Can't be the first time this has been asked, but what kind of critter is Ispher supposed to be?

I'm pretty sure he's a hybrid ("dragonborn" to borrow a more specific D&D term.) The hybrids were created by the Dragonlords to serve as shock troops during the Dragon Wars and those which survived the eventual defeat of their masters have been living as outcasts ever since. Ispher is one who appears to have taken up arms to make a difference in the world.

Incidentally, there's also some evidence (mainly from Runebound) to suggest that minotaurs are another type of hybrid created for heavy lifting and support purposes at the same time, which means Steelhorns is likely in a similar boat.

So, are regeneration and poison immunity common to dragonkin in the Rune world?

Steve-O said:

Interesting. Where do you get the background info on this stuff? I've been curious about the characters, monsters, etc in Descent myself and would like to read more.

steveg700 said:

No idea. It's worth noting that in his Runebound incarnation Ispher has no mentioned immunity to poison, either (although he does have a regeneration ability.) Based on the artwork, hybrids come in all shapes and sizes. whether that's because of different breeds of dragon used in their creation or if perhaps the entire process is highly susceptible to mutation, the world may never know. Ispher is the only dragon-hybrid named character in any of the games that I know of.

MR Suplex said:

A while back I decided I wanted to compile as much information about the Terrinoth universe as I could, since I found it fascinating and because they were up to 4 games at the time (5 if you count Drakon, which doesn't actually have any fluff to contribute) without any signs of slowing down. I did this by sitting down and reading every droplet of flavour text I could find on the cards, in the rulebooks, in web posts about the games and in any other official sources I could find, and putting the findings together in a text file. I even came up with a rough map of the known world by the time I was done.

This is not to say my findings are "official" in any capacity, mind you. I did have to fill a few holes with my own imagination, and even if we're talking about something explicitly mentioned in a card's text, it's not like FFG doesn't have the right to change it later if they want to. It's their world, after all.

By and large I ignored mechanics and just focused on the fluff. There are plenty of characters shared between the games, but their mechanical abilities in each are not always consistent with one another (see the whole poison thing for Ispher, above.) If you also consider magic items and gear, well, some of them are downright completely different even if they share the same artwork and name. The fluff, on the other hand, I found was remarkably consistent. Not perfect, but pretty close. Considering all this is just a backdrop for the games that make them their money, FFG certainly seems to have put a significant amount of thought into the way the world itself works.