Basgiath War College · Riders Quadrant
Threshing Day Game
Threshing Day Game is a free browser game about the October 1 rite at Basgiath War College. You make the choices. The dragons make the call.
Enter the Vale
No account, no email address, no download. A run takes four to eight minutes.
The short answers
- What it is
- A choice-driven run through Threshing, the annual rite in which first-year cadets enter a valley and dragons decide whether to bond.
- How long a run takes
- Four to eight minutes, depending on how much of the scene text you read.
- What it costs
- Nothing. No account, no payment, no app install.
- What you get
- An outcome, and a result card if a dragon chooses you: colour, tail, temperament, age, rarity and a share code.
- Replay
- Immediate. Every run is seeded, so the same choices do not guarantee the same dragon.
- Spoilers
- The ritual and the dragon categories are safe to read cold. No character outcome is settled here.
What Threshing Day is
Threshing is the day the Riders Quadrant stops being a school and becomes a selection. On the first of October, every first-year cadet walks into a bowl-shaped forested valley southwest of the citadel. The dragons are already there. The line the book gives is blunt: a dragon will bond with you, ignore you, or incinerate you.
Not being chosen is not the same as being killed, though the valley does not separate the two cleanly. A cadet who survives without a bond may repeat the year and stand in the valley again. Sawyer Henrick is the canonical repeater, and he eventually leaves with a dragon.
This game runs that day and nothing else. It does not hand you a character from the books. You are a cadet with a name, a wing, a section, a squad and a weapon, and the valley does the rest.
Threshing Day is also a book
The name does double duty. Threshing Day is the title of a thirteen-story companion anthology by Rebecca Yarros, published by Red Tower Books on 29 September 2026 and catalogued as The Empyrean #3.5. It is not Book 4 and it is not a novella. Each story follows one character through their own Threshing, and the collection is framed as testimony gathered later by two Basgiath professors.
If you came looking for the book, the official site is threshingday.com, and this page is not it. If you came looking for the official interactive dragon experience, that is Dragonkind, at dragonkind.com, and this page is not that either. What is here is a Threshing you can start in the next five minutes.
The order of the first year
Conscription Day, mid-July
Candidates are conscripted, volunteer, or are sent. The Parapet is the first test at Basgiath: a stone bridge roughly 18 inches wide and 200 feet above ground. Around 15 percent of candidates die crossing it.
The Gauntlet, autumn
The pre-Threshing test, taken about two months into the year. Those who do not pass it do not continue to the valley.
Presentation Day
The last formal step before the rite. Threshing falls two days after it.
Threshing, 1 October
The first-years enter the valley. Dragons choose, ignore or kill. Bonded cadets leave as riders with riding leathers and a private room. The unbonded may repeat the year.
After the bond
The dragon leaves a relic on the rider and begins to channel power. Weeks or months later it manifests as a signet.
The book and this game
In the books
- Threshing falls on 1 October every year, whatever day of the week that is.
- Dragons choose. Cadets do not apply, and cannot refuse a choice.
- Roughly 100 dragons were willing to bond in one recent year, down from 137 and 163 in the two before it.
- Not being chosen means repeating the year, if you survive it.
In this game
- The same rite, compressed into a single run.
- A cadet you create, with a generated wing, section and squad.
- A matching algorithm written for this site and seeded per run.
- Rarity, temperament and bond strength invented for the game and labelled as ours.
Sources
Questions people actually ask
Threshing is the annual trial on October 1 when the first-year cadets of the Riders Quadrant enter a forested valley below the citadel and hope a dragon chooses them. Riders do not choose dragons. A dragon either bonds with a cadet, ignores the cadet, or kills the cadet.
Yes, this site runs one. It is an original short run written for this website, not the official Dragonkind experience. You pick your way through the valley, and the site resolves a dragon from your choices, your stats and a seed.
No. The official interactive experience is at dragonkind.com, operated by Yarros Ink, Inc. This site is an independent fan project and is not affiliated with Rebecca Yarros, Red Tower Books or Dragonkind.
No. The run is played in the browser and your record is kept in your own browser storage. There is nothing to sign up for before you start.
No. There is no published official algorithm. The matching system on this site is its own game mechanic, built from six stats, colour weightings and a seeded random roll, and it is labelled as site-game content everywhere it appears.
The run is written to be readable before you finish the series, and later-series material is held behind a spoiler setting you control. Anything past Fourth Wing is gated rather than mixed into the default text.
A single run is short by design, a few minutes of choices rather than an evening. Each run ends in a bond, a rejection, a burn or a rarer hidden outcome, and you can start another immediately.
Ready to be chosen?
Four to eight minutes. No account. Replay as often as you like.