The Chinese form of military logistics favored Middleweights, but a few of their local breeds easily reach Heavyweight category.
The Zhao-Lung, or Emerald Glass, are green with red markings and a bristling spine of tendrils that can grow out into a mane. They come from the North and have a small rivalry with the Southern Shao-Lungs in the military.
The Shao-Lung, or Scarlet Flower, are orange or red with multiple horns and yellow crests, which can grow out into mane. It has two rows of small teeth and two pairs of curving fangs.
The Tien-Lung, or Celestial, is smooth glossy black with opalescent blue dapples on the bottom edge of its wing. It is distinguished from its more common relative the Qin-Lung, or Imperial, by having webbing between the flexible horns on its head like a frill and thin tendrils around its mouth. The former enjoys a status similar to aristocracy, while the latter is held to high expectations as part of the literati.
The Emerald Glass' head shape I based on the extant Chinese Alligator, while the Scarlet Flower borrowed from the extinct Chinese Gharial (Hanyusuchus), which also (roughly) matches where both breeds originated from. Hanyusuchus is found in South China, while the Alligator is technically in the vague north from there, in East China.
The choice of coloring the back and snout tendrils of Emerald Glass white lies in giving them some to the dragon present in the Qing flag (its horns are also modeled from that). The Scarlet Flower gets to have the nose (like Gharials, a gender feature) and the little crest it has on the cheek. Cutting up the Qin dragon into little parts...
I tossed around how to do a Celestial's ruff because reading "webbing between flexible horns"- FLEXIBLE HORNS?- threw me off. Qian supposedly had ribbed horns. Is that technically jewelry? Is it not? Might revise. Maybe not.
The Celestial's frill is unlike the other Chinese breeds, resembling the fish-like frills of certain Japanese dragons...
