Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. Its eyes glow brightly at night, and it enjoys attacking insects and small animals.

And look! It has grown wings! It must be close to maturing.

Young dragons are relatively defenseless. They are born with relatively soft scales, which are shed and replaced with harder ones as the hatchling matures. Once a hatchling’s wings grow in, it typically marks the beginning of maturation. At this point they are often capable of hunting on their own and are usually left alone by their mother.

Huge Crithpy Success started life as an ordinary hatchling, but made the mistake of wandering into the Weird Wizard's cheese-testing grounds. He emerged charred and crumpled, but unmistakably alive, and was named and labeled before the Wizard realized his triumphant success hadn't started out life as a wedge of Camembert. The youngster quickly effected an intrepid escape and fled to the coast (dodging vampires all the way), changed his name to Crithpin, and embraced a hermit's lifestyle until he got bored and hungry. A local clan of sky-watching Nebulae took pity on him and, in return for food and ranking, proceeded to extrapolate complex prophecies from the burn-marks in his hide. Some days a dragon just can't win.