Richard

RICHARD - HEAD ENGINEER / MECHANIC
A skilled engineer with a strong passion for what he does. He's rather distant to those he doesn't know, and can be a difficult code to crack. He is, however, a very polite and fiercely loyal young dragon, despite having a bit of a short fuse. He is often isolated in his workshop when he isn't with his childhood friend and lover, and many hatchlings are afraid of him (much to Scott's dismay)

Richard didn't know who he was before he joined Blodeuwedd. Born into a family strict on enforcing the Stormcatcher's policies, he was forced into work before he'd even learned to walk. Expected to be another loyal servant of his patron's endless lightning farm, Richard spent his early days at work, crafting top quality machinery to export beyond the borders of the Shifting Expanse. Despite it being forced upon him, the young imperial was intrigued by his work and strove to build something that was not laid out on a blueprint before him, but his clan had tight restrictions on his creativity.

Each morning, Richard was sent out to the far reaches of the Carrion Canyon to collect precious metals limited to the faraway geography. The flight was painstaking - three hours at least, six if you counted the trip back. Though initially frail, his duties beefed him up significantly. However, they did little for his mental state, the loneliness ebbing at him from the inside and leaving him to his own dangerous thoughts. He considered running away countless times, but he knew it wouldn't do him any good, as his clan's impeccable, unforgiving code of loyalty wouldn't allow him to even speak to an outsider. It took time, but Richard ultimately began to accept his fate that was so clearly written out for him.

However, Richard soon learned two things - one, that nothing was ever quite as it seemed. Two, this wasn't always a terrible thing.

When he was still a child, he encountered a coatl of his age. The coatl, a wind native, took an interest in him almost immediately, seeking to befriend the lonely lightning dragon as soon as he could - a suspected characteristic of a wind dragon. Richard, plagued by years of self-loathing, chose to ignore the coatl, knowing that eventually the stranger would grow bored of trying to pursue a lost cause. However, every trip out to the canyon he would encounter this coatl, until they eventually became friends. The coatl, known as Scott, soon served as a supportive shoulder for Richard's sufferings, and he alone assisted the imperial in finding worth in himself after years of being told he was nothing - in return, Richard did the same for his friend, who had been through traumatic experiences after the loss of a family member. The two soon became inseparable and ultimately fell in love, and they soon forged a seemingly impossible plan - to fake Richard's death and to remove him completely from the horrendous life he'd been born into, running off to Scott's clan in the Gladeveins. However, in the process, they were caught by Richard's family who held the two young dragons hostage with plans to kill them. However, in a great and heroic act, Scott managed to free his best friend and escape, and nothing was known of Richard's family's fate. Richard never returned to the Shifting Expanse - to do so would to mentally wear him to the point of resurfacing every demon he'd put to rest.

To live within a place where he felt safe and accepted as a member of a family worked wonders for the lonely Richard's isolated soul. While he remained closed to those he wasn't all that familiar with, he opened up to others - particularly Scott and his family - to reveal a side that even he didn't even know existed. On top of that, the Gladeveins was a wonderful breath of fresh air in comparison to years of scaling canyon walls and looking into clouded, crackling skies - just seeing the sun every morning brought energy to the imperial. He felt he owed his life to Scott, for without the coatl, he wouldn't even have one.

While Blodeuwedd was a clan that primarily functioned on arcane magic, Richard felt obliged to bring forth some of his homeland's engineering to express his lifelong gratitude to the dragons of his new clan. He and Scott run a cozy metalworking and engineering shop (also serving as their home) on the lowest level of Mothermaw, and they provide a great deal of Blodeuwedd's non-organic exports, particularly metal armor, batteries and power tools. He remains somewhat reclusive, rarely showing himself outside of his domain. He tends to wander in the surrounding forests, admiring the scenery and basking in the sunlight. Some of the hatchlings refer to him as a grouch, since he tends to be a bit snappy around children. He is well-meaning, though, and he wouldn't dare harm any member of his clan. After all, they gave him a life when no one else would.