Macaria

Lore is being entirely redone, will probably need a new tab just for her and her story. All writing below isn't necessarily non-canon, but it is all subject to change.

Main antagonist, but does that always mean evil? Very important - you poor dragon, you'll be getting some sad lore. Name means 'blessed death' and is named after both the goddess of blessed death from Greek mythology and after Heracles' daughter, also from Greek mythology.
First Theme: Isolation
Familiar: Animated Statue, Living Sculpture, Hippogriff, Dunewind Manticore, time devourer Little story:

I looked forward, my head held high. I could see it...within my grasp. Everything that my life had been built on, packed into this one moment, that one necklace. Everything ended here.

I smiled, something that was unfamiliar and distant to me...though old memories coursed with it. So long ago, it was, that I was a dragonet. Too long ago. Too long, to wait for this. Too long, to wait any more. I stepped forward, my footfalls sure and steady. A voice behind me, halted me, however. This voice, I could not ignore.


“Macaria wait! Stop! Think about what you’re doing!” My heart stopped at his voice, the one who had dropped the serious facade that the others held. Even her guardians had not bothered to be as close to her as he was. I decided to hear him out. Something I should not have done, it was a show of weakness, a terrible idea. But...for some reason...mortal ties turned my head.

“I am thinking, Zethes, I have been for years. My entire life leads up to this. Don’t try and stop me because of some of your silly theories.” I faked a cold exterior, I wanted to stop, to listen to his voice longer, to pretend that what I was about to do wouldn’t change everything. To pretend I was a normal dragonet with a normal friend, that I wasn’t in this prophecy. The one binding thing I could not be released from.

No. Not now, not ever again will I tarnish my own memory with such fantasies. Nothing of the sort will ever happen...I know that all too well now.

Despite my unforgiving tone, he persisted.

“Zethes, please don’t do this. I am a part of the prophecy, it cannot hurt me like it has hurt others.” I attempted a reassuring smile, but I remembered all the times he spoke to me about the heirs they tried to substitute for me...the ones who had gone out to find it, and never come back due to their greed. Funny how their hunger for power destroyed them so swiftly. They are nothing but dust in this place, no more than memories. I could not shake the thought that it might be me soon, who was a false subject of a phony prophecy, as Zethes had predicted for so long.

“Macaria...please...if you die, what will become of me? I am a disappointment to the cult. You’re the only reason I exist...the only reason I want to exist.” His voice fell at the end, I remember the dull understanding in his eyes. But he still tried, he still approached me. Something I always admired in him.

“I’ll see you soon, Zeth, don’t worry. The prophecy will prevail.” I turned away, though it pained me to do so. I knew then that this was it. My peak, or my fall. Though...something told me it was a bit of both. The end of an era in my life, and the beginning of something powerful.

I approached it, and it began to sing. The Shade...I could feel her. Her voice was so inviting, so gentle, I walked faster.

Oh...oh if I had only looked back to see those blue eyes...just one more time. If only I had given him something, a reassuring brush of the wing, a playful whip of the tail, anything.

My talons reached for the pendant, not greedily. But...as if it was necessary, if not for me, for everyone. At least that’s what her sweet voice whispered to me. Unlike the others, I hadn’t the capacity to take it for myself, I took it for others, for reasons I could not understand. Reasons I wish I had taken a moment to try and understand. I would have seen easily through the veil of her lies...if only I had looked back. If only I had hesitated more then a fraction of a second before slipping the cold chain around my snout, over my horns, and finally letting it settle on my chest.

Of course it was all too late.

I turned to my people, feeling the power within me, and I saw him run towards me. Screaming at me to take it off. He must have seen the blackening of my wings before I did, his desperation couldn’t have been any other cause.

I saw his parents attempt to hold him back, I saw his feathers fall out into their claws as he ripped away from them, and I saw the agony on his face as my aura of power lashed out furiously, and sliced him apart. He vaporized, and almost all of him burned to nothing. All in front of me. The fury never set in, just that echo of feeling inside me.

Something I cannot describe overtook me. It felt as if the core of the warmth in my heart had been violently torn from me, and only an outer shell was left behind, a scrap of shimmering blue fabric floated down, I instantly snatched it, seeing black on my talons. I turned my neck slowly to look at my wings, a dull pain beginning to creep into my being.

Black. It was all burned, my feathers crinkled and decayed, my muscles and bones weak and brittle, my jaw could barely creak open as I screamed my agony to the world. And it was agony. The truest pain I imagine anyone has ever felt...needles all over my body, fire in my very being, every inch every centimeter of my existence screamed true and complete pain.

I reached desperately for the link I had always had, the one thing that kept the black sickness at bay, but my mind grasped at nothing. My claws reached desperately at the air, looking for the shadows within me, my goddess, my patron, the one who kept me alive...had been taken from me. The warm safety of the Shadowbinder's protection that I had been born with, was terribly and truly gone.

I felt myself fading, and touched a claw to the pendant, wondering where all the power had gone, and it engulfed me once more. The pain still persisted, but she could feel herself coming back...was that herself? Everything seemed out of place, missing, gone even. She felt only despair, but her guardians and her fellow followers of the Shade cheered, their grins seemed to hungry, their eyes not proud enough. I stopped, a scowl forming on my face. I looked down at the scrap of cloth in my talons, the only remnant of what I had. The Shade whispered to me to burn it. But I chose to resist, just this one thing. I tied the cloth around my neck, looking at the sooty blue cloth that used to shine in time with Zethes’ eyes...and I felt the rage for the first time.

Where warmth was, there is cold. Where happiness lay, there is fury. And where my love used to be, there is only bloodlust.

I am Macaria...but do I even deserve that title any more?

Is that even who I am?

Written by the talented Bandicut

Story/lore dump:

Well, she is basically going to be the main antagonist behind a huge arc in my lore - this particular arc is taking place hundreds of years before my present clan and lore has come to be. So, she's really a part of my clan's history if that makes sense? Xandra to Hime are also part of this clan history, and they all will be put on a separate lair tab once they are released.

I have so many ideas and intertwining plot details that it would take forever to type it all out, so I'll just give you a small rundown of her story I got so far?
So, she is hatched into your clan of course, to your two leaders, but instead of the black or dark plumage they assumed she'd be born with, she has bright white feathers and scales.
dragon?

It's a strange, near miracle, but she doesn't seem to hold any amount of the infection that Sacral and Fabella have. A little ball of bright among the dark. It's a happy thing - but sadly, as she grows slightly older her plumage starts to fade, as does her energy. She does have the infection.
dragon?
She seemed to be getting sicker and sicker everyday - this one hatchling can't take the infection as well as the others. So perhaps the parents could come up with some sort of cure to try and save her, a cure that has to do with/uses elemental energy (it'll come up later)? And so they're able to save her from totally fading away, but the infection is not totally gotten ride of - her plumage is still slowly fading, although the white is still very much there.

Then the unthinkable happens - she's taken from them. One day they wake up and realize that she has disappeared, no trace of her wonderful bright fluff.
A dragon that is a part of a Shade-worshiping tribe/clan took her in the night, as she was identified to be the dragon in this prophecy they follow. The prophecy outlines a bright white dragon hatched to two as black as The Shade who resemble Death. It tells of how this dragon is the answer to finding and harnessing various Shade-touched objects throughout the land, all of which resemble a pendant of different elements.

They stay in the Shadow Flight for a bit, but quickly move away as they don't want to be seen with the stolen child - the little white Skydancer is too small to really understand what's happening, all she knows is that her mom and dad aren't around anymore.
They decide to flee to the Ice Flight since if dragons want to disappear, they go there. The Shade-worshiping clan moves a lot, so they just set their isolated base down in the snow of the Southern Icefields. There, they raise her under their cultish ways, her true mother and father being a faint memory. This is what she looked like when she was growing up in the Icefields (disregard the genes, but not the colour):

To cut the story incredibly short, they raised her and trained her to look to The Shade as a Deity and train her to be able to sense The Shade's energy/power. She doens't know The Shade is actually an evil being since their all so isolated. So she trained and trained, growing her own magical power, the whole tribe always telling her she is the chosen dragon, the one who The Shade will bless. This is what she now looks like - her feathers are still getting darker:
dragon?

In between this all she meets her one true friend, a chipper blue Skydancer who is also part of the cult (born into it) - his family was the one who picked the spot for the base.
dragon?

So, to cut it short, the day finally comes when she is 'ready' to be blessed by The Shade, and she finds the location of the first pendant - it was very near them the whole time. After a brief power struggle, she obtains it (it's colour turning from a bright white to a milky black), the whole cult extremely happy as this opens up new possibilities - if they can get all the Shade-touched pendants then they could rule supreme and even bring back The Shade. Unfortunately for them, the pendants' Shade power lay dormant within the jewels, so to get them they may need to get them off of other dragons.

So she gets this pendant and the cult demands that she puts it on, as she is the only one who can handle the power, according to the prophecy. She hesitates, but does so, as this has been her goal all along. Her friend tries to stop her, but she slips it on and suddenly everything changes. She feels like something vital has been severed, something she didn't even realize was there until it was gone. The slight tingling of elemental magic had been totally shut off, replaced with an empty feeling that was slowly being filled by something else, something darker than Shadow. Her feathers turned black in front of her eyes, agony racking her body as the infection that was being held off by the elemental cure could finish what it started now that her elemental connection was severed. Only small portions of her remained white, a testament of who she used to be.

Her friend was killed in the chaos of The Shade energy unleashing (still figuring those specifics out), so she was now alone with this cult. She felt empty and regretted it, but what else could she do? There was nothing left for her to do in this world except carry out her duty of obtaining the rest of the pendants. The Shade pendant eventually started corrupting her further, the magic she could use was nearly limitless in possibility, and turned her into another dragon - almost a split personality really. She donned a bone-like mask to hide behind, but that just made her Shade-self become more powerful and control her more. This is what she now looks like:
dragon?

(The little blue fabric she wears is from her friend's blue mantel!)
So, she then eventually found the next pendant in the Fire Flight, bringing her all together in my lore. She goes to Xandra and Faolin's new kingdom, Xandra wanting power more than anything. The pendant lay within the hollowed out volcano their kingdom existed around, and she eventually started working for Xandra and his kingdom, acting as a 'seer' to try and get the pendant. She convinced him to find the pendant, but he put it on before she could get it. She slowly allowed the Shade's power to seep out of the pendant though, so Xandra was slowly becoming corrupt too, also feeling the immense power that the jewel had.

Super long story short, he eventually dies as a part of the same arc, although a whole other dynamic, and she gets the next pendant. This is where it gets fuzzy, as I am unsure where to go from here. I think she will rule the kingdom a bit before the Flamecaller herself sends her wrath down, sealing her deep within the volcano's catacombs. There's a lot more to it than that, but I'm trying not to give you a whole novel. ^^; This all connects to the future, as my Clan's currently living in that same volcano, Gigginox being the descendant of Faolin and Vivllion being the descendant of Aithne. The past also catches up to them as in the present day arc I believe our skeletal Skydancer will come back in some way (she's already corrupted a few dragons that went too far into the catacombs) as well as Xandra...not sure though. A huge WIP.

I need a name for her...but the skeletal Skydancer would have started out as a pure, happy child, slowly becoming serious and cynical, before becoming just downright evil and cunning. But even when she is her most evil ,she has moments where she gets terrified of herself and she goes back to her original personality - before the Shade takes control again.

I have many ideas about the Shade as well. I was thinking their 'element' is no element at all, so it totally cuts off a dragon from their Deity. But with no element, there is the possibility of all sort of magic, some being incredibly powerful.

Telescope (to The Shade): Into Darkness