Tagua

Tagua is one of the more easily overlooked members of Clan _______. The clan has no shortage of spellcasters, and when the arcane dragons are constantly throwing flashy and destructive spells about without a care, it's can be difficult to appreciate or even notice the more subtle forms of magic. Especially with something like Tagua's magic, which is gentle and elusive even among the mages of her home flight.

The art of aromamancy requires the finest of precision. Yes, to some it might appear to be nothing more than making a room smell like lavender and calling it a day. But to truly master it as an art requires just as much restraint as it does force. It's all too easy to overpower a room with floral scents, leaving some of your clanmates with headaches and the herbivorous ones ravenously hungry. An even gentler touch is required to alter a food's flavour to perfection, skipping the costly and difficult process of discovering those rarest of seasonings and skipping right to their effects. But only a true master can replicate the exact smell of a toy given to a hatchling innumerable years ago and reduce another dragon to tears.

Not that Tagua would ever do that.

For the most part, what Tagua does is create perfumes. She's even a member of a Perfumer's Guild. It's quite convenient for her, as the guild does all the actual transport and selling of the perfume. Tagua has always shied away from actually having to interact with others, preferring to writhe unseen with anxiety somewhere in the background. So instead of having to worry about dealing with customers, she just has to make the stuff. Far less nerve-wracking. A bottle of perfume will rarely explode in a sudden outburst of anger. Unless it's got starfall blossoms in it. Tagua still doesn't understand why those exploding bottles sell so well in the Isles.

A trip to one of Rhys's or Scáthach's gardens for the material components, some powdered chalcedony from anywhere on the ground for a magical kick, and a whole lot of distilled water. That's all Tagua needs to start creating perfumes. Scents created purely from magic don't last for extended periods of time in a bottle, so she still has to create perfume via mundane methods. Her magic makes the experimentation and formulation of new scents much easier, however, and Tagua has never once had to waste time synthesizing something that didn't smell good. If some combination is unpleasantly pungent, Tagua can unwittingly expose herself and everything around her to it immediately without having to go through the effort of cooking down any herbs or flowers. She was very quickly asked to relocate her workshop to somewhere outside of the main fortress.

The more scientifically-minded might be aware that aromamancy would be equivalent to modifying the chemical composition of particulates in the air. And that's exactly correct. Technically, Tagua can modify those chemicals in all sorts of ways. And only some of those chemicals have any detectable smell. Really, if a dragon had such a magical ability, what's to stop them from using it in more harmful ways? With a single spell they could add a neurotoxin to the air in a room and commit practically unstoppable and untraceable murder. And Perfumer's Guild members usually work for the richest dragons anywhere in Sornieth. If they had any malicious intent, they'd be set to make a bid for control of Sornieth.

Tagua's not sure how it all ended up here, really. Her guild definitely started out as nothing more than perfume makers, that's for sure. But somebody realized that they had guild members with direct access to the leaders of many of the most powerful clans around, and things sort of spiralled out of control from there. One of them took the opportunity to poison a tyrant and quite quickly the rest agreed that actually that was a pretty good idea. Suddenly there were infiltration plans and talk of world domination and it all just got too stressful for Tagua.

She took one of the flowering cloaks that were meant to mask the smell of murder and fled the guild headquarters. As far as they're aware she's in deep cover infiltration, but all Tagua wants is to make perfume and forget all of this insurrection stuff. She's not trying to kill anyone, but that doesn't stop her from panicking nearly ever time anyone approaches her, expecting to be accused of murder.

Though perhaps she's more afraid old her old friends finding her than the new ones. The Perfumer's Guild quickly began to boast assassins that might be more dangerous than even the shadow flight's best. If they discover that she isn't loyal, any breath could be Tagua's last. And they probably won't even be kind enough to make it smell good. She hopes that this island is far enough in the middle of nowhere that nobody will care enough to check on her.

Looking to forget all this, she'll often busy herself in Gwenfor's inn, making sure that every room smells fresh and clean for new guests. Perhaps it's Tagua's habit of flying away to hide before anyone can see her that's responsible for him thinking the inn is haunted.

Her constant worry has caused a bit of involuntary shaking in her hands, so Tagua wears braces to keep her claws steady.