Kein Ironback (Dragon slayer)

1. "Ghar-nek" — "To me" (standard order, pronounced loudly and abruptly).
2. "Val-tor" — "Come closer to the hand" (for landing on the ground next to the owner).
3. "Mir-kaz" — "Come here, now" (demanding if the dragon hesitates).
4. "Sil-var" — "Fly up to me in the air" (for synchronized flight nearby).
5. "Tan-roh" — "Crouch at my feet" (the order to lie down so that the rider gets on his back).
6. "Zarsis" — "Approach quietly, without noise" (for stealthy approach).
7. "Khor-vel" — "Come here, my faithful one"* (an affectionate version, with a soft hiss — used only with a well-known dragon to calm and summon).
8. "Gror-tan-vis" — "Bow your head before me" (a demand for submission).
9. "Shir-dor-magh" — "I am your lord, do not resist" (order for the obstinate dragon).
10. "Fir-gal-tor-nes" — "Your blood belongs to my family" (ritual phrase for ancient houses).
11. "Gal-roh-nar" — "Look at me, I am your master" (a terrible reminder of who is in charge).
12. "Ul-for-zian" — "You were born to serve my flame" (the highest degree of submission, for old dragons).

Dragons can't speak the language, but they understand it.

1. "Khor-val" (guttural exhalation) — "Fly"
2. "Shis-magh" (hissing, with emphasis on the end) — "Stop"
3. "Mor-zhal" (low growl) — "Attack" (burn the enemy).
4. "Vir-ness" (prolonged hissing) — "Spin around"
5. "Gror—tag" (abrupt, like a cough) - "Sit down" (land on the ground).
6. "Khis-zor" — "Hit the wings" (the goal is to damage the flying membranes of the enemy).
7. "Tar-groom" — "Breathe into the ground"
8. "Fir-nak" — "Dodging to the left" (a sharp jerk to the side).
9. "Shir-dol" — "Dodge to the right".
10. "Vor-tis" — "Dive" (a rapid fall to the target).
11. "Zal-khen" — "Keep the formation" (order the dragon to fly next to another).
12. "Nir-val" — "Rise higher" (gain altitude, go into the clouds).
13. "Mar-zel" — "Descend to the water" (go down to the river or the sea).
14. "Gro-van" — "Hide" (freeze in the air, almost do not moving his wings).
15. "Power-tra" — "Spin around" (fly around the target in a spiral, knocking down the sight).
16. "Ah-nar" — "Call the others" (a loud roar that attracts a flock).
17. "Ris-kha" — "Disperse" (the order to split up and attack from different sides).
18. "Tol-mir" — "Be careful, your own" (warn not to attack an ally).
19. "Ur-gash" — "Save yourself" (a sharp retreat, withdrawal from battle).
20. "Khor-mis" — "Calm down, be quiet" (( in a long, low voice, with a soft hiss at the end. The dragon stops growling, lowers his head, and slows his breathing A special note for the Khor-mis team: The rider should place his hand on the dragon's neck and pronounce it on the exhale, almost in a whisper. If the dragon is very excited, the command is repeated twice with a pause of several heartbeats. Dragons raised in captivity react faster to this command than wild ones.)
21. "Dol-mir" — "Look at me" (to attract the attention of another dragon to coordinate the attack).
22. "Fir-zel" — "Do not touch your own" (command the young dragon not to attack the allies).

Craigmore is a mountain stronghold with sharp peaks, deep karst caves and narrow canyons. The capital is a Solid Rock hewn inside the rock, and the Stonebeck house rules the scattered valleys, where each lord thinks of himself as a true king. Silver, lead, and saltpeter are the main riches, and a shaky world holds control over the powder workshops. The peasants here are serf miners, and the gunsmiths live in caves. They are not afraid of dragons in the mountains — the narrow gorges deprive them of maneuver, but one of the king's relatives secretly hatches an egg in an abandoned tunnel, causing a split.

Havenport is a coastal kingdom with rugged fjords, rocky headlands, and the best harbor on the entire continent. The House of Tidemark rules nominally, but the power is shared by merchant councils, and the king is chosen from four branches of the family, each of which owns its own fleet. Salt, fish, and shipbuilding feed the people, but sailors often become debtors, and shipbuilders are constantly outbid by warring relatives. Havenport relies on naval arrows and incendiary mixtures — they dream of capturing a live dragon to use it as a battering ram or lighthouse.

Solaren is a southern dry land where steppes give way to salt marshes and rocky plateaus. The white city of Ossiri stands on a high limestone platform, defending itself from raids, and the house of El-Sarr is divided between five steppe marshals, each of whom is the king's cousin. The throne here passes not by seniority, but by the strength of the clan, so murders and poisoning are commonplace. Cattle breeders and potters pay tribute to all the marshals at once, completely ruining themselves. Solaren borders the wastelands, where wild dragons come from — they were poisoned with salt and poisons, but now the king longs to get the egg to become the ruler of the steppes.

Five kingdoms are located in harsh lands where the sky rarely pleases with warmth, and people live in an eternal struggle for a piece of bread and a drop of power. Each of them is a separate world with its own laws, fears and hopes, but they all have one thing in common: dragons, which have been exterminated for centuries as dangerous creatures, have now become the main threat and at the same time a cherished dream.

Einfors is a northern kingdom of endless plains, dense coniferous forests and thousands of cold lakes. The royal house of Fjorl has ruled here for two centuries, but thirty living contenders for the throne are constantly plotting. Winter dragon hunting was a tradition here, but now the king has ordered the animals to be caught alive — however, no one knows how to tame them. The peasants are suffocating in debt bondage to the forest barons, and the artisans who extract resin and wood are chained to the estates. Einfors builds heavy crossbows on wheeled carriages, but dense thickets prevent their use.

Tornmark is a hilly foothills mixed with oak and beech forests, cut by fast rivers. Here in the city of Bridge on Thorn, it is not so much the kings of the house of Greywood who rule, as three powerful guilds — blacksmiths, masons and ferrymen. The royal power is formal, the real power is in copper, tin and bronze, which are supplied to neighboring markets. The artisans here are oppressed to the extreme, but they were the first to start forging giant bolts and cable-throwers. Thornmark doesn't believe in taming—he wants to make dragons useless by creating fire-extinguishing projectiles.

• Thorgnir is Herlif's alchemist friend.He considers dragons to be an alien abomination. He does not attack head-on, but uses artifacts extracted from dead dragons (bones, blood) to cast curses on the living, provoking them to madness or betrayal of their master.

• Sigurd. A professional assassin from the northern lands, where dragons are hated as creatures of winter. He's not a knight, but a ranger using a root ointment that masks a person's scent. His goal is not to fight the dragon, but to kill the rider during landing.

• Ottor. A mute or ugly servant who has an empathic connection with dragons (feels their pain and anger). The lords use it as a "barometer" — if the whisperer starts bleeding from his nose, it means that the dragon is furious. He's the only one who understands the true nature of the beast, but he can't say it out loud.

• Ragnar. A member of the order who was exiled for heresy. He knows everything about dragons: where they sleep, what they suffer from, and how to prolong their lives. He despises magic and tries to find a scientific explanation for their nature.He lives in the town by the castle.

Dragons are intelligent creatures that are rarely seen by humans, they are territorial and very good parents, especially mothers, they guard the nests before the little dragons hatch from the eggs and hide somewhere in the forests. Dragons love warm places despite the stereotypes about their life in caves. Dragons can be tamed, they can be trained especially well if they are born, and they can also have very strong bonds with their rider, but still they cannot be tamed to the end. They will always be free-spirited and characteristic animals. Each individual has its own personality and special appearance. They should always have their own house. which they always fiercely defend, for example, if they cannot find their shelter in childhood, they can settle in a closet, drawer or barrel, and you can't unhook them from there, and they won't accept a new home because, as already mentioned, they are territorial. Dragons grow all their lives. No one can say for sure if they are immortal because a dragon can live a hundred years is a lot, they usually don't live to see this, they are killed before that, but there are records of a two-hundred-year-old dragon who was one hundred and ninety meters tall and they are born in crumbs, the eggs of dragons are small and they become sexually mature it is unknown when it is possible when all the fluff falls off or when they first take off, dragons breed very rarely and form strong pairs sometimes even for life. Dragons have a cloaca and outwardly, from afar, females do not differ from males in any way, neither in size nor color, just as the female can be large and bright, so can the male. Dragons don't have ears like mammals, instead they just have holes like birds and lizards.

Kein Ironback is a tall man with a beard and long blond hair. He used to kill dragons. He is a confidant of the king. As his relative, he is smart and gloomy. Life forces him to do this because there are enemies around who can always kill him, even his relatives. Therefore, he is always wary and does not let people get close. It is logical that he is quite rich. He has his own but he rarely goes there because the land there is not fertile and as he thought it was useless, he was angry at this, not understanding why he got such a useless land where there is only one village with farms and this despite the fact that his land is close to the capital, probably because most of the land is mountains. He lives in the kingdom of Einfors. He is 17 years old.