We are inspired once again by one of my favorite worldbuilding blog posts. What happens if we discover that the classic colors of the chromatic dragons are not different lineages, but different stages in the development of all such dragons?
White dragons are wyrmlings. The coloration of their scales is not so much truly “white” as it is a lack of pigmentation. Viewed up close, white dragon scales are almost translucent; although viewing a dragon up close is not advised, even at this young age. Humans refer to the white dragon as “the least intelligent” and “most animalistic,” but it is not because they are some inferior strain of dragonkind; they are simply immature dragons.
In its newborn state, the white dragon is a heat sink, literally absorbing heat from the environment around it. Its frosty cold breath weapon is not so much a matter of inducing cold as it is one of removing heat. A white dragon's tolerance for very cold temperatures is also an evolutionary adaptation that keeps it away from other, older dragons, who favor warmer climes, and might punish a white wyrmling for unwittingly trespassing on their territory.
Black dragons are young dragons. Their wyrmling scales have gradually absorbed enough light from the sun (harvesting that heat) to darken to a steel-gray or purple-black color. They are too big to continue to capture energy passively from the environment around them like wyrmlings, so they begin to take more energy from consuming ever-larger prey. Their breath no longer freezes. Instead, internal apoptosis begins to destroy the organs that drove the dragon’s early growth as a wyrmling, which they no longer need. The remains of these organs are liquified, stored in a special sac, and mixed with bile (plus any indigestible prey remains) to produce the acidic slurry breath of the black dragon stage.
Green and blue dragons are adult dragons. The dull black scales of the young black dragon gradually take on particularly greenish luster, influenced by chlorine production from a new organ within the dragon’s body, nestled between the lungs. Chlorine is one of a number of gasses that the dragon can now expel in place of the acidic breath it left behind with its juvenile state.
When the gas organ is sufficiently mature, one of the most interesting stages of draconic development begins; the gas “turns itself off.” The dragon instinctively throttles its gas-breathing function, leaving it without its breath weapon for a period of weeks or months (dragons will almost always retreat to hidden lairs during this vulnerable time). The scales, deprived of trace chlorine, transition to a deep sapphire blue. While in hiding, the dragon will seek out a rocky surface incorporating diamond or some similarly hard material, using it to scrape away at a layer of keratin on the roof of its mouth, exposing a conductive spur. It emerges as a blue dragon, breathing bolts of lightning at all who oppose it.
The sequencing of the green and blue phases, and the dragon’s instinct to cease breathing gas, long mystified scholars. But it is now believed to be a very practical adaptation. A dragon both able to breath flammable gas and to provide a spark of ignition risks quite literally igniting its insides and blowing itself up (the chlorine itself isn't flammable, but can enhance the combustibility of the other expelled gasses). By separating the developments into different phases – and repressing the preceding phase during the second phase – the dragon learns to master both effects.
Once the dragon can both breathe gas and ignite it without endangering itself, it can begin its final transformation. This typically involves nesting in a large horde for decades, even centuries. During this time, the dragon undergoes a slow molting process, losing its blue scales, and drawing trace metals from the hoard around it to reinforce its underlying “true” scales, which are a brilliant ruby red.
The dragon is now an ancient dragon, a red dragon, a true dragon. The dragon is ready to rule. The world is ready to burn.
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