Aevis

Aevis is a territory in the center of the continent. During the Age of Kingdoms, it was inhabited by a large tribe of mountain dragons, distinctive for their strict culture and harsh testing system for new hatchlings.

Under this system, newborn dragons were subjected to three tests. As mountain dragon eggs heat up so intensely just before hatching that anything near them often bursts into flame, they are intentionally laid in empty caverns or shallow riverbeds, some distance from any of the tribal settlements. Each dragon hatches fully alone, and must make their way back to the rest of their tribe. Thanks to a strong inborn sense of navigation, most hatchlings succeed in this initial trial, which they refer to as the First Test; the ones that do not are not missed.

The Second Test occurs the following morning after their hatching. Each newborn dragon is carried away from the tribe by an elder and is placed at the bottom of a large canyon that winds through the mountain territory. Once again relying on their resilience, determination, and internal navigation, the hatchlings must climb their way out from the canyon floor and back up to the surface level, to be reunited with the elder and returned home to camp. Those that are unable to escape the sharp cliff walls are left to starve.

The Third and Final Test is a larger ceremony that occurs once per season, so hatchlings are a variety of ages. The season's new clutch of hatchlings is brought to a small peninsula on the eastern side of Aevis, on a steep cliff face high above Lake Onyx. One at a time, the young dragons are led to the cliff's edge, where they either jump of their own accord, or are pushed. This is the most difficult Test that the tribe enforces; approximately one third of the hatchlings are successfully able to take flight for the first time and return to the group atop the cliff face to be fully and finally welcomed as a member of the tribe, and given their name and their assigned adopted parent. The remainder of hatchlings either die upon impact of the water's surface or drown in the murky depths, their bones littering the sandy lake bottom. Those rare few that do survive the fall are not permitted to join the tribe; they are called the Flightless, and are cast out and treated as the bitterest of enemies.

Unknown to the majority of dragons in Aevis, the surviving Flightless created their own civilization, sheltered away on Onyx Island.