Gazario

Gale's Thoughts: Gazario

Gazario announced his presence in Chiaroscuro with a scream.

It was the kind of scream that resembles the shriek of the forsaken, the unholy wailings of the ones who have seen it all and instead of weathering the storm presented to them, lost their minds to it. It was loud enough to render an entire army silent.

And it was powerful enough to bring the ship of one very vampiric pirate captain to its knees.

I hadn't needed to run that fast in a very long time. It was all hands on deck; we evacuated the tourists, got the youngest members of the clan and those who couldn't fight to safety, and used every bit of magic at our disposal to keep one very volatile, magical reactor of a ship from falling to the ground and desecrating our entire home. I stormed up to the main deck of the ship, only to find one very small dragon radiating enough pain and pure energy to slice through my mind like a sword.

"QUIET," the voice reverberating through my head pleaded. "Make them STOP."

And then, with a choked off cry and a burst of purple energy, the connection to the voice in my head was severed. As I staggered to get my bearings, panting heavily from what had been mere seconds in this dragon's presence, I saw Kendra standing over the tiny body. She had encased him in a deep purple glow that matched the one radiating from her clawtips, and she was staring at me with a haunted expression that oscillated between fear, anger, and emphatic sadness every few seconds.

"A soul that is whole is barely able to handle this much agony. His half-soul is crumbling as we speak."

What could I say to that? Even with Kendra's substantial well of magic trying to keep him in stasis, this fae still vibrated with the toll being taken on him. He wheezed with the effort it took to breathe, and he had something clenched so tightly in his hands that he was making them bleed profusely. Each one of his many eyes glowed red at random intervals, and he jolted with each resurgence of the light.

"Make it stop," it was out loud this time, and barely a whisper. He was staring directly at me, and his gaze flicked to Sargent, who was standing close by on shaky legs, a look of resigned determination on her face. He nodded, closing his eyes, and Sargent stumbled over to strike a blow that would end his misery.

"WAIT!" a voice called, in a screech that would have been loud if we all hadn't just heard what a true scream could be. Reid flew onto the scene in a flurry of limbs, crashing into the deck with a thud, and to my surprise, Rochambeau tumbled off her back. He fluttered quickly over to the dragon at Sargent and Kendra's feet, and draped himself across the body in a protective gesture. He forced open one of the hands that were slowly destroying themselves, and wrapped whatever was there around his own wrist.

The silence that followed was deafening. The energy-filled air had been sucked away and replaced with an eerie calm. Rochambeau sat up, bringing the now-dead-weight body with him. He cradled the face of a half-soul in his hand and murmured a name so fragile it was like he hadn't said it in millennia.

"Gazario."

And as only the first pair of those deep red eyes opened, it slowly dawned on me that the hand on Gazario's face was also the one bound with the treasure from Gazario's death grip. The red string of fate shimmered softly around Rochambeau's wrist, quietly content to be reunited after so long untethered.

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Baseline Stats





While he'll certainly never have the ability to flow through his social life like he once did, on good days (which are, admittedly, getting more common) Gazario's a remarkably charming individual, all things considered. He's very funny, and sometimes a little bit of his old overconfidence will shine through. Even with that improvement, though, most days he's remarkably subdued and tired, and he has no patience for social interaction or tact. He does, however, read other dragons' intentions through their facial expressions with a frightening degree of accuracy, almost to a point where I'm convinced there's no way it's because of his natural social acumen.



While he's picked up some survival skills in his decades traveling through Sornieth, he'll likely never beat any but the most incompetent fighters. His cranked-up pain spells could certainly tear through the mind and rend one helpless, but as those were never intentional on his end, those should not be counted in judging his capacity for physical defense.



Despite a few truly terrible judgement calls that ultimately led to Gazario getting involved with the Wyrmwound cult in the first place, Gazario's still a decently intelligent individual... even if he's not near as intelligent as he once thought. His own cocky arrogance and pride got in the way of smart decision-making, and he thought a fair bit too highly of his own brain for the catastrophic levels of crazy he was about to put himself through.



He's lucky to have found Rochambeau before his own magic and half-soul killed him, but beyond that? Gazario's last few centuries have been anything but lucky. Having his soul thread sliced in half, being a guinea pig for some terrible cultists working with the magic of the Wyrmwound, spending every day running for his life after he escaped, and still heavily feeling the aftereffects of the magic performed on him, even today? No, luck will never be Gazario's wheelhouse.



Before Rochambeau was an urban legend and had the magic skills to back it up, magic was something he and Gazario initially bonded over. Were it not for the magical torture and subsequent damage to Gazario's soul and body, they might still be at something resembling a comparable level, had he had the time to master it as Rochambeau has. As-is, though, while in theory his magic abilities are still at a decently high level, he's all but stopped using it since it aggravates old pains and makes the voices in his head louder.



Any vitality, physical or mental, that Gazario may have once had is mostly long gone, and what he still has is only because of the constant care and oversight of Rochambeau and other Ichor crew members. He's made use of a lot of species change magic over the years as well, much like Rochambeau has done, but even if he hasn't done as many, that's undoubtedly had an effect as well. Our healers have done their best for him, but he's been living on borrowed time for decades and that's not about to stop now.