In order to explain the colourful riot that most hatchings tend to be, I've guessed that each dragon must have not one pair of colour-determining genes, but anywhere from two to six or more! Of course, most dragons aren't two to six colours, so these 'extra' pairs of genes must be hidden, or 'masked'.

But how does this work? If there are a number of pairs, how do you choose which is the pair that actually shows up on a dragon, and which pairs remain hidden? I haven't found an answer to this, yet, but for our purposes, we'll assume that the first pair of colour-determining genes is the pair that determines the dragon's colour. The rest will work as stated below.

When a dragon has offspring, you will be to choose a gene randomly between not just the first set, but out of all the dragon's pairs, including the masked pairs! This means that a dragonet can appear as any colour that either parent has stored away in it's mask genes. Sound confusing? I'll try to illustrate what's going on by using an example. Let's breed an Old-World green with two mask genes to an Old-World blue with two mask genes as well.

The Green looks like this:
Show Genes: Green (PEC01PEC03)
Mask Genes: 2
1) Blue (PEC02PEC04)
2) Green (PEC01PEC05)

The Blue looks like this:
Show Genes: Blue (PEC02PEC04)
Mask Genes: 2
1) Bronze (PEC04PEC05)
2) Green (PEC01PEC02)

Choosing one gene randomly from the Green, we might get Green (PEC01); choosing one gene randomly from the Blue, we might get Bronze (PEC04). So, combining those two together, we'll get a green dragonet (PEC01PEC04). Once the first pair of genes have been selected (and you could do this at random, or 'fudge' the selection by picking the ones that you want! No one says you have to play 100% by the rules, here!), you could repeat the process to create some Mask gene-pairs. It's all very simple once you get the hang of it, just a bit monotonous.

For the sake of experimentation, I've included a little generator below that will give you one gene each from the above two dragons. Remember that the lowest number (eg: PEC01 vs PEC04) is the more dominant of the pair, even if it shows up second!

Gender Modifiers

Ever notice how most greens in the dragon-adopting world are female, or how most browns are male? And how while most greens are female, and most browns are male, some aren't? This can be explained by a different sort of gene, one known as the Gender Modifier. Unlike the genes we've been introduced to before, this modifier is very simple. It's either 'on', or 'off'. When the Gender Modifier gene is 'on', a dragon's gender is determined by its colour. Eg, a Green with an active Gender Modifier will be a female, while a Green with an inactive Gender Modifier might be either female or male. The Gender Modifier will work across most breeds of dragons; from Old-World to Alskyrian to Hathian to Danachian. Some colours will be unaffected by an active Gender Modifier (Red Hathians, for example!), and some entire breeds won't be effected by an active Gender Modifier. Star City mutts, for one, and Avengaean dragons, for another; their genders don't seem to be affected by their colours.

Let's see what this might look like on an Old-World dragon, another trusty green, again!

Green Dragon
Original Gender: Male (XY) (when determining gender, a female dragon will always have an 'XX' pair, while a male willl always have an 'XY' pair!)
Gender Modifier: On (Note that there is no little abbreviation, here. the Gender Modifier is only ever 'on' or 'off'.)
Gender: Female (XX)

This isn't to say that our green dragonet had a sex-change once out of the shell! Rather, the active Gender Modifier overrides the original gender that the dragonet would have been--male--and ensures that when the dragonet is born, she will most definitely be a 'she'! An inactive Gender Modifier would produce something like this:

Green Dragon
Original Gender: Male (XY)
Gender Modifier: Off
Gender: Male (XY)

So, this little green would hatch a male, regardless of what colour his hide is! Pretty spiffy, eh? As to deciding whether the Gender Modifier is on or off in the first place, look to the parents. If both have active Gender Modifiers, then all of the dragonets ought to have active Gender Modifiers! If one parent has an active Gender Modifier, and the other one has an inactive one, then you might choose at random whether the offspring's Gender Modifier is on or off.

Updates

While this page is far from finished, I'll have to shoo you along to the tutorial on creating a random dragon, found at the link below. On this page, I hope to add explainations for traits; things like Hathian horns, numbers of wing-tines, tail-adornments, etc. I haven't come up with a sturdy hypothesis on how these are passed along, however, so for now they'll have to be passed on the old-fashioned way. (That is, "This trait looks cool! Let's give the dragonet that!" ^_~) Please check back soon, as I hope to have some explainations up.