Snow Angel

Snow Angels (also known as Christmas '09 dragons) were released during Christmas 2009, from December 25th to the 27th. Similar to the previous Christmas dragons, there was a limit of two dragons per scroll. They are classified as rare and they were the first Christmas dragons to be released as a female-exclusive species, as the two previous Christmas dragons (Holly and Yulebuck) were both a male-exclusive species. Since the change, these dragons can breed with other Holiday Dragons during Holiday breeding seasons, producing eggs of their own kind or of their mate's kind.

This dragon broke many DC 'boundaries' and held many surprises. Apart from being the first female-exclusive Christmas Dragon, it is the second feather winged dragon to be released on DC (after the White Dragon). It was also kept as a secret even from the in-cave spriters. Over the years the dragon has become numerous and its eggs often fill the Abandoned Page for a short time during the holiday.

A unique trait of the Snow Angel, and a feature not originally intended is the existance of three possible adult sprites with three different wing patterns. The spriters worked on the Snow Angel sprite during the three weeks before Christmas and during its development JaziandCo suggested three kind of wing patterns (referred by the spriters as "Full patterned/Full colored/Tri-colored", "White tipped" and "Full gold"). Not able to come to a decision, they asked TJ09 which pattern he liked the best. Eventually one of the quartet had the idea to release all three types. The scrolls were coded to only have one type among the three possible choices, so it was (and still is) not possible to obtain more than one adult sprite colouration on the same scroll. Due to several users figuring out how sprites were assigned to scrolls, TJ removed the variations on New Year's Eve. They were eventually restored, but some users ended up with a variation different from the one they got before and, while some users got the variation they wanted, some got the one they liked the least. This caused a very large amount of drama on the Dragon Cave Forums.


 * The full story of this drama can now be viewed in the Discussion area of this page.

The Snow Angel also has another particularity: it was the first Holiday Dragon to have a Spriter's Alt Version, but this introduction wasn't intentional. This dragon, like every other dragon at that time, wasn't meant to have an Alt version at all, so when their hatchlings grew up the spriters got an adult with one of the wing patterns as everyone else (as example, TheAntimonyElement got a White tipped adult), however one of its spriters, Dis, asked to her colleague JaziandCo to make a special colored version to use as avatar and so the Snow Angel with the tan colored body and tri-colored wings was created. TJ saw this new sprite and promptly decided to release a fourth exclusive version of this dragon to give only to the three spriters, introducing in this way the first Spriter's Alt version and the use to allow spriters to make a different version of an Holiday dragon for their own scrolls. For this reason, there weren't Spriter's Alt hatchlings.

On 24th December 2010, all bred Snow Angels gendered male. This was a glitch and was fixed by TJ09 later.

Official Dragon Description
Adult:

"Christmas dragons are a very mysterious breed. They are only seen during winter, and even then it is hard to catch a glimpse of one. They are responsible for the general cheer that spreads during the holidays. In essence, they are the 'Spirits of Christmas."

Mature Hatchling:

"Aww... It's a cute baby dragon. It's very festively colored. And look! It's grown its wings! It must be close to maturing."

Hatchling:

"Aww... It's a cute baby dragon. It's very festively colored."

Egg:

"This egg fills you with holiday cheer."

Sprite Artist(s)

 * JaziandCo (Hatchling, Adult)
 * TheAntimonyElement (Adult)
 * Dis (Adult, Hatchling)

Sprites
Since TJ09 surprised the spriters of the Snow Angel with the special tan spriter's version, they had never created a tan hatchling set for it.