Baikal

Seer

(Bio by seraphemme)

Baikal’s parents were very happy when they learned their newborn son was an oracle. Not because he was special, but because then he would fit in with the other Water hatchlings. It was extremely common in that Clan dwelling in the Leviathan Trench for hatchlings to be born with future-reading powers. As a typical youngster, then, Baikal was always on the medium—not so popular with his Clanmates, but generally well-liked. Much like how he is in his current Clan, in his birth Clan he was quiet, an observer. He lived a very average life. Like most adults, he came to wish for children, and so he had a clutch of two eggs with a nice Skydancer from his Clan around his age named Agate. It was a loveless union, and afterward, Baikal returned to his quiet life of fishing and communal auguring, maintaining a close yet professional relationship with the mother of his children.

Strangely enough, there was a significant disproportion in the Clan of species, with the native species of the Sea of a Thousand Currents noticeably lacking. Baikal’s parents, after giving him a rudimentary education and teaching him the essentials on Clan life and culture, were for the most part absent from his adult life. He never heard about a Guardian’s “charge” until one day a strange dragon, an old Guardian male, was traveling through the Clan. Baikal was thrilled with the stories of his journey—the telling of close calls with storms and starvation, fights with monsters, and harrowing encounters with other dragons. But the thing that would become impressed on Baikal the most was the reason that this old drake had journeyed for so long and for so hard—he was searching for his “charge”.

“A Guardian’s charge is more than just a place or an object. It’s a need. A need to protect, to treasure, to live for, to die for,” he told the attentive Baikal. Of course, he hadn’t found his charge yet, otherwise his journey would be moot, but… “they say that when a Guardian finds their charge, time slows for a moment and everything in the world hushes, and to the Guardian it feels like coming home.” At that moment, Baikal was enchanted with this idea, this time-honored tradition. He knew that that was not how he felt in his current Clan—he felt so purposeless—and he turned to his prophesizing powers to show him what to do. His visions revealed that his life in his Water Clan would be fruitless an lonely, so he soon set off to find his own charge.

But this is not when the Water Guardian came to Hissark and Pixin. No, he would journey for more than a year until that. In fact, the seeds of that Clan would not even be sewn in Pixin’s mind for many moons to come. In that time which he likes to call “the Wandering”, Baikal traveled through the Tangled Wood, the Sunbeam Ruins, and the Shifting Expanse before reaching the Ashfall Waste, and he would quickly discover that those close calls with nature, those contests with beasts, and those harrowing confrontations with dragons were much kinder in tale than in reality. Another thing he discovered was that each land had its fair share of horrors.

In the Tangled Wood, he learned how to be quiet. Many times, he was faced with the split-second decision between fleeing, fighting, and hiding—he often chose hiding: his blue wings were good for blending into the glowing flora of the region. When he wasn’t wandering in the Wood, he was being hosted by a friendly Clan. Those Clans loved to warn him of the rumors of cannibalistic troupes of dragons who roved the undergrowth in search of loners. As much as Baikal tried to shake off the feeling of hungry eyes boring into him, he just couldn’t while he was alone.

He was honestly relieved when he crossed the border into the Sunbeam Ruins—bright sunlight had never felt so good. And yet, the land of golden light, he was dismayed to find out, was not a paradise. This was where he encountered Beastclan after Beastclan, not to mention the angry haunts that he happened to be targeted by in the Hewn City. The search for his charge turned up nothing, he was glad to say, in the Ruins, and by the time he reached the Shifting Expanse, Baikal was elated to be rid of the legions of Harpies and Longnecks.

But, of course, the Shifting Expanse wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. There was something majestic about the way the storm clouds crackled and popped like fireworks over the vast tracts of stony sand…that was Baikal’s first thought. His later thoughts went something like this: there is hardly any food to come by in the desert, and the storms have already caused more cactus forest fires than I can count. Not one who likes complaining, Baikal didn’t want to find his charge in a place where he would be so inclined towards the unbecoming behavior. And so, he moved on to the Ashfall Waste.

The Fire domain was somewhere where Baikal thought he would never find his charge. And he didn’t, at least not initially. Halfway in his journey through the Waste, Baikal was taken in by a new Clan, led by two dragons named Hissark and Pixin. He had planned on staying there for one night. But when a firestorm erupted, the Clan requested that he stay until it blew over, not wanting the utterly foreign dragon to get needlessly hurt by bad weather. On the unplanned-for morning, Hissark brought home a hatchling, like she did every now and then while she wandered the land. Often times, they had been abandoned.

In that moment, Baikal felt a unique feeling. It was an overwhelmingly new feeling. Something that made him feel like time had slowed and the world had hushed…he felt at home.

With a cry, the Guardian exclaimed “I found him!”

Vowing never to leave the side of the young Mirror that he had discovered was his charge, whom he named Torpedo, Baikal has become an indispensable member of the Clan. He is the Clan oracle. With his gift of the Sight, he advises Hissark and Pixin on the events of the mystic future. He takes his role very seriously, and, like in his old Clan, he tends to be more of an observer than a socializer. The other members of the Clan see him has a somewhat mysterious fellow, although he will share his thoughts and experiences freely if you ask him politely. He isn’t close with many dragons outside of Torpedo, and he tends to act coy when forming friendships (and relationships that are more than friendships), making himself appear less knowledgeable about any given subject other than future-reading. But really, this is a defense mechanism that he has yet to shake loose from the Wandering, when protecting himself from the world was his first priority


Mate Here

Charge is Torpedo