Post by . s p o r e ♪ on Jul 1, 2011 2:43:17 GMT -5
A dragon's birth rank is determined shortly after its conception, while the eggs are still within their mother's womb. In a normal queen, most females will be green and most males will be blue. About one percent of females will be delivered a hormone which stimulates their development into a queen. Ten percent of males receive this same hormone, which results in bronze dragons. An additional thirty percent of males receive what is referred to as a browning hormone, which causes their development into brown dragons. Three irregular ranks of dragon result form mutations in the mother which cause her body to produce the wrong hormones or deliver them to the wrong dragons.
One mutation causes the browning hormone to be delivered to female embryos, resulting in red dragons. A separate mutation causes the metallic hormone to be altered, which results in silver and iron dragons being produced instead of golds and bronzes. Genetically, greens, reds, golds, and silvers are all identical, and the same can be said for blues, browns, bronzes, and irons. Both silver and gold queens can inherit either mutation, though it is more common for silver queens to inherit the altered metallic gene. However, a queen who produces an iron or silver will never produce a gold or bronze, and the opposite is true as well.
Two other known mutations result from a confluence of genes that is present in the mutated offspring, rather than the mother. This genotype appears in both male and female embryos, and usually results in a black dragon. Dragons with this mutation are not known to be affected by the browning hormone, but both mutations of the metallic hormone appear to result in the same metallic phenotype. In the case of an embryo with the black dragon genotype being exposed to a metallic hormone, the result is the development of a copper dragon. These are the rarest of the five mutation ranks, with female coppers being the rarest of all.
| clutching information | |||
| no mutations | clutches: gold, bronze, brown, blue, green | ||
| altered browning | clutches: gold, bronze, brown, red, blue, green | ||
| altered metallic | clutches: silver, iron, brown, blue, green | ||
| altered browning & metallic | clutches: silver, iron, brown, red, blue, green | ||
| 0-20% chance of any of the above being a dual-gender rank | |||
