Carmine Wyverns are active predators found most commonly in tropical regions. They have a poor sense of smell and are primarily dependent on sight and sound to hunt. These dragons are lightweight and quick, and tend to flee from rivals rather than attempt to fight. When a confrontation does occur it usually involves large amounts of posturing and displaying to make the wyverns appear larger and stronger than their opponents, and one will often surrender and leave without a fight ever actually occurring. They are dedicated parents and usually mate for life, though the degree of loyalty to a partner varies between individuals and within individual pairings.

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.

Walloon was taken from his home as a newborn hatchling by a group of humans who knew very little about dragons. They merely saw Walloon's resemblance to a rooster and instantly concluded he could be used in cockfights. When the men discovered that Walloon, like most Carmine Wyverns, would simply run away from potential fights, they threw him out into the wild to fend for himself. Because he had no experience in hunting for food, Walloon spent most of his adolescence living off the scraps of food humans threw out. Upon reaching adulthood, Walloon found that he longed to return to his dragon clan and set out to find them. Unfortunately, since he was only a hatchling when he'd been taken away, he had no idea where his home was located. For that reason, he named himself Walloon. Remembering faintly that that was where his human abductors had stayed immediately after capturing him as a newborn dragon, he felt that once he located the town he'd named himself after, he must be close to home.