Calixte
(#5411004)
Level 25 Imperial
Familiar
Psywurm
Click or tap to view this dragon in Predict Morphology.
Energy: 0/50
This dragon’s natural inborn element is Light.
Male Imperial
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Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Scene
Measurements
Length
28.74 m
Wingspan
17.17 m
Weight
7213.95 kg
Genetics
Blue
Iridescent
Iridescent
Ice
Shimmer
Shimmer
White
Gembond
Gembond
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 25 Imperial
Max Level
STR
105
AGI
6
DEF
6
QCK
50
INT
8
VIT
11
MND
6
Biography
Calixte
of Cloud Branch
Quartermaster-general
Calixte, as quartermaster-general, is the head of Logistics Division at the Tree of Dawn, in charge everything vault and hoard-related. He is assisted by many dragons in this task, each responsible for a specific area. Some handle food supply, others, crafting materials and armamants. Working closely with everyone to ensure all the dragons at the tree, whatever their vocation, has what they need is a monumental task. Calixte, with a mind for detail and organization, rose to the task.
Statistical breakdown of supply:
Food
6 pages of insects
9 pages of meat
7 pages of seafood
7 pages of plants
Most in 7-page reserve, active supply is dwindling except for meat.
Materials
12 pages of incomplete/active stacks
23 pages of complete stacks
Actively gathering building-related materials.
Apparel
17 pages of festival apparel
1 page of miscellaneous apparel
1 page of transmutation supply
Familiars
9 pages of retired festival familiars
11 pages of cycled familiars
12 pages of miscellaneous free-wandering familiars
2 pages of deceased awaiting recycling through transmutation
Battle
3 pages of battle stones
17 Berserker
17 Scholar
23 Discipline
24 Ambush
Eliminate shortage.
Skins
17 pages of festival skins
1 page of user-made skins
Specialty
1 pages of vistas
Other
1 page of festival chests
6 pages of incomplete/active trinket stacks
2 pages of complete stacks
Visiting the Vaults
You come to an expansive platform, several minutes' flight across, constructed amidst the buttress roots of the tree. Numerous tents are set up, like stalls at a sprawling marketplace, each filled with shelves and stacks and crates of goodies - food of all kinds, trinkets, materials, clothing, stones... dragons dart around, transporting loads of items, bringing select quantities in or hauling some away. There were big tubs covered with frost with glowing blue runes on the outside, filled with meat, seafood, plants of all kinds. It was like a bazaar, but no goods were being bartered, bought or sold. Everything here was common property of the tree, and the dragons moved with purpose. Several squat stone buildings at in the centre of the platform, elaborate structures with carvings on the side. You guess that if this was an open-air warehouse of sorts, those might hold the real goodies - treasure, or gems perhaps? Maybe even artefacts?
Over the squat buildings, as if using them as foundation blocks, stretched a second platform. Dragons always seemed to make their way there before arriving or leaving the area. On it, at tree cookie many metres across served as a table, its surface covered with parchment. You see lists, tables, diagrams, and think you can even make the shape out of one of the continents of sornieth on a map under everything. A massive blue imperial pours over the table, with skydancers by his side reading or writing.
As you land at the platform, the imperial turns around and glowers at you before his features relax. "Ah, yes, the ambassadors. Welcome" he growls, unconvincingly. The uncomfortabe thought that imperials ate meat came unbidden. "Zephyr, I'm still too busy. Please give them the low down while I wrap up some work here."
"Of course," Zephyr demurs. He leads you and your companion over to the edge of he platform and spreads his wings low, as if presenting the scene before you.
"Welcome to the logistics yard," he says, a hint of pride in his voice. "This is where we keep our everyday goods and supplies. All deliveries, gifts, trades and tributes from other clans and states come here first, where we can keep track of it all. The when something is needed, we just glide down here and get it." He gestures to the green tubs that had caught your attention earlier. As you can see, we have a means of preserving food through refrigeration and freezing, thanks to our ice mages and sprites. We have enough food to last many months should famine threaten."
"However, this is not everything. This is only the tip of the iceberg, the things we use day to day, groups of things under an even hundred. Once they reach a hundred, and we have no immediate use for them, they go into our vault."
In the distance, a large stack of what looked like obsidian slabs began rising, a large column of stone ascending into the sky. Then, at a certain point, it begins dissappearing from the top down, until the entire stack has vanished.
Before Zephyr could talk about the spectacle you just witnessed, Pearl, the delivery courier dragon, glides down onto the platform. You wave at her, and she waves back.
"Good evening, Calixte!" she calls out.
Calixte looks up. You're surprised to see he has a smile on his face. "Pearl! Yes, delivery of obsidian, 70 slabs?"
"Yup! Long journey, thanks for waiting! Sign here..."
The imperial inscribes his sigil on her parchment. "Wonderful! Where'd you like them?"
"The usual spot, please. Thanks," he says warmly, then turns back to his parchments.
At that, Pearl flies over to where the obsidian stack has been previously, turned her bag upside down, and a large number of those familiar black stone slabs began tumbling out. It's always entertaining to see the courier's bags of holding at work, the slabs, each bigger than the bag's appearance, plopping out like squeezing drops of glue from a bottle. It gave you the impression of shucking an oyster and having a yeti fall out. They floated gently into forming a neat pile.
"The obsidian that was there previously was a complete stack," Zephyr finally explains. "We send them down to our materials vault through a portal to make room for a new pile."
"Calixte," he says, gesturing to the imperial you're having a little apprehension for, "is our director of logistics. He will be showing you the vaults."
At that, you hear a faint "hmph" from the imperial.
Zephyr leans in close, and speaks softly, almost a whisper. "He doesn't like or trust outsiders. A while ago an artfeact was stolen by trade representatives visiting from another clan. Nothing could be proven, so he took the fall for it. We are treaty-bound to demonstrate our economic base as a sign we can live up to our end of any given deal, and safeguards are now in place that would stop any would-be thieves, but he's still very unhappy about taking foreigners into the vaults. So please," he gives you a searching, pleading look, "don't do anything stupid. Okay? I vouched for you."
"We understand," you say. "don't worry."
But before you could say more, you're interrupted by Calixte. "Alright. You two. Follow me. Zephyr, stay here, Jordan could use a hand if you don't mind." He turns his attention back to you. "And if you you try anything funny, let's just say," he grins widely, exposing his many teeth. "diplomatic immunity only goes so far."
With that, he leapt from the side of the platform into the air, and began flying with heavy wingbeats towards what looks like a stone archway on the edge of the platform, nestled in the shadows between two roots. You struggle to keep up, and land right behind him in front of the archway. It appears to be a solid stone wall.
He whistles, and an earth sprite materializes out of the stone wall. The wall itself disintegrates to a cloud of dust, revealing a large but dark cave.
"Come," he says, and you follow into the cave. The sprite follows, and behind it, a solid wall re-forms.
{Hello}, you hear a voice in your head. You look around, then remember sprites can be telepathic. {Sprite here. I'm going to help guide you today, answer any questions. Just speak, or will a thought at me if you'd like to reply.}
{Hi}, you think to him. The tunnel seems to be sloping down. Orbs of light float around, casting sharp shadows against the walls. {This is going to the vaults, right? Not some torture chamber?}
You hear a giggle in your head. {Yes, the vaults.}
A pause.
{We don't have torture chambers.}
{Is it far?} you think-ask.
"Keep up please," a gruff voice echoes from ahead. You were forming behind, distracted by this thought-conversation you were having with the sprite. It's new to you, but you're grateful for the sprite's company. You pick up the pace.
{No,} it replies. Then, {actually, yes, but you're almost there. You'll see.}
As you catch up to Calixte, he's talking to a black skydancer in an odd, gutteral language. Jagged blue streaks cross his body, like scars left by lightning. The skydancer looks at you with what can only be described as contempt, then vanishes into the shadows. "Come on," Calixte growls, and you continue on.
{Who's that?}
{Polaris, one of our engineers. He also doesn't like outsiders.}
{Why?}
{It's just him, I guess. Don't worry about it.}
Finally, you stop at massive, ornate steel double-doors. Calixte rears up and pushes both of his front paws against the doors, exactly on circles carved into the doors amidst complex runes and patterns. The inscriptions begin glowing on it before the doors begin heaving open inward. With a shove, he flings the doors wing and lands back on all fours, then leads the way in.
You try, and fail, to suppress a gasp. Beyond the doors was a monstrous cavern, so big you couldn't make out the ceiling, which seemed lit like the daytime sky. The other end of the cavern was a blur in the horizon, and the walls on either side was a honeycomb of small chambers, stretching as far as the eye could see. In each chamber built into the walls lay neat stacks of items. You can make out in the chambers closest to you on the right many towering stacks of obsidian, like the stack that vanished from the platform above ground.
"This is our vault," Calixte said, again a hint of pride in his voice.
You take several moments to recover from the vertigo-inducing space, after so long underground. Where those clouds?
"How the hell does this even fit under the tree? Either we've teleported, or this is an illusion." You look at the imperial accusingly.
"Illusion? No. Come." He makes a short, low flight over to the chamber of obsidian. As you follow, the earth sprite begins talking into your head again.
{You're correct! We passed through a portal. The land beneath the tree is too dense to dig into.}
{Then where are we?}
{In our vaults, of course! But we can't tell you where it is, or we'd have to kill you.}
You laugh, relaxing. Of course they wouldn't reveal the location of their vault. Accessing a clan's vaults are among the best-kept secrets of any dragon worth their salt, and those who betray such secrets are despised and distrusted forever, even among the worst criminals. Vault secret-breakers don't last long.
As you get near, the dark stacks loom and resolve into neat, precise columns of slabs of black glass-like stone. You walk up to the base of the stacks, tap the stone with your claw, hearing the characteristic crystal resonance of obsidian. Then you look up and try to count how many there are, to get a sense of scale. You give up at over two thousand, and look around at the rest of the cavern from the obsidian storage cave. There must be hundreds of similar chambers, each for a specific material, artefact or food item. The chambers closest the the one you're in are filled with raw materials - logs, planks, ores of every kind. Thousands upon thousands of nearly stacked blocks, ingots, and pallets.
Then you make a realization: Of the truly tradeable goods, things like winter wolf pelts and gold ore, few are to be found. "Wait. But most of these materials are worthless," you say. "Swipp doesn't care for them, and they're no special alchemical ingredient."
"Oh, worthless to some, maybe. But these," he sweeps a wing to gesture the breadth of the caven, "are the building blocks of our buildings, our technologies, our industries. Our engineers find new ways to use them every day. Maybe most dragons clans are small family affairs content to buy and barter in current mass-produced baubles. But we are preparing for a technological revolution of the future. And one day, some of these things will be worth their weight in gold."
The Earth Sprite chimes in, looking out from the webpage at you.
And with that, the tour was over. As you exit, you spy chambers with what seemed to be glowing golden forcefields at their entrances. Stacks of gems and silver lay within, attesting to the wealth and fruitful planning of this state.
"That was supposed to be a brief look - I apologize, I'm afraid we have no time to stop in at the armoury." He didn't seem terribly apolagetic at all, but cheery. "We are going back to the surface. Our chiefs of training and defense represenative are waiting for you, and I'm sure your discussions with them are far more important than seeing a bunch of toys."
He's wrong. You really want to see the "toys". If this state is as advanced and well-supplied as they seem to be, they must have some very nice armamants indeed. You file a mental note to ask the defense representative to convince you of their military capabilities by having a proper look at the hardware.
Zephyr is waiting at the entrance, smiling genuinely. "Had fun?" he beams, looking at you, then Calixte.
The imperial huffs. "I'm sure. I must take my leave now; it was a pleasure showing you our vaults. Zephyr will take you from here."
You respond in kind, and the imperial bows shortly, then takes off in a beat of wings.
"Onwards. Anuket and Cameron are looking forward to seeing you. This way!" and he launches into the air, you leaping and spreading your wings to follow.
༒
Leader 2 / Thinker 3 / Telekinesis 3
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Exalting Calixte to the service of the Lightweaver will remove them from your lair forever. They will leave behind a small sum of riches that they have accumulated. This action is irreversible.
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