Orlapar

Orlapar's life had started from a single stray egg found among the bones and viscera of the wasteland. A small hunting team had found him and with some debating, took him back to a small clan farther north. The leader at the time welcomed the new arrival with open arms, taking the time to incubate and find a suitable home for the hatchling. Orlapar had later found himself in the care of the oldest dragons in the clan -- a librarian.

In the old days, he was an apprentice of the finest librarian in the clan. Name the book or legend and he surely had it in mind or knew where the volumes were located. Wherever the librarian was found, Orlapar was sure to be close by, carrying tome after tome in the satchels on his side. The current leader of the clan later warmed up to the boy, Orlapar slowly gaining her trust while he worked endlessly on recording any event that had happened or transcribing whatever relic he and his master had found. His master had always looked at him with such pride, knowing that all his work had paid off. Taking in a lost soul had taken a toll on both his studies and being.

As the years went past, the librarian grew frail.

He had struggled to eat and stand, his eyesight worsening as the days passed. The librarian knew his time had come to return to where he had once come.

As tradition goes, the oldest dragon is seen as a no longer functioning member of the clan and thus is named useless. So they leave the weakest to die in the unforgiving land in belief that what was given to them by the Plaguebringer must be returned.

The clan needed to move on from their current location thus time was of the essence. As the clan had packed to move, loading heavy packs on their backs, all of their tents bundled up. The librarian was to stay.

Orlapar was distraught, the very dragon he had considered family was to just be left. Reluctantly, he followed the clan farther north. Not a day goes by that he doesn't think of the old librarian. The way the dragon praised him for doing well in his studies, the way he smiled. The way he looked as he was left behind.

---

Years passed since the day the librarian was left. But the thought of him still being there in the same spot he was left behind still lingered in Orlapar's mind. Eventually the thought became far too much to bare. So, Orlapar left under the cover of night to return to the land he had grown to know. As the land became familiar, Orlapar felt a small flicker of hope grow and eventually his face had lit up with the thought of seeing the old dragon once more.

What he had found was anything but.

Orlapar's memory has since been faded, leaving him only with glimpses of what was or what may have been. But the sight of the shuffling horror that had claimed to be the librarian was far too disfigured to distinguish what was what.

Sinew hung from the torn and mangled corpse of the once maybe shining Pearlcatcher matched the overpowering stench, entrails scraped along the rocky ground, creating small lacerations in the porcaline organs from which oozed both coagulated blood and pale orange bile speckled with mold. The librarian's limbs were twisted and bent, looking unnatural no matter where Orlapar had looked. The jaw hung loose by only a single tendon, skin filleted off the bone with such savagery, it hardly looked as if it was supposed to connect anywhere near the face and cheek.

Orlapar couldn't look away, his body frozen in fear as the pearlacther let out a pathetic wail through a mangled windpipe. Orlapar stepped back, keen to turn and run or even take flight away from this gods forsaken place.

As Orlapar unfurled his wings, the librarian grasped the thin obsidian membrane and pulled Orlapar down to the ground, using it's decrepped fingers to claw at the flesh, rending it from both bone and muscle. Orlapar bellowed, throwing himself off to the side in an attempt to crush the creature beneath his weight. The librarian's corpse was indeed crushed under the immense weight but as Orlapar quickly stepped away, holding his injured limb close to himself, the librarian launched himself at the guardian.

That's when everything when black.

His eyes ripped from their fleshy home and merely tossed aside in the fight, leaving the guardian at a disadvantage. Orlapar stepped back quickly, the pain wracking his entire body while he swung his head about, attempting to knock the creature aside to buy him some time to escape or call for help. But none of that came.

Orlapar suddenly felt his legs give way under himself, the ground behind him dropping off to a vast pit of darkness and jagged bones. Orlapar stumbled, his arms flailing to grasp any part of stable ground before the ledge of the ravine had given way, swallowing both him and the abomination.

---

Now, Orlapar sits at the bottom of the ravine. Blind and unable to fly, limbs crippled from the fall. Orlapar had since then accepted his fate, living the rest of his life in solitude while he withers away; running his hands along the tomes he has in his lair that he had fallen with. Once a present to bring back to the librarian. Now, he simply looks back at those memories through the feeling of the rough paper along his fingers.

Memories have never been so vivid until now.

---

As he chooses to live the rest of his life in solitude, he welcomes all travelers with open arms. Some choose to stay and make improvements to the clan, building bridges and bringing food to others. Some choose to stay to form a path of their own by becoming alchemists or traders, bringing commerce and travelers to the ravine they have dubbed the name of Clan Black Borrows.

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Scatter quest:
1st default: Goldenrod,Obsidian,Soil
2nd: Rose,Pearl,Lemon
3rd: Maize, Spruce,Wine
4th: Aqua,Green,Ivory
5th: Charcoal, Grapefruit, Robin
6th Leaf, Sapphire, Crocodile
7th Beige, Grape, Steel
8th Shale, Cyan, Swamp
9th Sunshine, Iris, Blood
10th UNKNOWN (NOT LOGGED)
11th Stone, Buttercup, Metals