The Dragon Stone

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Venom and Fire
Nearly all the types of dragons have some connection with venom. This does not mean that every story has venom mentioned, but that most of the types discussed in the Dragon Biology section have some venemous individuals among them. Examples are dragons breathing or spitting venom and dragon's blood being posionous to the touch.

Many of the dragons are attributed with a normal carnivorous diet. This reduces the likelihood that the venom is being ingested, as plants are the best source of ingestable toxins. This means that the dragons must have some kind of venom producing mechanism/organ. The only exception to this are some medieval drawings of dragons eating scorpions and snakes. It was a popular view at the time that dragons ate venomous things in order to become more venomous. This does not necessarily mean these dragons stored the venom of such prey. After all, it would take a great number of snakes and scorpions to keep enough venom to produce clouds.

Some of those that do not breath venom breath fire. This is possibly an adaption of venom breathing. Igniting a flammable cloud of venom could be a useful skill for scaring predators, prey and rivals. As time went on, the venom would evolve to be more flammable, perhaps losing its toxicity. Some evidence towards this idea comes from accounts of oriental dragons breathing fire. It is said that dragons could either breath clouds of moisture or fire. Possibly the 'venom' cloud in both ignitied and unignitied forms.

Liquid and Fire
There is the possibility that the dangers of touching dragon's blood was not for the reasons given in the old sources. There could be some other form of danger which was simplified to 'poison'. The cloud of moisture might be something corrosive rather than poisonous.

There is an interesting example in nature, the bombardier beetle. This beetle has two chambers in its body, one with enzymes and one with a hydrogen peroxide mix. It combines these at the last minute, where they form a hot and corrosive liquid. A similar reaction could be used to decompose hydrogen peroxide into a fuel and then ignite it. It should be noted that this idea is not the same as the gas for flight idea (discussed in the flight section). Liquid hydrogen peroxide will not give an animal any lift... but it does make a good defense mechanism.

This theory can exist along-side the venom theory. A line of dragons breathing out hydrogen peroxide might still have started out with a standard venom, and slowly evolved towards being corrosive rather than poisonous.

Gas and Fire
There is an idea that dragons produce flammable gas to fly. This leads to the idea of dragons breathing out the gas and igniting it on purpose. Some sort of gas system for fire would be possible. The main issue the dragon would have is storing the gas when it is not in use. Possibly there could be a system that produces the gas on demand for fire-breathing. The main criticism of this idea would be that it does not seem to evolve in practice. Animals that need to spit out something use liquids. Snakes and the bombardier beetle are both examples of this.