Holiday dragons are a very mysterious breed. They are only seen during winter, and even then it is hard to catch a glimpse of one. They are responsible for the general cheer that spreads during the holidays. In essence, they are the “Spirits of Winter.”

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.

While Snow Rise started off as a wild dragon, she chose to remain at the side of a human after the man had helped heal her injured leg when she'd broken it in a sudden avalanche. The pair traveled around the world together for a few years before they came to a town that had built on a mountaintop. The whole village was in distress because a small child had been lost in the mountains, and all the efforts to locate the missing child by the town's fleet of domesticated Swallowtails and even the town's resident Tri-Horn, Foehn Bruiser, had failed. Deciding to help, Snow Rise and her master set off to help search, taking advantage of the fact that Snow Rise, unlike the Swallowtails and the solitary Tri-Horn, was well equipped to search the mountain by foot. They soon found the child huddled up under a rocky outcrop and brought her back to her family. After the incident, Snow Rise and her master accepted the offer to remain in the mountaintop village as the head of the town's rescue team.