The historical process by which the mixed drake races crossed the Drake Sea to populate the continent of Lacon. The migration occurred as a single expedition in the pre-Cataclysm era, characterized by catastrophic mortality and the establishment of a founder population that expanded over subsequent millennia.
Sky Mother's Sojourn
12000BC
The migration traces its origin to the Sky Mother, a Drake-phase dragon who crossed the Drake Sea and lived among the kor and sord populations of the Wild Desert of Arial for approximately 300 to 400 years. During this period she interbred with local populations, producing the first generation of mixed drakes.
Before departing the Wild Desert to return to Lacon, the Sky Mother addressed her descendants, describing the land of her birth and telling them that Lacon was their true home. This promise became the foundational motivation for the eventual crossing.
Desert Flourishing
12000BC - 5000BC
Following the Sky Mother's departure, the mixed drake populations established themselves in the deep Wild Desert. Over seven millennia, the three primary phenotypes (Drakash, Dragar, Drakai) stabilized through the race chromosome system.
The Wild Desert presented a severe biological limitation. Extreme temperature fluctuations, particularly freezing desert nights, induced dangerous torpor in the cold-blooded drake population. This thermal hardship drove a segment of the population to seek the geothermal stability of Lacon.
Great Crossing
5000BC
The crossing was undertaken by a small expeditionary group. Historical and archaeological consensus estimates the initial vanguard at approximately 400 to 600 individuals across all three phenotypes.
Island-Hopping Route
The expedition utilized the Ashflame Archipelago within the Drake Sea. The crossing relied on Stone Age watercraft and the cooperative biological advantages of the three phenotypes:
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Drakash swimmers crossed narrow straits first, dragging vines or woven kelp ropes to secure lines for the rafts.
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Dragar shipwrights hollowed logs for dugout canoes and bundled coastal reeds to construct shallow-draft rafts.
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Drakai navigators used Eidos node thermal perception to map warm, shallow currents, avoiding cold deep-water trenches.
Mortality
Cold-water exposure, thermal drops during night storms, and raft disintegration decimated the expedition. The cold-blooded physiology of the migrants meant that those who fell into the water during the night rapidly succumbed to torpor.
Of the estimated 500 individuals who launched the expedition, fewer than 40 survived to reach the western shores of Lacon. The mortality rate exceeded 90 percent.
Saris's Intervention
5000BC
Saris had never encountered mixed drakes prior to this event. He created the dragons and resided on Lacon in his true draconic form. The mixed drakes were the first living organisms he observed carrying his base template (D chromosome) combined with Ark's modifications (Sh, G, I chromosomes) in a single body.
The mixed drakes were an emergent phenomenon, produced by natural reproduction between the Sky Mother and kor populations. No Flesh Engineer designed them. For Saris, they represented a unique experimental condition: his base template combined with Ark's derivatives under extreme genetic bottleneck.
Motivation
Saris's obsessive idea is to catalogue all variations that have emerged from the base template. The Forty represented a data point he had never observed. If they died from inbreeding depression within a few generations, the experiment would end before producing results.
Mechanism
During the first clutch cycles, Saris visited the nesting sites in a disguised form. His Flesh Engineer abilities allowed him to read and edit DNA at the cellular level. He scanned each zygote, identified the deleterious recessive alleles carried on the kor chromosomes, and edited them out. He left the D-chromosome untouched.
He performed this intervention for the first generation, possibly the second, then stopped. The founders' offspring were genetically clean.
Aftermath
After the intervention, Saris did not touch the mixed drakes again. He observed and recorded their population growth, settlement patterns, and subsequent genetic developments over the following millennia without further intervention.
Genetic Bottleneck Resolution
The survival of fewer than 40 individuals represents a severe genetic bottleneck. Saris's intervention removed the primary cause of inbreeding depression (deleterious recessive alleles on the kor chromosomes). Several mechanisms sustained the population afterward:
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D-chromosome dominance: The D chromosome masks new recessive mutations on the kor chromosome in heterozygous state.
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Population growth: Within 10 to 15 generations the population was large enough that most matings occurred between genetically distant individuals.
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Drake Phase Unions: Every 300 to 500 years, a Drake-phase dragon entering a settlement introduces a pure D-chromosome into the gene pool, purging accumulated kor mutations.
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Lacon's environment: Geothermal warmth eliminated the cold-stress that killed most of the crossing vanguard, allowing rapid population growth.
Hearth Kinship
Close-kin mating was biologically necessary for the first three to five generations to maintain sufficient D-chromosome concentration. After the population grew beyond a few hundred individuals, outbreeding became safe. The elite lineages continued the practice as cultural imitation of dragons.
Dragons are DD. Mating between any two dragons produces DD offspring regardless of relatedness, because the paired D-chromosomes create a perfect genetic override. The practice carries no genetic cost for DD organisms. Mixed drakes (D+kor) who imitate this behavior accumulate minor kor mutations over generations.
Lineage Quirks
Over 4,500 years of closed breeding in elite lineages, minor mutations drift toward homozygosity and express as lineage-specific traits. Each noble lineage carries one specific flaw: fragile bones, poor night vision, cardiac irregularity, reduced fertility. Common mixed drakes who outbreed more freely do not carry these traits and are biologically healthier.
Founder Population Expansion
5000BC - 0AC
The surviving remnant established the first permanent drake settlements near the geothermal vents of western Lacon. Over the subsequent 5,000 years the founder group expanded rapidly in the thermally stable environment. By the time of the Virian Cataclysm (0 AC), the population had grown to roughly 300,000, establishing the Dragar forge-cities, the Drakai archive-temples, and the Laconian Protectorates.
The Deserian Remnant
The vast majority of the mixed drake population in the Wild Desert did not participate in the Great Crossing. The catastrophic loss rate of the vanguard served as a deterrent to further expeditions. The drakes who remained stabilized as the ancestors of the modern Deseria state.