The different Wings of Fire tribes have been talked about here on this site before, but we’ve never covered the other type of dragon: hybrids. Let’s dive in!
While very few hybrid dragons actually appear in the Wings of Fire series, they have become very popular and prevalent among the fan community. I’m not exactly sure why; perhaps it’s more fun to create a character with new or amalgamated features as opposed to making them the same as every other dragon in their tribe. I don’t know. That’s just speculation.
Hybrids, of course, come about when a dragon’s parents come from two different tribes. Theoretically, a “tribrid” would be the offspring of a hybrid and a purebred parent, but we have yet to meet one in the canonical books. One would think that the appearance of a hybrid is simply the combination of the characteristics of the tribes of its parents, but that is not always the case. There appear to be a few types of hybrid that show up throughout the series. In the rest of this article, we will look at the different varieties of hybrids and what differentiates them from each other.
I’m going to be giving each hybrid type a label based on its characteristics, but these names aren’t canonical; I’m just using them to identify different types of hybrids. The first one we’re going to look at today, I’m dubbing a “typical hybrid.” These hybrids are about what you’d expect when you hear the term “hybrid.” They are about half-and-half when it comes to their tribal features. For example, a RainWing-NightWing “typical” hybrid might have black scales on their body and wings, but their underbelly can change color. While they can’t breathe fire, they can spit venom and possess strong night vision, like a NightWing. Two canonical examples of typical hybrids would be Typhoon and Whiteout.
I spent a long time trying to find a good name for this category, and I ended up with “Partial Hybrids.” My initial intent was for the name to mean something along the lines of “one-sided” or something. The name is not perfect and is a little misleading. This type of hybrid is one that mostly takes the characteristics of one tribe and might even be indistinguishable from a purebred dragon. A good example of this type would be Darkstalker, who was almost wholly a NightWing, possessing mind reading, visions of the future, and fire breath. The only indication that he was part IceWing was a line of white scales under his wings.
Neutral hybrids are the unlucky few that, instead of getting abilities from both parents’ tribes, get nothing from either. Those of the other neutralize the characteristics of one tribe, hence the name, neutral hybrids. Of course, these dragons do have some characteristics of their parents, things like eye or scale color, but most special powers don’t appear. The only good example of a neutral hybrid is Sunny, who doesn’t have a SandWing tail barb nor any NightWing abilities, despite her parents being from those tribes.