When Water Dragons mature, they lose the ability to survive on land, entering the water permanently. They are adept swimmers and eat whatever fish are in the lake they live in. They tend to inhabit the same lake for their entire lives, although a few live in the ocean and swim all over the world.

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.

Hogitz always wanted to visit the sea. He was taken from his kin as an egg and sold to humans in a rich trading city. When hard times fell upon his humans, they released Hogitz into the Aortic River, where he lives to this day. He has explored the river's whole length, including the countless tributaries that form its start in the Drowned Mountains, through its center where it is a massive river, all the way down to where the relentless sun of the Voiceless Desert reduces it to nothing a few miles shy of the Bleeding Hart volcanoes. No matter how hard he searches, Hogitz remains trapped by the land. He is too dependent on water to slither across the Voiceless Desert and too helpless on land to brave the fauna and outlaws of the Drowned Mountains, so all he can do is long for the great watery expanse of which he has heard only legends.