Temperance
(#36183083)
Leave these mires alone or else.
Familiar
Molten Wartoad
Click or tap to view this dragon in Predict Morphology.
Energy: 32/50
This dragon’s natural inborn element is Arcane.
Female Veilspun
This dragon is on a Coliseum team.
This dragon is an ancient breed.
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Personal Style
Ancient dragons cannot wear apparel.
Skin
Scene
Measurements
Length
0.97 m
Wingspan
0.83 m
Weight
2.06 kg
Genetics
Cinnamon
Skink (Veilspun)
Skink (Veilspun)
Cream
Blend (Veilspun)
Blend (Veilspun)
Robin
Firefly (Veilspun)
Firefly (Veilspun)
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 25 Veilspun
Max Level
STR
119
AGI
8
DEF
5
QCK
70
INT
5
VIT
16
MND
5
Lineage
Parents
- none
Offspring
- none
Biography
 |
Personality
Temperance does not live up to her name.
Rangers can be a passionate bunch, yes: poke anything in their assigned environment the wrong way and you could get a stern talking-to that makes a few seconds of discomfort feel much, much longer. Temperance, despite not being good enough with words to reprimand anyone effectively, takes that passion up to another level. Anything that intrudes upon her formerly assigned myriad of quarantine swamps and threatens the ecological balance within them -dragon or Shade remnant or otherwise- gets, strictly speaking, ruthlessly demolished without hesitation. The only reason she doesn’t have a staggering bounty over her head despite being fairly dangerous with her teeth and claws is the weird fact that those who survive her wrath never seem to remember much about her beyond their bleeding wounds and her warning to ‘leave these mires alone or else’. No, other dragons are not truly dangerous to Temperance despite the fact that she would have to slink through a thick portion of the Wandering Contagion every time she has to return to Wonderstark to pick up new Observatory cadets for their survival training. Dragons can be ‘reasoned’ with: even Plague tribes. (And yes, Observatory protocol says it would be a great experience for aspiring scholars to follow an impulsive ranger into the dangerous depth of the Plaguelands, even if less than half of them ever actually return.) Her true bane would be the many diseases that on occasion diffuse into the swamps despite the nullifying magic that surround them -no thanks to those incompetent cadets- and send the native creatures into fits of incurable suffering that require them to be put down before an epidemic occurs. And wartoads. Eleven does she hate wartoads. Not only do they breed fast and eat too much, but they are also very, very hard to kill. With her stubborn streak of not giving up a fight no matter how dire things become for her, there would be way more instances where Temperance probably would have died than she could count- -if she could die in the first place. |
Despite its inclusivity to all dragons great and small, there is a certain amount of prejudice in the Observatory. Magically skilled mages are valued. Magically unskilled mages are not.
And despite being a fae tutored by some of the Observatory’s best archmages all her life, Temperance does not have enough magical skill to power a lightbulb.
So in many ways, Temperance was worth less than scrap metal: at least an artificer could use scrap metal to build a magitech golem to perform menial tasks with. There was nothing- not even janitorial work- she could successfully perform that a more magically apt dragon than her can’t do better.
Except in being the perfect test subject.
Ironically, due to being elementally neutral to the point of expendable, Temperance could act as the near-perfect control for the many mages living in remote locations across the Starfall Isles looking to test their enchantments and spells on actual dragons. She would serve as some outpost researcher’s white mouse for a few weeks, have any after-effects cleaned up with time magic, then be promptly teleported to the next mage in the ever-growing queue of experimenters after her plainness. All without a word of her actual agreement, of course.
She never expected to be dragged out of this vicious cycle.
It was supposed to be a quick investigation into extraterritorial Arcane leylines and their effects on magically weakened dragons. To Temperance, the story was even simpler: one day she was at Focal Point half-heartedly accepting an injection of vaccines from the clan healer, the next day she was stranded in the middle of a Plagueland swamp, starving like she had never seen food before in her life. She couldn’t think properly. She couldn’t even fly properly. There was only the hunger and the everlasting crawl forwards. The small group of researchers and other test subjects she accompanied was nowhere to be found.
The curse had already taken hold back then- had been the sole reason why she had somehow survived multiple attacks from the swamp’s vicious denizens and was still able to trudge onwards. When the mires’ original warden found her lunging at his face she was rabid, feverish, and shouldn’t have been able to move.
The mires’ leyline was peculiar, the old ranger had explained to Temperance as he dressed her wounds. It oozed raw Arcane magic that mixed badly with background Plague magic. Being in such close proximity to the leyline was enough to light a Mindfire in certain creatures, burning out their magic reserves and driving them insane with hunger. He had not seen a survivor before that lasted as long as Temperance did.
As far as the warden was concerned, it was his job to seal the leyline up. It would be the death of him, but for the safety of swamp denizens and dragons alike he needed to make the sacrifice. He just had to train a willing successor who would keep looking after his quarantine swamps and prevent them from becoming the target of Plague experiments and magical anomalies.
The mires were just like Temperance- subject to terrible tests to stoke some mage’s ego.
How could she say no?
Over time, Temperance learned to restrain her hunger and live in harmony with the mires. She learned to survive off sustenance in the swamps. She learned to track for traces of native creatures and dragons. She learned how to coexist with croakers and kamaitachi and unicorns and podids, how to spot disease, and when to make the hard decisions required to preserve their populations.
She learned how to fight.
When the old warden left without warning to finally do his duty, Temperance wasn’t there to watch.
But she felt the aftereffects.
And despite being a fae tutored by some of the Observatory’s best archmages all her life, Temperance does not have enough magical skill to power a lightbulb.
So in many ways, Temperance was worth less than scrap metal: at least an artificer could use scrap metal to build a magitech golem to perform menial tasks with. There was nothing- not even janitorial work- she could successfully perform that a more magically apt dragon than her can’t do better.
Except in being the perfect test subject.
Ironically, due to being elementally neutral to the point of expendable, Temperance could act as the near-perfect control for the many mages living in remote locations across the Starfall Isles looking to test their enchantments and spells on actual dragons. She would serve as some outpost researcher’s white mouse for a few weeks, have any after-effects cleaned up with time magic, then be promptly teleported to the next mage in the ever-growing queue of experimenters after her plainness. All without a word of her actual agreement, of course.
She never expected to be dragged out of this vicious cycle.
It was supposed to be a quick investigation into extraterritorial Arcane leylines and their effects on magically weakened dragons. To Temperance, the story was even simpler: one day she was at Focal Point half-heartedly accepting an injection of vaccines from the clan healer, the next day she was stranded in the middle of a Plagueland swamp, starving like she had never seen food before in her life. She couldn’t think properly. She couldn’t even fly properly. There was only the hunger and the everlasting crawl forwards. The small group of researchers and other test subjects she accompanied was nowhere to be found.
The curse had already taken hold back then- had been the sole reason why she had somehow survived multiple attacks from the swamp’s vicious denizens and was still able to trudge onwards. When the mires’ original warden found her lunging at his face she was rabid, feverish, and shouldn’t have been able to move.
The mires’ leyline was peculiar, the old ranger had explained to Temperance as he dressed her wounds. It oozed raw Arcane magic that mixed badly with background Plague magic. Being in such close proximity to the leyline was enough to light a Mindfire in certain creatures, burning out their magic reserves and driving them insane with hunger. He had not seen a survivor before that lasted as long as Temperance did.
As far as the warden was concerned, it was his job to seal the leyline up. It would be the death of him, but for the safety of swamp denizens and dragons alike he needed to make the sacrifice. He just had to train a willing successor who would keep looking after his quarantine swamps and prevent them from becoming the target of Plague experiments and magical anomalies.
The mires were just like Temperance- subject to terrible tests to stoke some mage’s ego.
How could she say no?
Over time, Temperance learned to restrain her hunger and live in harmony with the mires. She learned to survive off sustenance in the swamps. She learned to track for traces of native creatures and dragons. She learned how to coexist with croakers and kamaitachi and unicorns and podids, how to spot disease, and when to make the hard decisions required to preserve their populations.
She learned how to fight.
When the old warden left without warning to finally do his duty, Temperance wasn’t there to watch.
But she felt the aftereffects.
|
Current
Temperance woke up amongst the shattered remains of her sap nest as a veilspun like the old warden was, magic pulsing through her veins like it never had before. She was alone, and she didn’t need to call out to know that she had been left permanently alone. She never had been much of one for mourning. She also never had been much of one for conversation. When dragons inevitably came to investigate with their undead tools and claim the mires as their own, she didn’t know what else to do other than to strike them down and feed their body parts either to herself or the corrosive remains of the leyline. Plague dragons tended to carry unique and deadly diseases, after all. (She made the mistake of leaving a body to the wildlife once and came back to a few colonies of croakers with fungi growing painfully from their skulls.) When the numbers of bodies in swamps started piling up dangerously, Temperance resorted to scaring the dragons away instead. It really helped that the one magic trick she mastered could mask her presence from memory, helping her to get her point across without being hunted down by Plagueland mercenaries. On the other hand, it also attracted cryptid hunters. From Starfall Isles. Who know how to deflect simple magical effects. So there she was, wounded defender of her mires, pinned to the ground by a frazzled wildclaw with twin daggers. She could only growl and snap as figures surrounded her and dragged her back to the place she left behind. |
|
“Temperance, are you?” the tundra dragon in front of her quietly tutted, eyes staring into Temperance’s soul like rosy pools. “I’m sorry you came to us like this. You gave Orient quite the shock.”
She could not even think of attacking this tundra for some reason. Why couldn’t she? “Back. Let me go back.”
“But you’re hurt badly. And Omicron- sorry, one of our healers- says you’re being eaten alive by disease. The only reason you’re moving right now is due to some mix of Arcane and Plague magic. At least let us take care of you for a little?”
“I don’t care.”
“But you do care for that swamp, right? Wouldn’t it be nice if you’re not the one infecting it?”
She hadn’t thought of that before.
The tundra gave a small smile. “Wonderstark won’t hurt you, child. Rest well.”
Arcane clans aren’t the considerate type. While this one offered to claim the swamps in name to help decrease the number of dragons that would bother her, Temperance couldn’t help shake the feeling that it was her that it really wanted. Especially since, in return, the tundra wanted her to return to the clan every now and again. Visit the healers. Pick up a few new interns that- more often than not- still felt like hatchlings. And of course she had to protect the hatchlings the best she could before returning them home.
What else was a swamp’s warden to do?
Bio Layout: CityTurtle
She could not even think of attacking this tundra for some reason. Why couldn’t she? “Back. Let me go back.”
“But you’re hurt badly. And Omicron- sorry, one of our healers- says you’re being eaten alive by disease. The only reason you’re moving right now is due to some mix of Arcane and Plague magic. At least let us take care of you for a little?”
“I don’t care.”
“But you do care for that swamp, right? Wouldn’t it be nice if you’re not the one infecting it?”
She hadn’t thought of that before.
The tundra gave a small smile. “Wonderstark won’t hurt you, child. Rest well.”
Arcane clans aren’t the considerate type. While this one offered to claim the swamps in name to help decrease the number of dragons that would bother her, Temperance couldn’t help shake the feeling that it was her that it really wanted. Especially since, in return, the tundra wanted her to return to the clan every now and again. Visit the healers. Pick up a few new interns that- more often than not- still felt like hatchlings. And of course she had to protect the hatchlings the best she could before returning them home.
What else was a swamp’s warden to do?
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Trivia
╭━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╮
>Temperance thinks of unicorns as good luck, and will often refuse to hurt a diseased one unless it is vital to.
>Temperance's fighting style almost looks dance-like. >Temperance had learned to fight with weapons because as a fey, she did not have teeth. After becoming a veilspun, Temperance resorted to using her natural agility and prowess over using weapons. >Temperance's state of undeath is almost similar to that of a vampire, except she could survive running water. ╰━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╯ |
Relationships
╭━━━━━━━━━╮  best friend  kindred soul ╰━━━━━━━━━╯ |
Art
Bio Layout: CityTurtle
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Exalting Temperance to the service of the Arcanist 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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