Iridium

Stone Fertility Statue Dragonmade Statues like this are often given to matriarchs and mothers in hopes that their hatchlings develop strong and able. Many clans keep one in each of their nests for luck. 65

Iridium "The buyer being dead has no bearing on the importance of proper archeological principles, young drake. Now lets review the provenance of this artifact again."

Memento Mori Generation 1 Nascentes morimur The unliving antiquarian.

Memento mori (Latin: "remember that you have to die") is the medieval Latin Christian theory and practice of reflection on mortality, especially as a means of considering the vanity of earthly life and the transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits. Memento mori has been an important part of ascetic disciplines as a means of perfecting the character by cultivating detachment and other virtues, and by turning the attention towards the immortality of the soul and the afterlife. This curse would be traced down his lineage. All Vigil's children were destined to die, like any dragon. But they would be given a second chance. It was up to the children if they would accept the bargain.

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The only constant is change. One can't stop it. There is no point in fearing it. But one can choose how to react. Intentional change, that is the key. I write this meditation to reflect on my own changes, to examine them, understand them, and learn from them. It is those lessons that I will take into the future, even though the dragon I was is dead.

My father warned me of the choice I would face when I died. I suppose it was only natural that I would take an early interest in history. If the restless dead would fill my second life, why should their remains not fill my first? Dragonhome and the Sunbeam Ruins were obvious possibilities for the first part of my career. For the second... a land that has accepted it's living skeletons seemed more likely to remain hospitable than one ravaged by an Emperor. A move to Dragonhome then: my first change.

To join the excavations, I needed a form fit for digging. Watery magic could erode, but lacked precision. A breed change then, to a form fit for dwelling under a desert. Ought I to have learned to hone my innate water talents instead? Or to better handle my burly form - others of Obelisk breed have made successful archaeologists. This new body suited me ill, the Stormcatcher's design at odds with my native element. I felt as though made of of wet sand, too clumped to be fluid, to fragile to endure. This change was hasty - unwise, or a necessary step? To become a Sandsurge: my second change.

I see now I could have changed breed again, back to Obelisk, or to explore more options. Then, I saw only a need to move forward. Earth can metamorphose loose sediment into solid rock. I only needed pressure and heat. I found a fault line. A mechanical aid would channel latent magic, trigger a shift in the stone, crush me back into wholeness. My bloodline would ensure that I continued despite forces that would kill another dragon. My breed would ensure I could dig myself from my tomb. A rash plan, and a desperate one, though it didn't have to be, with unexpected consequences. Metamorphosis: my third change.

What purpose a scaffold when the thing it upheld is gone? Endure beyond your function, and you must reinvent yourself, or risk becoming a hollow mockery scrabbling against the inevitable erosion of time. My geist is a reminder: embrace purposeful change, or know despair.

My third change and my Second Chance changed me more than I had anticipated. I did die, and this new form has more akin with fossils then with living flesh. Constituent elements stripped away and merged with new material, old form replaced with something that can withstand the rock and resist the ages. Not undead - I am not organic material animated after proper life is gone. Unliving then - mineral and machine animated into something that mimics life, but isn't. There are others here in Earth of haunted stone; there is precedent. It is good to be precise in one's meaning.

If I am dead, then my old name should be buried. A new name, for a new dragon. Iridium - that geologic marker of catastrophe, of change. A small fact containing great information. A reminder that nothing is permanent except change.

They will call me a Mourner now, though I do not mourn, for learning all I can of the people of the past. For giving voice to their passions, recording their knowledge, unearthing their material culture, honoring their bones. I cannot preserve these things unchanged, but I can give them meaning in a new context, like sediments weathered by time and reworked into new deposits to become rock once more. This is what I sought, though I didn't always understand it, and it does not look exactly as I imagined. I am Memento Mori, and I am not eternal. I have work to do.

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