Cemlyn

Cemlyn is chaos personified. If he wasn’t such a skilled engineer, he’d have been kicked out long ago. And if he didn’t enjoy rubbing his skill in Leanan’s face so much, he would abandoned the clan even sooner. As it is, he spends most of his time screwing with the clan leaders while making brilliant and irreplaceable equipment in his down time.

With a chip on his shoulder and a hatred of authority, having him around is risky business. He’s exceptionally popular among the clan, especially those Leanan has alienated, even if he doesn’t truely see any of them as friends. He doesn’t really have enough trust left in him for friends.

Recently, however, his baleful attention has turned to Chou.

Cemlyn was such a bright-eyed and enthusiastic youngling. He really lucked out finding an engineering mentor from Lightning, Markeb, despite being in a Light clan. Everyone knew Lightning dragons were the most skilled with technology and innovation, and Cemlyn wanted nothing more than to build for the sheer joy of creation and purpose. He was tasked with building a machine to help catalogue materials based on how well they could absorb and channel magic. He started with basic physical properties since imbuing could cause drastic changes. If a material could take a lot of magic but would be made too brittle for any real use, it needed to be included in the analysis portfolio. Next, he worked on the system for measuring rates of magic absorption and emission, an endeavor that took him years to complete due to needing to include all types of elemental magic. Cemlyn was exceptionally proud of how he solved for testing multiple elements at once, and Markeb was too based on how ecstatic he was over his prototypes. Cemlyn’s intelligence and friendly energy made him very popular within his original clan. Outside of work, he was constantly running around to various parties and study groups. Though he did find it a bit weird that he was never invited to some of the more prestigious parties, despite the skill he’d demonstrated.

The day he revealed his final product to the research team was the proudest of his young life, though it was weird that the head researcher kept talking to Markeb rather than him. Why was he being sidelined at his own event? When the congratulations, the invites, and the recognition for his work never appeared, Cemlyn became concerned enough to ask his mentor why he was being ignored. xxx “You did a very good job, young one. I’m sure one day you’ll be a very well-respected engineer. But please be reasonable, you never would have been able to make anything without my guidance. I know you worked very hard, and I’ll make sure you get rewarded for that, but my expertise was essential to get you to where you are now. You can have more one-on-one with the higher ups on your next project.” xxx Except the next project never happened. Instead, because of Cemlyn’s mentor playing telephone, a miscommunication led to the machine breaking down and taking out 5 cases of precious samples. The very next day he was pulled into a tribunal and accused of gross negligence. His frantic, and frankly accusatory, insistence that they had used the machine wrong didn’t win him any allies. Trying to point the blame at Markeb, either for poor communication or because he was the one who ‘built it’, just led to more contempt from his judges. Slapped with financial reparations, house-arrest outside of work hours, and limited to mindless drudgery, Cemlyn stewed in a helpless rage. None of this had been his fault. He had given them everything, but received none of the recognition and all the punishment. Not even his friends stood by him, leaving him a pariah. For months Cemlyn worked off his ‘debt’, deflecting any technical conversation with his mentor by really talking about how he felt just terrible for his mistake and oh goodness, he’s a terrible engineer isn’t he? He slipped his leash at the first opportunity, fleeing to the Expanse.

He came into this clan like a wrecking ball. No one was expecting his addition, not even Chou who hired him within an hour of meeting him. Immediately upon entering, he caused a whole bunch of delays as he tried to integrate himself into the clan. At that point, everyone assumed it was an accident. Leanan was not happy to have such a trouble maker in the clan. She kept trying to push him out and, just to be contrary, that was why Cemlyn ended up staying. Cemlyn made sure to go out of his way to make Leanan’s life miserable, causing delays and messes whenever he could. Cemlyn hated Leanan for reminding him of the judgmental leaders from his original clan, but he also kind of liked that she never bothered to pretend to be friendly. There were plenty of dissatisfied dragons more than willing to help get one over the uptight clan leader. A skydancer named Miyazaki was so eager to help that Cemlyn found himself interacting with him to an almost oppressive degree.

But for all that Cemlyn loved to screw with Leanan by messing with her productivity, his fondest memory from those early days was the angry, pinched expression on her face when she realized just how skilled of an engineer he actually was. Cemlyn had joined just after a severe malfunction in the hydro-and-cooling system had flash frozen most of the clan. In the aftermath, the leaders were scrambling to find a new, safer water source. Cemlyn’s Waterworks design a thing of efficient beauty. Once kick started, the suction pumps would pull water through a vertical circuit, some of the water being routed to water splitter to generate hydrogen and oxygen. The pumps were powered by fission from the hydrogen, and the oxygen routed to life support since for safety reasons the whole system set deep beneath surface of the Expanse. The begrudging acknowledgement of his skill left him cackling for weeks, sweeter than any amount of sweet but empty praise.

When Cemlyn got sick with the terminal disease spreading through the clan, he had every intention of just letting it kill him. This wasn’t because he wanted to die – not at all! – but because he was absolutely convinced that if he went under Leanan’s knife there would be an ‘accident’. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of being the one to kill him. Cemlyn had his eyes on the wrong clan leader. xxx “If you don’t go through the surgery, we’re going to have to put you into cryostorage. I’m not going to let you kill yourself over whatever nonsense you’re on about right now.” Chou glared down at him. The imperial was more serious than Cemlyn had ever seen him. “And let me assure you that cryostorage is the worse option. Aceyl was partially awake for her freeze and I’m positive I can replicate it. I’m sure a few months of frozen boredom will change your mind about the life-saving surgery we’re asking you to partake in.” xxx Cemlyn hated being threated. He hated feeling helpless, and he hated being a prisoner. He agreed to the surgery and Leanan was no longer his most hated clan leader.

Hired:11-27-2016
Patient:13
Acid ant was a gift from Muttsmutt. Thank you!
G1 cost: 10mil