Hellfire Wyverns are so named for their foul tempers and fiery visages. Their social structure places all females above all males, due to superior physical characteristics and violent dispositions. Forced subservience of the males causes them to become vicious, petty, antisocial, and passive-aggressive compared to the aggressive and social females. However, orphaned hatchlings raised by foster parents of another species can develop surprisingly even tempers and mellow dispositions, proving that their defining unpleasant nature is, in fact, a learned behavior.

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.

Maldaeta, among most other hellfire wyverns, was feisty and ill-tempered, although she developed a kind of strategy similar to the saying "Don't get mad, get even". Maldaeta's mother was very abusive to her as a hatchling; she would often get whipped by her mother's tail to sweep old ashes out of the cave. Every few weeks, the ashes would pile up again in the cavern, and Maldaeta would wake up to her head being forced into the pile, and the cycle would repeat until she was finally old enough to leave.

Maldaeta resides as far away from her mother as possible now. A ridgewing dragon named Upside had stopped by later in her life, and she soon hatched an evil plan along with a young male hellfire hatchling she named Downseide. She cast Upside out after she got what she wanted; she now raises the hatchling with the same amount of care that she received from her mother. Maldaeta plans to raise Downseide as a violent creature to seek revenge on her mother.