Copper Dragons are masters of stealth, slipping silently and swiftly through the forests and jungles where they live. Often hunting in groups, their prey rarely know they are being stalked until the dragon’s at their throat. In the air they are agile and skilled. Copper Dragons prize family groups, spending large amounts of time teaching their young skills. So great is their love of life and family that they will sometimes adopt orphaned dragons of other breeds to raise.

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.

Hardly (pronounced with a silent H) is a copper of logic and reason. He is highly intelligent (read: pompous and insufferably conceited) and is vying for a permanent position at the Institution. There, for the last two years, he's been teaching theoretical physics, theoretical psychology, and other disciplines that begin with "theoretical" because that's what highly intelligent people do, and as a highly intelligent dragon, he lets it be known how brilliant he is, how many seminal papers he has, and how deserving he is of a professorship.