When the first emissaries from the land of Daqin arrived in the lands of the King-Emperor centuries ago, they noted that their land had similar creatures to the dragons they encountered. These Tianlong are regarded by the Collegium as being closely related to dragons, possibly sharing a recent common ancestor.

Like dragons, Tianlong are intensely magical beings with the ability to cause terrible damage with their claws and breath. Unlike dragons, they either cannot or do not wish to alter their shape at will, and they also generally have vestigial wings at best, having adapted to rely solely on magical levitation for their flight.

So far as is known, Tianlong have never ventured from their homeland, though a number of their whelps have been given as court gifts and a Tianlong known as Dakkie was once present in the King-Emperor’s menagerie for a period of about ten years before being slain for an organ which would supposedly have cured the King-Emperor’s declining heath—the consumption of which, incidentally, caused him to be struck stone dead.

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