Xarina » Lair » Nameless

Nameless

(#30567332)

Level 1 Coatl

Familiar

Depin

Energy: 5/50

Personal Style

Apparel

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

8.3 m

Wingspan

10.06 m

Weight

841.51 kg

Genetics

Maize
Skink

Maize
Basic

Black
Thylacine

Hatchday

Feb 02, 2017
(7 years)

Breed

Adult
Coatl

Eye Type

Plague
Common

Level 1 Coatl

EXP: 0 / 245

STR

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

Louis
Garnet

Offspring

none

Biography

N A M E L E S S
The Disease Bearer

~
dying • wise • insulting

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^STR
_{◆◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇}
^INT
_{◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◇}
^WIS
_{◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◇◇}

^MAG
_{◆◆◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇}
^CHA
_{◆◆◆◆◆◇◇◇◇◇}
^VIT
_{◆◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇}

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Aesthetic: red candle wax slowly cooling on dead skin, an autopsied lung filled with drying rose petals, old sepia toned photographs hanging in a darkroom, the bitterness of dehydration within an open mouth, warm breath on cold bones

Likes: the freedom of being forgotten, the sounds of voices carried across the Wastes, breaths drawn that do not rattle and catch in his chest, the chance to speak his mind, acknowledgement of his wisdom

Dislikes: the constant search for a cure that offers false hope, the painful space between dying and death, those who refuse to listen to advice, air plagued by dust, virulent diseases that are encouraged to mutate, survival-worshipers

_~~

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"In one way, I suppose, I have been 'in denial' for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~–Christopher Hitchens

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xXintroduction.

The voice hits first, before the smell, before the darkness dissipates as your eyes adjust. Something within this unlit cave sees you before you see it, and when it speaks, it speaks with a terrible whisper, more of a death rattle than a voice. “Begin… your gawking, then.”

And, much as you try to resist, you do. Not that you could help it, not really. You were hooked by the voice, but reeled in by the skinny, weakened wisp of a dragon that slowly materializes in the shadows. He commands attention, this one, the same way the aftermath of a battle would, the same way a horrific accident would, the same way a viewing at an open-casket funeral would. He looks more ghost than dragon, but bears an unmistakable weight that clears the thought of a haunting from your mind - and yet manages to add another layer of fear. This thing is alive. You realize you would rather this be an apparition, at least you could dismiss it if it were.

“Death is… not —ack!— beautiful.” The cough is dry, and it echoes in this tunnel-like cave. He turns his head towards you, slowly, his body remaining slumped in what, you notice with a new pang of shock and revulsion, is a bed of his own feathers. Feathers that should have been attached to his body. With this many on the ground, does he have any left on his body? The question you dare not voice is answered as he stretches a wing outward that looks more like a half-completed jigsaw puzzle of missing flight feathers. There is no way, even if he could manage to pull himself up and out of the maze of underground tunnels that make up this clan’s home, that he would ever take to the skies. "Those... in these accursed Plaguelands... would have you believe otherwise. Death," he pauses to catch his breath, almost as if speaking this much is a struggle, or even painful, "as a mechanism of... survival. Death as a symbolic rite. I have... seen it all. Come closer..." He beckons with a nearly skeletal tail, and you hesitate before stepping deeper into the dark cave. "Look. This... is what it looks like, standing... between survival and decay."

  Your eyes have fully adjusted now, and your nose - at first assaulted by the scent of decaying feathers, anguish, bile, and old blood - has surpassed the scent of the Coatl’s hideaway. What you see is revolting, pitiable, alarming. His frame only vaguely resembles that of his species, and looks more like an ancient mummified beast than anything that should be alive. The places without feathers feature chapped, paper-like skin, and those with pale and sickly plumage are threatening to release what feathers he does have into the down bedding the Coatl's illness has built him. His sickness has built him a death bed as it kills him from within, you think, and the sheer gloominess of this realization could make the cavern you stand in look like a brightly lit hallway. "So much for —ack!— a martyr... hm? Did you forget... that for 'survival... of the fittest' to work," he pauses again, his long forked tongue searching the air for moisture his mouth could no longer provide, "the weak must perish? Most do, and yet... I'm... not the weakest here. Remember that. Mind... over... matter. Minds... decay fast in this place." He shrugs, a few more feathers freeing themselves from his skin as he does. "You're no exception."

The dragon's unnerving speech is interrupted by a breath that sounds like it is difficult to draw, as if it is shuddering its way up from his chest. “I wonder if he... sent you. Not that it matters, no.” He smirks, almost more to himself than to you, but the expression is unnerving on him. “I will not die… because ‘Aseroe the Great,’” somehow he has injected unmistakable sarcasm into his grating murmur of a voice, “wills it… but I will suffer… because… my virus demands —ack!— that of me. I would… almost… rather die.” This time, the cough sounded more liquid, and to your horror, you see a frail front paw raise to wipe a dark (and likely red, were there lights to shine upon it) fluid from his mouth. “Almost.”

The small, weak smile is back. That eerie expression that looks so out of place on his frail form…

“Death… claims us all, stranger. You… are no exception. Maybe —ack!— one would hope… you do something useful… with that life of yours,” he turns away from you just as slowly as he had turned towards you before, like a living statue that is more stiff, inanimate stone than flesh, “…while you’ve still got it.”

Illness: The Nosos Virus
Physical Symptoms: Pale coloration, asthma, frail figure, difficulty breathing, excessive coughing, coughing blood (occasional), joint/body weakness, flaky/chapped skin, missing and continual loss of plumage. Patient has the appearance of a significantly older dragon. Bright spaces seem to cause visual discomfort, possibly headaches.
Co-occurring Mental Illness: Depression
Prognosis: Patient should continue taking Aseroe's newly developed antivirals to stop the progression of the disease, and his life should be sustainable.

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profile by epher #101073, art by MortNoire #350332, lore by Xarina
Egg recolor | Vial Recolor | Feather Recolor | Pixel Gifs

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xXliving dead.

What are time and age and memory to a living ghost? He could plot out his life trajectory, give a story to clusters of things that happened, but it felt so black and white, empty in spite of itself, populated only by lost meaning and questionable morality.

He could explain how there were parents that bore him, that there was a clan within which he had been raised, that the clan's inhabitants had looked upon him with fear, sympathy, curiosity, worry. He could explain how their voices switched from harshly muttered arguments with gritted teeth to that soft whispered sound that surrounded the sick, concern pervading their words, every time they spoke to him directly. As if he didn't know, as if he couldn't understand, as if he didn't feel the weight of averted glances and the ever-present hushed questions: "is he contagious? How can we be sure?" He could talk—or more successfully, write—about how they tried to let him feel normal, but failed. The meaning of nightly quarantines were not lost on him.

He could describe how there was one day, or maybe it had been a few (for each day had begun to feel like a week), that he had noticed his favorite toy missing, a posable doll made to look like a Bogsneak. Now, of course, he would say it was "back when such trivial things mattered," but a day, a time, an age... he could not give place to exactly when. His life was marked more in a series of traumas than it was in a series of years. When The Pain Got Worse. The Day The Quarantines Began. The Start Of the Useless Treatments. The Day They Discussed My Death (And Thought I Could Not Hear It).

The Day 'Marionette' Was Stolen.

That one he remembered, less for the fact that his toy had been taken (he had gotten used to bad things happening to him) and more the fact that it had surprised him. The clan, who had always meant well, had long since determined that the safest course of action would be to have no one touch his possessions, when they could carry his disease. "In defense of the many," and "just in case" were the buzzwords of the time. It was those words that intertwined with the loss of his favorite toy that had made sure the small event not only stuck around in his mind, but would torment him some nights, even now.

Marionette was returned in the end, of course. The days without that small comfort for a youngling in isolation returned, too, in dreams that devolved into nightmares. Loss, being misunderstood no matter what he said, coughing blood into the inner workings of the Bogsneak-shaped doll, being the thing clanmates and even his own parents had to fear... No! Those are thoughts best left for restless sleep. All that mattered now was that the toy had been taken, altered, and returned. A friend, or someone who was temporarily sympathetic to his plight, had told him Marionette had been "enchanted," made animate to help him better adapt to clan life.

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Service Familiar: Marionette
Marionette, sometimes called Marion, is a service familiar for Nameless. His childhood toy was enchanted by a well-wisher, and it accompanied him when he left his original clan so as to prevent the spread of, as they said, "whatever it is he has". While its history in his possession has not always been a positive memory, this magical creature provides some semblance of comfort. Marionette can respond to commands given by Nameless and has aided him in his meager attempt at survival.

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But he knew he wouldn't adapt. Kids know these things, they know how—despite the constant attempts to make them feel on par with their peers in every area of expertise—they are bad at some things, and no matter how hard they struggle and try, they will fail to be as successful as others. And he knew as a child, as an adolescent, that the bar for success was being continuously lowered for him, that his parents would praise him for doing what others could do without thinking. Perhaps that, he sometimes ponders, is how he should measure his childhood, if he ever had to detail it for posterity: each time the bar was set a little lower.

Even back then, he knew he wasn't getting better. What he could achieve physically at the Crystalline Gala was unmanageable by Trickmurk, and though the faces worn by the adults of the clan were uplifted, he could sense that their gestures were masking worry. "Will he make it? He's survived this long, but he's deteriorating so fast! The medicines just aren't having any effect.” And worse, “Just imagine if he transmitted this to the others, to you or me."

If he did ever have to explore his life (maybe in writing, a diary dictated to his enchanted familiar who would do the work for him, lest his wrists give out, or worse, his entire front legs), he would tell how it had become clear at some undefined point in the past that his mere existence was shattering the lives of those around him. He could still walk, then, but his flight feathers had begun to fall irreplaceably from his wings. Without flight, he could no longer do as the adults had for so many years: deny the realities of his condition. In the night, he gathered what little he could call his own, and made for the uncharted wastes of the Abiding Boneyard. At this point in the story, he would pause for dramatic effect and laugh, "I was, and am, the problem." Or... he would try to laugh, for these days his laughter came with racking coughs and flecks of blood that would stymie him mid-sentence and prevent him from even finishing those few words.

He could speak, too, of the days where he was so enraged about the unfairness of his condition that he wished it on those around him, taunted by their incessant sympathies, guilt-tripped and falling prey to the way they'd talk behind doors they felt were closed but weren't shut quite tight enough. Had he been truly able-bodied then, he'd have brought destruction to the Coatls both within his clan and those he encountered on his journeys beyond its reaches, regardless of their sentiments towards him. He'd have been the vector of an incurable ailment, and he knows that the younger-him would have felt triumph in the wake of such devastation. "My disease prevented me from doing what should never be done. It saved lives while taking mine."

But what are memories to the dead and dying? What are life stories with none to tell them to? He smiles to himself, glad he doesn't wish to be remembered. It saves him the trouble of letting just one more soul down when he fails to live up to their standards... or simply fails, at some point, to live at all.

xXcaptive, captor.

"What is your name?" The Imperial asked, the shock of seeing a ghost-like, deteriorating dragon finally passing. It was one of the few moments his face betrayed his emotions, despite its own decaying appearance. No, this creature, this... Coatl, was different, even from him, and the discomfort the sight evoked in him could not be so easily disguised.

"I have... no name." The Coatl's coarse, gravelly whisper was as frail as his body appeared. It seemed to take effort, the act of talking itself, and the dragon drew a rattling breath with each group of words he attempted to utter. "Names are... for the remembered."

"Hm. So you are not remembered?" Aseroe continued, his eyes almost staring through the being before him.

"I have... no need for it... I court death... with every waking moment... Not meaning anything... to anyone... is therapeutic..."

"Hmph. A meaningless existence suits you." The comment didn't seem to offend the nameless Coatl, who simply nodded his head weakly. It did suit him. It hadn't before, he had once been terrified of this very emptiness, but now he embraced it. It gave him strength, a strength few had the willingness to even try to understand. Those obsessed with adaptation and survival saw little to gain from the insights of the dying. He rested his gaze on the powerful imperial before him, a small indication of a smile on his mouth as his uninvited guest began to speak once more. "And do you know my name? They once called me Seraffo. I led a legion without mercy and we knew power, knew abundance, knew survival. Now, they call me Aseroe, leader of the Pestilent Gardens, and you presume to tell me who I am? You who are but the remnants of a dragon?"

"Hmph. I... see myself in you... your arrogance... your cruelty... so focused on something... you'll never gain..." He tried to laugh, an eerie noise in the magnification of the cavern, something between a pitch-less snicker and a racking cough that echoed around them both, wrapping them in the stark reality of impending death.

"And what is it I am 'focused' on? What will I 'never gain?'" Aseroe attempted to keep his gaze on the smaller dragon, but his eyes couldn't help but dart around, as if he were surrounded by the dead and dying, ghosts of dragons and his own sins. He still wasn't certain of the reality of the dragon speaking to him now, one who looked more ghostly than solid in these twisting shadows, more dead than alive.

"Acceptance. That is... what you crave... is it not?" The small smirk, or what seemed like a smirk, was still vaguely traceable on the Coatl's cracked lips, despite the agony it seemed to take to speak the words. And he wasn't well, not at all. The nameless beast was struggling, feeling his throat slowly begin to clamor for liquid relief that he couldn't muster the saliva to quench, his old bones aching from standing after having remained comfortably prone for so long before this, his very lungs screaming at him for moving so much in one day. His service familiar, an enchanted hatchling's toy, was nowhere to be seen, having been sent on an innocuous mission, or a mission that now seemed so. All the same, he couldn't help but smile. For once, he'd found someone worse off than he. Not physically, but, well, many years from now, he was sure this Imperial would be plagued with regret to levels that far surpassed any Affliction symptoms.

"Hmph. Acceptance. I need no one's acceptance but my own."

"You say that, but..." The Coatl coughed suddenly, the sound much louder than his own voice. His front legs buckled, sending his weakened body to the ground faster than he could attempt to catch himself. He internally cursed himself for not having given his body the respite it had been begging for for the past few minutes, but as a spot of blood sprayed from his mouth, he obliged his disease and let his back legs follow him down. "You... —ack!— need... an... advisor... Not that... you'd... take... the advice..."

"I need nothing, old man, nothing you could provide," Aseroe snapped, his red eyes glinting behind his gas mask. As he stared down at the frail wisp of a Coatl, an idea drifted across the twisted doctor's mind. "Nothing... except, perhaps, your illness."

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Exalting Nameless to the service of the Plaguebringer will remove them from your lair forever. They will leave behind a small sum of riches that they have accumulated. This action is irreversible.

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