Pathogen

Affiliate: Kau

Pathogen is a mystic fortuneteller, her original name was Risi. She was exaulted to work for the Shadowbinder, as a Seer in training. She was banished when she misinterpreted a vision, and told the Shadowbinder to send her shadowfighters to the scared wasteland. Her vision showed a mass of dragons gathering on the edge of the Plaguebringers territory and she thought they were preparing for an attack. When the shadowfighters arrived, they found no army waiting for them. The nearby plague clans were terrified and enraged at the sight of the shadowfighters setting foot in their territory and fought them brutally. The Plaguebringer was appalled at the culling of non-exaulted dragons and very nearly started a war with the Shadowbinder. The Shadowbinder had to swallow her pride and gave the Plaguebringer some of her treasure to appease her.
It was too late when Risi realised the dragons she had seen in her vision were her own flight's units.

The Shadowbinder was infuriated at Risi, and banished her to the scarred wasteland, ordering her to die where her brothers and sisters were pointlessly killed. Risi had scavenged and struggled to survive in the scarred wasteland, her soul laden with visions of nothing but death and savagery, and her nights ridden with nightmares of the Plaguebringer. There was one such nightmare that she could see, even when she woke up.

The Plaguebringer herself manifested from the rotting corpses of dragons all around. The deity said, in a voice like grinding metal, "You will always be surrounded by the miasma of death. Like the stench of rot, it will be in your breath, and in your eyes. You shall live, but you are a dragon no longer. You were the Shadowbinder's foolish pathogen, but now you are mine, my herald of tragedy. But don't you feel better? Knowing you are surrounded by your own kind?" The Plaguebringer laughed as her body collapsed into a mass of clattering bones. Pathogen felt the scales around her hind legs and tail start to shrivel and dry up, as though they were perpetually halfway between a molt.

As the months went on, Pathogen managed to get used to her growing molt, and her visions. Eventually, she saw her own death. She was old, and surrounded by dragons who weren't eating her, but mourning her. She wasn't sure what to make of it because she doubted she was ever going to get a 'happy ending' like the vision suggested. She discovered Canker's clan and... felt something very familiar about the members. Canker, the leader, found pathogen's appearance intimidating, the black and purple dragon had a strange cold nihilism in her eyes and shifting shapes in her wings. It was hard to get her to open up to the other members of the clan, but she seemed like she wanted to stay. Canker was impressed to find that Pathogen was a Seer of death, and her visions had come in handy a large number of times.

Canker was determined to find out the shadow seer's past, and how she ended up in the wandering contagion all by herself. Pathogen was reluctant, but she knew that Canker's scent was the strongest scent she had smelled in her personal death-vision. The closest one to her in her time of passing, in fact, so she opened up to the young leader.

Canker kept Pathogen's shameful secret. She understood why she was so distant. She picked up a birdskull that her mother was making before she disappeared after Fever, and gave it to Pathogen. She told Pathogen the story of her mother's struggles, and that the headdress represented strength despite hardships, and new beginnings. The two became inseparable, and they made a foreboding battle duo. But one day, she received a vision of Canker's parents and sister Fever.

Pathogen decided it was time to tell Canker their fates, so that she could finally move on. The death seer stood up and spread her wings open wide, the shifting shapes on the wrinkles of her wings becoming defined, and Canker could see the forms of her long lost family. Pathogen tells her that Fever used her parents as fodder in the boneyard, sacrificing them to the warring dragons so that she could make it to the wyrmwound unscathed. She says that Fever was obsessed with meeting the Plaguebringer, believing that the Plaguebringer would recognize her malicious cunning, and reward her for it as an immortal dragon. She did not.

In fact, the deity despised Fever.
"You think I only care about death, and destruction, like all of the others. Well I don't. Only an idiot like the Arcanist would think the end of all life would be worth sacrificing. I don't make diseases and plagues to wipe out life. I do it to make it stronger. The betterment of the self is the only thing that will allow life to continue no matter what disasters may come. But you, you were so preoccupied with your pompous vanity to ever bother to make yourself better. Even your brother, the weakling runt, who stole magic from my enemy of the glades, made himself into a healer. He gave himself a strength that no one else had, and now he and his sisters make a formidable team in the coliseum. However, you used the love and lives of your parents to scheme your way here. You are sorely mistaken if you thought I would be impressed by that,"

Canker asked Pathogen to stop. She knew what would come next, and she didn't want to see it. Canker was unhappy, but not surprised. The young leader made Pathogen her second in command for she saw that her wisdom was invaluable. Pathogen tried to refuse, but Canker was final in her decision. She told the seer that there was a reason for the drying scales. She told her that she was undergoing a molt no one has ever had, and that she would become something the world had never seen before. That it was only a matter of time before she shed her past self and sit proudly among the future that they would create together.

Pathogen replied "Save your speeches for the clan, I am not destined for glory, and I have known that... for a very long time,"

embodiment of shadow

past form (last day 11/3/23): Cherub, Noxtide, Underbelly


http://flightrising.com/dgen/preview/dragon?age=1&body=11&bodygene=25&breed=4&element=7&eyetype=0&gender=1&tert=13&tertgene=10&winggene=24&wings=69&auth=1d4f2249465601af0254f36a0e29c31c331087c8&dummyext=prev.png