Spellwrought Ambassador

Familiar

While harpies aren't typically prolific spellcasters, many have taken up apprenticeships with neutral dragon clans in the Starfall Isles. (Starfall Celebration 2018 Holiday Item)

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m| m| kg 12.69ft|11.94ft|513.08lbs Found in the Tangled Wood in the Shadowbinder's Realm On the 18th day of the Plaguebringer's Month. Spines given on 10/05/15 35k/162k Column Font From Font Meme Banner art by AngHuiQing Banner dividers by Georgianna Flight flags by Oseim

Berghexe Runereader and Arbiter Born in the month of the Tempest The Technician Very Genre Savvy, and wears a really Nice Hood. It takes a certain breed of dragon to be small, gentle and frustratingly fluffy among the rough and robust fighters and heavy tank casters of a campaign clan. Misdirection and boffo come naturally to any child of the Shadowbinder. Berghexe does her elemental mother proud. She came to the Clan during a day's gathering. As small ball of egg-damp fluff, she should have been clumsy as she tracked our mirror dragons on their hunt. But their steady caution was all she needed to keep at their heels and hidden, moving when they moved, pausing when they paused. Her native skills at magic keeping her sun-bright fur from betraying her in the gloom and dark of the Shadowbinder's lands. Even then she was a good judge of timing and picked her moment to reveal herself with the distinctly un-tundra-ish gift of a mostly stunned crow when the pack reached a tiny clearing. Hopping down from the shadows of creeping ivy to the ground before them, she carefully set the twitching bird down before the hunt leader and, with a paw barely larger than the bird's head, pushed it an inch closer and took a step back to let them think. 'I can do this and more…." The expectant silence said. This wasn't the begging gift of a desperately lonely hatchling, the crow was a bargaining chip. "Never saw that kind of skill from a tundra before." Was one surprised comment. "What kind of tundra even knows how to catch birds?" Was another. The hunt leader was thoughtful and practical, "The kind of dragon we would love to have with us." She said, as she crossed the small bit of space between them. She cocked her head to one side and then the other at the crow and nodded once. She dispatched the bird with one stone-colored claw and cocked her arm to let the hatchling climb up her shoulder and out of the Shadowbinder's realm. Place Breeding Card Here | http://keelanrosa.com/fr/

Subtle and tactical, Berghexe does her work largely through seeing what is really there instead of what others hope to see and acting accordingly. It takes skill to never let those you serve see you in the trenches or anything other than composed. She's earned her clan's respect through the quiet tending of the sick and injured. With the occasional firm nudge in the right direction for the living and once she provided the final escort to all those bound to serve her adopted god.

Occasionally the Clan brings in members who hold her small stature, lack of battle scars and her slightly-apart status with disdain. Those few never last in the Clan for long. They never quite know why they suddenly grow suspicious of shadows and black mice soon after their mocking, but somewhere at their core, seemingly without lifting a claw, they know the mountain witch is at the heart of it. Yet even they appreciate her silent companionship as they leave the Clan.



They are strange…. those two dragons.

They are strange in how they came to the Clan. They are strange in that they are siblings from a Wind Clan we have never met before and have not heard from since. They are strange in being born in Wind's embrace, they carry the Plaguebringer's aura with them, being influenced by her celebration month somehow.

And now there is the matter of exalting, which the Guide relinquished to them from me, and in which I am finding myself a most discomfited handmaiden….




His eyes glow dusky with pale godlight when they begin. In his bower of woven reeds and bamboo the incense will swirl around him in a heady haze of sandalwood and nag champa and something… else. The open roof always seems heavy, burdened down by the blue-eyed gaze of the sky. The inside is shaded but for that pool of blue sky above and green grass below. In seven steps, the dark guardian coils his length around the new tributes. In the light his Smoke danced and flowed across his skin like water would Ripple across a still pond. The incense would fade into the air and blur his shape even further, blending into his own Smoke streaks. He would fill the room with his prescence.

There were four that day, a quartet of sisters, great-granddaughters of the Patriarch himself and mirrors all. They were dressed in the finery of their lives. Their tiger-stripped hides were decorated with shining armor with inlaid gold and leather strapping gemstone studding. Their wingtips were armored and edged with kamaitatchi claws, their faces decorated with the bone masks and quills of vanquished harpies. They were daughters of the Storm's Eye, and they were ready and eager to serve.

He spoke then. Inside the light dome was the only place he spoke.

His voice infused the room in a basso wave and filled them through and through. They trembled in awe.



It was the sister furthest from him who stepped forward first and slid off her arm bands, her armor, her trophies of battles successfully fought. She passed them to me, my hood drawn up tighter than usual, because I was watching him and his shifting shape. Reverently I gathered her armor and set it aside. Her sisters followed her lead. The mirrors stripped off those things that had bound them to the Clan, to the life they was leaving behind, those things that were hidden below the glories of battle. From one, the tail rings from a lover long gone, a golden collar of rank from another, another set down a corsage from her children…

I brushed their wings with scented oils, and they stood there, clean and bare, their hides rippled in shades of moon-grey through rose-gold. Their heads were held high as they stepped through the circle of Skagway's claws, through the Smoke that rode down his shoulders and rolled down his wings.

The smoke did not drift out through the open canopy as smoke naturally should. It followed them, and wove around their heels and dusted their sides in godscent. It followed them to the next ring, taking on the shape of something massive and crocodilian and nearly invisible. It coiled around and above Gula who waited in the darkness of the dark dome.


And she glittered like the endless star-filled night sky.


She shone in the dark, reflecting in glints light that were not there, for this bower was covered and as shadowy as the other had been bright, and still she shone.

"Come." She said, rose in a liquid motion and spread her dark wings wide, mantling them as she bowed in acceptance of their gift. They stepped forward and touched her lowered muzzle with a reverent forehead. She spoke again, her voice deep and filled with something else, something that coiled around her in the smoke that swirled around her… in outlines that were seafoam and serpentine. The smoke would slither and wind its way around them and flow like a wave above her, rising over her head and reaching the ceiling. From the depths of the smoke and darkness there would be a glint, like a jadestone eye.


Her voice was as old as the world itself.





And there would be a rush of movement in the dark… and they were gone.





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