Creative Corner

Most of the Clan is working on some new thing-a-bo for the flight when it goes and blows up in their faces.

They are an old, populous and wealthy well-to-do clan, the reason they got the commission in the first place, but that also means the borders of their grand lands are respected, none near enough to learn misfortune befell the clan to the point they need help, and thus those members which didn't perish in the initial explosion do in the aftermath, succumbing to their wounds, residual polution, or, finally, hunger.

The survivors will have to decide whether future generations will continue on as everyone always has despite the impressive monument to tragedy on their doorstep, or whether they'll fall to fear technology even while living in the middle of the Shifting Expanse. At the same time ensuring that there will be future generations and a clan in the time to come.

---

Yeah, so, this is a Nuzlocke. With the Den suddenly a feature after yet another hiatus I figured I might as well.

This is really more for the story than anything else, thus justifying posting it in the Creative Corner rather than Quests & Challenges, which is also new, I'm pretty sure. I intend to stay close to Canon Flight Rising lore, we'll see how that goes.

But yeah, I'm looking to write everday and posting at least once a week, hopefully more frequently.

Please do comment, I guess?

Possessions:
- For this I vaulted all my items and money, which I won't touch with the exception of festivals.
- I don't do Fairgrounds.
- The AH/Marketplace/Items for sale Forum may only be used for battlestones, gene and breed change scrolls.
- Familiars, apparel and food needs to be got through the coli/gathering/baldwin (and the ingredients for that come from the other two).

Dragons:
- No buying from AH. (Except ungened, unbred lightning gen1s to substitute for unhatched eggs.)
- Every obtained unhatched egg can immediately be used as seen fit, though at the beginning trading for a lightning one is prefered for story reasons.

Breeding:
- Dragons are only egible to breed once they've reached level 10.
- To start with the clan can only support two nests at a time, though more may open up if they gain enough members.
- Dragons sitting on a nest can't fight in the coliseum, it wouldn't do for eggs to be orphaned.
- Other than the considerations of above dragons can do as they will whenever, as long as they can.

Nests:
- Double and Triples are instant death, you can't believe how tired I am of most of them.
- If I appear like a person who wouldn't cheat on coin tosses you're wrong. Instead it will depend on eye type. Common is supposed to have a 50% chance, so all those die, while I get to keep the rest.
- Possible exception to the second but not the first rule are one egg nests, depending on whether it makes sense for the story. If a lot of dragons died recently the rest may pull together to assure the lone hatchling lives, or alternatively if the clan is especially prosperous at the moment they may have the resources needed to keep them alive.

Scrolls/Changes:
- Since, without the AH and all my money making schemes, I'm going to be so broke there's no restriction on gene and breed changes.
- No scatterscrolls and eye changes, though.

Art/Accents:
- Once a dragon reaches level twenty two they really should be getting gened if they aren't already.
- Once they are it's time to buy an user made accent and/or commission art. Money may be taken from the vault for this.

Coliseum/Death:
- I will try/plan to coli every day. Provided I have dragons egible for it. And time.
- Team make-up and choice of venue is up to my discretion, and dependent on what the clan currently needs.
- Fleeing and potions and all that good stuff is a-okay.
- If the whole party K.O.s in a single fight one of the three is randomely decided to go.
- If the decided dragon has art/an accent instead of exalting they may go to the 'Hall of Fame' (a den tab) or be 'heavily injured' and remain in the Lair but thereafter not participate in the Coli, instead spending their time as a valued elder.
- Or, you know, the 'dead' may be given to a reader, if anyone expresses interest.
- Even with 'soft' rules I doubt I need help killing dragons off, but I suppose I should cover my bases. Rules subject to change. This is primarily supposed to be a writing thing, so dragons may die and disaster befall as the story demands.


Winning the locke:
- The Clan's back up to its former population with a hundred (100) dragons
- Twenty (20) dragons with outfits, genes, lore and art. 'Completed', so to say. The clan's back to its former glory. Valued elders count towards this. Unsure on the dead 'Hall of Fame'?
- 10k gems or the equivalent in treasure on hand at the time. By that point the clan's so rich there's not much point/need to getting their own food or an isolationist attitude. Better become a merchant heavyweight, eh?
- A year of playing (writing) without noteable pauses or clandeath ? At that point they might have found some stable footing or at least aren't in danger of going extinct at any moment? Well, I suppose I'll see whether this is the end in a years time.

[center][b]characters[/b][/center] Shuffled most everyone irrelevant off into the Den or to the AH, just gotta deal with a few stranglers in the next couple days. Please nevermind those. [u]Alive and kicking:[/u] Caesar, the Demise sole survivor[right][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=54586502] [img]http://flightrising.com/rendern/350/545866/54586502_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] Trouble, akward mad scientist mother hen[right][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=55171191] [img]http://flightrising.com/rendern/350/551712/55171191_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] Redge, self-appointed self-satisfied lady [right][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=55171195] [img]http://flightrising.com/rendern/350/551712/55171195_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] Ginn, wild non-verbal flower child [right][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=56264923] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/562650/56264923_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] Ascan, [right][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=57546606] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/575467/57546606_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] Prawn, [right][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=57546643] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/575467/57546643_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] Kekki, [right][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=57546658] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/575467/57546658_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] Esz, [right][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=57546763] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/575468/57546763_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] Elwy, [right][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=60317116] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/603172/60317116_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] Yakone, [right][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=60335956] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/603360/60335956_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] Sharkey, [right][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=60335958] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/603360/60335958_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] Sente, [right][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=60335960] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/603360/60335960_350.png[/img] [/url][/right] [u]Alive and arguing:[/u] aka, honoured elders None at this point in time [u]The dead:[/u] Too many to list and one since the Demise [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=57546775][img]https://flightrising.com/images/cms/trinket/583.png[/img][/url]

He is the Clans only survivor, and even that only by the tips of his claws. Is this what the elders call - called, now, the heartiness of youth? Logic would rather have Caesar believe it a combination of factors. There were other youths, after all.

First, he evaded the initial explosion. Sheer dumb luck, that; gathering roots and cacti hadn't taken him that much time in a while, practice and all, no, he daddled and if he hadn't, had come home just ten minutes earlier, he might well have been one of the initial casualities. For this project the engineers always had need of extra paws. Then later, though uninjured, he wasn't sent as scout because he had never yet left the clan lands. Meanwhile the scouts, sent alone in seperate directions, likely run afoul beastclan in their weakend states and perished thus. After all, noone would just leave their own clan to such disaster. Right? And even outsiders would have been sympathic, and sent help, right?

As an abled bodied dragon Caesar was now the obvious, sometimes only choice for various busy work. He didn't protest. Kept him away from the injured. The dying. The lair and the site of the exploded, cursed machine right next to it. Another tick in the column for his continued survival right there. Because as time went on it became clear to him the machine, whatever it would have been, wasn't conductive to dragon health in its unfortunate end state.

Also there were the obvious debris and chemicals splattered wherever, the corpses they didn't have the dragonpower to put to rest as dignity - and in the case of Imperials security - demanded. Of his personal belongings only the clothes he wore as it happened went unscathed. The lairs entire structural integrity became suspect. The nesting grounds - yeah.

From the beginning he avoided the lair whenever he could, took every excuse, going so far as to sleep a little while away. Still with it in sight, but not close enough to hear a shout or commotion, the thunder always rumbling overhead drowning out everything else. He ate what he found on trips, so he never had to draw onto the foodstores, but what he and the few others brought back wasn't enough to support the entire clan even had they known. Yet more dead through contamination, whatever the specifics.

Then there weren't others left to help get food, and the dying, all of them dying, began ripping into each other in pain, rage and desperation. The oldest remaining dragon read the signs ahead of time and pulled Caesar away, ordered him to leave for just a couple days as she gave into his custody two eggs. He hadn't thought any eggs survived. The elder all laid it out very logically even as an argument further in the lair escalated into a vicious screaming match. The eggs needed someone to shelter them for up to weeks after they hatched, someone unlikely to drop dead and leave helpless hatchlings to themselves, someone to protect, guide and provide for them till they could do so themselves.

In truth she needn't have bothered. To his enternal silent shame he was going to abadon the remains anyway. There was nothing left except the damned, and there was no reason to needlessly add himself to that category, was there? Even in his head the justification didn't sound good enough to let him go ahead with a light heart and still gone ahead he would have. But now, with the eggs, it was a most necessary, most worthy task, and he couldn't have disobeyed his elder in any case.

And so Caesar left the way he always did, like he had important official business elsewhere, which he did, and not like he was stealing away into the night, though the case also.

He didn't go far. Didn't dare. Eggs were so very fragile, and even the lands immediately around their lair had become perilious with noone to patrol them. He went to the spot he slept before deciding it wouldn't do, actually. He had been seen lying there, and it was maybe a little too close in any case. Instead he went up higher to the particular rock outcropping he had liked to play in during his not so far bygone hatchling days. Still with view of the lair, but itself only fully visible from the air. Defensible and hard to access and all that important stuff, nevermind how he fit into its bowl only barely.

So there he hunkered down, for days barely eating or drinking or shifting except to murmur to the eggs as he observed the lair and the flashes of magical attacks thrown around within.

Obviously beastclan must have sneaked in, Caesar tells the eggs, but also, mostly, himself. Logic isn't serving him well right now.

[b]Failed Eggs/Dead Hatchlings[/b] [u]First Nest, 0/2[/u] [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=56264916] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/562650/56264916.png[/img][/url][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=56264917] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/562650/56264917.png[/img][/url] [u]Second Nest, 1/2[/u] [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=60317115] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/603172/60317115.png[/img][/url] [u]Third Nest, 3/5[/u] [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/60335957] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/603360/60335957.png[/img][/url] [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/60335959] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/603360/60335959.png[/img][/url]

reserved

reserved

He waits additional days, but nothing moves around the lair that he can see, and the eggs neither hatch nor exhibit any sign they are about to. Not that Caesar knows much about eggs. He ain't yet that adult. But probably they'd move or stuff, right? Glow brighter? Surge in magic beforehand?

Doesn't matter. He doesn't much like it, doesn't much like it at all, but he's got nothing but the clothes on his body, and now even his outfit suffered more than going too long without a wash. He could have hardly put the eggs directly onto the ground. Rough, cold at night and likely to faciliate them rolling away when he's looking elsewhere? Yeah, no. Instead he fashioned a nest for them, or maybe a cocoon. A soft pedestal kinda thing with seperate hollows for them to lie and stay perfectly secure. He plucks and pulls at the edge of his construction till he can cover them with fabric as well. One upside to being so much bigger than everyone else, a single piece of clothing more than drowns them. Light still comes through, but whoever might pass overhead won't be able to identify them immediately. And it's the Shifting Expanse, who'll really bother to check out a lone blue-glowing thing? Nobody, that's who. Sparking trash litters the region!

"Procrastinating," Caesar murmurs. Eyes closed he curls into himself.

He throws himself off the cliff, wings snapping open after a bit of a fall, and glides towards the lair. The tomb. The nearest place to plunder for necessities. If it were just him, okay, whatever, he'd manage somehow. But the eggs, the hatchlings whenever they hatch, will need stuff. Better do it now while the place is fresh, while he has time on his hands, while his charges don't need no supervision.

He alights just outside, hestiates. Hurries on.

Avoiding looking at the - bodies, proves a challenge and a half, but he manages not to identify or count them.

He wants, needs blankets, toys, crayons, books and probably other stuff, too, but finds little salvageable. Just gathering together what he set out to get takes a nerveracking amount of time and he hasn't even found himself anything to eat yet. Still, he wavers at a juncture, uncertain. Ultimately decides if he forgot somethign essential or their clan of three otherwise really can't make do he'll just come back. Hate it and curse his past self for all he's worth, but. Those are problems for future!Caesar!

Through all the passages big enough to support thus safely even now he runs.

Nothing to see in the sky. Well, nothing remarkable. Stormclouds swirl and lightning flashes as always. Neither dragons nor harpies flit about. From this angle his temporary residence gives no suggestion it's been disturbed.

Caesar clenches his teeth and resists the urge to check up on the place, get his haul all stashed away. He wouldn't be able to justify leaving again and with time the residential reptiles wisened up and stopped wandering between his claws. Or maybe he just ate all of them. Made for pitiful meals, all told.

After throwing one last glance at the sky he goes to find himself some food. Even once he's eaten his fill for the first time in a while he forces himself to continue on gathering some more. Who knows how soon and how much the hatchlings will want? Not him. He just hopes they'll take something besides fish. Middle of the desert and all. Caesar thinks the Clan probably had some way of getting some, he just isn't privy to the particulars. Once he has a variety of everything he can get his paws on he takes flight and wings it back to where the nest's at.

Hasn't been disturbed. Tension flees so fast he almost flops on them, overcompensates and almost falls off the side.

He lowers himself gingerly to the ground before nosing at the eggs to investigate closer. The eggs are fine. Unbroken, sparking, just as warm.

Though there's noone around to fool he directs his reassurances at them.

[center][b]hatchlings[/b][/center] Tundras, two of them. So, siblings, probably? Caesar tries to determine which of the Clans handful Tundras could be the parent(s), but he's got nothing. In his defense, the hatchlings coat pattern has yet to come in. It will come in as they grow, right? He watches the older one (by a whole minute) steadily decimate his herb stash. The younger one hatched, looked around and promptly burrowed half under the clothes nest to fall asleep. They look healthy, at least, he thinks and immediately after realizes he's hardly a judge of that, since what does he know about Tundra, really? Nothing at all. After a little agonizing Caesar blames the coat. Hardly ideal for the Shifting Expanse, that. Which neatly explains why he could count the Tundras of the clan with the claws of one paw. No doubt that will bring problems. ... is already bringing problems now. All the insects and fresh meat he offers the hatchling yet again go ignored, which. Inconvenient, that. The desert landscape, especially around the Tempest Spire, isn't exactly flowering. With eating plants only, and that certainly seems to be a thing, sooner or later they'll have to travel around to keep everyone feed. "We'd probably have to do that anyway. We haven't a lair here, it's hardly ideal, and anyway," Caesar can't help glancing at the machinesite, "distance will do us good." The hatchlings neither argue nor agree. Get a move on once they start talking? There's a thousand and one issues to consider. The Explosion scared off some wildlife, and the Clan pretty much consumed the rest round these parts during the Demise. Before most food was brought in by warriors battling it out with beastclan and bigger prey. He'll have to do that. Later. Once the hatchlings can be left alone for a bit again. One problem after another. He can't tell their parents yet. Nor their gender, as a matter of fact, but as much he'll learn with time. The parentage issue... whether they're related to each other (and how closely) is relevant. Whether they are related to[i] him[/i]- One issue after another. Eventually, that is to say sometime now, the hatchlings will need names. With no parents to make their wishes known and no knowledge of premade decisions passed on to Caesar, such falls to him. Or the hatchlings themselves if he wants to go down that route... Yeah no, probably best not to wait that long. He talks at them some more, fairly walks them through all his troubles. Once the younger one wakes up and goes to investigate the food on offer the older one just so happens to grow bored and distracted by the stash nearby. Still talking, he takes a piece from the top for himself. First learn by listening, then by watching, then doing. [left][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=55171191] [img]http://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/551712/55171191.png[/img][/url][/left][right][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=55171195] [img]http://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/551712/55171195.png[/img][/url][/right]

Caesar closes his eyes for a moment and awakens to a hatchling leaping off the cliffdrop. Next to his head the other hatchling sits, nodding like 'uh-hu'. The adventurous one flaps their wings madly and plummets regardless because they only just hatched.

With a jerk forward he catches the hatchling between his jaws. But gently - and then not gently at all when he tumbles over the edge and has to twist and flapp his wings and generally concentrate on not hitting the rockface or the ground too hard.

Caesar manages something one might reasonably call a landing rather than a crash. After a bit of lying in the heap he's slumped he relaxes his mouth and tilts his head for the hatchling to tumble out. They, the older one as it happens, shakes themself, damp and scared timid, but overall uninjured. Or at least he can't taste any blood, though his mouth is full of fur which ain't ideal either. Simply unimportant in comparison.

After stretching out all stretchable bodyparts and fairly inspecting themself the hatchling blinks dark eyes at Caesar.

"You're trouble," he huffs.

They don't get the opportunity to argue as from above them sounds a cry.

His head snaps up, yet he doesn't catch sight of the other hatchling following them down. The cry contiunes for several more beats. A protest, not terror. The other hatchling isn't following them down just yet.

With a paw this time Caesar scoops up Trouble and launches off the ground.

The other one sits exactly where they sat before, looking around idly, with only their fur a little ruffled. When he stops hovering in midair they have to scramble to avoid being flattened. And yet by the time Trouble squirms out of his grip they're back to doing their own thing.

He ruffles his wings and curls his tail as much as the space allows. "I'm awake now and still too tired for this."

A little later he realizes their own thing means badgering him for a flight of their own. Curious, just not quite enough to fling themself from the cliff by themself.

"We need to relocate. And you," he pushes them away with a wing, "still need a name."

Now Trouble comes forward to investigate his wing. Caesar huffs and throws it over the hatchlings.

A name. One less uninspired.

"Redge," he says.

Grimaces.

Decides they're out of luck. "You both are, really. I'm going to think of you as 'the hatchlings' for the rest of your lives."

The hatchlings don't have the presence of mind to object.