Illusion

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Illusion is no young dragoness, that's for certain. She lived with her mate in the Southern Icefields for most of her life, the birthplace of her parents. She's had several nests, lived for a while, enough to have a variety of life experiences.
So woe betide anyone who threatens her hatchlings.

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Illusion tended to her nests in the valleys of the Cloudscape Crags in a goodsized clan direly short on defenders. As the eldest mother of the breeding pairs, she put herself in charge of collecting nest materials, keeping the cavern they nested in clean and most importantly, of guarding them when the defenders or parents were away. That was a job she took very seriously.

She'd made the clan ridgeback and earth dragon carve the nesting cavern behind an overhang, reducing the aerial access for predators and the pathway up she trapped extensively. Nothing with tripwires, or anything a hatchling could pull down and hurt themselves with. Large logs frozen with brittle ice to the passage-side that she could block the path with, dense snowpack carefully laid so she could trigger it on the heads of marauding longnecks, nets strung stealthily over the roof and the edge of the overhang to entangle and snare. She had a frozen pantry that she hunted herself in the nesting cavern, solid iceblocks of insects, fish and meat. She could hold out for almost a month with a full cavern of hatchlings if she needed to.

And while it never came to siege, she did have to use those traps and provisions. Hoarfrost maulers, the occasional impaler or frosttangle strangler. Some she could summon the rest of the clan to intimidate them away or fight them off, other times everyone was away and she'd barricade herself in, listening to the wild beasts snuffling at her door. She'd never had to deal with Yetis, partly on purpose. She'd had the entrances made too small for them to get through.

But over time, she saw the creeping problem no one else wanted to address. The cold from the Fortress of Ends was creeping down the mountains. Things were freezing faster, snow falling sooner in the year than usual... Her first mate, her only mate, didn't want to see it either. Didn't think it was possible, the Icefields were reliable. But she saw the big snap coming. She took a few of the clan's children and left the clan. Based on how far the ice reached the next few days, she was right to do so.

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She stayed clanless until all the children were grown. Too risky to find the wrong clan, even if managing, feeding and teaching six little ones was.... difficult to say the least. She took them all over Sornieth, showing them the flights of their parents, giving them enough experience to make their own decision on what they wanted to do. (detail some of the perils that involved?) Her last one left her in the Sunbeam Ruins and then....
Her job was done.

But that wasn't enough to stop her, of course. Just because she left her home didn't mean she had nothing left; she always had her skills and she took those to market. She offered herself as a guide back to the Icefields, a dencarer, a trapper, and as a clanguard. That last offer, made to a large armored golden imperial, was the one that finally won her a clanspot. Illusion joined clan Mediasolis to fill out the clanguard, but she sometimes helps Eos with the nesting grounds on occasion and still loves playing with the hatchlings. While she's less familiar with the traditional guard methods, Goldfoo has made it clear her methods are no less useful.