The Dragon's Body

Hide Internal Systems Skeleton Muscles The Tail Length
 * Dragon hide is smooth, soft to the touch, strong, and hairless. A healthy hide is glossy with no hint of gray. Sick hide also tends to be chalky to the touch.
 * The five standard colors of dragons are:
 * gold (pale yellow to dark antique gold)
 * bronze (golden-green sheen, though some can be more brown in coloring)
 * brown (tan to chocolate)
 * blue
 * green
 * Dragon Weyr has added two additional colors
 * silver (f)
 * crimson (m)
 * Female dragons (gold, silver and green) change color tone during their proddy (sexually aroused) period before mating. Just before, they may even seem to glow.
 * As dragons age, their hide changes color tone. Browns get green, while golds tend to bronze as they get older.
 * They can hold their breath for up to 10 minutes. When the dorsally-placed lungs are fully inflated, the dragon's chest can swell twice its normal size.
 * Dragons have two stomachs. One for digestion of food (when a weyrling they eat 7-8 times a day, then at one turn twice a sevenday), and one for the firestone to be made into fuel for fire.
 * Warm blooded, with a green ichor. This ichor, like human blood, is based on metal, copper, which makes the hide a greenish tint instead of human pink.
 * Their several hearts are place in comparible in their ribcage like ours.
 * There are 10 vertebra in the neck, and 56 in the back with an extremely strong endoskeleton.
 * This skeleton is made up of light, flexible plates, with a fused ribcage of one piece.
 * Their joints are ball and socket for strength, and less likelihood of dislocation, during landings and flights.
 * A line of ridges run along a dragon's spine from just behind the headknobs down to the shoulder muscles of the wings, where they grow less prominent. Then they continue down to the forked tail.
 * Dragons have extremely muscled back legs for power during take-off.
 * Muscles are shiny silver-grey.
 * The lower part of the dragons digestive system is in the tail. Dragons have forked tails, almost arrowhead in shape. Their sphincters are located towards the base of the tail, and excreta is stored up for several days here until they are able to go between and get rid of it. Weyrlings and infirm Dragons that cannot go between need to have their Rider muck out their couch or Weyr.
 * Dragon genitalia are concealed behind pouchlike flaps of hide under the junction of tail and body, and are only revealed during mating.
 * A dragonlength is the size of the most common dragons, the greens. There are so many that they number the sum of blue, brown and bronzes.
 * Reaching full growth at 18 months, the dragon can reach up to 45 meters at its largest (Gold Ramoth). The growth increment is shown in the following chart (in meters):