Hellfire Wyverns are so named for their foul tempers and fiery visages. Their social structure places all females above all males, due to superior physical characteristics and violent dispositions. Forced subservience of the males causes them to become vicious, petty, antisocial, and passive-aggressive compared to the aggressive and social females. However, orphaned hatchlings raised by foster parents of another species can develop surprisingly even tempers and mellow dispositions, proving that their defining unpleasant nature is, in fact, a learned behavior.

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.

When Larinor was young, he defied his older sisters on multiple occasions—normal behavior for most dragons, who would have considered him quite meek, but an unforgivable crime among hellfire wyverns.  As punishment, he was cast out of the pack as soon as he was old enough to survive on his own.  As none of the other hellfire wyverns wanted such a troublemaker in their pack, Larinor was forced to wander far and long before he finally found a weyr to take him in.  He still can't get used to being the fiercest of Snowy Francis' small band of altruistically-inclined dragons, and still has a habit of automatically deferring to female dragons Vicijen and Valgrave, no matter how many times they tell him he doesn't need to.