Dragons

Dragons (ドラゴン, Doragon), are a living race of creatures in Tales of RWBY series. They are key creatures to the story.

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 * —About Dragons.

Anatomy and Design
Dragons are creatures with reptilian appearance, thus manifesting claws, scale skin, often wings, sharp teeth and long or thick tails. Many creatures fall into the dragon category even if not directly resembling one. This accounts for many regular lizard creatures without wings, general winged-lizards and also some humanoid beings with draconic abilities or limbs. Dragons are four-legged, varying between standing or crawling positions, size, whether they can use spiritual or magic artes, and affinity. Dragons like any other members of any race, can have a good, bad or neutral alignment, as seen with all races—an example being Symonne, a seraphim, creatures of which are almost always aligned with goodness and grace for protecting people, especially the Lord of the Lands.

Drakes and dragons alike appear as four-legged, winged lizards able to use magic artes.

Description
When a spiritual lifeform such as a malak is exposed to malevolence due to lacking a pure vessel, they turn into a Drakes (ドラゴンパピー, doragonpapii; meaning "dragon puppy"), which, if exposed constantly to malevolence, may evolve into a fully-fledged dragon. In the distant past, Drakes were invisible to humans lacking enough resonance, manifesting for them as a raging tornado for example, but a dragon is visible to anyone regardless of their spiritual aptitude. A dragon's sighting is considered to be an ill omen. The Silver Flame is unable to purify dragons, requiring them to be killed to stop their rampage. Where malevolence is instead absorbed by the Shepherd for purification, no Shepherd is able to purify a dragon. This rule holds true until Sorey, who proves that there simply was no Shepherd capable of purifying a dragon, and he proceeds to do so with the help of his Squires, Rose and Alisha Diphda, though the effort almost kills them.

According to the malak Zui Fuu, who resides in The Heavenly Steppes, the existence of dragons is the result of a curse that was imposed upon humans and malakhim, spirits who left the heavenly realm to live side by side with humans, by the malakhim who remained in the heavenly realm to ensure that coexistence would never happen.

Etymology
A dragon is a legendary creature, typically scaled or fire-spewing and with serpentine, reptilian or avian traits, that features in the myths of many cultures around world. The two most well-known cultural traditions of dragon are: The two traditions may have evolved separately, but have influenced each other to a certain extent, particularly with the cross-cultural contact of recent centuries. The English word dragon and Latin word draco derives from Greek δράκων (drákōn), "dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake".
 * The European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Balkans and Western Asian mythologies. Most are depicted as reptilian creatures with animal-level intelligence, and are uniquely six-limbed (four legs and a separate set of wings).
 * The Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan (namely the Japanese dragon), Korea and other East Asian and South Asian countries. Most are depicted as serpentine creatures with above-average intelligence, and are quadrupeds (four legs and wingless).