Marshal

Marshal is equal parts exceptionally paranoid and exceptionally dedicated. He has a short temper and prickly disposition, perhaps is even a bit of a control freak. Not knowing what is happening in his clan at all times stresses him out immensely, and while he is welcoming of new clan members, his trust is only won after fierce evaluation. Marshal was once a carefree, sociable young nobledragon, but grew embittered after his exile. Despite being so standoffish, everything Marshal does is from a place of care, or perhaps from paranoia. More than likely both. His neuroticism is a large part of who he is now. He often needs to be talked down to relax and take his claws off clan business. He is especially dedicated to his family and is a devoted, if overprotective (but well-meaning) father. Marshal also has a special connection with many of the young male Tundra dragons in the clan and welcomes them in frequently, as he was the eldest sibling of many brothers and sees the brothers he was pushed away from in younger tundra males.

b i r t h


High in the glacier peaks of the Frigid Floes, Marshal was the only dragon to emerge from an otherwise dud clutch of eggs to a clan full of the Icewarden's most faithful.

b a c k s t o r y


Marshal's home clan were faithful servants of the Icewarden, with proud claims that their family lineage was one of the oldest in the Southern Icefields, supposedly descendants of the Icewarden's very own Sentinel order of Gaoler dragons. Allegedly, their forebears had grown too old to continue their service, so they departed for the Frigid Icefloes to spend their twilight years training and exalting dragons to serve their deity. This was a great point of pride to his clan, and the clan itself was structured around the family descended from supposed Sentinels, and the variety of temporary clan members destined to move on and serve the Icewarden.

As the eldest son of this new generation of their noble lineage, Marshal was raised by his father as the heir to their clan, and his many subsequent brothers to fill various governing roles. Marshal grew up just as proud as his father was and eager to prove his worth. He was an excitable, sociable, if bullheaded young dragon who was ready to take the mantle. While he was still young, though, his father insisted the only dragons he need be in charge of were his brothers. And Marshal did watch them dutifully, but did lord his status as the true heir over them (something he regrets now, wishing he was content to enjoy their relationships as brothers and hadn't viewed it as another exercise of leadership).

Marshal's life changed from that of a sheltered leader-in-training living prosperously when he was a young adult, more than likely just on the cusp of beginning to help his father lead the clan in earnest. Marshal had been displaying signs of illness for some time, but it was written off as a common cold, largely by Marshal himself. His father believed him, but his brothers who all had rather polarizing relationships with him grew suspicious it was something worse as they listened to him cough and wretch all hours some nights. Seeing red creep in at the corners of his eyes, his brothers recalled tales of the infections spread by the Plaguebringer on the mainland. When Marshal left on a foraging trip, that was when his brothers, some out of resentment but most out of genuine fear and concern, brought the signs about Marshal's condition to their father.

It took some convincing, as his father did not want to believe what he was hearing about his heir, but there were too many warning signs to ignore. Marshal's father met him on the glacier cliffs, Marshal's erratic flying and coughing echoing through the canyons only confirming his suspicions. After a midair coughing fit, Marshal crash-landed, tearing his wing on an ice spire. Devastated by what was becoming of his son and fearful for his clan's safety, Marshal's father kept his eyes off Marshal as he landed nearby and declared him, for the safety of the clan, an exile claimed by the Plaguebringer's contagion. He gave him a cold, halfhearted farewell as he flew off, trying to limit their contact, while Marshal pleaded after him all the while.

No longer welcome in his own clan, Marshal had to go to the one place he wanted nothing to do with--the Scarred Wasteland, the place whatever strain of something he had caught undoubtedly originated. Weak from his sickness and with a torn wing, the journey was long and arduous, needing to be made on foot. All the time Marshal spent traveling gave him plenty of time to grieve and fester, to struggle between rage and sadness and terror before he finally settled on a bitter numbness as he reached the Scarred Wasteland. Much to his disgust, he was forced to stand before the Plaguebringer to receive her blessing to start a clan, a deity he resented for, according to him, taking away his life and his birthright.

Marshal apathetically approached a towering clay mound in the wastes of the Abiding Boneyard. He dug at the base of the rock formation to create a squat, barely-accessible burrow to sleep in overnight. He had no idea what to do or make of this exile or how he could do anything but lay out in the unforgiving sun and wait for scavengers to eat him alive. If there was one thing Marshal was noticing as he was present in the Scarred Wasteland, however, it was that his infection had gone near-dormant, and physically speaking (certainly not emotionally speaking) he felt much like his old self again.

An answer of sorts came to Marshal in the morning, in the form of a pale Guardian hanging over him. The red eyes staring down at him told him perhaps a Plague dragon had indeed come to eat him alive, but that was hardly the case at all. Instead, she introduced herself as Stella, a young Guardian who had just embarked on The Search, and she was incredibly surprised one Tundra had supposedly laid claim to such a large rock formation. She fired off dozens of questions about who he was and why he was there, most answered with bitterness or apathy as he explained his situation. Unfortunately for him (at least, he thought so at the time), that was hardly the last he would see of Stella. She seemed to have it in her head that he needed guidance as a non-Plague-born dragon when it came to making his own clan. Marshal questioned if she didn't have better things to do, like finding her charge.

Stella called him an idiot and that it physically pained her to watch him bumble around.

Needless to say, there was no ridding himself of her help, and so when Marshal wanted to do nothing but roll over, give up and die, Stella had somehow inserted herself into his life and forced him to take establishing a clan seriously. And what had started as resentment turned into a quiet appreciation as Stella helped Marshal realize it was not yet time to give up, that there as life to be lived for him if he was just willing to seize it. The day his determination to do something, (motivated out of equal parts self-preservation, hope, and spite for the family who had disowned him) solidified, he woke before Stella to work at carving the rock, and she took clear notice of that and the shift it meant.

Somehow, Marshal can never truly define how, their allyship turned to love, and that love produced one simple egg. As Marshal watched the egg stir and hatch, his determination and understanding of what his purpose was became solidified: he would not just survive, he would thrive, and he would simultaneously show everyone who cast him away his strength, that he was no lost cause after all and provide a home for dragons who were like him.

Stella seemed to especially egg on the aspect of it that came from spite, but she, much like Marshal, had a deep and true care for the clan that made her the perfect leader to stand beside him.

p r e s e n t


Marshal is the now long-term leader of the Clan of the Wounded. Generally, he's regarded as a fair and tolerant leader, though his paranoia often makes it hard for him to stay out of each other's business, but Stella is there to keep him in check. He was initially hesitant to create the clan's governing council, as relinquishing control sounded very stressful, but he eventually did go through with it and will admit it has helped cut back on his hovering, and allows him to spend time with all his children, whom he adores.

Coming from such a large clan, Marshal fears the clan growing too big and instilling any kind of class disparity or becoming isolated from the dragons he lives to guide. He does not want to be a hands-off leader and become distant or untouchable from the clan dragons, so with his additional free time, he tries to develop even a small relationship with each one. Marshal also remains fully involved in appraising newcomers to the clan and being the final say on those allowed to stay. While he grills new dragons extensively, and has a particular distrust and disdain for dragons of the Ice Flight and suspects many of them to be spies sent by his old family to kill him (considering his father said exile was a mercy), he actually rarely turns dragons away even if he appears to not like them at all.

r e l a t i o n s h i p s