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Avelyn She did not understand the importance of keeping up appearances at first. When she told the leaders of her clan that it was pointless to expand because they would eventually disband and fall to ruin, she was reprimanded and sentenced to community service. When she told her parents that they would not stay together and every one of her future siblings would be exalted, they shouted in anger and denial and kicked her out of their nest.
Fate told her where she would be most comfortable sleeping in the lair that night. She would have/had time to ponder the issue other dragons had with her honesty while she will spend/spent one hour, twenty-seven minutes, and four seconds adjusting her position on the grassy outcrop she would find/had found. Then, another sixteen minutes-five seconds until she would be/was asleep, and after that eight hours before she would be/was awake. She would make/had made amends with her parents, would speak/had spoken with the spiral whose wings would tangle/had tangled in brambles that will grow/are growing/had grown a little too close to his nest will/would/have/had/has-
Avelyn had not noticed that she had collapsed on the ground and was shaking and finding it hard to breathe. Reality snapped back around her, time fitting itself to the present. Or rather, she was fitting the present to herself. All of time expanded out before her, but it seemed perceiving it all at once was not ideal for a week-old dragon.
After that night, Avelyn learned to take the future in bit by bit. She tried to help where she could, but her monotone prevented anyone who wasn’t a Fae from taking her seriously. They either took it as dark humor or an insult and would always, always deny it. Of course they only remembered her darker projections and never the good that came to pass. For weeks, Avelyn could not figure out why. When her clan grew tired of her ‘depressive attitude bringing everyone down’, they sent her off into the world. She had known it would happen of course, but as Fate she knew her path would not deviate and there would be no point in trying to prevent it. Her next journey would take her to a new clan in the deserts of Dragonhome. It would be some time before she reached her destination, so she would be spending it practicing and learning how to help others understand her view.
The first few dragons she met on her path did not take kindly to her, but after several days she encountered a heavily decorated stall in the middle of a small caravan parked beside the road. She knew there was someone she needed to speak with inside, so she entered, paying no mind to the snickering merchants outside.
When their eyes met, she knew that the blue-eyed guardian across from her could See like she could. They were sat before a large table draped in cloth obscuring most of their body.
“You are Avelyn.” they spoke, voice dripping with magic that echoed off the walls of the small, dim tent.
“I am supposed to speak with you.” she replied, her frills dipping slightly as an instinctual spike of fear gripped her heart.
“Yes. I have an important message for you.”
The table creaked as the guardian leaned forward, craning their neck so that their face was closer to the little fae. Avelyn shrunk down, folding her wings in. Her frills flared upward in alarm as the deep, piercing blue of their eyes intensified to a slight glow.
“You are an oracle.”
“No, I am a vassal of Fate-”
“You are. An oracle.”
“...why?”
“You have been honest with those you meet, no? You have told them what you see of their future, and they have turned you away. There is a reason for this.”
They leaned back and turned, disappearing into the gloom. Avelyn could hear the clink of glass being moved around as they continued to speak.
“Knowing all is not often desired by dragons, or any entity for that matter. They are meant for the present moment, not the future. If one knows everything that will ever happen, life becomes a meaningless chore without surprise or sorrow. For them, much is lost. So,” they reappeared, a large crystal orb in their claws, “when someone tries to tell them everything, they cannot accept it.” They set the orb down in the middle of the table, smoothing out the cloth before allowing their hands to hover just above its surface.
Avelyn perked up a bit, fixated on the sphere as swirling mist began to churn within. An image, vague and flowing like silk, filtered out of the fog.
“True Sight is beyond rare. Fate and beings like it pick few vassals out of the multitudes of dragons. Those that can See are like oases in a desert, almost impossible to find. Oracles, however, are seen in many lucrative positions across Sornieth. They use their talents, whether real or fake, to earn a bit of treasure if they do not care to help for free. This is how they are known by most of dragonkind.”
She could make out what was in the orb, now. It was a reflection of herself, surrounded by pink and blue smoke with shifting eyes. She held an orb, not unlike this guardian’s, before her in ghostly claws. Avelyn realized she was making eye contact with herself. She Looked, and she could See this same view but backwards. It was a strange loop in time that almost gave her a headache.
The guardian placed their hands back on the table, and the image faded away. Avelyn blinked as she came back to the present moment.
“So… I’m supposed to… what, put on an act? Pretend like my abilities aren’t real and I’m putting on a scam for desperate dragons?”
“Is that what you Saw?” They asked it even though they surely already knew the answer.
She thought for a moment. Her path lay ahead of her still, she was to be part of a clan of Earth but… she acted as a guide rather than a carnival attraction.
“No.” she answered after a moment. The guardian hummed and nodded.
“I will offer you one more piece of advice before you continue your travels. Orbs possessed by spirits can be made into familiars, and one can share a mental link with these familiars. Such a link would allow one to project their Sight into a form other dragons could perceive. Oracles are known to deliver cryptic messages that tell incomplete truths, leaving much for a dragon to anticipate. You may be able to See, but you must also learn to see. Goodbye, Avelyn.”
She left the tent, the path ahead of her clearer now as she allowed Fate to guide her steps.
In December, she discovered an Orbiting Spirit and successfully bonded with it.
By January, she had reached the oasis of the Highland Council’s clan.
She presented herself as a mystical oracle, capable of divining fragments of the future gifted by Fate, but nothing more. She was taken in and she found herself slipping comfortably into the role she was meant to play. She knew she was delivering half-truths, but even with the desire to protect her new home with full honesty, she found herself experiencing something new. When the events she had predicted came to pass, she could almost feel the emotion of the dragons it affected. When a beloved clan member fell in battle, sorrow sullied her fins. When a treasure trove was discovered from a digsite, she danced with elation. She knew all that would come to pass, but even without the element of surprise she was able to draw from her clanmates what she could not create herself.
So, Avelyn the oracle, embodiment of Fate, found herself living a future that was not shocking in the slightest yet wonderfully brilliant all the same.
Lore written by QuarantineArea


Blight
Gods, he wanted to tear something apart.
It took guts to be a warrior of plague. Sometimes, warriors of plague took guts, literally. To be a warlord? That required a great deal of skill and tenacity, not to mention a vicious no-mercy attitude when it came to competition. For a dragon born into a clan of wind who somehow ended up in the Scarred Wasteland, it was near impossible.
All of this meant that Blight was beyond extraordinary, truly a brilliant bloody jewel in the crown of the Plaguemother. He was something to marvel at, the embodiment of triumph over hardship, the loose thread in any expectation, the ultimate pearlcatcher of this Age.
So how in the name of plague did he end up wrapped in bandages being carried around by a Shade-bitten coatl to attend council meetings like some kind of beaurocrat??
…
What, you’re genuinely curious? Fine. I’ll tell you.
Once upon a time, in a land of reeds and song, there lived a little pearlcatcher. Then one day one of his siblings punched him in the face by accident, knocked him out of the nest, and sent him drifting down a river toward the plague-lands. That precious little hatchling nearly drowned clutching his pearl, but managed to be fished up by some Serthis who, upon deciding he was not worth eating, sold him off to a coliseum team in need of fodder. When the deadline for dominance passed before he could be trained, the pearlcatcher was sold again to an arena to be used as a gladiator.
After being punched, drowned, sold, battled, and sold again, this pearlcatcher was pretty tired of being tossed around. He may have been far from home, but Singer forbid if he wasn’t about to teach someone a lesson for messing with him. When he was grown enough to fight, he walked proudly onto the arena sands to face his opponent. A bogsneak twice his size slithered into view and he didn’t even flinch. He laughed, looking the dragon in the eyes, and told them “I could topple you no problem!”
Thirty seconds later the pearlcatcher was pinned solidly beneath the bogsneak’s bulk, head buried in the sand as his fists pounded furiously in indignation.
Now, it’s normal for any dragon to feel the weight of defeat and take it hard. The healthy thing to do is to be a good sport about it and move on.
The pearlcatcher didn’t really care for what the ‘healthy’ thing to do was. He had now been punched-drowned-sold-fought-sold-crushed and he was far past his limit. He wasn’t about to let some brutish bogsneak get the best of him so easily, so he had decided to stalk the dragon every second of every day, observing every breath, every potential weakness, and standing for hours over their sleeping body.
He would admit to nobody that he was obsessing a bit too much over his loss.
Naturally, he ended up getting caught by his own target. When the bogsneak, distressed at realizing someone had been spying on them 24/7, had picked the pearlcatcher up by the throat and demanded an explanation, the pearlcatcher had screamed in the bogsneak’s face demanding to be trained in their ways of combat so he could defeat them. The bogsneak gave him a simple ‘no’, dropped him, and submitted a formal complaint to the arena master. The pearlcatcher was booted from the organization and left to fend for himself in the middle of the Abiding Boneyard.
Unphased, he decided to take his request straight to the top and set out for the Wyrmwound.
Some wandering mirror packs mistook him for a would-be exalt and carried him all the way to the Rotrock Rim, nourishing him and helping him beef up out of pity for his pathetic form. Once the pearlcatcher was atop the massive crater’s edge, he spotted the grand form of the Plaguebringer herself stewing the Wound and began to waltz toward her faraway silhouette. He hadn’t gone two spiral-lengths before he was tumbling head-over-tail down the slope to the crater floor. As he lay sprawled in the muck, covered in mucous and rot, a snapper leaned into his still-spinning view and asked if he had an appointment. Once his senses had properly returned to him, he was able to ask what exactly he needed an appointment for.
“For meeting the Plaguemother.” They had replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. The pearlcatcher had snapped to attention at that, quickly picking himself and his pearl up out of the sludge in an attempt to look more presentable.
“Why yes, in fact, I do have an appointment with the, uh, Plaguemother. So if I could just-”
He tried to slip past the dense form of the dragon but was immediately popped in the jaw with a trunk-like leg. He mentally added ‘punched again’ to his list of reasons why he was mad before meeting the snapper’s sanguine eyes.
“Hey, what’s the probl-”
“Anyone with an appointment has to wait in line.”
They pointed and he turned to see a string of dragons the length of the Windsinger circling the edge of the lake, going the long way around the crater and disappearing into the distant fog in the general direction of the Plaguebringer. His jaw dropped.
“You can’t be serio-”
“I’ll need a name as well.”
As quick as he had come up with the genius lie of having an appointment with a deity, he spat out the first thing that came to mind.
“Blight.”
The snapper huffed in acknowledgement and nodded toward the end of the line. The pearlcatcher, now Blight he supposed, threw the dragon one last glare before stomping off to join the file.
What followed was three days of aimless shuffling in place as the line crept infinitesimally toward Blight’s destination. He was tired, thirsty, his feet hurt, his lungs burned, and Gods the Banescale in front of him WOULDN’T STOP POKING HIM WITH THEIR SPINES EVERY TIME THEY MOVED-
By the time Blight reached the foot of the Plaguebringer’s post, he was pretty sure he had contracted several diseases and developed some serious anger issues (if he didn’t have them already). The great Bringer did not stop stewing nor did she turn her head to address him. He cleared his throat, but she gave no indication she was even listening to him. He could feel his anger boiling inside him, but he kept himself under control while in the presence of a deity.
“Oh great Plaguemother, master of contagion, virellent-”
“For the spread of sickness get on with it, there’s a line you know!” came a cry from behind him. He felt the fleshy ground beneath him splinter as his claws dug in. He bit his tongue and began again.
“Mother, I desire a blessing of strength so that I may vanquish my nemesis and prove I am superior.”
A gust of hot air breezed by Blight as the Plaguebringer swept by with another stir. Her skeletal maw parted, dripping strings of acidic ooze as she took in a rotten breath. She barked it out in a simple ‘no.’ and that was that.
Blight stood before the deity, shocked. The dragon behind him moved up to speak, but Blight cut them off.
“You know what? Alright. Okay. Fine. Cool. I’m done.”
With that, he dropped his pearl on the slimy shore and took a swan dive directly into the swirling contagion.
In the moments of searing agony tearing through his form that followed, Blight’s only thought was directed at the faint hope that this would make him stronger.
And then a pair of gargantuan bony claws were lifting him by his wings from the goo.
A single blinding red eye peered at him from a twisted neck as the Plaguebringer regarded his coughing deformed frame.
“That was pretty stupid.” she boomed, her raspy voice echoing off the crater walls.
Blight gurgled in response, hoping his anger and determination were somehow still visible with his entire body melting.
“Ok. Here, then. Idiot.”
A bolt of pure elemental magic ripped through him and his form instantly solidified into a scaly, spiky mess. He gasped, able to breathe again, and felt the Plague coursing through him.
“Th-thank you m-!”
“Don’t cut people in line. It’s rude.”
He barely had time to respond before he was being tossed with the force of a deity over her shoulder, past the Rim, and hurtling toward the tangled mess of infected plant life on the other side of the crater. His pearl followed soon after.
A few health potions later, and Blight was mostly without broken bones. From there, he began scouring every trading post and auction house for acuity fragments and plague magic to build his strength. Every living thing he came across, he decimated with his growing power and left their remains to feed the perpetual rot. Born a wind dragon, now with the Plaguemother’s blessing coursing through him beside his rage-driven determination to gain power, he was a nigh unstoppable force,a true warlord of the plaguelands. Finally, it was time for a rematch.
Using his previous knowledge from stalking them, he quickly tracked down the bogsneak that had bested him. They had tried to run, oh they had tried, going all the way to Dragonhome in a cowardly and futile attempt to avoid their fate. Blight found them in a mighty lair of the Parched Canyonwalks, seemingly begging for protection from the clan leaders.
Blight had no need for stealth. There was nowhere for this bogsneak to run while standing atop a giant boulder. If they tried to fly away, Blight would simply spear them with a bolt of magic midair. It was finally time.
With a raging battle cry, Blight flashed into the sky, tattered wings spread wide as he lunged for the bogsneak. They didn’t even have time to react with so much as a squeak before they were being pelted with plague magic. Great spikes of bone and rot erupted from the ground beneath them, a rain of sickness sprayed down from above, all the while Blight stood screaming and demanding the bogsneak fight him. The clan leaders looked on in horror until one finally stepped forward to screech “STOP STOP SHE’S ALREADY DEAD!!!”
Blight paused his assault for a moment to stare in confusion at the wildclaw to his side.
“Huh? Oh.” Indeed, inspecting where the bogsneak had stood just a minute ago, they had been reduced to a steaming heap of twisted flesh and pustules.
The leaders of course had questions, demanding arbitrary things like who he was, why was he here, why had he killed a potential clan leader, and- oops, he did what now? He did his best to explain his tragic side of the story in an epic tale of loss and rage and vengeance, taking care to list off every slight against him he had counted on his travels, but they still didn’t seem to understand. They left him to poke at the mangled bogsneak while they discussed what to do with him. At last, they addressed him.
“You’re a plague dragon, right? A powerful one?”
“Psh, yeah uh duh. I’m super powerful. Even the Plaguebringer was all like ‘oh my gosh you’re sooooo coooool Blight, let me save you from the Wyrmwound because you’re so amazing and strong and-”
“Okay, I’ve heard enough. Our council needs a member to represent Plague. Since you just decimated our original candidate and we have nobody else, do you think you could handle it?”
Blight thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Yeah I didn’t really have anything else on the life-agenda besides proving I’m superior by beating my old nemesis. Plus I’m totally fit for any challenge you could throw at me, so bring it on! I’ll be the best council member you’ve ever seen, I’ll be so good, you’ll see-”
He went on bragging for a few minutes, even after all the other council members had left. For the few minutes his arch-enemy had been dead, he had felt empty, without purpose. But now? Now he had a new goal, a new way to prove his strength, a new challenge!
As it turned out, the life of a council leader was rather dull compared to the life of a plague warlord. All he did was talk about the clan’s problems and how to solve them, and no one ever liked his ideas for how to destroy their neighbors and eat their corpses.
A few weeks into his new job and he started to really fall apart. No, really fall apart, not figuratively. Evidently having gallons of toxic sludge melt your body and then having an entirely different element to the one you were born with fill you up instead wasn’t a good skincare routine. Day by day, Blight found himself able to function less and less. The day he couldn’t leave his nest atop the boulder was the day he knew he would never fight again.
He knew disability was nothing to be ashamed of, but gods he wanted to tear something apart anytime he couldn’t even keep his legs tied up enough to stand. The only dragon he accepted help from was Ombair, and at least the coatl let him keep his dignity most of the time by letting him walk with a bit of support. Blight couldn’t help but stew in anger whenever the guard captain had to pick him up and carry him like a limp animal carcass. Now, after a life of receiving and causing suffering in equal amounts, Blight was going to spend the rest of his days sitting on a boulder and talking about food stocks and lair slots.
What joy.

Lore written by QuarantineArea