leave the area and kept returning to the mountain river near the nesting grounds. No matter how many times he was driven away, Dark Ripple still made his way back to the river. After the clan's elder, who happened to be Dark Ripple's grandmother, spoke to him one evening, she told the rest of the group that instead of driving Dark Ripple away from the river, the dragon clan would simply relocate to a new location. The excuse she gave was that Dark Ripple had a bad wing and simply wasn't able to travel too far. However, the truth was that Dark Ripple had told his grandmother that as a hatchling, he had befriended a young Nilia Pygmy when they had met by the river. Tragically, the Nilia had drowned while trying to fetch a shiny stone in the river one day, and Dark Ripple was unable to leave his friend's graveside.