Dark Lumina Dragons received their names from their highly reflective scales, which—at times—seem to glow. They are vain, always strutting about and preening incessantly; if one of their scales has so much as a scratch or a defect, they’ll remove it. Luckily, their scales grow back quickly, and each new growth is more beautiful than the last. These narcissistic dragons live in small groups and prefer to surround themselves with beauty. The males guard their territory and eggs while the females search for meat to eat. Dark Lumina Dragons are much meaner than their cousins.

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.

Where Maya grew up, everyone "knew" the dark-scaled luminae were mean. Even before her wings grew in, she picked up on the fact that, when a light lumina was mean, everyone dismissed the fault as "unintentional"—luminae being narcissistic, they couldn't help it. But if a dark lumina did the same or less, it was by default "intentionally cruel". Maya turned to books to get away from the unfair judgment and was particularly drawn to poetry. She started writing on her own since nobody would teach her (a dark lumina would use verse to hurt and demean, "obviously"), so she never learned the formal rules to make truly beautiful verse. Her anger and misery is apparent in the majority of her works, which some intentionally misinterpret as the viciousness they seek to observe in her kind. She has since moved to Lloyprij, where there is no such bias, but she still suffers paranoia and has nervous breakdowns when she fears she is being judged.