Drake and Other Dragon Lore from TWoS:

I was pondering details of Drake's backstory the other day and decided to draw what he may have looked like while growing up.

In my world, Dragons age about the same rate as humans up to around their 30s. Then it slows down to about 1/4th the human rate. Some dragons are even slower and can live to be close to 1000 years old (Human years).

Newborn baby dragons hatch out of eggs and their scales are soft. So they are just as vulnerable as other humanoid babies.

As they age, their scales start to darken and harden. Depending on the subspecies, some dragons grow thick plates on certain areas of the body. Drake is from a smooth-scaled subspecies though, so he doesn't have hard plating.

This means that he still has to wear armor as an adventurer even though his scales make him take less damage than a typical human would.

Drake ends up getting his first set of scars after flying too close to a griffin nest.

Speaking of Flying, most subspecies of dragon learn to fly in their early tens (10-15 yrs old).
Its all a matter of growth proportion. If the wings aren't big/strong enough to get lift then the dragon has to keep growing before trying again.

I'll probably end up doing similar lore pages like this for all the featured creature species from the webcomic. So stay tuned for those~