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.

When Incepticon was small, she knew no other dragons aside from her family. Several siblings and aunts and uncles described a dreadful thing called being "bothered". It sounded awful. "If you don't want to be bothered, you have to be MEAN," they said. Some seemed to follow this philosophy, while others didn't but agreed it was true. Incepticon didn't want "bothering" to happen to her, so she watched people and learned how to be mean. Once she moved to another network, she found that meanness wasn't all it was cracked up to be: hatchlings fled from her, adults threatened her, law enforcement punished her, and she just felt bad all the time. Incepticon spent years changing herself to be whatever the opposite of "mean" is. Despite her non-meanness, she's never experienced the dreadful "bothering" that so many family members warned about. Other people have asked her for help, invited her to gatherings, visited her at home or work, and told her their woes, but they've never "bothered" her.