Gunnbjorn

Born to a pair of Seekers, Gunnbjorn came into the world in a spartan cave carved far away from the Icewarden’s charges. The first things to greet his eyes was the verdant greenery of nature, and the first gouges his claws made were in dark, rich loam. His heavy fur gathered burs, snags and tangles as his family set out the day after he learned to walk.

With a loving nudges from one of his parents, his young legs began the trek which were his family’s legacy. He left his hatchling days behind quickly as his body grew lanky, horns budded, and baby down was replaced by full, coarse fur. The small family roamed the world in search of the Shade’s minions and once found, Gaolers had to imprison or destroyed such beings. Such was their most ancient duty to the Icewarden.

Gunnbjorn scraped off the itching velvet or his horns on an old, gnarled tree before he left the Veridian Labyrinth. Shaking out his thick mane, he looked over his shoulder at the only world he had ever know. In one sense, he would miss it, but it had less nostalgia connected to it than he would find the modern dragons held for places or possessions. His kind held their vigils and did their duty. It did not matter that he had never felt snow beneath his paws or personally bowed before the Icewarden. The reason of his breed flowed through his blood, hastening him onward with his parents and siblings.

Turning his sights toward the Tangled Wood, he listened raptly to the education his parents gave him of the Deities, the rise of the Beastclans, the Shade, and other ways the world around them turned. His lessons were almost complete when he pricked his ears toward a new sound. It reminded him of high wind in the uppermost trees but stronger and less erratic. When he asked what it was, his parents told him it was the sea.

The sand of long beaches crumbled strangely beneath his toes, but even in the Sea of a Thousand Currents there were forgotten pockets where the Shade had taken root. Deep beneath the turbulent blue waves, crevices plunged almost to the center of the earth. Mysteries of things best left unknown coiled there, waiting their opportunity to spring. It was upon finding one such creature that Gunnbjorn earned his name and place among the Gaelor society. Unlike his parents, his role was to be a Keeper.

Together, the family went into fearsome battle to subdue a bleak leviathan which slithered through the blackest pits of the sea. They fought it into a prison of their making, calling on every trick and gift originally bestowed on their kind by the Icewarden. Once it was driven back, hissing revenge, Gunnbjorn assumed his solitary role.

Like all of his kind, he would stand vigilant, watch and wait so that the rest of dragonkind could enjoy some measure of safety in their innocent obliviousness to the horrors of the Shade.