Ridgewing Dragons live just below the snow level on the upper slopes of mountains. They are a friendly, playful breed and enjoy dancing in wind currents near their homes or plummeting down into valleys from great heights. Their wings, by far their most striking feature, grow in fin-like ridges along their backs. While their bodies lack markings to blend better with their surroundings, a ridgewing’s wings have bright markings in the colors of the flowers that grow in their mountain habitat. Occasionally different-colored individuals can be found, but they are rare because their striking coloring offers little protection.

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.

Sylvaeus is a lookout for a dragon city, who keeps watch over the nearby human kingdoms to the south and east. He brings warning back to town when he sees mass movements of knights that he believes are gathering for a dragon-slaying expedition, so that the dragons can ready themselves. Many of the farm-dragons who keep the city fed feel they owe their lives to Sylvaeus's watchfulness. He is quite underconfident in his own abilities, though, knowing that despite his good endurance he is a fairly slow flier. He sees fast-flying dragons like the coffee-addict Tktaka, and every time a raid does any damage he berates himself for not being as fast as her. "If I could only fly faster," he tells himself, "I could have gathered the militia before the humans got there..." Of course, there is no way Tktaka or anyone else from the city could stay airborne for as long as Sylvaeus does, spending days at a time in lazy circles through thin air on his voluminous wings.