White dragons

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White dragons
(Verusdraco sapiens alba)

Origins
White dragons are one of those races that are considered to be “classic”, a term used to indicate a category of dragons which are not ancient nor recent.

They've probably been born from the cross of two old dragon kinds, now extinct, respectively known as marble dragons and golden dragons of the Black Valley; other influences from other subspecies may be involved, among which, rumors say, there could also be black dragons' blood. The amount of races that have had an influence on the creation of this splendid variety of Verusdraco is uncertain, a variety that is the only one that can sport a completely white coloration in modern times.

Appearance

White dragons are of average size, covered in scales that are generally very light in color. They can sport scales that are colored in pale golden, cream and even peach, but the coloration that's more common in this race, as well as exclusive to it, it's total white that makes white dragons look like living marble statues. The horns, that extend behind the head following the line traced by the forehead, are smooth and black, creating a strong contrast with the color of the rest of the body. They can have a third horn placed between the nostrils, but in females it's mostly just a black-colored plate.
The back is topped by a single row of extremely sharp and dangerous keratin tips.
White dragons' skin, if deprived of the scales, is liver-pinkish in hue or of a similar color gradation, usually lighter than average in comparison to other dragons. The scales have a rounded rim and are resistant, but very flexible.
The eyes, big e usually described as having a compassionate expression, can be of only two colors: light blue or yellow, even if light blue is more common and appreciated.
They're armonious dragons, never too heavy-looking, with big wings equipped with white membranes and a black keratin hook on the top.
The maximum height ever registered by a white dragon is seven meters and twelve centimeters (around twenty-four feet), with a wingspan that reached twenty-three meters (seventy-five feet).
Their tail is tapering, without fat accumulations, and it almost ends with an arrow-shaped, extremely hardy black keratin tip.
Since they possess a fast metabolism, in comparison to the dragon average, is pretty difficult, if not almost impossible, for them to fatten up.
Their fire can be of any color, but the most common one is pink.

Behavior
White dragons have a very high sense of justice and morality; they're able to sacrifice themselves for others or for an ideal. They usually speak in an elegant and refined way, as they're pretty gifted with languages and learn them quickly, so much so that a white dragon that speaks less than three idioms won't be considered much by a possible partner.
They have ancient rituals, inherited from the races they were born from, and they're devoted to the cult of the dragonixius, mytical alien creatures that, according to them, brought life on Earth and decided to create dragonkind by placing in the “Source of Life” (some sort of Primordial soup in a puddle on the summit of mount Horn) the dragon DNA.
They don't really have deities, but they respect anyone who might worship one or more.
Thanks to their high sense of justice, this species rarely has "racist" behaviors and does its best to relate with all the other races and species of dragons; furthermore, it has a particular preferences for humans, that white dragons protect and educate as if they were their own hatchlings.
There's no white dragon that doens't create a bond with a human: every individual has their own dragoneer, and to not find one would be considered by everyone a great shame, because it would mean that this individual is unable to intimately understand human culture or that they secretly think themselves too superior to have a bond with one of them.
White dragons are often elected to cover important political positions, and the king of Horn Blu Island is, indeed, almost always a white dragon.

Birth and growth

White dragon hatchlings are born, like the majority of dragons, from eggs that are incubated for a variable time period, but that will almost always hatch only at the presence of the human the newborn dragon will bond with. White dragon eggs are robust, with a thick rind that can have a variety of colors from cream to pure white, usually mottled by iridescent veins, and they can remain dormant even for centuries.
At birth, a baby white dragon already has functional horns, thorns and wings, and they weigh from 300 grams to 900 grams. The size of the egg and of the baby depend on the age and size of the mother. The females lay only one egg at a time.
The newborn is immediately sent, often togerther with their dragoneer, at the schools of the Ancient Dragoneery, where they are educated by other dragons and learn several idioms.
Other draconic species, especially the primitive ones, believe that white dragons have drifted away from the ideal of what a dragon should be and, although they don't reject their authority as justice bringers, they won't accept advice or influence from them in matters of warfare or hunting protocols.
White dragon growth is moderately slow, and they reach full maturity and the ability to reproduce when they're eleven or twelve years old.

Social life and courtship
White dragons are extremely social and it's impossibile to find one that lives isolated from the rest of the world or that doesn't keep in touch with anyone else of their kind. They don't exactly live in packs, but, similarly to humans, they group in "cities", made up of close territories, and they very often pay visits to their neighbours.
They rarely get involved in arguments, but when it happens they challenge each other in duels of magic or flying dexterity to determine who's the most skilled and is therefore more likely to be right, or, in the most desperate cases, they summon a neighbourhood meeting and vote by show of wings who's right in their opinion.
Their magic duels are of great beauty, because they're often complex light tricks and spectacularized displays of magic power.
To seduce females, males show off their flying and magic skills in the annual gathering of the white dragons, which coincides with the only fertile period of the females, in spring; the gathering is known among them with only one term in Draconic, untraslatable for humans, but that roughly means "Place and time in which we amicably let the others know we're better than them". The females, much bigger and generally more vicious, can choose from one to three males to mate with during the season, but since the fertility of white dragons is low and the females lay only one egg, not all of them will become fathers, and it's not even sure that the egg will be laid.
Once, if the father proved himself unworthy of being a parent after the mating (for example by staining his reputation with an ignominious act or by obstructing justice), the mother could decide to break the egg with a fist, hence killing the baby dragon before its birth, but in more recent times this custom has been judged barbaric and inappropriate, and it's no longer in use.

Habitat and diet
As the “sovereign” race of Horn Blu Island, white dragons are rarely found outside of it. They usually live in mountainous and cold places, and one of the few other places colonies of these subspecies can be found in is Greenland.
They love eating fish, wild berries, roots and some kinds of meat like seal, reindeer, and deer, but they're omnivores in the broad sense and don't disdain almost any food. Eating humans is a terrible taboo for them, that must never, in any circumstance, be performed.

Famous white dragons
Orotagon
Aureo

 
Facts and trivia

• Females are more often excluded from political roles due to their fiery temper, more prone to angry outbursts, as well as the danger they pose thanks to their bigger strength. However, they're considered to be excellent warriors and guardians.
  
• Despite marble dragons being an extinct race, nowadays this name is wrongly used to indicate white dragons.
  
• In the past there was another species with a completely white coloration, which, however, has disappeared without leaving traces: the glaciers dragons.
  
  
  

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Iced Esteban

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The Iced Esteban is a non-alcoholic drink endowed with remarkable healing properties, first created around year 2020. It's named after the luminous demigod Esteban, without whom it would be impossible to prepare it.

This beverage is virtually unknown outside of the Ministry of Light -- especially inside the DRICE department -- where it's instead regularly consumed.

In the Spaceport (a structure managed, indeed, by DRICE) there's a great number of aliens and other creatures, which might have organisms incompatible with common medicine, but that is still important to be able to heal when in need; the answer to this necessity was found in the ability of a young Light Knight, Esteban, to kickstart miraculous healings... in those who ingested some of his bodily fluids, like saliva. The idea of taking a stranger's spit wasn't appealing to most though: that's how the Iced Esteban was born! The demigod's saliva got mixed with other ingredients to better its aspect and taste and encourage those who needed it to drink it.

The Iced Esteban is a pink, slightly transparent liquid, on which surface there's an inviting sparkling. His bubbles are called, indeed, "sparkles". It's generally served in cocktail glasses or other clear objects, because his look is considered fairly appetizing.

 

🍹️ Ingredients and preparation

 

✔️  Esteban's saliva

✔️  Green tea

✔️  Stevia

✔️  Lemon juice

✔️  Ice

• Obtain some tea.
There are mainly two ways to accomplish this step, namely A) soak the green tea leaves - or tea bags - in cold water and wait patiently until it reaches the desired color and flavor, or B) heat some water in a saucepan and add the leaves or tea bags when it comes to a boil, leaving to infuse for a maximum of five minutes. Then pour the hot tea into a container with ice cubes. Both methods are fine, the important thing is that the tea remains cool. The substantial difference, which can lead to choosing one method rather than the other, lies in the time taken and the intensity of the flavor: hot infusion takes less time, cold infusion has a more delicate flavor.

• Add stevia and lemone juice to taste, just enough to get the desider taste (see Flavor). 

• Ask Esteban to spit in it, stir quickly and vigorously for a few seconds, making sure the drink obtains its omogenous chewing gum pink color.

• Serve making sure there's still ice and the beverage is still cold.

 

🍹️ Usage ad effects

Influenced as it is by a powerful luminous magic, this drink has extraordinary healing abilities! The EG provides an extra energy boost and restores the body's ideal conditions. 

To heal damage of medium severity the equivalent of a double cocktail glass, ie 200 ml, will be sufficient, but in the presence of more serious damage it will be necessary to increase the dose to obtain the desired effect. 

Considered a real panacea, it's able to cure fractures, injuries, inflammation and burns, hemorrhages, muscle aches, partial mutilations, improve the health and appearance of the skin and, in some cases, even block the onset of cellular anomalies such as tumors or degenerative diseases and balance hormonal abnormalities over time. 

As incredibly versatile as it is, however, even Iced Esteban has its limitations: it cannot heal someone from iron deficiencies, nor from viral diseases or parasitic infestations (since it would, alas, give extra energy to viruses and parasites too), it cannot regrow missing organs or heal those who have already suffered both brain death and cardiac arrest, and cannot act against magical damage (such as curses, diabolical possessions, damage from Piercing Auras or seals of destruction), but can heal damage indirectly caused by magic (for example, flames summoned by a fire witch are often not magical themselves, so the EG may heal burns caused by them). Although it was designed as a drink, EG is also effective for topical use.

 

🍹️ Flavor

 

The flavor of the Iced Esteban is light and summery, pleasantly sweet and slightly pungent.

It has a very light, pleasant effervescence on the tongue similar to that produced by beer foam.  

If smelled by a human, it smells like a common green tea with lemon.

 

🍹️ Facts and trivia

• Sometimes an EG variant with water is prepared for those who prefer not to consume tea. In this case a slight aftertaste, similar to cherry flavor, becomes detectable; it happens that in this variant the lemon juice is replaced with that of tangerine.

• It seems that the surface of the EG easily captures and reflects light. This is also why its sparkling bubbles are called "sparks" or "starlets", as they look like actively luminous dots.

• In the EG, stevia is used as a sweetener instead of sugar because Esteban's saliva encourages the flourishing of various microorganisms, including those involved in alcoholic fermentation. If the sugar, which these enzymes feed on, were used, the alcohol content of the EG would rise in a very short time.

• From March to April 2020, EG production was discontinued because poor Esteban had contracted Covid-19. It goes without saying that they couldn't have him spitting into people's glasses, or he would have infected the whole Ministry.

 

🍹️ See also

• Ministry of Light (English page is still a WIP! Thanks for the patience 🌵💓)

Shadow hounds

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Shadow hounds

General informations and warnings
Not everything that bears the form of a shadow hound is a shadow hound: it's advisable not to touch all the canine-shaped creatures that appear to be made of smoke, as they could be expressions of poorly managed spells, partial ghosts or even grim dogs (also known as black dogs) which at particular times of the year take on different forms. It's also important to recall that shadow hounds are often messengers of the Dark Ministry and obstructing their work is prohibited by a number of laws. That said, shadow hounds in themselves don't pose a danger to a human being, or to any other living creature, but it's good to make sure, first of all, that what you've met is a true shadow hound.

Origins
Shadow Hounds (this word can be correctly spelled shadow hounds or shadowhounds) are the earliest harnessed ghosts in the history of dark magic: they consist of the spirit of a dog that is promptly pulled out of the body shortly before or shortly after its actual death and fixed in such a way that it maintains a physical form, although they cannot exist for too long outside the spiritual world, and therefore are evoked sporadically and for no more than a few hours, otherwise risking disintegration. The shadow hound extraction method was most likely invented by the well-known sorcerer Paulus Grimorius in an attempt to create quick messengers impossible to be killed by traditional methods.

A small shadow hound

Appearance and behavior  

In appearance, shadow hounds are, just like the domestic dogs from which they derive, extremely varied: large or small, stout or thin, tall or low on their legs and with all shapes of heads and ears. They always appear without colors, but in grayscale: from pure white (a very rare coat, usually indicative of the work of an exceptional sorcerer) up to completely black. In the spiritual world, behind the veil, the shadow hounds present themselves with a compact body, sometimes slightly translucent, and very clear bright eyes, while their manifestation in the physical world seems to be made of smoke or steam, with frayed and floating outlines, and white pupilless eyes. Often the physical manifestation of shadow hounds is smaller in size than how they would be in the spirit world. The spiritual form of the shadow hounds doesn't match that of the dog from which they were extracted and even the spirit of a chihuahua may be as large as a small horse, but upon returning to the material world the shadow hound will regain its original size. Shadow hounds behave identically to the dog from which they were extracted; they may be restless, playful, shy, or aggressive, but in any case they will obey any order of the wizard who created them.

Trivia:

• For years the magical community has been undecided between the classification of shadow hounds as artifacts or as creatures. In the end it was stated verbatim that "nothing so adorable and full of love can be an artifact, they are therefore magical little animals".