A Dragon's Blood Runs Cold (Prelude)

[kindofahippy]

Hey hippy,

Assuming you're aiming for a standard triolet, you should be looking for iambic tetrameter. 4 feet of iambs per line. (iamb being a "soft HARD" foot)
There are some exceptions to this rule;
A trochee (HARD soft) early in a line can be acceptable,
A spondee (HARD HARD) can substitute for an iamb (as long as they are not too frequent!),
The opening soft syllable can be dropped to provide emphasis e.g. HARD soft HARD soft HARD soft HARD
and there are substitution and demotion rules;
three HARD syllables will demote the second of the three to a soft stress and vice versa.
e.g. BURNS BLUE HOT, becomes BURNS blue HOT.

But be wary, these exceptions can only be used sparingly. If they appear too frequently the whole thing breaks down.

Think of your rhythm as guiding the reader. If your meter is consistent, your reader will adapt to the odd exception, and you can use these to bring additional meaning to the poem (emphasis, stops, runs etc)
But if it is too haphazard, the reader has no baseline, and spends more time struggling to read than understanding.

I've taken a stab at scanning your first stanza below and done a suggested edit that tidies it up.
Note that I may be wrong in places. I'm still learning myself.

I love your content here though, I'll look forward to seeing this develop

Thank you for your input. I'll need to set this poem aside until I grasp those things. I actually can't hear syallable stress in words that well, and so I cannot workshop any poetry until I am able to apply proper stress. What I could use is some sort of glossary of words and their proper stresses.