Fenma

The breeding project
Dragons in the breeding project are technically classified by their relationship (by blood or mates) to Fenma, so I may as well use her bio for an explanation.

Dragons in the breeding project are divided into groups, and they can only mate within their respective groups. There are two levels of breeding groups. The first is star colour groups, which are represented by star emojis (). Each colour group is divided into two subgroups, represented by either one or two of the appropriate stars. Therefore, there are eight total breeding groups.

The breeding group of a hatchling is determined by the group of their parents. The children of one star colour group are always members of the next colour in sequence. The sequence is a loop that goes >>>>etc. The children of one of the subgroups are always members of a subgroup, and so on.

The loop is exactly long enough to overcome the FR limitation of requiring two dragons to be five generations apart to breed. (Weirdly enough, "five generations" means they have three generations in between, where the two prospective mates are dragons 1 and 5.) The only complication in this loop is the split of the subgroups, which is so complicated as to require a diagram to keep straight at most times. (Or maybe I'm just easily confused haha)
-- (Insert diagram here once you have a digital copy)
The simplest explanation is that the sons and daughters of any breeding group must be kept in separate groups, because otherwise they would be considered able to breed with each other, which is clearly not permissible. (Even though FR's 5-gens mechanic prevents this, the breeding group system is more a lore idea, so the problem needs to be addressed within its terms.) As such, siblings of different sexes are placed in different subgroups. The subgroup cycle, as detailed in the above diagram, has two loops, one for the line of female descent, and the other for male descent. The daughters of each group are simply defined as belonging to the next group in the sequence, following the clockwise arrows. The sons however must go across the circle, to the other subgroup of the colour, in order to separate themselves from their own sisters by the appropriate five generations. For daughters, the cycle is a simple loop of >>>>>>>>etc. But for sons the loop is more complex, following the pattern >>>>>>>>etc. (Despite my best efforts, I don't think there's an easy way to stop dragons being in-lore allowed to breed with their first cousins but eh I'm not an American and am not instantly squicked out by that. And the actual breeding mechanics prevent that, so who cares. This thing is overcomplicated as it is.)

The breeding group of an unrelated dragon is undetermined until they mate with a dragon that is a member of the project, at which point their breeding group immediately and irrevocably is defined as the breeding group of their mate. From that point forward, they may only breed with dragons of that breeding group (at least within the project), and the group of any previous mates and offspring are (in theory) defined by this as well. (Strictly, this means that all FR dragons that are related in any way to the members of the breeding project are theoretically pre-sorted, but that'd take so much energy to figure out as to render the whole thing indeterminable.)

Apart from the rule of breeding within your group, there's pretty much no rules on who you're allowed to be mates with. I mean, I guess the rules make it sound like everyone should be straight, but not all kids are expected to have kids, so???????????


Results sadly show that while the loop is long enough that once you get back to the start, a dragon is sufficiently distantly related to the previous generation in the breeding group, this whole thing isn't enough to stop the members of the same generation ending up in the same breeding group while the game still prevents them from having offspring. I can't currently remember if I'd need 16 or 32 distinct groups to prevent that, but it's something of one 9f those magnitudes