Pillow Dragons are covered in enormous amounts of fur affectionately referred to as fluff. Despite their deceivingly large size, they can still fly even with such tiny wings because their bodies are remarkably light. Pillow Dragons have a habit of sleeping for up to eighteen hours a day, waking only in short bursts. During their few waking hours, they take the time to hunt for prey. Once a pillow dragon becomes an adult, its fur grows very slowly. Pillow dragon fur is used to make very expensive and valuable cloth known as “dragon cashmere.”

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.

Wankel Engine likes writing clever one-liners and artful poetry. They are not actually "clever" or "artful" or "poetry" by any definition except hers, and she writes them on the records of other dragons, who cross the unwelcome text out when she's through. Her writings are either unsatisfactorily brief and without much substance, or riddled with errors and clearly written to annoy—a pain to read but at least mercifully short. During times she isn't sleeping, hunting, or invading documents, Wankel Engine toys with old metal parts. As she sticks them together into complicated contraptions, she thinks of new things to write.