Cyrus

The Riftrunner: an interdimensional research vessel crewed by the most daring dragons in Sornieth. Their mission: to explore realities beyond our current understanding and push past the current limits of scientific knowledge. Or more specifically, to keep Captain Cyrus alive in all sort of dangerous alien environments while he does all of the important scientific research. It's a perilous mission, to be sure. But they all signed up for it for one simple reason. A true commitment to science and the advancement of draconic knowledge! Cyrus knows that any member of he crew would be willing to lay down their lives for sake of this scientific mission. He'll make sure to give them co-authorship in the articles he publishes.

Every scientist has a specialty, and Cyrus is no exception. His research is on the fundamental makeup of the universe. No, not just this universe. Every universe. His theories hold that everything is magic — or perhaps that magic is no different than dirt or any other matter, as those two statements are equivalent. But does that hypothesis withstand the rigours of repeated experiments? The Riftrunner's expeditions are the only way to find out. What they find will shape the future of all academic study. What if they find worlds where other elements of magic exist? Ones where fire magic defeats water magic? Even one where no magic exists at all? Well, Cyrus's calculations suggest that in that final case the Riftrunner's crew will either become the most powerful beings in that plane, or they'll instantly blip out of existence. But those are the risks you must take for science.

There's another reason Cyrus is eager to be part of Sornieth's earliest expeditions into other realities. Simply put, it's because nobody knows anything about any of them. Which means, of course, that learning anything about them instantly makes you the foremost expert in that field. Why should Cyrus settle for being an expert in only fundamental magic theory when he could be an expert in the interdimensional version of every field? Imagine — Cyrus finally getting his recognition as the greatest scholar of all time. Even the Arcanist would have to step aside and put him in charge of the Observatory. And from there, true knowledge of all magic will be at his clawtips. (And Cyrus will finally get to use the giant telescope!)

But becoming the greatest scientist will take quite a lot of work. Mostly on the part of his crew, who Cyrus will be eagerly commanding to scour these other planes for anything he can study. They'll drag those subjects back to his laboratory (at great risk to themselves), and then he'll probe what they've found for whatever knowledge he can extract from it. Even a simple stone from another world could provide invaluable data. But Cyrus is looking for more interesting samples than that. Preferably, he'd like them to find him artefacts of magical power. There's so much to learn from something like that — the type of magic used to create the item, the method of its enchantment, the actual effects of the item when activated, and that's just the magical half of it! If it's naturally occurring, that implies much about how the elemental forces of the world where it was found interact. And if it's an artificially created item — well, that opens so many new questions. Annoyingly, answering them might require Cyrus to have more social interactions than he prefers. Good thing he's got Loblolly! She can interrogate the weird aliens for him. Though he might have to actually leave the laboratory at times to remind her to ask useful questions. The scientific community doesn't care about how many friends you can make, they want results.

And those results will be difficult to get if his crew won't leave him alone when he's in the middle of important research. Embryes is the worst offender, always sending those illusionary copies of herself to remind him to do all sorts of useless tasks. Cyrus is well aware when it's his turn to be on cleaning duty, but scientific breakthroughs wait for no dragon! The Riftrunner doesn't even work yet, why do the windows need to be spotless? And why should the captain have to take his turn cooking for the crew? Everyone can just skip dinner and have some snacks if he doesn't feel like cooking. He's got so much spare paper in the laboratory nowadays, ever since he had the brilliant idea to use auditory data transcription crystals to store his research instead of tasty, tasty paper. The only downside is that their small and portable nature makes the crystals very easy to misplace. There's a wealth of recorded knowledge scattered around the vessel — and Cyrus keeps adding to that hoard, recording a log of everything that happens aboard the Riftrunner. If some doom were to befall the crew, anyone who stumbles upon the wreckage probably could piece together what happened to them from Cyrus's audio logs. Well, the exaggerated version of events where Cyrus is the more intelligent dragon to ever exist and everything that went wrong was the fault of his incompetent crew.

And doom could definitely befall them, because Cyrus is absolutely useless in a dangerous situation. Sure, Cyrus believes that he can instantaneously analyze any attacker and point out their weaknesses for the other aethers to exploit. But in practice, he just flies around thinking really hard until someone can be bothered to blast him out of the sky.

Since he's still waiting for the crew to finish preparations for their first expedition, Cyrus is eager for any connections to alternate realities that her can get his claws on. And his luck hasn't failed him yet, for there's one right here in Clan _______. Math. (That's a dragon's name, not the concept of mathematics.) Unfortunately, Math is convinced that they're a sneaky spy and refuses to tell Cyrus anything useful about where they come from. They're very wiling to be a test subject, at least, which has given Cyrus ample opportunity to test some of his theories on alternate dimensions. Preliminary results are looking good: while the way Math entered Sornieth's dimension is far from how the Riftrunner will work, the fact they they've survived here with no adverse side-effects extrapolates to dragons being able to survive in other planes as well. Cyrus is more eager than ever to explore other worlds.

Though perhaps not the one Math came from. Even from what little Cyrus has heard about it, that one sounds horrifying.