Most seawing peasants/low ranking pod members who go on land use wet plants, mud, and/or their cured woven seaweed clothing to stay moist (since sturdier cloth is a land product and thus very expensive, and also largely unnecessary in their mostly aquatic lifestyles.) You can tell the social status of a landwalker by the quality of their landsuit. Covering the gills is an absolute necessity, even if the gill vents are closed there is still a risk of them drying out thanks to them breathing air (which can get under the vent flap if there’s no water to seal it). If the gills dry out theyll lose function because of damage to the thick network of blood vessels there. They can get away with not covering some body parts if they’re only going to be out of water for a little bit, but if their thin scaled skin (kind of similar to shark skin) dries out, the skin will tear as it shrinks (especially true of the wings and their fins). Most also cover their sensitive eyes from direct sunlight.
horrid lore drop about their briefly mentioned magic system below (tldr it’s soft)
Magic is the reason why the dragons can be considered species in the same genus even though they have drastically different traits (such as the aforementioned gills, skywing/icewing feathers, and rainwings being omnivorous rather than carnivorous). Basically they’re in a sort of magic-genetic modification uplift situation.
So it’s kind of like they’re all in the genus canis, but something artificially mixed a bunch of stuff in and let them loose so now there’s smart dogs with both feathers and fur (something similar happened to all other life on the planet, so all other animals look a little strange too). (Maybe just like. Big magic natural disaster? Intentional large-scale ritual gone wrong? Who knows).
Environmental stressors over time solidified these changes and caused them to settle into a niche and become a natural part of the world. continued regional separation/reinforcement of the different traits is currently causing some dragons to become more genetically different, but hybridization is still possible due to their common magical affliction (it recognizes itself and will continue to play out the ‘mix these’ command automatically).
Their magic is something that is as much a part of the world as gravity, but it exists as fringe edges on the general bell curve of how reality is supposed to work. It’s the unaccounted-for effects of the way their world was structured, the glitch, the exception to every rule, every unknown. Like if the technicality that there is a non-zero probability for Anything actually meant that you can do the impossible if you hit reality at the right angle.
In the same way that dropping an object allows the force of gravity to make it move, saying a spell can make magic do something to reality that it wouldn’t normally allow. Speak it and it can be. In canon this would also equate to stuff like fire/ice breathing, mind reading, and animus stuff.
It’s something you’d have to learn how to do, and the ‘spells’ that cause magic reactions aren’t cut and dry teachable, guaranteed replicable things (yet. The Nightwings are working on it don’t worry).
It’s mostly coincidental and the results vary wildly, since again you’re trying to get a reaction out of a force that exists between the other, more tactile and real forces that can interfere (such as, going back to their genetic thing, the growing biological distance between the types of dragons makes it harder for magic to allow them to have kids. Or, even if you know a way to make fire appear out of thin air and burn on nothing, you can’t do it if it’s raining.)
Intent and belief it can actually happen is important and it appears you have to speak to it to get a response. When “asking” (aka saying a spell) they’re using a ‘magic’ language that they innately have the ability to know of and understand because they’re creatures made by magic, and thus magic will respond to the input.
The process of discovering how to do a spell in the first place, or to learn new spells, is the hard part, since you have to figure out the language exists/where to “see” it, learn how to understand it, and thennn you figure out how to use it. (kind of like how you don’t know all the buttons and moves for a character in the video game you just started playing, and also can’t see the controller you’re playing with, but can understand/ assume that jumping is a thing they can do because you can jump in real life, which equates to having the capacity for knowledge of the magic language but not understanding it or how to get it to do anything. If you later get a glimpse of the controller, discover the button for jumping, and figure out that if you jump in the right way you can clip through a wall because the developers didn’t think to prevent that, that would be the spell you’re jail breaking reality with.
Getting ‘glimpses’ or ‘hearing’ the language normally happens during dreaming, but some people can interpret it from the waking world too. No one is born with a higher capacity for magic than anyone else (that’s a lie propagated by a certain queendom) since everyone’s learning it from the same starting point, and it’s not a resource that can be built up for your own individual use (so it’s not like a “mana pool” you can run out of in some other fantasy stuff. ) You’re not accumulating more magic with your spells, you’re just learning spells that add an exponent to the same number in the equation and greatly increase the output, so to speak (so it’s not a more fuel=more fire situation, it’s a better tool=more fire situation?).
Side effects mostly include it just not working at all, you can try casting the same thing multiple times and nothing can happen. Another problem is that magic can continue to respond to the pattern/command in a spell in certain instances, repeating itself in some places even though there is no one new putting in that input (curses, places where fire just spawns in or the currents don’t behave normally, the spell that made the dragons the way they are, or enchanted objects) At some point reality might break entirely if you keep messing with it idk. The other risks are mostly mental, but literal backlash from spells not hitting right or just having unforeseen effects can also cause physical harm.
There’s also the cultural persecution etc but I’ve already yapped for way longer than I thought I was going to. So yeah.
The familiar voice, usually silky smooth, is sharp and full of authority. Every demon that hasn’t been turned into ash on the wind stops where they stand. They all look up, expectant, panting, confused, and Rumi follows their gaze to the dark-dressed figure crouched on the sagging limb of a riverside tree: Romance Saja, with one hand steadied against bark and the other hanging too casually over his knee. He tilts his chin up, earrings dancing beside his sharp cheekbones, smiling at the hunters standing tall in the middle of the confused crowd. Abby Saja leans on the base of the tree with his arms folded over his firm chest. The hanbok he wears his just as raggedy as the one Rumi had seen Jinu in, time and time again.
As Baby wipes his bloodied hand on the dead demon’s back and rises up, Mystery moves to join him, modern jewelry in conflict with the antiquity of his robes.
The Saja Boys. Covered in Gwi-Ma’s barbed purple patterns, eyes glowing fiercely like a Golden Honmoon, skin the color of a frozen death — they’re nothing like the bubblegum pop pastels that once taunted them so openly.
“You idiots,” Romance says, voice lilting. “Are you really trying to kill our only hope of survival?”
“I’m still at it, you guys! Another incredibly detailed picture is all lineart-ed!”
“This one features Pippi again and Zeela too!”
“This is the scene where I realize the scope of how many jerkish things I did in the past while chasing my impulses. I cry (again) and she comforts me.”
“I think this one’s from Brace For Impact Part 3. But also I don’t know for sure because I can’t think straight now. I was doin’ lineart for 5 hours. No breaks.”
