Basgiath War College · Riders Quadrant
Tairn
Tairn is a black dragon, the second-largest on the Continent, and the only morningstartail the books name. His full name is Tairneanach, and he is of the Dubhmadinn line.
The record
- Full name
- Tairneanach
- Colour
- Black
- Tail
- Morningstartail, the only one on record
- Line
- Dubhmadinn. Son of Murtcuideam and Fiaclanfuil
- Size
- Second largest on the Continent
- Larger than him
- Codagh, and only Codagh
- First appearance
- Fourth Wing
- Mate
- Recorded at Fourth Wing spoiler levelGated below
- Rider
- Recorded at Fourth Wing spoiler levelGated below
Registry
The registry module. Use the colour filter to hold it at black, or the tail filter for the morningstartail.
Anatomy: what a morningstartail does
Five of the six tail types are a single weapon: blunt force in the clubtail, an edge in the swordtail, a point in the daggertail, venom in the scorpiontail. The morningstartail refuses to choose. It carries the bludgeoning weight of a clubtail and the eviscerating spikes of a daggertail on the same tail.
That makes it the heaviest of the weapon tails rather than the fastest. A daggertail kills with a flick. A morningstartail has to put its weight behind the strike, which suits the animal it belongs to: a black dragon the size of a house.
Tairn is proud of the tail, and the books let him be. It is the only one named in the series, and no other dragon in the registry carries it.
Size, and why it matters
The books rank size twice, and both statements land on this page. Codagh is the largest dragon on the Continent. Tairn is second. Nobody else is placed on that ladder, and nothing in reachable material suggests a third dragon close to them.
Size is not decoration in this series. It decides how much weight a tail carries, how much of a valley a dragon occupies, and how loudly a bonding is felt by the people watching. When the books say a black bonding ripples through the whole college, the size record is part of why.
Spoilers: Fourth Wing
This section contains material from later in the series.
The bond record
Naolin
Tairn was bonded to Naolin, who died at the Battle of Aretia. The books treat each subsequent bond as stronger than the last, so the Naolin record matters to everything after it.
Sgaeyl
Tairn is mated to Sgaeyl. Mated pairs are described as the strongest bond in the world, and they cannot be separated for long, roughly three days, without their health deteriorating.
Violet Sorrengail
Tairn chooses Violet Sorrengail at her Threshing, and reveals his full name to her, because dragons speak only to their own rider and give the full name to no one else.
The mated rule
Because Tairn and Sgaeyl are mated, their riders end up posted together. That single rule shapes the plot more than either bonding does on its own.
What Tairn reads as in our game
In the bonding engine on this site, black leans on courage and patience, and the morningstartail is not a separate reward: it rolls on the tail axis like every other tail, with its own weighting. A black daggertail is a normal, legitimate result.
That is design, not canon. Nothing in the books describes a scoring system, and Tairn being the only morningstartail does not make the tail a prize in a game. It makes it his.
The rider and the mate, stated plainly
Spoilers: Fourth Wing
This section contains material from later in the series.
Tairn is bonded to Violet Sorrengail. He is mated to Sgaeyl, who is bonded to Xaden Riorson, which is why the two riders are inseparable in practice as well as in policy.
Violet bonds two dragons, Tairn and Andarna, which the quadrant has no precedent for. Tairn is the larger of the two and the one who carries her into most of the fighting.
Solas
Spoilers: Iron Flame
This section contains material from later in the series.
Tairn takes one of Solas's eyes, and Solas is later killed by Andarna with a poisoned scorpion barb. Major Varrish, Solas's rider, does not survive the same sequence of events.
The detail matters to this dossier because it is the clearest demonstration of what the size and tail records mean in practice. Tairn does not win that fight by being fast.
Sources
Questions people actually ask
Tairn is a black dragon and the only morningstartail on record. He is the second-largest dragon on the Continent, behind only Codagh.
A tail that combines the bludgeoning weight of a clubtail with the eviscerating spikes of a daggertail. Tairn carries the only one the books name, and he is proud of it.
Tairneanach. Dragons reveal their full name only to their own rider, so it is not common knowledge inside the story.
He is the son of Murtcuideam and Fiaclanfuil, of the Dubhmadinn line, which is the line fan material associates with black dragons.
Yes. He was bonded to Naolin, who died at the Battle of Aretia. Each subsequent bond a dragon forms is described as stronger than the last.
Because black is the rarest colour, and because the books treat his bonding as an event that changes the politics of the whole college rather than a personal matter.
Ready to be chosen?
Black dragons are rare in the pool. The engine still rolls for them.