Shadow Walkers are a strange breed that possess the ability to slip between the planes of reality, becoming immaterial. This allows them to hide in the shadows, either hunting from the concealment of near invisibility or evading enemies. Though they become corporeal to mate or to eat, they spend most of the rest of their lives walking in the shadows. Shadow Walkers are wary creatures, though on dark autumn evenings when the leaves fall to swirl in the chill, rain damp air, they may be seen drifting out from the shadows.

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.

Though she refrains from visiting other humans, the young dragon guardian named Flight often travels outside of the Mountains of Elgar on her horse dragon companion, Curyn, in search of new dragon eggs in need of care. On one of these trips, Flight and Curyn discovered a herd of Shadow Walkers in an ancient graveyard. After falling asleep away from the herd, the companions woke up the next morning to find a Shadow Walker egg lying near their camp. Flight raised the hatchling, whom she named Syphilus after seeing the name on the tomb stone the egg was laying on. Growing up alongside two other hatchlings, Syphilus preferred to stay alone, rarely interacting with his brothers and sisters, all dragons cared for by Flight. He does enjoy talking to Raz'iax of the Stone, despite her ferocious personality. As an adult, Syphilus enjoys being with Flight, often in the forests within the Mountains of Elgar, playing Hide-n-Seek in the shadows of the trees and taking rides through the mountains.