Press or click to Save this image.
(NOTE: Some browsers or ad blockers may require you to do this manually with a right click or long press on the image above.)
(NOTE: Some browsers or ad blockers may require you to do this manually with a right click or long press on the image above.)
Exit Scenic Mode.
Expand the dragon details section.
Collapse the dragon details section.
Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Scene
Measurements
Length
6.07 m
Wingspan
5.25 m
Weight
509.77 kg
Genetics
Beige
Speckle
Speckle
Beige
Freckle
Freckle
Coal
Okapi
Okapi
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 1 Mirror
EXP: 0 / 245
STR
7
AGI
8
DEF
6
QCK
8
INT
5
VIT
6
MND
5
Biography
ALOPOCHEN
The Awoken Warrior
“You are all slaves, who trust in the lies of religion. In the false burdens of portent and prophecy. I died once, and I can tell you this: there is no light in the darkness, no afterlife to wake to. No amount of piety is worth a single coin, in your life or your death.”
|
 Dehisce says: “You will be delivered unto the Mother! You will sup of her milk and your blood will writhe with the eager seedlings of her waiting young! You will carry her spores to new lands, you will be cured of all your blemishes, you will be freed from your singular, weak mind. We will be One.”  Sirocco says: “We were the ones who destroyed the earth. It was us who consumed the land in fire, who poisoned the seas. We who loosed the abominations back upon the earth, long after they had been buried by her hand. Now that they crawl back from the shadows to grasp at the seat of dominion, you want to dig her up and ask her to do it again?” |
    Cannon Keeper 
  
|
The desert stretched enormous before her, a featureless sea of whirling sand. Death, that dauntless pilgrim who followed ever at her heels, seemed to whisper to her in the wailing wind, calling on her like an old promise. There had been a road here once. Half-buried, rust-eaten husks of machinery sprayed across the wasteland like the forgotten toys of some puerile giant. She’d stopped at each of them to rummage through their remains for provisions. One yielded a can of beans two days back. Nothing since. Alopochen was still young in body, one who might only have just become an adult in the old traditions of her people, but still her girlhood was far behind her, an antiquated thing from lifetimes ago. Even in the old world, she had not been girlish. The upbringing of her kind was joyless and unforgiving: Training, research, discipline. It had been so for generations uncounted, since before her deathless sleep, before the wheels of history spun around her. Her body was young, but her keen eyes and hard heart bore the old wisdom of generations. Her dress was that of the fighter-folk of the old world. She wore golden bands over ashen wraps. On one wing was a strapped glaive that had killed forty and three in its time. Her helm fashioned from a skull kept the sand from her face and concealed her features from wanderers on the road. Her cannon, inlaid with ornate vinework of gold, was crafted especially for her hands by the priest-smithies in the meticulous tradition of the old Tomb-Keepers, whose magic had sealed her away, to be reawakened when the time came to unleash Judgment upon the world. They had called her a hero, but they knew nothing of her. The things she’d done. She did once carry a heart in her breast, but it had been extinguished over long, quiet years entombed in darkness and silence. Still, she knew that tales of heroes ferried hope across the wastes just as dust carries on the wind, and so she let them believe. Alopochen arrived by morning. Fogtown was a ragged patchwork of shanties and huts, but for the great stone church at its centre, before which she now stood. It cast long shadows in the morning sun. For a moment, she saw it as the townsfolk must have seen it: a lovely thing, a symbol of hope. She put her hand on the door and could sense the calamity that waited within. Her heart quickened, and she flung the great doors open and entered. “—That we may walk in the grace of our Holy Mother,” an old priest was sermonising, “and remain in Her favour until we meet Her upon Her throne—” The doors banged shut behind Alopochen, and a dozen faces turned from the pews to regard her. They wore the same desperation that she had seen time and again in the years that she wore her sigils. They clung to the hope of community, of survival for their children, and religion would warm their hearts as liquor curbs a weak man’s troubles. “Ah,” the priest said, gesturing at her, smiling, “another of our Mother’s children has come to hear Her Word. Come, come. You're most welcome.” Alopochen looked upon the faces of the congregation. “Ladies, sirs,” her words echoed off the stone. “Leave. Now.” “Beg pardon,” a ragged man said, standing, “but this is—” The thunderclap of Alopochen's cannon boomed in the church vaults, and shards of a stained glass window fell in a spray of coloured rain. Someone screamed, and the churchgoers got to their feet and fled at once, shouldering past Alopochen down the aisle. She let them pass, eyeing the priest. The doors slammed shut behind the last of them, and all was quiet. The priest took a step back, aghast, showing his palms. “What is the meaning of this?” the priest stammered. “Please, sheathe your weapon! This is a house of the Goddess!” “Goddess,” she said, studying him. “I’m sure they think so,” flicking her head toward the door. “You’ve seen to that, haven’t you?” “You’ll find no coin here,” the priest said. “We want no trouble with you, wanderer. Please, go in peace.” Alopochen smiled darkly. “Coin. No, you’ve no need for such trifles. You deal in damnation.” “And salvation,” he said. He spread his hands and offered a grandfatherly smile of honeyed sympathy. “Whatever you’ve done, you are not beyond the Mother’s mercy. Now, please.” Alopochen stepped forward. “Hang your illusions, fiend. You and the Filthy One are unwelcome in this domain.” The priest stared. Then his voice was forged anew and his shoulders hitched with his laughter, deep and cold and piqued with malice. A liar’s voice; a murderer’s. Alopochen had known many and more of both. “You should not have come,” he turned and regarded her with wild eyes, long teeth shining behind a sly grin. “And you have come alone?” He shook his head and spoke with playful disappointment: “Folly. Where are your armies? Where are the proud banners and high parapets of your Flight?” “Dust!” he spat. “Ash in the fallow fields of a world that was. Your time is done.” The priest’s face bulged as the bones beneath shifted into a lunatic caricature. A scarab scuttled from underneath his vestments. “I remain,” she said. “That is enough.” “Oh?” the priest cackled. “We shall see.” His eyes peeled shut and rolled behind their lids, and he spoke in a deadened chant, his face turned towards the heavens. “Yes.” Alopochen said. “Pray. It won’t avail you now. You and I both know that your goddess is not the forgiving kind.” The priest’s eyes snapped open, huge orbs thick with gelatinous puss. He brayed laughter. Beetles and bulbous spiders crawled across his face, which whitened and split as a chitinous form began to pierce through. “But what is there to forgive? You are too late, child. Mother has laid claim to Her young.” “Soon,” the thing boomed, “their bellies will burst, and from their flesh shall spread the thousand-eyed children of our sweet Mother! The Filthy One! Hand of the Contagion!” Its guise abandoned, the mad priest's horned carapace shone with slime and the red gore of its shed skin. Rows of multitudinous eyes rolled madly and found Alopochen, and its mouths hissed and clicked with the voice of swarms. “Then the afflicted will be purged,” Alopochen said, steadying her cannon, “but not before you.” “No, heretic!” the monster screamed, “You will be delivered unto the Mother!” It swiped a long, barbed talon at her, roaches and carrion worms spewing from its orifices in ebon waves. “You will sup of her milk and your blood will writhe with the eager seedlings of her waiting young!” “Come then,” Alopochen took aim, “and die for Mother.” Then she heard them: the insectile shrieks of Plague's newborn children. The shadowed forms of the townsfolk emerged from the base of the towers in the fog, shambling toward her, their eyes shining with a mad hunger that she knew well. One of them screamed at her, blow flies spilling from its mouth and twisting in the dust. Alopochen closed her eyes, breathed deep and calm, and set about her work. |
Click or tap a food type to individually feed this dragon only. The other dragons in your lair will not have their energy replenished.
This dragon doesn't eat Insects.
Feed this dragon Meat.
Feed this dragon Seafood.
This dragon doesn't eat Plants.
You can share this dragon on the forums by either copying the browser URL manually, or using bbcode!
Exalting Alopochen 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.