Yellow-Crowned Dragons are found in the hottest, driest regions of the desert. Although they thrive in these conditions, they do very poorly in cold or humid climates. These dragons are very fast fliers and skilled hunters, and usually feed on small, quick desert antelope. Yellow-Crowned Dragons are diurnal, and spend the night in underground burrows they dig or steal from other creatures. They are often seen out sunning themselves in the early morning sun, waiting for the heat of the day to set in.

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.

The desert has a lot of sand, and there's a lot of stuff beneath it, the buried artifacts and architecture of ancient communities and peoples. Deaton digs them up. He discovered his first thousand-year-old storage unit as a hatchling while building sandcastles, and he was interested in dead old languages before he was enrolled in the Primary Class of the Academy. He is most interested in excavating ancient treasures, but rather than keep it all to himself and lie on it as he so desires to do, he almost always sends them away to the government, the Academy, or one of the archaeology guilds for further study.