Striped Dragons come in a dazzling array of colors complemented by an intricate pattern of stripes. These bright colors and patterns help attract their favorite food, insects. Because their prey is so tiny, striped dragons must spend a large portion of their day eating. The color of the offspring is usually determined by the dragon’s mate.

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.

Shadows of Emerald loves words—or, more specifically, rhyming words. He enjoys nothing more than putting together words to create beautiful, poetic verses that he will often read to the young hatchlings as bedtime stories. He believes it's to give them culture, but the mother dragonesses really gave him the job because his poems are so long and boring, and his voice is so melodious and droning that the hatchlings drop off right away.

He has comprised several poems extolling the beauty and virtues of a lovely daydream dragoness he fell in love with, and he often goes to her cave to read them to her. Many other dragons pity Emerald, as the dragoness he is in love with has fallen into a deep, unwakable sleep. Emerald, however, has not given up hope and goes to her cave every day, filling it with more and more beautiful objects that he finds in his travels. Through the years he has grown discouraged, but still holds on to a faint hope that someday she will awaken.