Character Histories

((Alright, so after reading a post that dealt with how Non-Gifted regard Gifted and vice versa, it lead me to wonder about my own character and why she is the way she is. Then I thought, well hey, I'll write up her history! Maybe others would enjoy reading about her, and perhaps want to write about their own characters to flesh them out a little more. So without further a due, here is the history on the Dragoness Avalina.))

Many, many seasons ago, when Istaria was still young an egg was abandon and left to die in the snow covered wastes. It's parents had disappeared without a sight, what had happened to them, or what had led them to abandon their pride and joy may never be known. What was known is that the embryo inside the egg was destined for great things; the dragon that grew within did not die from the cold, but actually flourished! Day by freezing day the egg was packed into the snow, the babe inside growing and waiting for the day it'd be strong enough to break from its prison and glimpse the outside world.
When that day came, the young hatchling did not open her eyes to the loving faces of parents, but to a wall of white. Digging herself from her snow tomb, the hatchling found her still soft scales matched the colors of the snow and ice, she was an ice dragon. Completely at home in the cold wilderness, she had no one to guide or teach her, it was a wonder she was able to survive. In the beginning she believed something was wrong with her, that since she was packed in the snow during her incubation stage she was different, and therefore didn't need to eat like the other animals.
Lonely and afraid she wondered the vast snow covered mountains, narrowly escaping Ice and Snow Ogres and wolves. In a time, her wonderings led her into Madghara, home of the half giants. It was there that she learned she had a calling in life, a duty to the living races of Istaria, she was what they called Gifted. Sending her to New Trimus to begin her training, she went by the name Shiella.
The hatchling worked hard, though an empty feeling of loneliness never left her. She found it hard to make new friends, awkward when dealing with others. It was in her first years she developed a complex of sorts, the old familiar feeling of being different coiled it's black trindles around her heart. It was then despair caught up to her, she saw other hatchlings so happy and already finding mates. She believed she was undesirable and went back to the icy peaks where she hatched and fell into a deep sleep that lasted many years.
It was dark times for Istaria during that time; the undead grew stronger and attacked the living races. The other Gifted were able to fend them off for a time, but soon they were over thrown. Fleeing, the people made a desperate attempt to leap into another realm, our little Shiella awoke around this time, just in time to make the leap into the new realm of Order.
Her time was short, the leap having taken much out of her, and soon she fell back into slumber. After a time, she awoke again, everyone she had known were gone and the world was a desolate place. Whole towns were left abandon save for the few shop owners who refused to leave. It was during this time she chose to take on a new name. A new life for a new world. She called herself Avalina.
The years went by in a blur, occasionally she'd fall into deep sleeps, but her loneliness never disappeared. It wasn't until recently, during one of her many sleeps that she felt something shift in the world, a new force. Dragging herself out of her slumber, she awoke to find Istaria bustling with new life. Intrigued, she ventured out and once again began her training. The undead were still present, and the fight continued. She had seen what had happened to her previous home, and she would not allow it to happen again. Devoting herself to her training, she met many other dragons along the way, and even a few she hesitantly called her friends.
Joy gripped her heart, beating back the black hate of loneliness. Soon it was time for her to begin her Rites of Passage; she'd finally grow into adulthood and have her wings. With the aid of her new friends, she ventured to Drakul. What she experienced and saw there filled her with a new found sorrow and despair. All those hatchlings and dragons, over thrown by the undead and forever cursed to wonder the land. It was that day she vowed to never fall asleep for a prolonged period of time, for she felt as if it were partly her falt this fait had fallen on these poor souls. Perhaps if she had trained harder, and fought longer, she might have been able to make a difference.
After her ascension Avalina trained hard. She took up a lair in Parisina, one she made sure hatchlings could reach. The reason, though she'd never say this out loud, she never wanted another hatchie to be along, and grow up with no one like she had. Her time alone had made her bitter, and while her new friends had helped change such feelings, they still lingered. Still alone, she had no mate.
And here we are at present day, the Ice Dragoness now toils away on her lair to make a safe haven for all abandon and homeless hatchlings, and also a home base for the guild she founded, Guardian Flight.

Many, many years ago, perhaps even hundreds...Before the many worlds merged into two, when Istaria was new, there was a clan of dragons.

They called themselves the Fireshapers. Great, powerful wyrms that lived far out in the wastes of Dralk, hidden in volcanic caverns deep beneath the blackened soil. Within these caves the Fireshapers lived, amongst glowing red crystals and rumbling earth, magma and rock; dining upon naka-duskael and flame beetles; practicing their craft. As their name suggested, the Fireshapers made use of heat and flame. They cultivated the fire crystals, redirected magma flows, imbued items with flame itself, learned to draw on a dragon's fiery essence to coat claw and fang.

Our story begins with Koreshan, a great soot-black dragoness with frills about her skull and two long, elegantly curving horns. She was one of the more powerful Fireshapers, one of those more gifted with the craft, and one of the few willing to devote time and energy to hatchlings. Her first and only clutch had five eggs; one a deep azure, two a dull, mossy green, one a black like herself, and one a deep red. The azure and the black hatched first, both male, while the other eggs hadn't even stirred yet. However, they were certainly alive.

The red egg was paid particular attention to. Colors such as orange, red, yellow, and sometimes even black, were special to the Fireshapers...for obvious reasons. This red egg was kept in the hottest nesting cavern, washed with magma often, and made much more comfortable than the rest of the clutch. Amidst all the pampering, one of the green eggs died of neglect. Sadly, nobody noticed, even when it was hit with a tail and split open and a foul-smelling skeleton fell out. The remains were simply washed away in lava.

The Fireshapers' peace was not to last, as little peace can. Soon the Aegis marched across Istaria, reaching even into the volcanic regions. The Fireshapers defended their caverns fiercely, but were slowly beaten back. Koreshan, caring for the clan's only children at the moment, took her clutch and fled. She flew out, out of the volcanic regions, through the icy wastes, even into a Blight in her desperation to escape with her children. It was there, in this blight...The Aegis noticed Koreshan flying overhead and attacked her. One of the eggs, the beloved red, slipped from Koreshan's grasp...She managed to fly to the edge of the Blighted lands before she was killed. Her two hatchlings ran off, and have not been seen since.

The red egg... (will write the rest soon, must brb for dinner)

((BAH. Edit timer thingamabob killed my post. And after I went to so much trouble to type the rest of it. Never mind. :mad: ))

ack, no fair to leave it hanging like that, malaquion!

((Alright :p))

The red egg had not, however, cracked open and died. Dragon eggs are tougher than that, and anyway, its fall was broken by one of the blight-trees. It hit the branches, hung there for a while, and then fell to the blackened ground where it lay unnoticed, the hatchling within shaken and scared. Although the Blight could not creep within and kill the hatchling, the green tendrils of mist crept across its shell, scarring it green-striped along with the scales of the dragon inside.

Eventually, the shell cracked, and the dragon awoke. One of the larger hatchlings around, with eyes stained green as its stripes, and earfins atop its head. It was a female.
The hatchling would meep and squawk for its mother, father, any dragon, hoping to catch the comforting scent of an adult dragon. When it began to learn to form words, sounds it had heard in the shell, the plaintive cries turned to calls for it mother. The monsters in the Blight never noticed the hatchling's sounds, but neither did any dragons who may have passed through that Blight. Eventually, the hatchling gave up and focused on surviving. It hunted the lesser ghosts, slurping at their essence, and chewed at the black weeds. If hunting was scarce enough, it would even turn to eating the flesh of the corporeal undead.

However, this wouldn't have been terribly good for any dragon, and certainly not good for the little red one. After a long time of breathing the sickly green mist, ingesting the Blighted substances, the hatchling's body decided it had had enough. She didn't quite die, but fell into hibernation, a long one that would last through the merging of worlds and the bipeds' successes against the Blight, and other dragons living and dying. Even as she slept...The Fireshapers had managed to defend their home, but their numbers were severely lessened. The few hatchlings they had all died, or ventured out into the world, and many of the older Fireshapers went their separate ways. It's possible that any hatchling now could be a Fireshaper; they might instinctively know the name, or have a special talent with fire.

The hatchling's sleep was ended by a mummy warrior who came upon its sleeping body. It was filthy, camouflaged well despite its red color, but of course it couldn't stay hidden forever. The mummy raised its axe and, in one swift blow, beheaded the dormant hatchling. She had been lucky enough not to die before, and never knew she was born Gifted, and so she soon awoke in Skalkaar with the name "Malaquion Fireshaper" etched firmly in her mind as who she was. That is all she remembers of her time before sleeping; all the memories of Blight and those from the egg had been lost in the slumber. Though she was far, far older than many ancients, in many ways she was still a hatchling. Malaquion hadn't grown at all, and had about as much life experience as one still with bits of eggshell clinging to their scales. And so, as she stepped to the green-spotted hatchling to learn, she might as well have freshly hatched.

She would later gain dim memories of the Blight, but had no idea how long ago it was until very recently. And during her hatchlinghood, she simply lived as would any other Gifted hatchling: eventfully and dangerously, although she always did have a bit of a taste for ghosts.

Slurp slurp slurp.

I thought id tack my little bit on the end of this ^^

***

How did we end up like this?

How did it begin, and with who? What were their names? What were they fighting for?

It had gone on so long that no one really remembered how it started, or who attacked who first.

Maybe someone had written it all down once, but now it was ancient history; an age old travesty of lessons unlearnt and un-remembered. Truth was the struggle had gone on for so long that no one really cared anymore. Who cared for the past, when the future was so uncertain? How could ideals be upheld in the face of utter destruction? Perhaps they had, once, but after the first century or so people had stopped thinking about the means and considered nothing but the ends.

That was how the Aegis came to be.

Now nothing remained but an endless cycle of death and rebirth, a bloody slaughter that would only be ended with the complete and total destruction of the other side, or the world; whichever came first. Grievances had centuries to fester and could never be cast aside, and both the Empire and the Aegis had forgotten their humanity in the fruitless search for a final victory. What had become of the struggle now couldn’t even be called War, because wars were fought over land or politics or ideals.

Wars ended. Wars were more than killing for the sake of bloody vengeance.

Wars were remembered, and so too were those who died in them.

***

Lighting streaked the sky, its brief flash illuminating a nightmare. This place had been green once, a dream ago, but all that remained now was blasted and barren rock. And death. The stink of it was everywhere; it hung in the air, rose from the rotting soil and the shattered ruins that were outlined so clearly against the sky.

Melanth averted his eyes until the flash faded. Apprehension twisted in his gut like a tightening noose. He hated this place and would have happily shed a gallon of blood or rush a Dwarven shield wall to be elsewhere, but there were some things that duty demanded. Not his duty as a Dragon, or duty to uphold the oaths of a Lunus warrior, but duty to friends.

Or rather a duty to their memory. As he understood, some humans reserved a special dagger for friends who were mortally wounded in battle that they would use to end the pain of the dying. He likened his presence here as the same- one last honour as one warrior to another; a brother’s right to meet peace at the hands of a friend, rather than the carrion crow torment of the Aegis. He wondered at this strange compulsion. Dragons, as a rule, were not overly given to sentiment; what was done was done and could not be changed was the mantra by which they lived.

It was only dumb luck that he spotted the hatchling before it spotted him, snuffling over the diseased earth upwind. At first glance it could have been mistaken for a youngling that had gotten into a bad scrap, until it got closer that was, and the true horror was revealed. Flesh hung in ragged tatters about its frame, barely concealing the work of the muscles beneath; cracked and marred scales had bleached in death, the few that remained turning an unhealthy yellow hue. And its eyes- no living thing had eyes like that. They were eyes of a corpse, milky and unfocused, yet luminous, as though some infernal energy shone from within to maintain life beyond the ruin of its physical form. It moved jerkily; nothing of a dragon’s fluid movement and grace remained. More like a marionette handled by an inexpert puppeteer. That was the point, he supposed. His muscles tensed at its approach.

Melanth pounced.

The first blow broke its back, and would have finished it had a beating heart still thumped within its breast. The hatchling pivoted, vertebra laid bare, sinking tiny fangs into his throat. He shook at it, instinctively pressing his weight upon its chest with his forelegs in an effort to asphyxiate it into release. To his horror the talons punched through the putrid flesh and its ribcage gave way with a sickening crack. The hatchling relented, retreating a short way with its unnatural, jerking gait. The right side of its chest looked like a deflated balloon; worms and maggots spilled from the rents in its flesh and Melanth had to fight back an urge to vomit.

He knew what it was about to do, perhaps even before it did. Moving swiftly, he had the undead thing’s head off its neck even as it inhaled to cry a warning. The severed head snapped its jaws angrily at him, terrible milky eyes rolling grotesquely in their sockets as the trunk twitched and juddered, necromantic magics spent. Disgusted, he threw the thing onto the ground and spat fire over it, closing his nostrils to the scent of putrid flesh charring. It was over nearly as soon as it had begun. Within moments nothing remained of the corpse but brittle, blackened bones as dragonfire did its awful work.

Melanth exhaled, his lungs feeling hot as though full of molten lead. He was shaking, he realised; not with exhilaration, for there was nothing of the fierce joy of battle in the kill. Something else. Something that wasn’t quite contempt, but was not remorse either. After all what was there to be remorseful over? The thing he has killed certainly was not alive, was a foe, and as for the past-

That would remain in the past, he told himself.

As he made to leave, something caught his eye; a glinting somewhat muted by the turbulent sky. He turned back to the charred remains, noticing for the first time a collar encircling the corpse’s truncated throat. Years of pus and dirt had tarnished it beyond recognition, but his flame had seared away much of the grime. It was a pendant, of a sort; a thick chain and clasp to be easily worked by dragon paws. His throat became thick at the sight, as though his belly had been pierced by a shard of ice. He remembered this, although it was a faded, faint memory that might have been a dream for all the substance it had.

Impossible

He ran an ebony claw over the worn sigils and familiar designs carved into the thick metal, lost in memory. His body felt heavy, and his legs buckled. After a moment’s thought he bit it away from the corpse and wrapped it tightly around his talons. Some things that should never have been forgotten had been lost even to him, so it seemed.

***

The air was clear here and grass grew, even if it was in ragged patches. Simply gazing upon living things again did wonders for morale.

The air was fresher here too; he could smell deer from his perch at the top of a cliff and made a mental note to investigate the canyons later. The hatchling’s chain dangled in his talons and a strange, wistful mood overtook him; almost peaceful. He was so lost in thought that he didn’t even notice the stranger’s approach until she stood beside him.

“How many this time?� She asked, mantling her wings. Her scales were painted in white and yellow; the colours of mourning against her natural green, so that she looked like some kind of walking flowery shrub. In another time he might have laughed at the likeness.

“Twelve.� He replied, not shifting his gaze. The pendant sparkled and danced in the sunlight, like quicksilver in firelight. Had he no knowledge of what it stood for he might have called it beautiful.

They shared a silent moment together, looking out over the shadowed isle. Before stood the shadowed blight; a haven of death, lurking doom and hopes lost. Behind, what remained of the isle was verdant with spring’s bloom. There were even birds singing.

For a moment, he was indecisive. Many heard the story, although few remembered it; another tragedy amidst an ocean of calamity. Another tale lost and forgotten. Forgotten by all, that is, save those who were a part of it. Perhaps it would be easier to just forget and move on rather than torturing himself with ghosts of the past, but if not them to remember, then who?

“Do we belong down there, do you think?� He asked. “Did we ever really leave?�
“This place is our home. Someday we will have it back. Until that day, I am content to wait,� She shifted uneasily. “Unlike some.�

He gripped the necklace in his paw, rivulets of blood running down the chain where he clasped it too tightly.

“This belonged to Gherd. Remember that he was so proud of it, he wore it always?� He said, holding it out to her. “I killed him this morning... again. It is all well and good saying the past can remain in the past and we should look to the future, but when pieces of it come back to haunt you, you realise that there are things even you, who swore to remember, have forgotten. Our friends and families do not yet even rest in a cairn and all I can recall of this place is what it is now; a monument to a lost generation and the arrogance that cost them- us, our lives. I can hardly remember what they were like when they were still alive.�

She said nothing, gazing out over the dead lands once again as though deep in thought, or maybe in guilt. It was hard to tell. He paused, throwing a glance at the painted female.

“It was us.� He said. “We, the living, caused this in our arrogance. In our struggle to conquer death, we brought death upon ourselves. I don’t care to remember the names of the guilty, but I remember the names of the innocents they killed, and I will never forgive. Death is the only answer to death, and the Aegis will pay for what they wrought. As for their victims; I call it mercy. Our friends that died here never lived to see what became of us all; that we are no better than the ones who did this.�

Melanth untwined the pendant from his claws and hurled it from the cliff top, following it with his eyes until it vanished, engulfed into the dread mists below. The painted one watched it too, and tears streamed down her scaled cheeks. He turned away dispassionately and headed down the path that led back to the blight, back to the ruins of Draak; what had once been his home.

“Beware the path of vengeance Melanth, lest it consumes you. Else you will die as surely as they did.� Mesetha said.

Melanth ignored her, and walked on.