Ripplestep

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PERSONALITY Rip has always walked closer to the dead than most, even their brother. As a result, they often seem somehow wrong: distant, detached, and emotionless. In a sense, they see living dragons the same way: incomprehensible, needlessly complicated, and confusing even at their best. That being said, they are extremely talented as a medium and a seer, and tenacious to a fault. On the rare occasion a dragon- living or dead- earns their favor, they can expect to have a friend and ally for a lifetime. HISTORY Ripplestep's father was effectively pure arcane magic. Their mother was something like a zombie, a returned being lacking even a heartbeat. The result of such a pairing was a nestful of strange children. While most of their siblings perished soon after hatching, Rip and their brother Brik clung to life, clawing their ways to adolescence and eventual adulthood. Regardless of their survival, however, the two have always had a strange connection with death. Rip sees spirits wherever they can be found, and in their home clan of Spinehome there were many: a choked network of the broken, the lost, and the vengeful. It took years to unwind the many tangled threads of the spiritual side of the clan, especially for two young dragons with no mentors or formal training, but hard work- and a lot of trial and error- eventually paid off with a cautious coexistence between the lingering and the deceased. The two jointly decided to travel thereafter, as Spinehome increasingly began to focus on stability and recovery for their living clan members. Ever since, they have ventured from clan to clan, offering their services as mediums, investigators, or hunters of the paranormal to dragons with spiritual issues. Rip's additional prophetic ability has been noteworthy to many water-flight seers, and with their help they have been able to hone it into something of a tool, invaluable to their new career. They journeyed to Stormview after hearing rumors of an old resort inexplicably returning to operation and a small string of disappearances to boot.

Four-Eyed Phylactery Familiar Someone in your lair picked up this "haunted doll" as a gift in the easternmost bay of the realm. The seaside hawker claimed it was (quote): "Very independent! Do not try to pin this doll down!" 1500 Crown of Bones Apparel A dusty circlet constructed with the bones of several creatures. It is unclear whether some of them came from other dragons. 500 Crystal Ball Trinkets You see about 35 treasure in your future. 35 Battered Book of Fables Dragonmade The terrible thing is that all your favorite characters die in the end. (Special thanks XenonZerrow.) 70

CONNECTIONS

Brik is Ripplestep's brother: a gentle giant, anxious and protective of his more delicate sibling. He was once called out to war during the conflict with DERG. It was one of the loneliest times Rip has ever had the displeasure of experiencing.

The Cadavery had been in Rip's periphery for some time before they met Caonach, and as a result they were extremely hesitant to have any dealings with the Gaoler. Caonach, however, was very insistent on learning from the professionals, and something about being called "expert in their field" ruffled Rip's scales in just the right way. Brik's support of the young dragon certainly didn't hurt.

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STATS

• CLASS: Paranormal Investigator
• ALIGNMENT: LN
• THEME:

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AFFILIATIONS

• Born into SPINEHOME
• Current resident of STORMVIEW RESORT

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ART, WORKS, RESOURCES

"Ripple," Tybalt says one night when their paths cross, years after their mother's death, years since they and their brother began to grow up effectively parentless, "I'm sorry."

It's too little too late and they both know it. And even then, Rip needs no gift of prophecy to know the only reason he is here now is because Brik is not, out fighting battles that Rip's thin, ghost-riddled frame is not fit for. A bound leg and a pronounced limp are all that keeps Tybalt himself from the fury of war, and Rip's brother has inherited their de-facto father's natural strength, if not his years spent training.

Regardless-- Brik would tear him to shreds, and would succeed. Tybalt wouldn't fight back. Guilt presses heavy and thick at the back of Rip's mind, not their own but the guilt of the father that rejected them. Guilt would keep his claws from ripping. They can see it as clear as any prophecy.

"I don't forgive you," They say, simple and quiet and blunt the way mother taught them.

"I know," Tybalt says, "I wouldn't, either."

They almost feel bad for him.

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Titus is a curiosity, true, but so many of the dragons in Spinehome are. The only big difference is that most of the curiosities are either scientific in nature or ghosts exclusively known to them and Brik, and Titus is the first who is explicitly... not.

That, and the prickle that runs down their spine whenever he walks nearby.

Something is dangerous about him, something doesn't belong, and Rip doesn't like it.

In their mind's eye, the place in the back of their head that instinctively knows when a dragon is wrong, he is something like a lidded pot over a fire. The pot is bottomless, and within it resides something unknowable. The higher the fire rises, the closer the interior comes to boiling over.

The thing in the pot, Rip thinks, is hungry. That Titus will not share what he knows about it is a larger issue than they would like to admit. That Rip cannot think of what the fire itself might be, what force might be driving the contents to break free, is perhaps even more important a problem to solve.

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Ripplestep tilts their head at Lilia. It's the only thing they can think to do, and rarely are the prophetic drawn to wordlessness.

Lilia just smiles, expression vague, downy gray fluff and pale scales somewhere between new and familiar. She is corporeal, from the sensitive antennae on her head to the featherduster ending of her tail. She stinks like marigolds and death. The fine, round jewel in her forehead has suffered a hairline crack.

Not too long ago, that crack had been bigger.

Not too long ago, Lilia had been the faintest and least reasonable of the ghosts in their halls.

And now, she lives.