Dragonborn in the Sea of Stars

The Dragonborn . . . did not have a place in the Sea of Stars.  When I started work on the setting, the Dragonborn were not even a published species and when first introduced in 3.x were entirely optional, so I just ignored them.  Fast forward to D&D 5E and I am running an open game at Tyche’s Games (drop by and join us sometime) and people wanted to play Dragonborn.  As they are in the Player’s Handbook, I did not feel right telling them no, so, suddenly there are Dragonborn in the Sea of Stars.  But where do they come from?  How do they fit into the Draconic Empire?  Well, I have been working on that and this is what I have so far:

The Dragonborn were created well before the Godswar and the Sundering by a god who occasionally appeared as a dragon in an attempt to lead the dragons onto a better, more honorable path.  He raised and nurtured them in his philosophy of might for right, honorable conduct and selfless behavior (this being a callback to the original D&D origin story of the Dragonborn as uplifted agents of Bahamut).  Their numbers were never great, especially given their tendency to go on quixotic quests from which they did not return, but they slowly grew.

Then the God War happened.  The Dragonborn patron was one of the first to fall under the talons of the Empress, she made it a point to display his failure of might to his creations, and even those not too shocked and demoralized by this were unable to mobilize quickly enough to have any serious effect on the course of the war.  After the war, the Dragonborn lands were divided among no fewer than three Draconic Houses, a few distant villages ending up under yet other houses than the main three, and their faith and worship as they knew it was proscribed.  A handful of brave, or foolish, Dragonborn tried to fight off their new draconic rulers . . . it did not end well.  Most just accepted the yoke and turned to the philosophy of Dominae to fill the void in their spiritual life.  Others sought new paths, such as the Way and some just sunk into apathy.

But a few, the one who were clever as well as faithful, took their old faith underground, now as a philosophy of honorable aid, personal duty and self discipline.  They act as a secret society within the Dragonborn, carefully vetting those they recruit and occasionally even bringing in those of other species, but relying on dire oaths to keep secrecy.

As far as game mechanics go, they are as presented in the SRD except for:

Age. Newly hatched dragonborn grow rapidly with an appetite to match.  They walk hours after hatching, attain the size and development of a ten-year-old human child by the age of three, and physically reach adulthood by around fourteen years but are not considered adult until they pass through some sort of coming of age ritual. They can live to be as old as one hundred and fifty years but violence often cuts this short.

Size. Dragonborn are often taller and heavier than human a human of equivalent height.  Their draconic ancestry is quite obvious.  (Size Medium.)