Harlow

He/Him, Demiromantic Asexual.

Harlow pledges himself to no sub clan, but is a face welcome and well known within all of them. As a talented nomadic mage and performer, he has many patrons within each. As a wanderer, his appearances are sporadic, but often guaranteed when flight-wide festivals when performer's profits skyrocket. Harlow is one of such traveling performers, and beloved in niche audiences.

While performers are no unusual occurrence within the clans, His magical ability and sharp wit are what separates him from others of his kind. Many mages act as they are trained to, and their magic is more polished as a result. But in Harlow's case, he did not have that benefit due to the caste he was born into. The abilities he harbors are entirely through his own effort and years of independent practice. While he may not have the raw power nor stamina of more trained mages, Harlow is still very proud of his capabilities and the spectacle the fact that he developed them himself. He has had to learn to use what he has in a more creative fashion, breeding more niche in execution, yet well loved showings.

Like many of the dragons that hail from Risia, the color of his eyes is no indicator of his magical abilities. While he does harbor small enough traces to impact the pigment of his eye color, Harlow was born in Risia's arcane sector. As such, he is far more skilled in acts of telekinesis, teleportation, telepathy, and a degree of clairvoyance than spreading or conjuring disease. However, he has picked up illusionary and various charms in his travels, though such are not to the standards of a Shadow mage, can often give his performances all the more power. Having once been a full-time jester for the nobility and royalty of his former home, he is also capable of playing music and storytelling to a lesser extent. But if there is anyone best suited to mocking his masters, both subtly and explicitly, that is where he shines. He has no tolerance whatsoever for dragons who flaunt their wealth or look down upon others, and always seems to have a biting, witty retort prepared for them.

No matter if they have personally harmed him, Harlow tends to act with aggression and general hostility towards noble dragons. While he may seem at ease one moment in the presence of commoners, the moment a noble enters, quickly he becomes deeply wary and on noticeably on edge. Rather expectedly, the nobility of the clans often avoid or outright loathe him, while those who have suffered at the hands of powerful individuals tend to connect with him more. Despite the showy facade and charming exterior he exhibits during performances, Harlow struggles to trust most others. Beneath it all, he is very jaded and bitter. Despite achieving what he views as the best option for himself and his people, Harlow rarely has the capacity to see nobledragons as good individuals and sees the world as inherently stacked against him. He struggles to let go of past wrongs and to this day his perspective is colored by these experiences. Perhaps this is why he has never had traveling companions beyond his familiar.

But these views do not form in a vacuum. Much of the reason he refuses to fully pledge himself to a clan is because he does not want another master nor to be in a position where he may be harmed by them. Harlow hails from a former kingdom bordering the Arcane and Plague domains, one of few places to harbor both the latent magic of the Arcanist and the Plaguebringer. Risia as it was formerly known, has long since fallen due to division and strife between its castes and elements in turn. Harlow was born into Risia during its golden age and into one of the lowest castes. He to this day is rumored to be of impure birth, and aided in supporting himself and his mother. He often found himself struggling to make ends meet and turning to his nobility in hopes of earning their favor and funds. Due to its mixing of magic, Risia was not always known for breeding mages. Many of its nobledragons were even born without anything but the latent, unchannelable magic needed to keep them alive.

As such, any mages were in high demand, and even his birth did not deter his masters. He worked in the presence of several of Risia's greatest nobility, but they never paid much mind to his needs. He was always to act as they wanted and be loyal to them at all times, even if they refused to aid him in any way or even mistreated him. Commonplace expectations for the lowest caste, yet far from just. After years of this treatment and many masters, Harlow's anger and resentment for them festered more and more over time. And when his mother passed away, he was left completely wiped out, both emotionally and financially. His last hope was the Risian king who promised him protection and to have his needs accounted for so long as he gave service. And given the king's actions towards him, Harlow truly believed that was what he was to receive.

However, that only lasted until the king became paranoid and concerned for his image in having Harlow in his service. He was very swiftly and quietly passed off onto his son, Inigo. While this was nothing new to Harlow, the king had been his last chance. He thought that if there was anyone would still care for him and respect him for what he was, it would be the king. But this choice only solidified to him that the rulers of his kingdom only cared for their own image. He had no say in what the king chose, and was forced to serve in his private forces under the prince's control. From the beginning, he and the prince did not get on well. Between the prince's lack of experience and Harlow's continued grieving, the prince assumed his lack of efficiency was purposeful and in an attempt to seize the crown for himself due to his magical prowess. This could not be further from the truth, and yet Inigo was never apt to hear Harlow out, often punishing him for any perceived slight. This was when Harlow stopped caring to live up to any noble's expectation of a servant. No matter what he did, he was always going to be taken advantage of, or in his current situation, targeted by an abuser he could not defend himself against.

He began looking to provoke Inigo, which was never difficult in the first place. Inigo had always been insecure in his power and easily angered if insulted, since he had experienced so little pain in his life. It seemed the right choice of words could irritate his master with ease, all without the consequences of physically fighting back. Harlow relished in feeling some degree of power of the dragon and by extension the nobility who seemed to do nothing but mistreat him. This only meant the prince targeted him more and acted more harshly as time went on, and in turn meant Harlow became more brutal and biting in his own responses. This fueled both fires between them, solidifying to both that they were apparently right in their actions and for hating the other caste. These spats became increasingly common and more extreme within the organization itself, even if they largely occurred behind closed doors.

As miserable as his time was under Inigo's possession, he was still placed there and in a fairly high position as promised by the king. Harlow learnt that many of the people within the king's private forces were not there out of their free will either, and were often there as servants or due to a need for money. The city their organization was based in was also largely victim of the plague magics, leaving an unforgiving landscape that only a clever and compassionate ruler could work to their advantage. Inigo was young, and not yet either. The dragons dwelling there often hated him for his control, and could barely cultivate crops while the prince reaped the luxuries of the taxes they paid. Harlow quickly discovered he was not the only one to be mistreated and used, and felt great empathy for those in such a similar place.

As years went on, the prince only grew more extreme, insecure, and desperate to feel powerful. He often overstepped boundaries between his vassals or attempted to manipulate other nobledragons without his father's finesse and experience. The anger within his own city only rippled outward the worse he acted, breeding more and more insurgents. This also meant pushing Harlow to do more and more things he did not ask for, festering tensions within the very organization itself. It only continued to snowball until the conditions were at their very worst. Harlow was dragged into a situation that meant placing his hometown under the prince's control, and it had already been a city afflicted by the nobility's greed and negligence, with such an increasing gap in wealth that many commondragons feared to be taken as slaves. Many of them were the loudest and most aggressive of the insurgents, and hated that the prince could freely enter. All that was needed in securing the position for the prince was Harlow's magic. As a mage whose powers were deemed too powerful for the egos of the nobility and kept under heavy restraint normally, he'd had enough. He was so tired of his needs and condition being discounted, all the while the nobility felt entitled to take away or use the one thing he took pride in. He absolutely snapped, exposing the prince publicly before the very dragons who hated the nobility most. Harlow let loose all that was kept under wraps within the organization, between the prince's greed and refusal to bend when conflict could be avoided, to the abuse he faced as a servant, and his explicit hand in a past disaster that wiped out the fertile farmland of an arcane sector. The prince could no longer do anything to keep Harlow silent, and ordered him to be executed for his disobedience.

A city full of commoners who knew these words were the truth could not handle the blatant act of hate against one of their own and overpowered the prince by sheer numbers. Many of the prince's own even turned against him, drastically reducing those he held the power to fight back with. While imperials were the rarest and most powerful of dragons within Risia, but he was no match for the lot of them. Harlow was lucky to escape the organization's clutches through the brute force of his fellow commoners, and had never felt both so supported and one with the masses. With his guiding claw, he was able to redirect their anger where it hurt most, to the prince and nobility themselves. It was their stubbornness and inaction that allowed such corruption, and the only way to rid of it in their mind was to uproot the royal family. The insurgents only grew in reach and forces as they prepared for confrontation,