Lucem

The only hatchling of a pair of eccentric and hesitant Light dragons on the fringes of a much larger clan, Lucem was not born into glory. Her scales were dull and dark, they had no particular sheen or pattern. She was resentful, bitter, but shy. Often introverted, sullen, whispering obscenities to herself. Her life was without purpose, a cynical, misbegotten shadow in a world of light.

Until they gave her the gem. It was so pretty, so perfect; she knew instantly it was her charge, her purpose, and she treasured it beyond reason. It never left her sight, or her claws.

At first her fellows found this habit bemusing, and nothing more. She treasured the stone, coveted it, whispered her darkest secrets to it... and gradually, she grew pale. The stone made her scales as white as milk, and her eyes, once golden with Light, darkened to black. It was revealing the darkness within her. It was making her evil plain to see. She left in the dead of night, her stone nestled under her tongue, and never returned.

It was while she was struggling through the Driftwood Drag, a pale shadow in the murk, that she realized she was wrong. Her charge was not the stone; the Pale Heart was a means to an end. She had found it beautiful because it showed her what her Charge really was. Evil. Shadows. Darkness. Cruelty. Her duty was to spread pain. Her pleasure was to revel in it. Her Charge and her Sire was death, and darkness, and manipulation. Alone, she wouldn't be more than an irritance, but the stone would reveal those who shared her nature...

Now Lucem uses the Pale Heart to gather others as black-hearted as she. Under her careful, twisted care, the stone has become strong enough to blanch the scales of a malicious dragon within hours, and hatchlings born near it are warped, both scales and soul. She presides over them like a queen, the stone nestled around her neck in a platinum filigree, a mephistophelean glint in her soulless eyes. Gradually, softly, her Pale Fiends gather in the night, white as bone and wicked as sin... and one day, Sornieth will tremble in the shadow of their ivory wings.