Chroma

Chroma ==================================

Copper Ore Minerals & Ores More valuable than gold in some respects. 15 Amber Delver's Lamp Apparel A copper-plated lamplight emitting an inviting amber glow. Cave seekers favor and rely upon this item whilst exploring caverns and rocky depths. 0 Celestine Geode Minerals & Ores The crystals are beautiful, but too small to be of much use to a craftsman. 81

Overall, Chroma's pretty pleased with everything.

They definitely shouldn't be, considering recent events. Goldwood being subjected to a hostile takeover and who knows how many people dying or at least having a really bad time. (Though to be honest Chroma knows they don't quite understand the gravity that dying has to dragons. Permanent death is pretty incomprehensible to them. Still, they know the dragons hate it a lot and consider it the worst thing, so Chroma strives to treat it as such where dragons are concerned.)

Then of course there were Hyacinth's injuries, and how all of them were trapped down here for the foreseeable future, which was objectively kinda bad, except Chroma is thrilled to have companions finally. They'd been alone for longer than they could remember, and they didn't particularly mind the solitude, but they're a social creature too and they didn't realize just how much they needed that socialization. They try to rein it in for the dragons' sake but, well. It's not working very well. At least the dragons don't seem bothered by it.

---

A lot of work needs doing now that there's long term inhabitants who are bigger than Chroma themself. Codsworth and Curie are stout enough, and their subspecies is cave-adapted enough, that Chroma could probably just raise some ceilings and widen key hallways a bit and call it a day. Hyacinth, though - she towers over them all, and wouldn't even fit in most of the hallways no matter how much she scrunched up. It's not a problem for now, with her recuperating in Curie's infirmary, but Chroma has a lot of renovations ahead of them.

They're delighted. They haven't had a decent megaproject in so long, and this is going to be amazing.

Chroma ends up demolishing several rooms entirely; their tendency to carve mazelike rooms is coming back to bite them there. It's no big deal though - they can reuse the resources elsewhere. Hyacinth, when she's healed enough to start moving around the section of cavern she can fit in, picks up what Chroma is doing immediately and is immediately aghast. Chroma can empathize - the dragons had to build things in such a tedious way after all, remodeling would be terrible to them. Hyacinth apologises profusely; Chroma forgoes their mangled attempts at sign to shake their head, grin as wide as they can, and offer an ecstatic thumbs up. She still apologizes, but she does it less, so Chroma counts it as a win.

---

Eventually things settle down. Codsworth starts puttering around cleaning everything in his reach, which delights Chroma to no end. Curie resumes her experiments once her patients no longer need her attention, and Chroma is happy to bring her samples of organics and minerals. Wolf gets released eventually, once Hyacinth decides she trusts him. Chroma shrugs at the whole thing and follows her lead; the social lives of dragons are still a bit incomprehensible. Hyacinth herself gardens, writes, and adapts to her injuries. Chroma brings her interesting things from time to time, plants and bits of rock that grew in odd shapes, things like that. It's not much, but it seems to help her mood a little.

The dragons can't stay here forever, though. Chroma would be happy if they did, and the cavern could probably support them - and if it couldn't, well, Chroma could always expand farther. Except... They need more socialization than this. They need a community - they need the sky. Even the snappers, cave-adapted though they are, can't live sealed in such a limited place for the rest of their lives.

So... Chroma starts on an escape tunnel.

---

The escape tunnel turns out to be a fantastic idea. Not on its own merit necessarily, though it'll probably be so in the future. No, it's because Chroma finds something way more interesting.

It's another tunnel. When Chroma finds it, it's totally unlit, and yet no monsters have spawned. The stuff it's made of is like nothing Chroma has ever seen before - it shines like gold but is hard like obsidian, and it hums with some kind of energy only Chroma can hear. There's tracks on the floor, redstone tracks, which are unpowered but even that offers an important clue. This thing, whatever it is, was crafted by a Builder.

Chroma has always known, intellectually, that there must have been others like them at some point. This tunnel - it drives it home. Someone else made this. Someone else - who might still be down there somewhere.

Also, more importantly, it's cool as all hell and Chroma cannot wait to explore.







Character Notes
♫ The Island (Madeon Remix), As Daylight Dies
• About 1.8m tall with no obvious signs of belonging to either sex. They're bipedal, with goatlike hooves for feet and five-fingered hands, and covered in a mix of scales, fur, and feathers. While they have dragonlike wings that are large enough for limited flight, they do not use them to fly, and simply use them as balance aids. Most of the time the wings are tightly furled against their back. Curiously, Chroma lacks a tongue and is apparently incapable of producing any vocalizations at all.
• Chroma picks up languages with incredible speed - they were fluent in Common Draconic within a week. The bits and pieces they've heard from other languages appear to have stuck with them as well despite the lack of teaching effort. Their writing skills are abysmal though, so communication is difficult. Attempts were made to teach them sign language, more out of curiosity than anything. They picked that up just as fast as spoken/written language, but their inability to do a lot of the hand movements makes it an impractical method of communication too. Thankfully, charades are enough to get across the important stuff.
• The common theory is that Chroma is some ancient species of beastclan that has since gone extinct on the surface. A thick magical haze hangs around them at all times, which explains the long life-span. Chroma claims to not remember anything before the cave, though.




The Under/Chroma's caverns! Click for fullsize.

• Construction Album
• Other Screenshots




OOC Notes
• Flight Rising version of my Minecraft skin... they fill a needed plot role, okay? :P
• Chroma genuinely doesn't remember their past; the farther back they try to remember, the blurrier things get, until they can't remember anything at all. They're about 8000 years old, which doesn't help, but in this case the memory loss is primarily due to severe injury.
• More info on Chroma's species, the Builders, is located in Patchy's bio. The short of it is that the Builders are a constructed species who were designed to maintain power stations like the Grand Reactor (the one that blew up and made the Arcanist) - but due to the Grand Reactor meltdown Chroma and Reese are the last two survivors of the species.
• Chroma was near-mortally wounded during the reactor meltdown. Most of the small markings on their head/body are actually "scars" (imperfect repairs). Their muteness, lack of fine motor control, and stub tail also all stem from their ancient injury. They have no memory of the work they're supposed to be doing; their incessant digging/hoarding is subconsciously connected to finding usable materials for maintenance but it's not going much of anywhere these days.