Long ago, humans and dragons lived together in harmony in Kumandra.

Kumandra is ravaged by the Druun, evil spirits that attack and petrify the land's people and dragons.

For most of the film, Sisu is the last of her kind after she concentrates the last of the dragon magic into an orb and uses it to banish the Druun, reviving Kumandra's people but not the dragons.

A power struggle for the orb divides Kumandra's people into five tribes based on their placement along a giant, dragon-shaped river: Fang, Heart, Spine, Talon, and Tail.

Raya's father, Chief Benja, is the leader of the Heart tribe.

Some Vietnamese words are used in the film such as "Ba" which Raya calls her father, and "Oh, Toi" which means "Oh, we're screwed."

Part-pill bug, part-armadillo, part-high speed off-road vehicle, Tuk Tuk has been Raya's best friend since she could hold him in the palm of her hand.

Raya befriends the daughter of Chief Virana of the Fang tribe, Namaari, who gives her a dragon pendant as a gift. But Namaari is only manipulating Raya to learn the location of the dragon orb so Fang can steal it. Alerted to the attack, Benja and the other tribes start fighting over the orb, which gets broken in the scuffle. As each tribe steals a piece of the orb, the reawakened Druun return to ravage the land once more.

A wounded Chief Benja, discovering that the Druun are weak against water, throws Raya into a river before getting petrified himself.

After reaching a shipwreck in Tail, Raya finally manages to summon Sisu, who reveals that she did not create the orb, but only used it on behalf of her siblings and can gain her siblings' powers when she touches its pieces.