Sure, that sounds interesting.
Let's start with the basic Balkan Slavic Dragon taxonomy:
There are four very different words that all translate into dragon. Their Serbian versions are: Zmaj, Ala, Aždaha/Aždaja and Lamja. Shapeshifters one and all. in Balkan Slavic mythologies Dragons start out as either snakes or carps (Croatians also believe wels catfish can do this too) that then "reveal their legs" after around 10/12/30/33/40/50/100 years and become adult Dragons. So juvenile Dragons look just like snakes/carps and then undergo a metamorphosis into adult dragons. Or they are especially powerful Silvan herd dogs that become a zmaj trough the nobility of their spirit and the endurance of their loyalty.
Zmajevi (plural of zmaj) are the good, noble dragons. Think metallic dragons from DnD in character, but the appearance of either the stereotypical fantasy dragon or a flaming bird with a snake's tail. There are no half-dragons/polu-zmajevi with humans. Any child born from a union of a zmaj and a human woman is human and also a hero while any child born of a union of a human man and a zmaj is a zmaj. The pregnancy with a zmaj child is difficult for a human woman, lasts 15-20 months and the birth can kill them. Zmaj is treated as gender neutral, but I've never heard someone say zmaj man/male, but I have heard of people saying zmaj woman/female as a descriptor of a woman's fierceness or other such "male" qualities.
Ale (plural of Ala) on the other hand are always snakes as juveniles for a century, unless they are Aesculapian snakes/Smukovi in which case they are juvenile for 40 years and can reach at least a stable earth orbit as adults in flight, and as they mature they become monsters of a class of their own. They appear as Snakelike Abominations (sometimes multi-headed and/or multilimbed and/or winged, one of these that is from Knjaževac according to myth is basically a wingless and limbless King Ghidorah that can still fly and has three different breath weapons (one for each head): one mouth caries fairies and winds, one mouth carries storms, hails, tempests and diseases and one mouth releases evil deeds), Giant Eagles, Black Whirlwinds, Gaunt Pale Humans that devour crops sometimes able to turn themselves into an unkindness of ravens. Ale's have an elemental form that is a black whirlwind and it is made of wind and gluttony/famine. They are quite literally famine elementals/dragons.
Ale are the most powerful of Balkan Slavic Dragons and in their own weight class of power all at once.
In Serbian mythology anyone/anybeing powerful enough (starting with certain kings/nobles and moving on up) can take on an elemental form, but the most common one is windstorm because any other elemental form is going to leave devastation in their wake if they move with it so only air/wind elementalists use their elemental forms for something other than WMD/Fuck Anyone Over There. Except for Ale and God.
Now when I say God I mean the Christian God as the pre-Christianity Gods were still under this mystical restriction. God gets to do elemental forms other than wind and not be destructive, Ale do wind as devouring destruction.
Aždahe/Aždaje (plural of aždaha/aždaja) are literally the bad dragons. More specifically the name refers to snake descendants of the Lernaean Hydra that can have 1,2,3,7 and 9 heads. Always snakes in juvenile form, can sometimes mature early if they eat another snake at 12 and 30 years (100 year olds will sometimes still eat another snake if they think they will benefit from that) of age or if they manage to reach 40 years of age while remaining unseen by humans, otherwise it's wait until they are 12 or 40 or a 100. Sometimes they are giant snakes, sometimes they are stub four-legged bat-winged blue fire-breathing snake abominations, sometimes the one-headed ones are lion-headed fire-tongued long-tailed large winged lizards or have an armored head like
sač that makes them impervious to head trauma. All aždahe/aždaje are bulletressistant, can only be killed by beheading but can be wounded by other means, spawn vermin on death from their bodies disintegrating, their thirst can be truly colossal and is only quenched when their desires are fulfilled and they also live in hell as part of it's ecosystem on top of living in caves/lakes/forests on earth. The dragon St. George killed was one of them according to Serbian myths. If an ordinary mortal kills them they will die soon after. Heroes, Saints, Kings or anyone else with some vague amount of power can kill them and live since that curse won't affect them. Though they may need to heal from it.
The difference between an ala and an aždaha/aždaja are multiple:
- An ala is a gluttony and famine elemental while an aždaha/aždaja is an (sometimes) earthly animalistic demon that uses it's stomach as a vault of stolen things.
- Sometimes the aždaha's/aždaja's meal can be recovered from their gullet/stomach unharmed while whatever an ala eats is gone though souls may survive to move onto the afterlife.
- Snakelike beings that are world or star eaters or something similar like Jörmungandr are classified as an aždaha/aždaja.
- Ale can have children with humans while aždahe/aždaje cannot. The human almost always dies: The mother at birth consumed from within and the father is usually devoured after conception. The human child born to a mother will always become an Ala if some sort of an intervention isn't done.
- You can reason with an ala as futile as such things are most of the time, but there is no reasoning with with an aždaha/aždaja and any appearance of such is to your detriment.
- Ala is associated with hunger and gluttony while aždaha/aždaja is with thirst and greed (or sometimes lust).
- An aždaha/aždaja can be satiated temporarily, but an ala is always hungry. This is why an individual aždaha/aždaja can be more powerful than an ala, but ale are considered the most powerful dragons: An aždaha/aždaja can stop and think and wait and plot and withdraw. Ale for all their power cannot stop. Just be directed.
As for the lamje (plural of lamja)? They claim that they are descended from the Greek Lamia and have a magic that breaks stone and wood with thunder and are really fond of causing droughts to blackmail communities to give them human resources/sacrifices. Also their pregnancies last 15-20 months, children are always sired with completely evil people, either another lamja or such a piece of human/mortal shit that a Nazi would object to working with them on moral principles alone (think Rape of Nanjing), and they use horndust of bulls, bullocks and oxen mixed inside decapitated snake heads in their mystical workings.
I'll do vampire progenitors and Usud in separate posts.
