In my AU, the dragons are a particularly primitive society, mostly divided into clans and only now are starting to develop inklings of a state. as as such, they have no writing, since there was never the need for it, and when Princess Ember (Khagan Köz) needed to send a student to Twilight’s school, the chosen one, Smolder (Yakalevsiz) went there without even knowing how to read. Knowing she was horribly behind everyone else, even with Twilight making she was determined to learn how to read, and managed it with the help of her friends and Spike (Arslan Mazdadad Azamig), who she also taught how to fly once he molted.
Dragon clothing is made out of asbestos, by the way.
Since Dragons would be the cultural equivalent of all kinds of Turkic peoples, i tried to do some traditionaly steppe-ish clothing. but i couldn’t find any description of something uniquely 7th, 8th-century Turkic so i wound up going for a vaguely Mongol-like outfit because it was the only thing i could find a description for.
Four days to finish this. I decided to do something different with Spike’s face, and wound up borrowing a good part of the style from frist44 - he has by far the best older Spike design in the fandom.
Bagde Smolder’s wearing is Royal Leopold ’s one.