An important species in the Fourth Wing Series are Dragons. They are sentient, sovereign beings who choose riders—they do not tolerate weakness or coercion and will kill unworthy candidates. Each cadet in the Rider’s Quadrant will need to bond with a dragon. Bonding creates a mind-to-mind link and grants the rider access to draconic power. Dragons are fewer than cadets, making competition—and sabotage—part of the ecosystem. After bonding, a rider may manifest a unique signet (personal magical ability) shaped by the dragon–rider pairing. Dragon power fuels battlefield dominance and helps sustain the kingdom’s wards, whose stability is a constant strategic concern.

Fourth Wing Characters

One of the biggest reasons Fourth Wing exploded is because the characters are just that good. They’re messy, layered, and completely unforgettable.
At the center, of course, is Violet Sorrengail — the fragile-looking, chronically ill heroine who gets shoved into the Riders Quadrant even though she was supposed to be a Scribe. Then there’s Xaden Riorson, the shadow-wielding rebel leader who is as dangerous as he is magnetic. Together, their dynamic has basically set all of BookTok on fire.
But Fourth Wing doesn’t just give us a swoony main couple and call it a day. We also get:
Loyal friends who keep Violet grounded (looking at you, Rhiannon).
Complicated relationships that test her loyalty (Dain, we’re side-eyeing you).
Professors, generals, and rivals who remind us that Basgiath War College is not Hogwarts — it’s brutal, political, and sometimes downright cruel.

• Loyal friends who keep Violet grounded (looking at you, Rhiannon).
  
  
• Complicated relationships that test her loyalty (Dain, we’re side-eyeing you).
  
  
• Professors, generals, and rivals who remind us that Basgiath War College is not Hogwarts — it’s brutal, political, and sometimes downright cruel.

And there are a lot of names to juggle. That’s where this guide comes in. We’ve pulled together every major character, their role at Basgiath, their dragon (if they have one), and their signet.

Fourth Wing Professors

The professors at Basgiath War College cover every aspect of a cadet’s training, from tactics to physical endurance and the study of dragons themselves.

The world of Fourth Wing

The Empyrean series is set in a war-torn continent where ancient magic and deadly creatures shape the balance of power. At the heart of the story is Navarre, a kingdom whose survival depends on dragons and the riders who bond with them. Its borders are protected by powerful wards, woven centuries ago, but those defenses are under constant threat from enemies like Poromiel, who fight with gryphon riders.
Amid this conflict stands Basgiath War College, the brutal training ground where cadets are pushed to bond with dragons or die trying. It’s here that the future of Navarre — and the fragile alliance between humans and dragons — is decided.

Navarre

The world of Fourth Wing centers on Navarre, a kingdom that depends on dragons for both strength and protection. Its borders are held by ancient wards, first woven during the Great War and powered by the Vale, the dragons’ sacred hatching ground.

Basgiath

Basgiath War College is Navarre’s state-run academy. Cadets are assigned to Rider, Scribe, Healer, or Infantry tracks.
Training blends field drills with classroom work (e.g., Battle Brief, strategy, survival, archives study). Rank, squad placements, and privileges come from performance rather than lineage. Basgiath is designed to certify competent officers and specialists for active borders.

• Purpose: train officers and specialists who can support and lead dragon-backed forces.
• Key spaces: parapet and training yards; lecture halls for Battle Brief and tactics; archives and infirmary.
• Culture: rules-heavy, merit-based, and publicly competitive; cooperation inside squads is expected.
• Outcomes: cadets advance by meeting benchmarks; failure to meet standards means reassignment, dismissal, or even death.

The Vale

The Vale is a bowl-shaped forested valley behind Basgiath War College and home to the dragons’ sacred hatching grounds. It provides a magical shield that protects Navarre. The valley’s entrance is at the narrowest part of the flight field by a waterfall. The process of Threshing occurs every year in a portion of the Vale.

Poromiel

Navarre’s main enemy is Poromiel, whose forces fight with gryphon riders — fast, disciplined opponents capable of challenging dragons in the skies.

The Barrens

The Barrens lie beyond Navarre’s wards. It’s a desolate, scarred wasteland where little life can survive. Once fertile, the land has been stripped bare over centuries of conflict, leaving behind cracked earth and ash-choked air.

Dragons in Fourth Wing

Dragons are at the very core of Fourth Wing. They are powerful, intelligent, and utterly independent — creatures who choose their riders, not the other way around. Bonding with a dragon unlocks a rider’s signet, but every cadet at Basgiath knows the risk: if a dragon doesn’t see you as worthy, you don’t walk away.

The dragon species in Fourth Wing is organized into dens, each tied to a distinct color and reputation:

• Black Den: immense, dominant, rare; raw power and presence (e.g., Tairn).
• Blue Den: fast, precise, battle-sharp (e.g., Sgaeyl).
• Green Den: cunning and tactical; favor strategic riders.
• Brown Den: steady, durable, built for endurance.
• Orange Den: bold, hot-tempered, aggressive flyers.
• Red Den: fierce, combustible energy; notorious for relentless offense.
• Irid (Iridescent) Dragons: Irids can shift the color of their scales to camouflage seamlessly with their surroundings. Unlike other dens, they are known as pacifists, refusing to take part in war.

Dragons also choose their tail type as they mature — from crushing clubtails to venomous scorpiontails.

Magic Sources: Dragons, Gryphons & Venin

In the world of Fourth Wing, magic is a natural force that saturates the land and every living being, but humans can only truly wield it by drawing power from one of three sources: dragons, gryphons, or the ground itself, known as the source. Most riders channel through bonded dragons or gryphons, but those who pull raw power straight from the earth become venin, sacrificing their humanity as the cost of that strength. Magic is always present in the background, humming through the world like faint heat waves, so subtle that most people never consciously feel it.

Once someone channels magic, it doesn’t appear as random sparkles or constant glows. It only becomes visible when the wielder shapes it into a specific form—like defensive grounding and shielding, a rider’s unique signet, or smaller, practical spells often called lesser magic. Skilled wielders can also store magic inside objects, turning them into batteries of contained power, or inscribe it with intent through tempered runes that are designed to perform a particular task. Together, these systems—channeling from dragons, gryphons, or the source, manifesting power as signets or shields, and binding magic into items—create a structured, rule-based magic system that feels dangerous, costly, and deeply tied to the world’s politics and survival.

Dragons

In the Empyrean world, dragons function as a major source of magic, supplying their bonded riders with the power necessary to wield both lesser magic and their eventual signet. Each dragon carries a reservoir of inner power, and once bonded, they channel this energy through their rider. This flow of magic enables practical applications of lesser magic, including opening doors without physical contact, moving with enhanced speed, manipulating mage lights, powering ink pens, and placing runes. These abilities exist only because the dragon supplies the magical energy required to perform them.

Signet

A dragon also determines when its rider is ready to manifest a signet, a unique ability shaped by the rider rather than the dragon. Signets arise from the specific chemistry between dragon and rider, meaning no two signets are identical. Their strength depends on the intensity of the bond and the power the dragon channels. According to canon, signets reflect the nature of the person wielding them, and dragons can differ in how their magic feels when it’s flowing through the rider. Although extremely rare, a second signet may manifest when a dragon bonds with someone directly descended from its previous rider, though this carries an equal risk of driving the rider mad.

Dragon Relic

Every bonded rider is marked with a dragon relic, a magical imprint created by the dragon itself. The relic appears on the rider’s skin, usually reflecting the dragon’s shape, and serves as a visible mark of the bond. The use of signets comes with significant limitations: riders must control the power they channel, because drawing too much at once can lead to burnout and death. In cases where a rider bonds with a juvenile or feathertail dragon, the consequences reverse—an overload threatens the dragon’s life instead of the rider’s.

Through their ability to channel inner power, create signets, enable lesser magic, and imprint relics, dragons form one of the core magical conduits in the Empyrean universe, shaping the capabilities, limits, and risks faced by every bonded rider.

Gryphons

Gryphons act as a source of magic by channeling power into their bonded fliers, enabling them to use lesser magic and receive specific magical abilities known as gifts. These gifts do not function as signets; fliers do not manifest signets at all. Instead, gryphons provide abilities that are typically mindwork-based, including various forms of mental influence or manipulation. Through their gryphons, fliers become adept at lesser magic while relying on the gifts supplied by the creature they are bonded to.

Gryphons are also capable of telepathic communication, which allows them to communicate mentally with their own flier, with other gryphons, and with dragons. These telepathic abilities are part of the magical channeling that occurs through the gryphon–flier bond and form a consistent element of gryphon-sourced magic across bonded pairs.

The Source & Venin

Magic can be channeled directly from the source, also referred to as the ground, allowing humans to wield power without forming a bond with a magical creature. Any human who draws magic this way becomes a Venin. Using the source carries a defined cost: each act of channeling consumes part of the individual’s soul. The more power a Venin pulls from the source, the more of their soul they lose, and this progression is visibly marked by their eyes turning increasingly red.

The full limits of Venin magic have not been defined, but several abilities are confirmed. Venin can create wyvern through the use of runes, establishing a method of producing magical creatures through direct manipulation of source-drawn power. They are also capable of controlling dragons to whom they are bonded, marking a significant distinction from other magic systems that rely on cooperative bonds rather than direct dominance. These traits make source-based magic fundamentally different from the channeling that occurs through dragons or gryphons, with consequences tied directly to the user’s soul.

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