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Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Scene
Measurements
Length
5.24 m
Wingspan
8.26 m
Weight
714.17 kg
Genetics
Twilight
Basic
Basic
Denim
Basic
Basic
Forest
Basic
Basic
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 1 Bogsneak
EXP: 0 / 245
STR
7
AGI
6
DEF
7
QCK
7
INT
6
VIT
7
MND
6
Lineage
Parents
- none
Offspring
- none
Biography
PBD-- Duco
"You're oddly sympathetic for a bogsneak, Duco."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~"And you're oddly heartless for a wildclaw, Dominor."
Duco Dion
Duco Dion
The Unstable Savant
Duco Dion was one of the most famed and revered mechanical engineers of the early 3rd (or "technomagical") era. By the year 800, he was a pioneer of magical automation and artificial intelligence. He was also one of the few leading intellectuals who operated independently, owing no allegiance to any of Sornieth's Great Houses, nor relying on their funding for his work. In fact, he was an outspoken advocate for banning the practice.
"The separation of science and state is the only way to ensure that resources are spent on pursuing what will benefit dragonkind, and not on turning waylaying political powerhouses into rampant war machines."
It's no surprise that such an outspoken, independent and powerful figure would be the target of political violence from the very groups that he was speaking out against. What surprised Sornieth's scientific community was the efficiency and brutality of the method that was used to shut him down.
Glasswall Mesa, Dion's hometown in the Highland Scrub, was almost completely wiped from the map overnight. A town of several hundred reduced to rubble in a single night of violence. No group claimed responsibility, but blame quickly fell on House Joia, the House most invested in mechanical sciences and dominance over the trade sector. It made news headlines across Sornieth, two of the victims in particular making the front page.
Aleksei Dion, 19. Emma Dion, 12.
A single father, they had been all that Duco had.
He couldn't understand how he had possibly failed them, how he had been so ignorant as to put them at risk. He couldn't understand how they could possibly be gone.
Something in his very spirit broke beyond repair.
Co-workers later reported how he had refused to take time off work, but also that he spent more time having emotional breakdowns than actually getting any work done.
He became easily distracted. Obsessive. More focused on his personal magic projects and alchemical hobbies than his mechanics tasks or programming work.
It was around the time when he started practicing blood magic that they started getting concerned.
Like it or not, his area of expertise was still lightning magic and mechanics, not this life-tampering, nature-defying necromantic work. His co-workers were more concerned by the fact that he was working outside his expertise and hurting himself in the process, than the fact that what he was doing was very illegal.
The extent of his experimentation went so far that within a few weeks he started to periodically faint from the emotional stress. As one would expect: a grieving scientist working with dangerous magics, and random loss of consciousness, make a very dangerous pair. It was really only a matter of time before an accident occurred, as one did.
It was the 6th of Starfall, an intern recalled, when Duco stayed back late at the lab one night. No one else stayed behind long enough to be certain, but it was suspected that Duco didn't go home or even sleep that night. He spent all night fussing over his blood alchemy and necromantic spellwork.
At some point during the night, it was never determined when, Duco passed out and his work table collapsed under the sudden weight. Twelve glass beakers, each a different mixture or even different experiment altogether. They came crashing down, mixing with each other; spraying unstable chemicals and broken glass on the unconscious scientist as they broke apart.
When his co-workers found him still unconscious in the morning, it was hard to tell what was part of this furiously bubbling concoction and what was his own spilled blood. There was no clear line where the liquids mixed, as they coiled and blended into each other in a far more gradual way.
They might as well have become one and the same.
The next fifteen minutes were a rush of commotion and energy as the small group of scientists that had come in early that morning tried to figure out what the heck they should do and who was responsible for fetching a healer. The closest one available at such an early hour and for such a serious case was the House Penumbra backed hospital in Praenuntius City, about half an hour's flight to the east. In fate's twist of irony, the scientist most opposed to the Great Houses' "buying out" of academic researchers became the most indebted of all of them.
Even with all of House Penumbra's resources, the healers were barely able to keep him alive, let alone stable. The several hours he had spent passed out in his own boiling concoction, and with open wounds at the time, had caused the mixture to thoroughly infect his bloodstream.
The complex alchemy that he had been working on at the time was all about the recreation and altering of life: isolating the genetic traits of certain dragons in the hope that he could one day fully clone an individual dragon. All of those potions mixed together, however, was untested: it could produce a randomizing effect, mutating the subject's genetic expression-- or it could just be pure poison.
There was no way to tell in advance.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately for Duco, it did the former.
Duco was comatose for several months, his body unable to take the relatively rapid mutation of his genetics. It was quickly realised that the combination of unstable, synthesized genetic traits had replicated a far more volatile version of the Bogsneak mutagen. Unlike the original version, discovered way back in the late 2nd era, this one was not painless. As the colours and patterns of his scales changed at the same time, it was hard to follow what was his breed changing and what was just random mutation, but...
It clearly didn't happen entirely... right.
While he gradually changed into a bogsneak, some of his old skydancer traits never truly went away, they simply... changed.
Some traits he aquired as he became a bogsneak aren't normal for the transformation, either.
The multiple injuries he received in his accident healed almost completely, and all of his old scars did too. His natural healing abilities have been far above average ever since, with one exception.
When he finally awoke from his coma, it was slowly realised that Duco had a rather significant head injury. What social confidence he had possessed had mysteriously vanished. The powerfully outspoken advocate he had been was long gone. He struggled to understand the emotional cues of others, having never had to rely on facial expression to determine another's mood before.
Between that and his frequent migraines and general mental exhaustion, it took almost a week before he could even begin to ask what happened to him and where he was.
--TBC--
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