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Description
Worldbuilding Smaugust day 1: Ancestral

For millenia, dragons have aterrorized the skies of Aetherra. Beasts that put crops on fire, eat your livestock and kill your people.
But dragons were not always the apex predators of the world, they started small, almost harmless.

Truly flying dragons were small, gemneralist omnivores that ate insects, small reptiles, mammals, birds, eggs and fruits. But they were predated by basically everything at the same size, or bigger than themselves, but then the tides changed, evolution was generous to dragons, so much that now they are one of the most diverse order of animals in aetherra, evolution gave dragons, **fire**!!

You see, dragons are an early diverging branche from varanoids, so they share a lot in common with monitor lizards and snakes, such as specialized salivary glands that delivered **Aether based venom**, wich in dragons was specialized even further.
Dragons have a peculiar method in how they produce their fire. There is two steps in the evolution of fire, the first was relatively easy and fast to evolve, dragons use specialized salivary glands, that produce a special liquid, a mix of liquid aether and fat/oil derived from their diet, wich were expelled in order to produce fire. Now that is where we reach our second step, dragons use **methane bladders** to produce fire, earlier dragons had underdeveloped bladders, they use these bladders to store methane produced by their stomachs, that when it reacts with the aether oil, boom! Fire is produced.
Fire was used to defend early dragons from predators and to roast small prey animals, so it was kinda uncontrolled, being more of a burst or a small explosion, these dragons had small glands and bladders, but modern dragons have larger bladders/glands since they have better developed fire control.
Of course there were drawbacks of fire coming out of their mouth, such as the dragons burning themselves when using it, so as fire was improved, so their anatomy was too in order to protect themselves against their own fire. The most inportant thing was their mouth, as fire could easily burn the inside of their mouths, so dragons used a simple solution to overcome this problem, thicker saliva! Dragons have very dense saliva covering the insides of their mouths, protecting the soft, gummy flesh from the bursts of fire they produced.
Amother problem was the outside. Soft scales/skin were easily burned too, but the solution of this second problem was just as easy as the solution of the first, **thick skin and scales**, the thick integument of dragons protect the soft skin from burn damages, some modern dragons have brought this even further!

Description
Worldbuilding Smaugust day 1: Ancestral

For millenia, dragons have aterrorized the skies of Aetherra. Beasts that put crops on fire, eat your livestock and kill your people.
But dragons were not always the apex predators of the world, they started small, almost harmless.

Truly flying dragons were small, gemneralist omnivores that ate insects, small reptiles, mammals, birds, eggs and fruits. But they were predated by basically everything at the same size, or bigger than themselves, but then the tides changed, evolution was generous to dragons, so much that now they are one of the most diverse order of animals in aetherra, evolution gave dragons, **fire**!!

You see, dragons are an early diverging branche from varanoids, so they share a lot in common with monitor lizards and snakes, such as specialized salivary glands that delivered **Aether based venom**, wich in dragons was specialized even further.
Dragons have a peculiar method in how they produce their fire. There is two steps in the evolution of fire, the first was relatively easy and fast to evolve, dragons use specialized salivary glands, that produce a special liquid, a mix of liquid aether and fat/oil derived from their diet, wich were expelled in order to produce fire. Now that is where we reach our second step, dragons use **methane bladders** to produce fire, earlier dragons had underdeveloped bladders, they use these bladders to store methane produced by their stomachs, that when it reacts with the aether oil, boom! Fire is produced.
Fire was used to defend early dragons from predators and to roast small prey animals, so it was kinda uncontrolled, being more of a burst or a small explosion, these dragons had small glands and bladders, but modern dragons have larger bladders/glands since they have better developed fire control.
Of course there were drawbacks of fire coming out of their mouth, such as the dragons burning themselves when using it, so as fire was improved, so their anatomy was too in order to protect themselves against their own fire. The most inportant thing was their mouth, as fire could easily burn the inside of their mouths, so dragons used a simple solution to overcome this problem, thicker saliva! Dragons have very dense saliva covering the insides of their mouths, protecting the soft, gummy flesh from the bursts of fire they produced.
Amother problem was the outside. Soft scales/skin were easily burned too, but the solution of this second problem was just as easy as the solution of the first, **thick skin and scales**, the thick integument of dragons protect the soft skin from burn damages, some modern dragons have brought this even further!