Taratat

After all, there are only so many times a single lair can test fate and invite things touched by elements and shade and madness before something will come to investigate and mitigate the anomalies. Taratat was the investigator, born with a flame in her eyes to a relatively clean bloodline.

She was found by the scavenging party on a routine delve through the Molten Scar, injured by a Serthis spear and bleeding out in the heat alone. Whatever party had brought her had abandoned her, and they knew their denmother wouldn't have them abandon a dying Tundra. She was a tundra, they had assured themselves, even though she babbled like a new hatchling and her eyes didn't quite seem to be open yet when they found her. She was a tundra, they hoped by the sheer size of her scraggle furred body, six meter of muscle and fur and budding horns. She wasn't the strangest thing they had in the lair, and she didn't seem to be dangerous either. She must be a tundra afflicted by ill or allergy, they promised each other the whole trek back to the lair.

The Good Doctor Talamir assured them she was not a Tundra after he stitched her up, and he directed them to construct a new cave in the hibernal den. They lay her there alone and out of the sight of the rest of the clans that shared the lair. The denmother was alerted and shown the new arrival, and the Scavengers were instructed to remain quiet about their discovery. Much as many of the other behemoths and anomalies and monsters that shared the lair had been, Taratat was put away while she healed from the circumstances that brought her to the clan.



In the same day, the clean blood began changing in the lair. A loitering bogsneak who had taken no name and been relatively unexceptional aside from his reported orphanism was the first to show the sudden feral shift of body. His eyes took a glow on and he shed his scales and fins over the course of mere hours, growing in their place fur and mane. The clans were tender with him as he howled in confusion and pain, his bones growing and his body taking a new form. By the next morning there was a second Gaoler in their midst, to the alarm of even Taratat. When the light of the morning struck his body, he lifted his head exhausted but healthy to the Leader of the clan. She had lain at his side through his changes, massaging his growing pains and comforting him through his inexplicable transition. She deemed him Auveg, and the clan welcomed him with a cacophony of roaring and food to resume his strength. This was the first, and not the last of the clan to seemingly respond to Taratat's promise to call her kin, though the ones who changed still would not show any loyalty to the tyrant Gaoler.