Help! (Dragons)

Hey all,

I am conlanging on Urasti, and also on the Yorash dialect, for a  possible
upcoming novel.  Here is my question.
The ancestors of the Urasti, a people dwelling in a wealthy mercantile
city-state, and the Yorayash, human tribes living in symbiosis with giant
carnivorous lizards, last spoke a common language between five hundred and
a thousand years ago.  I want to use Urasti as the basis for conlanging a
dialect for the Yorayash, but am not sure *how* different dialects should
be after such a time. A vowel shift makes sense, and I am going to do one.
I am also reading Kroeber's handbook of California Indians and goggling
over how the Karok, Hupa and Yurok had the same material culture but spoke
wildly different languages.  Hmm.
Who's done this on the list, and how do you do it, besides assuming
loanwords, making up new words for things that a Yorash hunter or herder
would know and a Urasti shoemaker or blacksmith doesn't.....adding fifty
words for bamboo, or seven for rain, and sixteen for dragons?
How useful is glottochronology as a tool? I read Latin, Greek, French,
Spanish, German, and know some Esperanto, etc. Any useful books for a
non-linguist? (History prof, actually, at a little college in the Mojave).
Thanks everyone!

Jim

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