Executioner

WIP

some notes:
extremely so, and extremely disorganized with a lot of very important information missing. check back later!

• extremely infamous serial killer and cannibal within the Wasteland. no one has been able to unearth any identifying information about him, but the one thing they do know is that nothing good will happen once he's spotted nearby. public spaces and crowds have never deterred him; he doesn't try to hide who he is or what he's there for and has picked out and chased down victims who were in highly visible, highly populated areas before and will do it again

• his real name is unknown; his refusal to disclose it lead to Sonja introducing him by his position as "the [clan's] executioner" and attempting to respectfully refer to him as "Executioner" when interacting with him directly, leading the other members to adopt similar mannerisms and fondly call him Ex. the newer and younger members have only ever known him as such and often don't make the connection between his "name" and his role, often not even realizing that it isn't his real name until they overhear a rare conversation between him and Sonja

• while he can handle loud noises, high-pitched ones invariably give him awful migraines that cause him to retreat back to his den for at least a day.

• he's a firm believer that the strongest should rule and is equally as confident that he's the strongest; as such, there're people he'll tolerate but no one he truly sees as an equal. there are two criteria that'd have to be met first before he'd consider it:
1. beat him in a fight,
and
2. not be scared of him. [...]

• gets all the hydration he needs solely from the blood and tissue he consumes; has a strange aversion to water

• only present in the cult due to agreeing to capture & kill its traitors in turn for being able to eat the dissenter; isn't actually part of Jahi or in agreement of its goals

• the shards are unbreakable growths that fused to his wings from an infection; the tips are now as sharp as his claws

• land-bound due to the weight of his wings but is skilled in leaping to make up for it

• is very reserved with both his emotions and personal information; consistently deflects all questions regarding his personal life

• belittles everyone, especially those in positions of power

• always comes off as sarcastic or condescending even when he doesn't mean to

» personality:
• he's much more observant in everyday life than anyone would expect and is adept at identifying people's emotions despite being unable to resonate with them. this doesn't mean he does anything with that information, but he does notice it

• when he's well-fed, the members of Jahi discovered he's actually pretty funny, quick-witted, and surprisingly down with participating in the dumb games they come up with to pass the time. he also has a wealth of knowledge about draconic biology that even rivals that of Jahi's medics, a fact they learned when a member idly made an incorrect comment about how a dragon's body worked and got an impromptu lesson from him on their misunderstanding. oddly enough, he wasn't really rude when he was explaining it— it was actually pretty informative!
he's also friendly in his own way when he wants to be; he's answered their questions about cannibalism, gave his guesses on which parts of a dragon he thinks they'd like to eat, and even offered to let them have leftovers at some point if they were really that curious. he never gets upset with them when they decline; why would he get angry over having less competition?
the only reason he offers in the first place is because he knows he could kill them if they ever tried to encroach on his territory, though

• he gets bored too easily to put in the effort of manipulating anyone, but people like Sonja are so fun to play with; how could they not be when they make it so easy for him? he knows when people are scared of him, even the ones who try so hard to act like they aren't. the second he spots anything that gives him the upper hand— wariness, anxiety, even anger or disgust— he'll latch onto it and never let go. to see someone squirm around him, bite back their remark, nearly be brought to tears trying to keep their composure, or shake in anger when they see him— it all does wonders at stroking his ego.
there's no such thing as bad publicity or negative attention to him; as long as they're thinking of him, he's happy. whether they curse him, hesitate to go somewhere, or warn others of him— he's still in the back of their mind somewhere, even when he's not around. he's never been one for lofty goals like world domination, but social domination feels pretty damn good

• he has a strict code of what he believes to be fair fights and appropriate showings of a dragon's strength, and if these conditions are met, he'll view them [appropriately].
1. the dragons must be of comparable size.
- an Imperial crushing a Fae and saying they won is a worthless statement, but a Fae winning against a Veilspun holds more weight.
- an adult hassling hatchlings is pathetic, but two young dragons competing against one another is a valid display of their skill.
2. both opponents must have access to the same abilities.
- by "abilities", he means magic and body.
- he believes that magic wielders will always have an advantage against opponents with weak magic or little experience in using it, so the only fair fights are if both opponents use magic against each other or if they abstain entirely and only use their physical attributes to their advantage.
- if he's being honest, he sees magic wielders as hacks to begin with and puts more personal value on physical strength and skill, but he can acknowledge their skill in magic as long as they're not trying to use it against him

» relationships:
• the majority of the cultists who hang around him are women as, unsurprisingly, the men are acutely aware of his reputation and aren't keen on making him aware that they exist.
- of the men he's interacted with on any significant scale, one is Aumoe, who has a pointed interest in annoying him by wrapping himself around him and begging him for just one blood sample, pleaaaaaase? or! or, what about a scale sample? it won't take long at all! it won't hurt, c'mon, you've dealt with worse than that, please?— which is typically when Ex gives him a harsh warning bite, which Aumoe laughs off as he reverses the injury and then returns to his lab, leaving Ex to recoil in disgust at the foul taste of his blood.
- the other was Atieno, a young boy who he watched grow into a very, very depressed adult. he initially avoided him as to not scare him, but as time went on, he'd occasionally initiate interactions solely with the intent of defending him from Sonja, such as accompanying him back to the clan when he accidentally stayed out too late to negate the harsh punishment Sonja would've undoubtedly had waiting for him when he returned.
- as an adult, he was faced with Atieno initiating interactions on his own to beg for him to eat him, which was among the more disturbing requests he got from him as his state of mind further shattered into pieces. adamantly refusing to lay a claw on him each time, he was then met with the boy sobbing, gripping tightly onto his arms, and just barely coherently gasping out pleas and why?s and am I not good enough for you? why am I not good enough for you?s between silent, broken wails.
- he was an awfully depressing kid to be around.
- on the day he returned to the cult to be met with Enyo crouched near a trail of blood, tearfully begging him to test it to see if it belonged to her master, and the other cultists informing him that Atieno had defected and was killed, the only words that crossed his mind were about time.
- he hopes he's doing well out there, wherever he may be. he was a strong kid; he doubts the others really had what it took to kill him.

» feeding habits:
• he's said to have a bottomless stomach; getting hungry roughly every 6 to 8 hours, he averages 3 men a day. this toll can be higher even in the absence of true hunger when he attacks solely for the thrill of the fight and eats them regardless both due to his dislike of wasted food and the hunger brought on from the exhaustion of fighting

• when he's feeding, he once again doesn't act like himself: he becomes very giddy and affectionate, occasionally witnessed hugging or nuzzling his meal between bites, and doesn't seem to register much of anything around him. members of Jahi know better than to bother him when he gets like that, though; on top of being prone to overstimulation, he views anyone trying to get close to him as a threat to his meal and acts accordingly. upon finishing his meal, he becomes more aware of his surroundings shortly before taking a short nap

• regularly roams all across the Wasteland in search of prey both due to restlessness and an attempt to not deplete any one area of resources for himself. his decisions to leave are just as sporadic and unpredictable as his decisions to return and both Jahi and normal residents of the Wasteland have become accustomed to him randomly disappearing, although it's possible to approximate his last likely location by reports of attacks and missing men suddenly spiking in a certain area

» abilities & skills:
• extremely powerful sense of smell due to similar anatomy to that of a snake, being the most adept at smelling any amount of blood and, to a lesser extent, emotions. he tracks his prey primarily by following the trail of anxiety and can tell when someone's lying when their scent doesn't match their behavior
- those around him regard him flicking his tongue out as a taunt, but this is one of the things he does that's actually benign; he's just checking out the scents around him and the sight of his tongue retreating back into his mouth is often misinterpreted as him quickly licking his lips

• can typically match the taste (and more rarely, the scent) of blood back to a specific dragon if he tasted or smelled their blood prior. he can occasionally make vague guesses to whether the blood is from a male or female dragon as well; men's blood is tangy whereas women's blood is sickeningly sweet and often accompanied by a nauseating smell

» backstory:
• only a few months into living on his own as a teenager, he neglected to tend to small scrapes on his wings, not wanting to waste his finite medical supply on something so minor that he knew would heal by the end of the day regardless.
- it didn't start quickly, initially presenting itself as a soreness in his wings so mild that he assumed he slept wrong, but [...]
- it eventually culminated into a pain he never experienced before or since: his wings were burning, each spasm sending another searing jolt of pain down his shoulders and to his arms, which felt as though they were seizing. before the pain crippled him past the point of moving, he managed to crawl to a little nook in his den near but just out of sight of the entrance, where he'd overhear passing conversations of unfamiliar dragons just barely over the rushing of blood in his ears and watch their shadows dance near his paralyzed body.
- he still has no idea how much time really passed, but in the moment, it felt like years; he was constantly drifting in and out of consciousness as his body's exhaustion warred with the pain constantly waking him up, he was rapidly losing weight with each day he couldn't hunt, and even the simple actions of breathing made his wings cramp and spasm more, now feeling too heavy to move.
- it would've been hell for anybody, let alone a young dragon who was once so cocky that he felt invincible; now he was vulnerable, he was dying, and he was terrified. never before had he felt such unbridled fear, and the incident marked the only time he actually cried. he was so far gone that he couldn't even think of himself as pathetic for sobbing, quieting down only because the instinctual fear of attracting opportunistic predators just barely won over him giving in to how much it hurt.
- he had bitten his arm raw by this point; out of hunger, to muffle his sobs, to try to distract from what felt like the very claws of the Plaguebringer ripping him open and toying with him. the cold, hard ground of his den was painful against his now jutting bones and his sense of smell, stronger now as if in a last ditch attempt of a chance at survival, was flooded with the scent of rotting prey just out of his reach, of living prey scurrying past his den, of infection, of everything and far too much all at once. [...]

Title: The Executioner
Real name: ??? (???)








needs Tunnel Hydra

jump to progress
breeding project completed at 11:31 am, 1/25/20!

**

Fire came out with a restless soul
That only got worse as he got older
'Til finally he got too hot to tame

--

If no one will love me
At least they'll feel something, oh

--

I am not the favorite son
But I'm the one who's been here all along