Bishamonten

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Named after Bishamonten, the Japanese god of war and a Buddhist protector of warriors, shrines and holy places. One of the Seven Lucky Gods, he protects the great treasure pagoda of Buddhist offerings and gives these out to faithful believers.


Lore Notes

• Mother affectionately refers to as her 'little pebble'
• Received 'Teal Starsilk Shawl' as a departing gift to remember his mother by
• Takes his duty as protector in the Training Fields seriously, admires his mother for her duty and service - strives to always prove himself and make her proud
• Has a particular weakness for fresh fruit given as offerings - will use a single claw to carefully and silently roll the fruit towards him in hopes of not being caught

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She should have been cherished—a miracle, not a prize. Her parents had labored to win her back from the cruel dollmaker, but the trials had been nearly impossible to beat, and Catalina had claimed their child as her own.

In another life, Molly's egg might have been left to gather dust in some dark corner, the patchwork "shell" slowly becoming dull and threadbare as the life inside went out. But her strange beginnings—for she was the child of one of Catalina's creations and an ordinary Nocturne—had also endowed her with strange magic, one that the dollmaker wanted to learn more of.

And so the egg became one of Catalina's prized possessions. In her secret lair in the Feywild, she began unraveling its shell. She picked away the yarn, peeled back scraps of flannel, and there it was.

Magic.

What kind? What was its nature? What would it become?

The only question the dollmaker didn't consider was "What does it want?" and truly, she didn't care. She infused that brilliant ball of life into a plush Tundra she'd made specially for the occasion, trapping the soul in a body—and in her realm.

But that brief whisper of freedom, between being released from the shell and bound to a body, would not be ignored. Molly found herself yearning more and more for freedom as time passed.

In the beginning, she could speak in the tiny, piping voice of a hatchling. But Catalina soon decided she'd said too much, and she picked up a needle and thread. "Children should be seen and not heard," she cooed as she sewed Molly's mouth shut. But there was steel beneath that gentle voice, and coldness glittering in her eyes. She made several rows of stitches so that the little doll, with her blunt and featureless paws, had no hope of prying them away.

Flying had always been out of the question. Molly's "wings" were really just flaps of cloth. She could walk, though—and did so, wandering around Catalina's workshop and the gardens beyond. The Veilspun soon caught her, laughing quietly all the while. But there was no warmth in that laughter, and her claws dug deep into the cloth. She laughed again, with a cruel satisfaction this time, as she snipped off huge chunks of the legs and sewed them over again, turning them into little blobs that Molly couldn't stand upon, let alone walk on.

So she sat on the Veilspun's shelf, a quiet, inert prize. But no matter what Catalina did, she was still a miracle. Her parents' miracle. Her family's miracle. Her own miracle.

Like all miracles, all she needed to wait for was the right place and time.



Molly knew she had a family waiting for her. At times, Catalina whispered of the father who'd failed to win her back, the mother who hadn't come for her. With her mouth stitched shut, the Tundra couldn't argue, but her heart still swelled with defiance. Her father had failed, certainly—but hadn't he tried his hardest? Her mother hadn't come, true—but was that because she wouldn't or couldn't?

And someone did arrive eventually, a dragon neither she nor Catalina expected: Leo, one of her brothers. There was no doubt about it; even before Catalina confirmed his identity, Molly saw the swirling patterns of his fur, the patchwork wings so much like hers. But he was a living, breathing dragon—

—and now Catalina was explaining how she could become one, too.

Or could she? Molly saw how Leo's face fell, his eyes darkening with distress as the dollmaker spelled out her terms. If Molly left the Feywild as she was now, she would be a lifeless trinket—and therefore as good as dead.

"...Though, you may want to find her a new vessel to transfer her soul into. I have no idea what would happen to her on Sornieth without a body.”

The words were addressed to Leo, yet their import shot through Molly like an electric current. Her brother's incredulous rebuttal—"Living here is the only option that guarantees her staying alive"—only cemented her determination.

After many moons of staying with Catalina, Molly knew that remaining here was no "life": trapped in a body that had never been truly hers, unable to move or speak with the world around her.

Even the dollmaker didn't know what would happen to her once her soul left the Feywild. But that was a risk she was willing to take.

She found the strength to move. To raise herself up, and to walk.

She turned towards the edge of the nearby cliff, her button eyes focusing upon a sharp spur of rock. She'd seen Catalina unravel other dolls many times. If she could catch upon it, just a bit...

There came a sharp tug against her side—and then the exhilarating rush of air as she fell. It was the closest she had come to flying.

And now she was flying! She was rocketing downwards as the accursed threads unraveled behind her, freeing her soul at last. She heard her brother's anguished howl, heard him and his familiar diving after her; she turned to look at his face....

And then he vanished into a swirl of clouds as she tumbled out of the Feywild. Molly drifted through the star-strewn sky, and she exulted as she felt the breeze move through her. Untethered and free—at last.



Before she could get her bearings, she felt the wind again—but it tugged upon her with greater urgency, pulling her high into the sky. Molly looked around wildly as the gusts tugged her this way and that. They seemed to come from many different directions, and they threatened to tear her apart....

She puffed through a cloudbank. That was when she realized the clouds were still scudding slowly along; whatever was happening right now wasn't a storm.

With the insight born of fear, she realized that this was what Catalina had hinted at: outside the Feywild, her soul was decaying. What had the dollmaker said? Something about...

"A vessel!" And Molly did hesitate, though it was for the fraction of a second. She would be binding herself anew, after all.

"But this time, it's my decision!" And with all of her strength, she hurled herself down from the clouds.

Grassy meadows and gently rising hills unrolled themselves beneath her. She saw the glimmer of flowers opening up to the moon, the glinting eyes of creatures bustling through the grass. Would any of them be a suitable vessel?

Could she bear to steal their lives away?

"No." The spirit soared over them, leaving them untouched. She would not force those souls out of their bodies. She would not stoop to Catalina's level, even if it cost her.

Perhaps it would be better to unravel in the breeze, after all. Better to become one with the wind rather than take another's life...

...and then she saw it.

It gleamed in the distance, lit by moonbeams: some kind of stone?

Molly sped towards it, and as she drew closer, she saw that it was a statue, a roughly carved representation of another dragon. What breed it was, she didn't know; it was difficult to tell in the dark.

But what she did know was that at last, her spirit had found a home.

She sank into the statue with a sigh of relief. Its stone shell enfolded her like a thick, warm blanket. She relaxed into the embrace, letting her exhausted awareness sink into slumber.

She briefly thought of her brother and the rest of his family, hoping that they had escaped Catalina's wrath as she had. And then at last, sleep overtook her, and the Training Fields was quiet again.

Dawn slowly overtook the land, touching it with warmth and light. It took some time to seep into Molly's new body, the stone growing warm again, like aching muscles finally relaxing.

She went on sleeping, though—after all, yesterday had been quite turbulent for her. And she probably would have gone on sleeping, if not for the voice—

"Hello, what's this, then?"

In this new form, she couldn't quite open her eyes...yet...but as a spirit, she could still turn her awareness outwards, perceive what was nearby.

She was astounded—and delighted—to see a most curious pair in front of her: a harpy with shaggy pink hair and, somewhat smaller than he was, a Fae dragon. They were perched on the dewy grass, looking curiously up at her.

"It's a statue. We've seen it before," the harpy said with a shrug. He rubbed his chin with one wing. "Though something about it is..."

It was still fairly cloudy, and a huge bank of clouds slid over the sun, temporarily darkening the world. Molly felt her limbs grow cool...and heavy. "What a curious thing," she thought, still entranced by the creatures before her.

The Fae shrugged and took off in a single surging motion. "Well, we'd better get some training done before it grows too warm."

"Agreed. We'll be back before lunchtime..."

The pair's voices faded as they moved away from Molly. She decided she wanted to know more about them, but was horrified when she tried to move. Her new body wasn't responding. She could feel herself exerting effort, but the stone simply wouldn't...

"Be calm, Molly. Focus. You got around Catalina's bindings before. This body is yours now; you should be able to move it, too."

And so Molly sat there for several minutes more, drinking in the sight of the glowing sky, the dew glimmering upon the grass. All of it so bright, so fresh, so real...and so unlike the patchwork-and-magic prison Catalina had kept her in.

The panic and frustration ebbed away. The stone gradually grew warmer, and now she found that she could move. Bit by bit—an ear tip, a claw—but she was moving all the same.

Time passed—several hours, actually. But they seemed to jet by in minutes, as Molly became accustomed to using her new body. Her movements were jerky and robotic, and more than once she stumbled. But her stony skin protected her from harm and, still brimming with excitement, she was soon up and marching again.

All the while, she kept her eyes open for the curious pair she'd met earlier. She had only ever seen plush versions of harpies and Fae in Catalina's lair; it had been so enchanting...no, more enchanting!...to meet the real things.

And just as before, she heard them before she saw them. The same voices—but this time higher, harsher. Shot through with fear.

She turned laboriously—and in the distance, past some rocky outcrops, she glimpsed them. It was difficult to see them, however, through the wings of the birds attacking them. Molly thrilled with both horror and wonder: The birds were large, a little bigger than the harpy, with striking red and black plumage and long, silky tails. But their red eyes burned with anger, and their razor-sharp beaks stabbed towards the Fae and harpy again and again, driving the hapless pair towards the rocks.

"I must help!" Molly thought. She stomped towards them—but she was still moving slowly, so dreadfully slowly, as though she were underwater. Still, she tried.

She remembered her screaming flight through the portal, then rocketing down from the clouds. She'd done that less than 12 hours ago, hadn't she? She could do it now. She had to!

"I must go to them! I must! Must...help...!"

It began as a whisper of warmth moving through her. Like a chill running down the spine, but hotter, almost electrifying. It was only for a split-second—

—because the next instant, the whisper became a roar, a flood of energy rushing through Molly, turning her will into a mighty engine, her limbs into thundering pistons. Suddenly she was rocketing across the grass, the earth shaking with her every step; her stone jaws cracked open and loosed a hollow howl.

The webwings scattered, and Molly chased them further away from their prey, her wings creaking horrendously as she flapped them, threatening to chase them into the sky. She could not—she was still too heavy—but they took the message and flapped away.

"Hah! That showed them," she thought as she settled back onto all fours again. She turned to look for the harpy and the Fae, but they'd fled, and were now just a pair of dots in the distance.

Still, Molly wasn't displeased. Truthfully, she wasn't sure she even had the energy to be displeased. The strength was rapidly leaving her again, and she was feeling a strong urge to go back to sleep.

As her limbs clicked back into their idle positions, Molly noticed that whorls of bluish and greenish light were glimmering through them, deep within the stone. "Very pretty," she thought muzzily, as she went back to sleep.

She wasn't sure when she woke up again—hours, or perhaps days later. It was dusk, anyway. But when she looked outside, to her great delight, she saw the harpy and the Fae again. They both looked a little banged-up, but were otherwise all right.

"But is it dragon magic?" the harpy was saying. "I've heard of similar constructs. Some sort of golem, maybe?"

"Maybe? But I'm sure we've passed this statue hundreds of times before. I don't think I've ever..." The Fae shrugged, briefly at a loss for words. "Well, it's such a good statue! It saved our hides."

His frills were quivering with emotion, and from his satchel, he drew a garland of flowers and draped it around Molly's neck. "Thank you, statue," he said humbly. "I'll tell my clan to look out for you."

Molly did not see them again. The Training Grounds is a place for new warriors, and dragons do not stay here long. There are many other challenges for them, more monsters and places to see...and in the company of stronger clanmates, they soon find that they have no need for these gentle, rolling plains.

But there are still those who come here. When they find themselves beset by creatures they can't beat, Molly does her best to aid them. She chases the creatures away, or if the warriors have grown too weak, she hauls them back to safety, where they can be found by their friends.

Many of them remember her. That first garland of flowers has long since crumbled away, but it has been replaced by other tokens of appreciation. Gleaming silvery jewelry. Silken scarves. Strings of glittering beads.

Molly cannot help everyone, for she still moves slowly, and even then, only in the daytime—the night belongs to another. But she does what she can, when she can. The Miracle of the Fields, many call her, and she appreciates the name.

After all, what is a miracle but greatness that arrives at the right place and time? And for all those folks she aids, that's exactly what she is.



Credits: Special thanks to Petall for lending their characters (Catalina, Leo, Maria, Malcolm, Nala) and for setting up Molly's escape scene. This story also references and links to lore written by them.

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Other info:

• reference: Beneath the Boughs - Day 152
• a spirit that inhabits one of the statues in the Training Fields
• draws power from daylight. She can move about in the daytime, and she goes around helping newbies in the Fields. Drags them back to safety if they get knocked out.
• Her apparel is gifts from various people she's saved. It does decay and fall off due to the weather and her tussles with monsters, but gets replaced by newer gifts.
• She can speak, but not to everyone -- because she is a spirit, not everyone is able to hear her voice. She's also aware of this, and so she stays silent most of the time, because she isn't sure who can hear her and it gets frustrating sometimes.
• Looks like one of those Training Fields statues most of the time: whitish stone, carved with whorls, with a rather goofy smile on its face. When she gathers enough power and starts exerting energy, she glows blue and green.
• Is still very concerned about her family. Wants them to know she's OK and is willing to help them however she can. However, she does not know where exactly the Refuge is located, and due to having been imprisoned for most of her life, she doesn't even know what most of them look like. Pretty much all she has to go on are her parents' names, and her brother's name and description.
• She sometimes tries to ask passersby about them, but those who can hear her find that they simply don't have enough information to go on.
• original "plush dragon" appearance: