Yaazaniah
(#74245131)
Level 25 Guardian
Polly
Jade Troodo
Click or tap to view this dragon in Predict Morphology.
Energy: 0/50
This dragon’s natural inborn element is Water.
Female Guardian
Expand the dragon details section.
Collapse the dragon details section.
Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Scene
Measurements
Length
12.23 m
Wingspan
16.07 m
Weight
7584.87 kg
Genetics
Saffron
Pinstripe
Pinstripe
Overcast
Current
Current
Obsidian
Crackle
Crackle
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 25 Guardian
Max Level
STR
114
AGI
7
DEF
8
QCK
44
INT
5
VIT
8
MND
6
Lineage
Biography
 ╒════════════════╕
An ex-pirate with a heart of gold (or bronze, at the very
╘════════════════╛
least), Yaazaniah is a prestigious Guardian with a gruff kindness and a fondness for convoluted, highly Water- specific expressions. She works as the clan's firefighter, using a combination of Water magic and more novel technologies designed by the many Lightning natives which have set up shop in the village. Yaazaniah often goes by the nickname of Yaaz, and has proven to be quite essential to the running of the clan. In addition to firefighting, Yaaz works with dragons to help them avert such disasters in the first place. She is quick to lend a claw when it comes to avoiding fire hazards, whether that be helping a farmer clear her fields of debris, helping dragons relocate more flammable assets (such as hay and paper) out of proximity to lived-in lairs, or giving architects, such as Upelluri, advice on rendering lairs and other planned buildings as safe as possible (no mean feat, considering the great differences in breed behavior and morphology, in addition to interflight variation in weakness to smoke inhalation and other hazards). The Guardian is also learning key elements of first aid from Sunniva, the clan's medic- a process complicated by the considerable morphological differences between, and within, different breeds of dragons. On her time off, Yaaz takes pleasure in the simple things, be it spending time with her wife, keeping her combat skills sharp, or closely guarding the very nature of her Charge from everybody... |
|
╒═══════════════════╕
Full Name: Yaazaniah 'Yaaz' San Elmo Yaazaniah bears the surname 'San Elmo'. She did not inherit this surname, but developed it alongside Shaushka, who also lacked one, having been raised in a clan where they were quite uncommon. As a reference to a form of lightning -related glow, often seen on ships and stormfaring dragons, it incorporates elements of both of their Flights and, perhaps more crucially, strikes both Yaaz and Shaushka as pleasing to the ear. The origins of the phrase itself are uncertain, but many, including Yaaz and Shaushka, take it as a reference to a mythical denizen of the Fire Flight. ╘═══════════════════╛
|
- Answer, by Aequorin, in the Weekly Q&A.
- Keywords from description of the Water flight in
the previous iteration of the World Map. 
- Encyclopedia entry on the Guardian Dragon breed.
══════════════════════════
|
|
 A dragon of many words and many actions, Yaazaniah is a tenacious person who, in the absence of the Tidelord's many-futured predictions, has crafted her destiny with her own two claws. When it comes to the conflicts and disagreements inevitable in any life, Yaaz prefers to address issues the moment that they arise (or, should talk fail, exchange blows). Her view is that, if she isn't bothered by something enough to address it at the time, she shouldn't muse on it in hindsight. Yaaz is aware that not everyone has the luxury of this position- not everyone can act against things which could later haunt them, nor the experience to understand what will (and won't) keep them up at night -but she finds her personal system to be quite efficient at both maintaining moral cohesion, and not fretting over things which she has allowed to let slide. Her regrets thus tend to be the result of selfish personal actions and inactions, rather than arising for moral conflict with her social milieu. Although she has honed her response to arguments and brawls remarkably well over the years, Yaaz is far less inclined to anger than she was in her youth, reaching instead for the more comfortable emotions of frustration, disgruntlement, and amusement. Just as the ocean heats slowly, even below the hottest sun, Yaaz's annoyance and frustration tend to take a length of time and social corrosion to crest into anger. Her temper is unremarkable, being fearsome but quite controllable. It emerges only in sporadic arguments, which, despite their tumult, tend to not result in grudges on Yaaz's part. Yaaz is no pushover, but she has encountered so many dragons that the subset who dealt her minor slights is too numerous for her to busy her mind, and bitter her heart, by remembering them. Yaaz places little stock in the opinions of others, even those that end up affecting practical aspects of her life. Her confident and commanding presence make her excellent at public speaking and advocating for others. She isn't the finest of speakers, lacking any formal training in oration despite being resident in the Light flight, but what she lacks in eloquence, she makes up for in directness and a certain gruff charm. Although she has no desire to engage in governance or mediation of disputes, Yaaz is looked upon as a leader by many members of the clan, and she finds herself playing this role nonetheless, whether to call attention to a wrong or to settle a dispute between neighbors. Although such affairs often leave Yaaz grumbling about wasted time, some have glimpsed her smiling after a debt or conflict is resolved in an agreeable manner. Yaaz herself can't deny that it feels rather pleasant (and something of a relief) to help others with more mundane matters than fires and catastrophes, but she would rather be sunk than admit this to anybody else. |
 Yaazaniah runs the local fire station fairly single-clawedly, aided mostly by transient dragons who wish to learn firefighting skills in the hopes of eventually serving the Lightweaver. A couple of the more long-term members of the clan volunteer from time to time, and some dragons have jobs which are quite connected to Yaaz's own, but ultimately Yaaz is the clan's only professional and permanent firefighter. She enjoys the role, and doesn't mind being the only one on the job- if anything, she seems to prefer not having to take another's opinion into much account. Nonetheless, when rushing out, in the dark hours or from an event which she promised to attend, Yaaz concedes that it might be helpful to have a colleague who she could count upon. While Yaazaniah dedicates most of her time to fighting fires using uncomplicated Water magic, or else educating and aiding her clanmates in fire prevention, the firefighter also serves as a reserve warrior, one of a group of dragons who are willing to defend the clan in case of an emergency. She helps Jayfajel organize the warriors' monthly training sessions, and occasionally lends a claw at Jay's regular classes. |
|
 Yaazaniah's various relationships with other dragons, be they friends, acquaintances, or enemies.
|
 
|
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ |
 Yaazaniah's charge relates to the naturalist Alcuin and the (part-time) mystic Kuruneta. However, her charge is not either of these two dragons. Instead, Yaaz's charge appears to be the animosity between them. Yaaz is as bemused as anyone else at this turn of events (especially since she spent years scouring the Sea of a Thousand Currents for something or someone awesome to be her charge), but she has long since come to accept her Charge, although she doesn't often mention exactly what it is to others. Yaaz isn't one to be overly secretive, but she suspects that neither Alcuin nor Kuruneta would take kindly to finding out that she views it as her duty to preserve their mutual hatred. She's certain that she could beat either of them in a battle of force, wills, or even popularity (a testimony to Kuruneta and Alcuin's shared talent of irritating those around them, rather than an indication of preternaturally good social skills on Yaaz's part). Nonetheless, Yaaz thinks that being honest about her Charge's nature will only jeopardize its existence. Powerful though Alcuin's and Kuruneta's mutual dislike may be, Yaaz would rather not reveal the slightly artificial nature of their conflict. Most of the clan, Kuruneta and Alcuin included, don't know what Yaaz guards, and many are too intimidated or polite to ask. Some roughly suspect that it might pertain to the mystic or the naturalist, while others suspect Yaaz's charge to be something related to the safety of the clan, perhaps even the clan itself, on the basis of her job as its firefighter. Only Shaushka knows the truth, and she's probably even more withholding of the information than Yaaz herself. |
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ |
 
|
|
 Polly is an uncreatively named creature with a penchant for mischief. When lodging at a rowdy village on the shores of the Tsunami Flats, Yaazaniah purchasing a hatchling Troodo from a wandering grave robber whose long-winded tale of the Troodo egg's legitimate origins neither duped nor deterred Yaaz from buying the scraggily little reptile. Yaazaniah had initially hoped to train and sell the Jade Troodo, upon coming to a climate where such creatures are rare, but, as with any plan hinging on the trainability of a Troodo, this did not work out. Despite (or perhaps, because of) Polly's intractable personality, Yaaz doesn't quite regret her failed investment. |
 Yaazaniah is very well-respected by the fellow members of her clan. Her job as a firefighter has brought her into communication with even the most unsociable of the clan's denizens. Although dragons of the Sunbeam Runes are sometimes perceived as snobbish, Yaaz hasn't experienced such rudeness in her current clan, perhaps due to its youth and the esteem in which it holds honesty to the self, regardless of what other dragons think. Yaaz's lack of airs and graces has helped endear her to the clan, and almost all of its members place greater stock in a judgement delivered in her familiar, strong Water accent rather than one passed in a more uppity tone. Yaazaniah's job as a firefighter is deeply appreciated by the other members of the clan, and many of those dragons who hope to someday serve the Lightweaver volunteer at her firestation. Yaaz's mantra of prevention being infinitely better than cure can strike some as rather pedantic, but her willingness to personally help reduce fire hazards, especially by helping to haul hay and other flammables away from lairs, has meant that such disquieted mutterings don't have much impact on her reputation. Due to her honest, kind, and confident nature (or perhaps the fact that she is fairly tall), Yaazaniah is viewed as something of an authority figure in the clan. She helps to resolve the many minor disputes which arise in any community, such as arguments over a neighbor's fence or conflict over a wayward Bell Goat causing damage to another farmer's field. Yaaz never seeks out disputes to resolve, but ever since her advice was sought over a few issues, and found to be fairly wise, the fire station is often visited by dragons who need a third-party opinion on their squabble. Yaaz has never sought to run for a formal position of authority, such as that of major, but she could be quite successful if she did. Although she is not prone to waxing on about her past, Yaaz is fairly honest about her history as a wandering pirate. Several members of the clan have, naively, interpreted this as something daring and romantic, while most others have come around to the idea that Yaaz has simply become less selfish and desperate over time. Yaaz does strike discomfort in the most lawful members of the clan but, due to the great acrimony between the territories of different flights, there is nothing which legally can be done about Yaaz's crimes committed in the Water flight. Indeed, the more cynical followers of interflight politics doubt that Yaaz would suffer any repercussions even should she have remained in the Sea of a Thousand Currents, as the absence of the Tidelord and the generally mysterious nature of the Water flight has long lent itself to a certain disregard for laws and other draconic constructs- one can hardly bring a Leviathan, or some similar sea monster, to court, after all. Nonetheless, Yaaz appears to have changed for the better (something not unusual among Guardians, who sometimes perceive the chargeless time of a young dragon's life as one of regrettable decisions), a fact confirmed by the clan's Skydancers, who tend, as a whole, to be fairly accurate in their character judgements. |
|
 Yaazaniah was hatched into the wild and beautiful graveyard that constitutes the Fishspine Reef. She spent her early years under the protection of a mighty and loving clan, gamboling underwater and living predominantly off of seafood. The youngest and, indeed, the smallest of three rowdy Guardian siblings, Yaaz spent her times roughhousing in the water when she wasn't busy tailing the clan's hunters and warriors, begging them to take her on her next hunt despite the impracticality and danger of allowing a mere hatchling to tag along. She amused herself, instead, by playing at make-believe battles with her siblings and, for a time, was content. |
|
|
It was storm season when Yaazaniah realized that she, and her siblings, were approaching adulthood, and with it, the apparently inevitable Search. The season began without emotional fanfare. Quick waves snatched coral and softened all skeletal edges. Some fish migrated, while others remained, nestled deeper inside the harbors created by the faster-growing corals to avoid succumbing to the turmoil above. Possessing little of her element's characteristic foresight, and no romantic sense of pathetic fallacy, Yaazaniah welcomed the rough waters as an opportunity for physical challenge. Little did she know how challenging that season was to become. The first droplets of chance appeared as mere glances. Yaazaniah's brother, Bryan, fell into the habit of gazing prophetically towards the ocean's vast surface. His moments of distraction were short- seconds at most -but their frequency initially caused Yaaz to tease him, grateful to have an advantage in that continuation of their childhood 'mock battles', sparring. However, victory breeds boredom. Yaaz's impishness melted into frustration, until she could no longer avoid a frank conversation with her brother, one imbued with seriousness and not, as Yaaz then preferred, constituting entirely of jest, facts, and occasional insults. "What's the matter?" The words flitted from her mouth in the form of bubbles. Unwilling to appear too gentle, Yaaz added "You've been staring at the overwater like a barreleye fish.". Bryan seemed saddened, rather than annoyed by the insult or, perhaps, by the statement. With a tone of almost comical weariness, he answered Yaaz's question. "Do you ever wonder what it's like up there?" Yaaz was confused by the question. The adults had tried to impart a mental image of Sornieth as a whole upon their hatchlings, and Yaaz found that they had not altogether failed. Surely it was obvious to Bryan that, up above, lay a world composed of wind, and earth, and plague, and plants, and shadow? Yaaz could have continued listing elements but, she suspected, so too could Bryan. Therein lay her confusion. She had known Bryan to be aware of the world beyond; she just had never expected him to care about it all that much. Unsure of what to say, Yaaz merely shook her head and watched as her brother continued to talk. "Well, I wonder. More than that- I want to find out." Yaaz's variegated face crinkled into a confused expression. "You already know all about what it's like up there." "No," Bryan answered wistfully. "I don't know one thing. I don't know how it feels." |
|
Yaazaniah initially treated her brother's statement as something temporary, and humored him when he, and sometimes Jager, journeyed into the sky and even onto the land below. Jager became enamored with the vivid quaintness of the Churnscar Wharf, while Bryan set his sights further afield, climbing high into the sky as great flashes of lightning struck reflections on the water. Deep in the Sea of a Thousand Currents, Yaaz's amusement at her siblings' adventures waned, and she grew sullen at the mere mention of the world above the water. Privately, she worried that their prolonged exposure to the air could weaken their gills until they were left either air-drowned like fish or, more treacherously, incapable of breathing in the ocean. Reason told Yaaz that this was simply not how the gills of Guardians worked (and Water Guardians, to boot!), but she was too caught up in her own emotions to listen. Her misguided worry for her siblings took the form of irritability and snappiness, until at last she admitted to her older siblings how betrayed she felt, as their sister and as a Water dragon, that either of them would even contemplate leaving the depths of the Tidelord's kingdom. Jager replied kindly to Yaaz's rather meandering outburst, with the maturity of an elder speaking to a hatchling rather than to a dragon only five-three minutes younger than themself. "Yaaz- there's no need to feel as though we are abandoning you. Because we're not, we do always love you, but- "-But what?!" Yaaz interjected. "You two imagine yourselves as my role models- but you're not fit for a half a cuttlefish to mimic! What about loyalty to your family and to the Tidelord?! I know how much you've been splashing around in the clouds like a hogfish in muck!" Yaaz would have likely continued in the same arrogant and injured tone, had she not stopped to let a little water flit through her gills, allowing Bryan to interject, not unempathetically. "Yaaz- I understand, you talk of loyalty-" Yaaz sent a loud snort of bubbles from her nose at that, but did not quite interrupt her brother -"-but there is more than one way to show it. There is nothing more loyal to the Tidelord than respecting our nature as Guardians. He created us with the Search in mind, and it would be miserable, in every way, to render ourselves practically purposeless just so that we could imagine our stagnancy as loyalty.". Her brother's words were gently spoken, but Yaaz felt the warmth of a tear forming in her eye, an amalgamation of pride, love, and undeniable sadness. In as nonchalant a tone as she could muster, Yaaz accepted the argument. "I'm going to miss you two silly sunfish." They gathered into a hug which, while not quite their last, brought with it a sense of finality. Yaaz came to accept that their paths were going to vary, and gradually stopped pining for some imagined future in which all three of them found charges, and lives, in close proximity to their native clan. Reality was, after all, far more interesting. |
|
|
Having tried, for years, to seek her Charge solely in the waters of her birth clan, Yaazaniah finally ventured further afield. By the time she left to conduct her Search, Jager had made a home in the froth and flotsam of the Churnscar Wharf, while Bryan had declared his Charge to be the Tidelord's closest approximation of a descendant, the Stormcatcher. Yaaz found that her clan, though as lovely and caring as ever, no longer felt quite correct to her. It came as a relief to leave her former home and, while she did deeply miss her parents, warm autumnal currents were quick to ferry her bubbles and bottled messages home. She maintains communication with her family to this day, although merriment has long crusted into normality, and habit rather than excitement is the font of her current letters. Although Yaaz maintains a memory of her relatives in her mind, she knows it to have grown dated; the characters who engage in the almost automatic letter-writing with herself seem to resemble them in little more than name. So powerful is the wash of time that Yaaz's mind would fain suggest that she has two pairs of siblings. The real pair, one may say, commits its evolving characters to letters, abstractions, and scrawled runic anecdotes that meanderingly move forward in time. The other pair is stagnant, composed of memories of the senses, the blink of the water, their current thoughts not yet fermented. Yaaz has grown out of the habit of comparing one pair to the other, for she finds it stranger than comparing the fish to the egg, the nymph to the dragonfly, the larva to the tunicate. The two exist separately, and in her more tired states she finds it impossible to believe that the vivid, living creatures in her head have metamorphosed into strangers' words, delivered by courier, flesh and blood diluted by distance to become deadgrass and squid ink, reality inadequately transformed into runes on a page. It takes time for affection to harden into the opaque and shiftless waters of memory. Yaazaniah spent many months underwater, swimming and keenly searching, with eyes adapted to the murk of the ocean, for her Charge. She was confident in her element, her wings wide and well-suited for gliding through the Tidelord's abandoned kingdom. The martial education which Yaaz had received in her own clan grew sharper with experience. She ventured towards the depths of the ocean, initially, and found many a horror in benthic and abyssal zones. For pragmatic purposes, she worked as a wandering mercenary, further tempering her battle skills, and never questioned the legality of the brawls and watches which she was hired to perform, as she knew well what answer awaited her if she did. The seas had never been an orderly place, but the Tidelord's absence had bred nihilism and further lawlessness. What respect could remain in mundane authority when the water's own deity had proven himself either heartless or fallible (and few could agree on which was worse)? Succumbing to such beliefs regarding the law and the Tidelord (whose presence she had never known), it was perhaps unsurprising that, despite her unmalicious nature, Yaaz lent her skills quite readily to wandering piracy. Untethered to anything but the sea's shifting currents, and possessing of an inexpensive lifestyle, Yaaz had the luxury of refusing jobs which fell below her conscience. Still, her moral compass was distracted by the lodestone of youth, inexperience and a certain corresponding lack of empathy, and many an honest merchant passing the Sea of a Thousand Currents could have had good reason to fear the hired Yaazaniah, in those days. Nonetheless, she was neither fearsome, nor leaderlike, nor permanent enough to earn a reputation for herself. Yaaz's vanity was slightly wounded by this, at the time, but, in hindsight, she is enormously grateful that her former endeavors could be attributed to any faceless goon of the period, and thus she has been able to shed them as easily as a seasnake discards its old skin. |
|
Yaazaniah deeply enjoyed those years spent roaming the oceans as a pirate-for-hire, staying in one place only long enough to shatter a newfound girlfriend's heart over her antipathy towards commitment. She plunged from current to current, until eventually she found that she had traversed much of the sea, with nothing to show for it but a few scars and memories. Years of enduring no permanent companion, bar the sea itself, had impressed upon Yaazaniah a certain confidence. She bore no urgent need for company, but was capable of rightly appreciating friendliness. She was not unsympathetic nor unwilling to hear the grievances of others, yet she was immune to being swayed by others' words, and deeply valued the ability to plot her own course of action. In short, she had grown up somewhat, and could no longer deny a certain remorse for her numerous brawls and robberies of the innocent, which she had been raised to abhor. Furthermore, Yaazaniah was forced to admit to herself that her elusive Charge lay beyond the sea's great and godlost waves. She disreputably whiled away several weeks upon the shores of the Sea of a Thousand Currents in order to acclimate her eyes, and her wings, to the unsupportive air. Eventually Yaaz learned to swim through that thin medium, and set off into the northern sunrise. Alternately gliding and walking, Yaazaniah watched as the palm fronds of the Tsunami Flats gave way to the more northwesterly pines. Despite the care that she had taken to acclimate herself to the land, Yaaz felt quite unnatural when parted from her native element. Only when flying through clouds, whose damp opacity obscured any sight of a possible Charge, did Yaaz feel in any way as though she was at home. Nonetheless, it would take more than a little sunshine to daunt her. Although she flew slowly, she flew with purpose, having decided long before leaving the Water Flight's territories that she was to seek her Charge on the salty coastlines of Sornieth. Her first stop was to be Lanternlea Port, however, she never quite arrived there. Yaaz funded her journey (which, on account of a certain catastrophe, was necessarily meandering) by stopping at amicable clans which required somebody to do odd jobs for a day or two. By the time that she was passing through the sleepy landscape surrounding the Moonportal, Yaaz already had the makings of a few strange stories. Having resolved to seek more honest work than piracy, she had initially expected to conduct tasks such as guarding landbased merchant caravans (the irony of this brief career shift only became obvious to Yaaz in hindsight). However, she had also been offered tasks whose relationship with reality she found to be esoteric at best, such as reciting some basic, albeit-Flight specific, phrases for a student of lexicology, or sorting some dreary, long-irrelevant scrolls on accounting. Yaaz has performed each honest labor to the best of her ability, but she was rather relieved when her route took her into the territory of a more homely, dispersed kind of clan. The harvest was approaching and, upon screening her intentions as best they could, the residents of the agrarian clan informed Yaaz that she had arrived on the cusp of a great many temporary job openings. Their appreciation was a little stifling for Yaaz's taste, but she was grateful for the opportunity and its inherent lack of permenance; once she had earned enough treasure to make it to Lanternlea, Yaaz intended to leave the clan. She initially availed of the gruff, affordable hospitality of a local hosteler, and secured work harvesting vegetables alongside the morose Varlan. Yet, no matter how well she surrounded herself with unsociable figures, the clan was to enthrall Yaazaniah quite permanently. |
|
|
Regardless of the direction from which one approaches it, the road to Varlan's farm is an unpleasant one. On the fridges of an already loosely-populated clan, the journey is worsened by unpleasant winds which, while occasionally bearing the pleasant easterly tang of seabreeze, often hail from across the fierce, dry grasslands and copses which are characteristic of the Ruins. However, Yaazaniah was well acclimated to travelling, and a journey of less than a dozen miles meant little to her, a dragon who had navigated the Tidelord's ocean, and a fair portion of the Hewn City, before. Her regular walk to work left her exposed to the daily goings-on of the clan; its activities and its residents, in all their joy and arguments. It was the latter interaction that, despite Yaaz's unvoyeuristic nature, would prove particularly fateful. On her second evening of trudging home from Varlan's farm, the dusk already lapping against the fields, a cacophony reached Yaazaniah's ears. Yaaz had only ever been familiar with the movement of sound underwater. To her, speech was something tangible, be it a flutter of waves generated by deep, melodic bellows, or the rush of gleaming bubbles created by hiccups, whispers, and laughter. However, dimensionless though the airborne words were, the angry tone was unmistakable. She should have found it to be unremarkable- merely one neighbor yelling at another -but, well acquainted though Yaaz was with conflict, something ineffable about this argument caught her attention. She approached the noise with a sense of urgency, taking to the air with all the flailing and lost elegance of a swan. Fortunately, that evening's weather was sympathetic towards her. A kind breeze caught quickly her wings and allowed even a novice flyer like herself the opportunity to glide in vulturine circles. It was the perfect way to see the world- to see her Charge -for the first time. Stretched across a pair of differing gardens, Yaazaniah could spot two neighbors sounding off at one another. A pair of Skydancers stood at odds, like territorial songbirds, their antipathy visible even from an altitude too high above to discern their individual insults. Yaaz's eyes flitted fervently from one dragon to the other, trying to seek out the slightest twinge of sympathy that might denote either Skydancer as her Charge. Yet, despite having witnessed (and, ocassionally, started) far more interesting disputes, Yaaz somehow felt more protective of the strange antipathy than anything else. The thought that a squabble could be her Charge struck Yaazaniah with annoyance. She flew away with a glare on her face and a decided disbelief that her Charge could be something so ridiculous. |
|
On her next day off, Yaazaniah availed of one Light's most well-advertised services- assistance in matters of logic and knowledge -in the hopes that there would be neither record nor possibility that an enmity could be her Charge. Although she was more than a little miffed that she could have undergone countless trials and travels to find such an underwhelming Charge, Yaaz's desire to discredit this notion was born out of more than mere vanity. Yaaz was rather terrified and confused as to how one might guard something incorporeal- an argument wasn't a hoard or an artefact which one could merely protect from threats with one's bulk. Yaaz turned to an odd little shop of dubious economic viability for this purpose. Nestled in a corner, in the shadow of the main street, its young shopfront already bore a sunweathered appearance. An unnecessarily well-kept sign was the only indication that the business' outwark presentation had not yet been completely cheaped by the sun. The sign boasted a very elegant rendition of the shop's name- Name. Below the name, in a smaller, more enthusiastic font, someone had scrawled, as though attempting an explanation, the words 'Arevik's Advice And Information Emporium!!!'. The shopfront was barely large enough for Yaaz's head to extend through the door. This in itself was not unexpected- in some regions, a very common custom of draconic businesses with limited employees (and resources) remains the acts of renting a place appropriately sized for only the breeds employed, be they Veilspun, Imperial, or any size in-between, or else plying their wares outside (many restaurants tend to use a mixture of the two models, with kitchens, icerooms, and other necessary structures being well-fitted for only a couple of breeds, and the dining areas being located outside). However, though the shape of the shop was predictable, the contents (and their haphazard locations) were anything but. Yaaz had been expecting the building to be awash with books and scrolls alone, but some of the items which dotted the room seemed rather bizarre. A seemingly sentient globe of Sornieth hummed and bobbed, while books lay propped up against manticore skeletons, eggshells, monuments to a canine familiar, old clothes of no obvious historical importance, and chests long-since converted into open topped, overflowing, boxes. A single, slight exhalation from Yaaz's anterior air sacs was enough to ruffle the whole system (if such a mass of labelled but otherwise indecipherably sorted files could warrant that title) and send leaves of paper rattling off shelves and onto the floor. This noise appeared to catch the attention of Name's proprietor- perhaps the eponymous Arevik -far better than the appearance of a potential customer. The Mirror dragon lazily barred her fans against her head, as if out of habit moreso than as an expression of genuine disgruntlement, and asked Yaaz, in an unexpectedly chirpy tone, what information she sought. Yaaz explained a little of the interest which she had in intangible Charges, couching her curiosity in very general questions, hoping to avoid revealing her personal dilemma to a complete stranger. Fortunately, even before Yaaz had finished speaking or price had been discussed, Arevik was diving into piles of books and papers, skimming and disregarding them at a speed only outmatched by Spiral dragons. For a moment, Yaaz was almost certain that the Mirror dragon had forgotten her presence, so absorbed was the purplish-golden blur in the hunt for information, but, as suddenly as it had begun, Arevik's chaotic search came to a brief, sudden halt. Yaaz almost fancied that the small dragon had made a breakthrough, but the truth was a little more mundane. "What were you looking for again?" Yaaz supressed a glare, interpreting the dragon's question as a testimony to forgetfulness, and gratingly replied. "Stuff about nonphysical charges." The Mirror dragon's eyes became bright crescents, and her very fans appeared to join in the smile. "This-" she said, sweeping a claw towards her beloved chaos, "-is the perfect place! We carry every work, and edition thereof, of the esteemed philosopher Nanala Surname! Do you know, she's a resident of this village?" Yaaz had never heard of this dragon, who she presumed to be some local hack, and was on the verge of withdrawing her head from the doorway (courtesy be sunk!) when Arevik resumed taking. "I have other material, you know. Records of past Charges, Charge-related phenomena, even a first-edition of Charges and their Interactions-" Arevik flicked through the titular book before tossing it back on the shelf with an unembarrassed declaration of "-Nevermind, that about electromagnetism." Unwilling to either shatter Arevik's enthusiasm or hear more book titles, Yaaz decided to humor the well-meaning dragon, if only for a couple of minutes. "Tell me about this... Nanala character." Arevik's fans flung into the air in clear delight, and she began speaking at an almost indecipherable pace. "Where do I even begin? Well, Nanala's a philosopher, works on the nature of objects as pertaining to Charges in particular, lives by the Sunthread, married to Hyacintus (what a cute couple!), working on a book at the moment, very scholarly and she's letting me give feedback on the first draft, would you imagine? But that's Nanala, the nicest Guardian you'll ever meet- err... no offence -and the most humble, too, do you know she went to Radiant Eye- the University that is, the best one in Light and that's saying something. Not to be snobbish, Lanterlea is good too and the Sanctum's really up-and-coming, but Radiant Eye! The legends say the Lightweaver herself founded it- of course, that's a nice story but it's not quite true, does discredit to Sunspark- not the Magistar, his great-great-great-grandaunt in law or something -but anyway you'll never guess she went there, she doesn't brag about it- but listen to me, doing the bragging for her! Anyway, she has a theory of Charges, theory of Charges as a system, you see, she developed it when she found her charge was the River Sunspark- well, we call it a river but it's more of a creek, like calling a lane a road almost, although we do do a lot of that as well, come to think of it-" "Wait," Yaazaniah said, her voice ringing with the feeling that she had been cheated of her time, "You're telling me that she has a river as a Charge! That's a physical object, for Tidelord's sake! You can defend that and nurture it or whatever you do with a river- point is, it's hypocritical!" Yaaz made to leave, tilting her head so that her horns wouldn't get caught on a beam, but Arevik's oddly calm and cheerless statement caused her to pause, if only to wonder what bizarre ramble the Mirror was cooking up next. "You don't understand, do you?" "Well, you didn't exactly explain it." Arevik dipped her fans briefly- a polite expression of mild shame or guilt -and began talking in a slower tone, imbued with a certain Light gravitas that her standard speech lacked. "A river is a physical object, yes. But what does it mean the guard a river? Must you chase down every lick of water trying to escape it, and prevent the inevitable escape of the water into the ground, into the sky, into the bellies and roots of its biotic surroundings?" Yaaz wrinkled her nose in an expression of disbelief, that Arevik would ask her such a simple question. "No way on Sornieth! That's impossible and, even if some loony did that, it wouldn't even be a river anymore- it'd just be a weird lake..." Arevik's fans and features came together into a smile- even her wings twitched upwards as if to join in the happy semicircle. "You're absolutely right. But this brought Nanala to her current interpretation of charges. A Charge is in a system, a process which one guards. This sounds wishy-washy, but think about the river. One can protect it from damming, or contamination, but in order for it to exist, one must allow the water and minerals within it to change- sometimes quite considerably. Otherwise, as you have said, the river stops becoming a river. It's just a weird lake." Yaaz half-smiled at the rather genuine echoing of her words. "Of course," Arevik cautioned, "This is just an idea, but it does fit with what we currently know about Charges. Any Guardian who takes on a living thing as a Charge is automatically guarding a system which is the process of constant, (ideally) regulated change." Arevik waved her claw, "I don't need to call in a naturalist to tell you that nothing entering, or leaving, or altering, in a living thing would be quite bad." "What about Guardians whose Charges really are unchanging? Not like a river, or a current, or a grove, but something really unchanging, like a piece of parchment or a cool rock." Arevik nodded. "I was also stumped by that idea. I couldn't get it out of my head. I'm surrounded by scrolls for a living, but I ended up having to go to the experts- the chemists, and the alchemists, Name the scroll restorer, and virtually every Earth dragon in the clan." The Mirror dragon gave a kind chuckle. "Sometimes, I forget that I'm still learning. Turns out, that to those familiar with them, the notion that many so-called unchanging objects are truly unchanging is somewhat untrue." |
|
|
"Take the example of a stone. A sedimentary rock, as a Fen informed me, is the product of countless years of deposition, and metamorphic rocks' very distinguishability from others is based on change. Let's chose an igneous rock, then. Unchanging since its conception though it appears, it actually has radioactive materials nested within it. Some geologists on the Earth-Arcane seaborder have actually developed a method of dating rocks- especially, I'm told, those containing zircon crystals -based on this change that rocks undergo over time. If a Guardian's Charge is a rock, I don't see any why in which they could reverse the process of radioactive decay. A similar principle exists with scrolls, although often within the shorter timespan of chemical degradation of the ink, according to our local scroll-restorer, well, they're based locally but they travel a lot for the job-" Arevik cut off her discussion of her neighbor, and returned to the topic of Charges. "There are other features which showed that such apparently unchanging things do change, merely too slowly for draconic timescales to pay much attention to. But still, the fact that dragons aren't rushing off to somehow harmlessly restore, to a radioactive form of uranium, every lead atom which arises from decay within their Charge, does point to the idea that even the most unchanging of Charges may be perceived as systems." Yaaz nodded- though some of the details struck her as irrelevant, it was an interesting idea. "So you're saying that a dragon could have something not strictly physical, like an argument- or a friendship or something! -as a Charge, because it's a sort of continued social interaction, it's a thing that can change- or even stopped existing -even though you can't really reach out and touch it?" Arevik nodded, beaming with the pride of a successful teacher. "Exactly. You're a quick learner." Yaaz bowed her head in thanks for the compliment, and shook a little treasure out of her bandana, letting it clatter to the floor. Arevik initially politely refused, saying that the conversation had been payment enough, but Yaaz replied that conversations probably didn't pay the overhead costs and, anyway, it was almost impossible for her bulky claws or jaws to pick them up now. Arevik eventually accepted the payment for a substantial amount of teaching, and waved happily at Yaaz as the Guardian cautiously wove her head out of the door. "Goodbye! Take care!" Arevik leapt up and down with short, hovering wingbursts. Yaaz smiled at the slightly over-the-top goodbye (she was boarding right down the street from Arevik's shop, after all!) and promised that she would return on her next day off, to discuss something or other about a boat made from parts of another, older boat. Yaaz felt happy, even as her fins ruffled and she tried to shake the crink out her neck. An enmity might be an odd Charge, and not one whose existence would really benefit from being talked about, but she was Yaazaniah, and she knew herself to be capable of protecting and preserving her newfound Charge. |
|
Having found her Charge, and reconciled herself with its odd nature, Yaazaniah started becoming a permanent member of the clan. Remaining in one place was a difficult habit to relearn, but Yaaz managed to do so, thanks to a classically Guardian sense of fatalism and her newly-forming friendships with many denizens of the area. Once the harvest was over and the associated boom in jobs had drawn to a close, Yaaz made a compelling case to the major for a firestation, both to educate against the rather hazardous management of flammable materials that she had seen during her time as a laborer, and to protect the citizens of the clan, and their property, from the fires which regularly plagued the sclerophyll landscape. She built it mostly with her own two claws, both as a cost-cutting mechanism and a way of ensuring that the entire building was up to her exacting standards without having to annoy anyone else. However, Yaaz couldn't create a modern building entirely on her own, and a great many dragons- particularly Petrel, Dexamene, and Regmaglypt -have been integral to the creation and maintance of the station. Perhaps a less intuitive helper was the Wildclaw Shaushka, a budding friend of Yaaz who diligently turned up to volunteer in the building's creation. Regmaglypt didn't expect to have a fellow Lightning dragon to help, especially one whose engineering expertise encompassed engines much more thoroughly than buildings. The canny Skydancer was probably the first in the clan to suspect that Shaushka had feelings for Yaaz, and spent several weeks hoping that one of the two would act on the increasingly obvious information- Regmaglypt was no matchmaker, but it was becoming quite tiring to work alongside Shaushka's 'help', which seemed more likely to provide the building with the ability to move around than to provide it with functioning lights. Fortunately for the frustrated electrical engineer, Yaaz finally noticed that Shaushka had a crush on her. Regmaglypt received less pyrrhic help from Shaushka after that, also the Wildclaw did continue to contribute somewhat to the wiring and, even to this day, Regma half-suspects that the firestation has some unnecessary ability to move, although she doesn't mention this to anyone, thinking that their mental image would be that the station possesses the ability to grow legs and saunter off like a mimic (although she hasn't quite ruled that odd possibility out...). Yaazaniah married Shaushka in the following spring, during the month of the Windsinger. Marriage is not ascribed a higher significance than other forms of longterm romantic relationships (such as the common practice of becoming mates without an official ceremony), but it functions as one of several convenient and official ways of keeping formal records of long-term couples and thruples in the clan. Nonetheless, despite knowing that her past self would be aghast that she had settled down, Yaaz was quite set on getting married, and found it to be an unforgettable way of declaring her love for Shaushka in front of their closest friends. Her surname, and the eerie cyan pendants which are seldom missing from Yaaz's neck, both stem from this happy day. |
|
|
 Strengths:
|
|
|
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ |
════════════ ｃｒｅｄｉｔｓ ════════════ ▪ elemental flag X @Ryeon030 ▪ D&D themed X alignment X icons @Chee ▪ lesbian pride X flag @gemhue ▪ all other X art ©Flight X Rising ▪ bio writing & X formatting X@Heliographer ════════════ 
|
Click or tap a food type to individually feed this dragon only. The other dragons in your lair will not have their energy replenished.
Feed this dragon Insects.
Feed this dragon Meat.
Feed this dragon Seafood.
Feed this dragon Plants.
You can share this dragon on the forums by either copying the browser URL manually, or using bbcode!
Exalting Yaazaniah to the service of the Plaguebringer will remove them from your lair forever. They will leave behind a small sum of riches that they have accumulated. This action is irreversible.
Do you wish to continue?
- Names must be longer than 2 characters.
- Names must be no longer than 16 characters.
- Names can only contain letters.
- Names must be no longer than 16 characters.
- Names can only contain letters.