Creative Corner

[center] [img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ohuopl6m6idq40o/shadowfull.png[/img][font=Georgia][size=3] Hello! This thread will serve as a repository for all of my Flight Rising-related writing. I had another thread some time ago, but it ended up becoming a staging ground for post BBCode instead of a dedicated writing thread. [b]I ask that you do not make any posts in this thread; if you're interested in my writing, feel free to DM me to ask about commissions.[/b] This post (and this entire thread) will receive some visual updates as time goes on, but I'm just getting the basics down for now. Thank you for stopping by![/center] [LIST] [*][font=Georgia]I will be opening this thread up for posting/feedback once thirty posts are reserved. Once I fill up all of the reserved posts, I will archive older entries in a separate thread.[/font] [*][font=Georgia]I'll probably update these periodically to fix typos and other errors.[/font] [/LIST] [center][size=3][font=Georgia]I do not have a formal commission thread, but I will take commissions on a case-by-case basis depending upon how much free time I have. Do inquire![/center][/font] [right][font=Georgia][size=2]Unless otherwise stated, all visual assets used were created by [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/2177898][b]osiem[/b][/url].[/font][/size][/font][/right]

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[center][img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/86qbkt5wl1j2sqs/lightfull.png[/img][/center] ----- [center] [font=Georgia]The sun-parched lowlands of Elderen Glade stretch for countless miles along the sandy shoreline, bathing the rolling forest hills in swaths of warm honey-gold. Shallow stone hills overgrown with blankets of waxy crimson ivy peter off into combed dunes of powdery, beige-white sand. The road running alongside the beach is marked sparsely by old signs in an ancient tongue and wound through all the hills and trees above. At a fork in the road where one path continued north and the other turned west, the ruins of Yat-avel can be looked upon in the east. By all accounts, the beachfront structure is quite unremarkable - unremarkable enough in its disrepair, at least, to have escaped the interest of scholars for many years. Several expeditions over the past half-decade have yielded naught but a paltry assortment of mismatched pottery for all the effort of the excavators - curious to the specialists and enthusiasts of the Lightweaver's devotees, no doubt, but otherwise more troublesome to sort than their worth. A research team assessed the artifacts under enchanted lenses, waved their claws, and dismissed them as the refuse of destroyed Beastclan offerings. Seirina was not impressed with their findings. The fastidious imperial dragon held one fourth of the stakes in what was then the most recent research venture into the ruins, and she was paying closer attention to the evidence than her contemporaries. She spent her nights on the trip curled up in a cliffside cavern, writing and drawing and theorizing with eerie enthusiasm despite the doubt or disinterest of most of the other scholars. Her outrageous ideas about the purpose of the temple were spurned by the survey's other stakeholders to such a degree that they did everything they could to block her from studying it. In defiance of her detractors, Seirina continued disseminating her observations and ideas all throughout the camp in hopes that someone might eventually see things the same way she did. In time, three dragons came to her. First was the Ridgeback Veneer, impetuous and vain, to bask in the drama of the contention between Seirina and her associates. Warrior followed closely behind her, a Spiral with unquenchable curiosity hindered only by a wandering mind, and for a long time it was only those three. After a few weeks, the third, the debaucherous Cabasi, joined the group, and for weeks after the four deliberated at the cliffside cave. In time, the group formed a plan to settle the debate of Seirina's theories once and for all. When the last of the lamps were extinguished at midnight, Seirina and her sympathizers gathered beneath the crumbling pillars and blast-scorched bronze doors of the oceanside shrine. While Veneer, Warrior and Cabasi breached the ruins, the grand Imperial stood watch outside, her gold and white body half-buried in the powdery sand. An hour passed before she received word from her allies, but it did not come from them - it was delivered, instead, on the waves of earthquakes. The three dragons emerged from the gate immediately afterward. As the lamps at the base camp on the hilltop flickered on one by one, they urged Seirina to flee with them back to the Sundial Terrace. They took to the skies with haste and disappeared beyond the glade long before the survey team realized they were gone. The four arrived home far ahead of the dragons sent to follow them. News of their discovery spread fast through certain circles: a complex of tunnels and caverns that sprawled for kilometers in all directions had been found beneath the sand. They humbled themselves with impassioned pleas for support to various research commissioners, drawing their ears with stories about a mysterious underground stronghold, a dead city with neither body nor bone to its halls and an armored gate ten Imperials tall. Things did not go over well with the more established organizations in the region. Representatives of the Antiquarian Society and Songblade Reliquary turned them away, each too embroiled in its own operations to afford diverting resources to an uncertainty. A dozen other middling groups turned them away for a dozen other reasons. Only after all other options seemed to be exhausted did the enigmatic Circle of the Vault call on them to meet. By the time Seirina's associates finally caught up to the group to accuse her of sabotage, she had already won. The curiosity of several dragons embroiled in the Circle had been piqued, and their influence opened the way for the group to file a formal claim of discovery of the underground ruin. Upon the quartet's return to the ruins and the commissioners' confirmation of their discovery, her former contemporaries were ousted from their positions by the cruel hand of ridicule and shunned by many of their former peers and colleagues. Seirina took pity on some and invited them to join her newly formed expedition team to mend their fractured reputations, but few accepted her offer. These new additions to her ragtag team became the beginning of the Goldenspire Company. Over the next couple of years, the survey unearthed a trove of artifacts and information from the uppermost caverns of the complex, and Seirina returned to the Lightweaver's dominion to present their findings and humble herself in service to her deity. She left her leader's mantle to the three dragons whose faith in her ramblings created bonds of friendship unbreakable by neither death nor exaltation. The Goldenspire Company has made leaps and bounds in their research. Under the de facto leadership of Cabasi, the company has invested extra time and resources into decrypting the dead language of the Echnamin who once roamed the complex in droves. The phonology of the language has been almost entirely reconstructed by the combined efforts of mind and magic, and, perhaps most importantly, the city has rediscovered its name: Yat-avel, the Underkingdom. ----- [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/56545609][font=Georgia]Location[/font][/url][/font][/center]

[center] [img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/imkbo2kyh44uyge/nature%20full.png[/img]-----[font=Georgia] Don’t listen to the jealous courtiers. The prophet never asked for favor; she has only ever done what has needed to be done, and in turn has been rewarded. All Felara remembers of her youth is the calm of the forest. She remembers the cool, damp air on still mornings, the songs of birds, and the steady echoes of bamboo stalks rattling in the breeze. More than anything, she remembers the owl, how they came to her at her most vulnerable and defied their nature to guide her with kindness and love. The owl guarded her as she slept, taught her to fly, and showed her the way of the wood - as she grew, she learned to hunt by the light of the moon and move silently through the trees. By the time Felara had become an adolescent, she had come to understand and master everything essential to her survival in the wilds, thanks largely in part to the mercy of her avian guardian. Problems started happening for Felara when she began to meet other dragons. Her foresight had always been there, but when she was little it never felt like something outside the norm. She never seemed to misplace her pearl, but that diligence never struck her as strange. Some nights, she would dream of coming storms, and others, unsettling thoughts of roving hunters would drive her deeper into the forest. She never had a need to understand the nature of her gift when all she knew was the forest and the owl. As she grew, she started learning from and trading with the dragons that passed through the forest. Certainties manifested in fear and dread: from nobody in particular, she learned of deaths, of failures, of betrayals. Muddled flashes of the future invasively punctuated her day-to-day life, distressing her and wracking her with paranoia. Distraught by the mounting predictions, the young dragon drove a wedge between herself and the cherished few she had worked to befriend. The power of premonition is frightening when misunderstood, and it can be just as dangerous when mishandled. For years, the aimless oracle mishandled her gift with wild abandon. There were times when epiphanies instilled fear in her over inspiration, and times when she fought fruitlessly to shut out unpleasant thoughts. Her knowledge crushed her in the wake of all she had to bear. In spite of everything, Felara was able to accept the things that haunted her. Years passed, and one by one, her hunches began to manifest: the victors won, the doomed perished, and the fate-bound fell in love. Plague ripped along the forest's edge, scarring the earth with fleshy blight. Felara accepted the fulfillment of every inevitability with ease. A sense of peace followed her contentment, and the forest grew quiet again. The silence afforded her an opportunity to confront her trauma; she spent months alone with her thoughts, her only company the owl that had taught her so much. She remembered with perfect clarity, every kindness she had been afforded and every hardship she had endured. Eventually, her thoughts stilled, and for the first time she could see her path forward. Night after night, the blackened corridors of a drowned kingdom haunted Felara's dreams. Each time she visited it, she swam with uncertainty through the submerged city, her spirit drawn toward an unpleasant force that lay unseen at its heart. Each night, before she woke, she entered the spire at the center of the sunken palace and confronted the magnetizing force: a pot in the center of a throne room, out of which withering vines slithered and thrashed toward a massive, cowering dragon. The dragon's face stuck in her mind every moment she was awake. Over time, the vines grew, and questions about the city in the sea occupied her waking thoughts more and more. One night, the pot shattered and the vines blanketed the walls. The next, she dreamt of nothing at all. Felara bid the owl farewell with a sorrowful sort of urgency and left the only place she had ever known. She followed the plague scar south, soaring over peaks and dipping into narrow ravines, her unflown path not entirely unfamiliar. The days blurred together, with each proving to be less remarkable than the last as the terrain melted into an endless sea of green before her. After a week of travel, just as the graveness of her dream was starting to slip away from her, she found the city. In the light of the morning, Felara could see it perfectly: every neighborhood, every greenway, every spire. She could see the crisp line of the ocean tide lapping along the outer walls of the great palace, and she could see the shell-topped roofs of a thousand underwater buildings glimmer through the clear blue water. Splayed out in the palace gardens lay the dragon from her dreams, swathed in red silk and flanked by attendants on all sides. Kasho, as she learned he was called, was the first dragon to surprise her. Fortune had given him excess upon excess, but that excess never eroded his empathy for others. He had all the power and favor a person could ever ask for, yet applied it so cautiously and thoughtfully that he seemed more a guardian to Felara than a king. It did not take long for the oracle to endear herself to Kasho. Beyond her curious, poetic predictions, Felara possessed care for him beyond his station that allowed him to feel comfortable opening up to her. They became fast friends, and as the pearlcatcher became entrenched in the goings-on of the Yearning Waters, she grew into his most trusted advisor. In her dreams, the city lifted from the depths, and the vines in the throne room withered to nothing. Just as Felara had known the fate of her friends in the forest, she knew the way of the city. At the very least, she knew the blue bloods would gossip about her, and she knew the lies that they would spite her with, because she knew how deeply the roots of insecurity bore into them. She understood their intentions before they ever spoke a word of her, and she already forgave them. After all, her entire life up until that point had been a game of discerning intent: every decision she ever made was informed by cryptic certainties, an unseen force guiding her by way of preternatural intuition. Inscrutable though Felara's intentions were to Kasho’s jealous stewards, her words were truthful, her actions selfless, and her integrity unerring; even in times where she acted in self-service, she never made a decision to the detriment of innocent people. The peace she made with the judgment of others and the fluidity of her foresight gave her greater insight into her abilities than she ever imagined was possible. For the first time in her life, secure in herself and her trust in those around her, Felara was comfortable. No matter what was on the horizon, she was equipped to deal with it - covetous nobles be damned.[/font]-----[font=Georgia][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/6965656]Location[/url][/font] [/center]

[center] [img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/82c4mkb726en517/windfull.png[/img]-----[font=Georgia][size=3]The seat of the Windsinger is elegant as it ever was, winding freely over the verdant steppes on the high breeze. Young dragons playfully circle each other through the clouds with delicate kites in tow, drawing their revelry in hues of green and gold across the midday sky. There are excited whispers of celebration in the air, but neither streamer nor balloon looks out of place on the airborne embankments here on the Cloudsong. The real spectacle lay far beneath the cool winds, where the common clans tread the sprawling plateau. The tiers of the tranquil steppes are covered from edge to edge in a sea of pinwheels thousands strong. Hollowed-out bamboo shoots snaking down from the northern ascent carry the song of the wind down over the land. They aren’t difficult to see even from where you stand on the lower decks: they rise fifty meters over the lush ground, their paper fans decorated with ink and paint and glitter that melt into a colorful blur as they spin lazily in the breeze. Today marks the date of one of the most involved celebrations in all the region, and the often-silent steppes have taken on the festive energy in spades. All along the edge of the pinwheel forest, tents of sheer fabric are drawn up into makeshift spires on long, narrow posts. Dragons of all ages and sizes slink between tents in search of delicious food and carouse on broad, shaded platforms. Sweet scents on the breeze lead the curious to stacks of spiced pastries meters tall, and whelps of all types wrestle and race under the wings of their guardians, all untroubled by the woes of the world. At the center of the festival alley, mounted upon the highest post, the standard of Clan Rook flutters on the lowland zephyrs. A bell is struck with such force that the rope bridges sway on the edges of the Cloudsong, then again, then again. Twelve bells ring as the sun reaches its zenith in the summer sky, and the bustle of the floating structure rumbles to a halt. Two by two, decorated dragons begin plunging from the shadowed underbelly of the structure, each swathed in jade silk and singing chimes; sheer ribbons of various colors stream behind them as they dive, turning their flight into a weightless dance. They follow the path of the wind as they spiral gracefully toward the earth, precise, gentle, free. You breathe in deeply as you watch the flight over the pinwheels; even up here, the air is thick with the smells of sweets and incense. The wind brings no ill omens today; there are no conspiracies in the brush; the powerful do not plot against each other. There are no slights made toward visitors from beyond the plateau, nor do storied traditions lie in wait for missteps to criticize. The festival is carefree and contemporary - a testament to the tenets of the Windsinger. In those tenets lay the essence at the heart of the celebration. The dragons of Clan Rook are as diverse as their display is commanding, and in that lies their strength.[/font]-----[font=Georgia][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/7995512]Location[/url][/font] [/center]

[center] [img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/imkbo2kyh44uyge/nature%20full.png[/img]-----[font=Georgia][size=3]High over the Gladeveins, where the plains meet the reeds and the reeds meet the water, a sea of long-dead trees blankets the marshy earth. The trees, rough-hewn by wind and rain and long since petrified, are mired in the wispy threads of ley energy that drift out from the sanctum to the west. The magic in the wood is twisted and ancient, both of the earth and completely alien - a layover, no doubt, from a time before dragons stirred the seas and moved the mountains. The dragons of the Viridian Labyrinth would see these trees as a thing of some importance were they not irrevocably dead. They instead stand undisturbed in the shadow of the great tree, disinterested as the Gladekeeper’s adherents are in the lifeless reaches of their verdant wood; all the better for the outlanders. At the heart of the lifeless forest is a small, still lake of sickly turquoise, and at its center stands a single tree. Its wear is deliberate, manufactured, sculpted meticulously into the wood with spear and claw. The barkless structure twists dozens of meters up into the sky, its grasping branches casting long, diffuse shadows over the water below. Massive, lifeless vines slither up out of uncertain depths and wind around the structure, coiling around the stony thorns that jut out of its walls. The taste of the air is acrid with the essence of putrefaction; neither animals nor plants dare make their homes in this dead mire, save for the hardiest of ferns and insects - and Opheodra. She sees the pursuits of the Gladekeeper’s followers as frivolous vanity projects - affronts to nature that value beauty over function - and wears her distaste for the Nature flight on her sleeve. While she would never dream of letting herself get dragged into cyclical ideological battles, she has criticisms for the Gladekeeper in spades, and works to curb the spread of verdure into the ancient marshland. The ancient tree - “Bramblespire”, the druid calls it - is more luxuriant than any world tree could ever hope to be. Hand-carved passages twist deep into the ancient oak, all opening beneath its jagged, leafless canopy; the passages empty into a domed chamber at the base of the structure, and this chamber is where the eerie spiral makes her home. Black banners have been hammered into the aged wood, and into their surfaces have been stitched the innumerable elytra of viridescent beetles. Where there aren’t drapes there are frames, all different shapes and sizes, all showcasing the pressed bodies of insects and arachnids. The torches lining the openings of the passages are few and far between, leaving the center of the room incredibly dim, but that is probably for the best - otherworldly things scuttle around audibly in the darkness, the sounds of their little footfalls and chirping wings compounding into a deafening drone-song. Long mushrooms grow up out of the floor and down from the ceiling like living stalactites, their soft bodies shifting and breathing. The scent of rot is pungent enough here to turn the strongest stomachs, but the decay is true, uncorrupted, pure. Opheodra would have it no other way, for she reviles the Plaguebringer as much as she does the Gladekeeper for her affront to life. Nature is far out of balance, Opheodra thinks, and it has been for time immemorial; the world has been built on the backs of eleven dragons whose selfish goals have been successfully overshadowed by shows of power and proclamations of divinity. The spiral stews resentfully in her dead tree fortress, her only source of comfort the legions of insects that bend to her beck and call. If anyone has ever shown the world true love, it is the bugs, so selfless they are in their communal pursuits. She has always seen herself as just like them - feeble, many-eyed, never taken seriously by those who see themselves as mightier - and they have always afforded her a great deal of comfort and loyalty. She can only give them her loyalty and love and return, and the honesty of a true caretaker - when her time comes to blacken the sky, after all, her many million adherents will put their lives on the line to see the deed done. She would be cruel to deny them her affection - no better than a god.[/font]-----[font=Georgia][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/71308156]Location[/url][/font] [/center]

[center] [img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/i1vtno1ez9wf225/plaguefull.png[/img]-----[font=Georgia][size=3]The night was still and silent. The full moon hung high over the water, casting long bands of pearlescent moonlight over the blue-black sea. The Curse of Fortune chugged lazily through the brackish water, its portside hull throwing shadows several stories tall over the Gladeveins estuary. The Curse of Fortune was a massive ship. Despite its imposing size and terrifying silhouette, it belonged to neither merchant marine nor pirate; the flags flown beside its leathery masts were stark white, and the standards facing out from the ivory banisters lining the upper deck bore the insignia of the Plaguebringer. A handful of Spirals circled the ship tirelessly from above, all watching the water or barking orders at the score of Mirrors scuttling around the boat. Polished bone and tanned flesh bodged shut holes in the hull and patched over tears in the sails, giving the vessel the look of a floating behemoth coasting dangerously across the midnight sea. Below deck, about a dozen dragons - mostly crew members, judging by the burgundy scarves tied around their bodies - were scattered across the living quarters. One, a deep gray Wildclaw swathed in black, red and silver, sat on a red floor pillow at a splintered dining table, a massive goblet of cactus wine clasped between his little fingers. A scarlet Nocturne draped in black silks was seated opposite him, her wings folded down over her egg-shaped body like a cloak as she shook a dice cup vigorously in both hands. The Wildclaw watched his companion closely, flaxen eyes unblinking as the smirking sailor cast the die out over the wood. His eyes took a second to adjust. He craned his neck forward, stooping in his seat to get a better look at the numbers. Six - three. He glanced at the dice he cast moments before, lips curling into an ugly snarl. Before anyone around him could process what was going on, his glass of cactus wine soared halfway across the lower deck and smashed violently against the planks, sending the remainder of his drink trickling down through the floorboards. The gaggle of Mirrors surrounding the pair cheered and hollered in response, their spirits lifted by the sudden chaos. “[i]Alto[/i],” the Wildclaw’s company said plainly, her short, black claws coming to rap on the table. “Get yourself under control.” “[i]Me? [/i]Take a look at yourself. I chalked the first five rolls up to chance, but this is way too far. You’re clearly cheating.” The Nocturne stared at him for a moment, shocked speechless, then tossed her angular head back and barked out a laugh. “I’m clearly cheating. Oh, that’s rich.” She stopped abruptly, then leveled her head to get a good look at Alto through squinting red eyes. “Of course I’m cheating, you dullard. My boat, my rules. Now, pay up.” Alto stared back at her, just as silent in his incredulity as she was moments before. The long, hooked claws on his big toes rapped anxiously at the ground. “I already paid you everything I owe for the trip. Why can’t you bet normally? You know, bet some real dice?" The Nocturne lay her hands flat on the table and pushed herself up to get a closer look at him. “[i]Why can’t you bet normally[/i]? Give me a break, man. No more moralizing on my ship. Why wouldn’t you cheat if you knew I was cheating too? Boring. Now pay up and shut up, unless you want to swim the rest of the way to Mirrorlight - or get dredged up by someone else." The Wildclaw bared his teeth a little wider, then glanced down at the coin purse fastened at his hip. He exhaled abruptly, nostrils flaring out, and brought both hands down to open it. After a moment, he raised his hands and opened them over the table; a handful of shimmering gems and dumped them unceremoniously beside the captain’s drink. “Whatever - have your money. Fun’s over anyway. You just drained my wallet dry. Might as well find a different chump to leave destitute.” The captain pouted mockingly, her jagged teeth poking past her lips. “Fun’s over? It doesn’t have to be, but if you’re that torn up over it, I could see about getting you some work. You know, 'work'? The way most dragons get their gems?” “I know what work is," Alto replied, his eyes narrowing at the captain's cold emphasis. "I work all the time.” “[i]All the time[/i], huh. ‘Killing guys,’ as you like to call it, isn’t what I would call work.” “Debatable.” The Nocturne ignored his half-baked refutation. “Look, man, if you’re this much of a sore loser, I’ll cut you a break. You can keep eating the good meat here - [i]for free[/i], do you hear me? - until we dock at the promenade. Then you can go out on a job for me.” Alto slouched forward in defeat, his head coming to rest gently on the tabletop. “Ugh..." “Is that a no?” “I'm flat broke now, so it’s a yes. Tell me who you need me to kill.” “[i]Who I need you to kill?[/i] I told you how I feel about your main vocation already. There’s not going to be any guy-killing in my name. You’re going to help me repatriate some artifacts to the Wyrmwound.” Alto melted further into the table. “That sounds pretty boring.” “Work can be boring, but this isn’t boring. For you it might be, but I would kill to be out there doing this instead of chasing three dozen Mirrors around a boat all day. Besides, this is twice as dangerous as cutting someone to ribbons is for you, and a lot more important, too. I need you to sneak around these stuffy Imperials with your stupid Wildclaw body and recover three tablets for me." Alto rolled his eyes. "What's so dangerous about that?" "If you get caught, they'll probably crush you half to death and launch you into the sea." "Ugh,” he grunted again. “No, they won't, but the sneaking sounds fun for what it is - good enough for me. Before I agree to anything, though, what're you offering?" "[i]Ugh[/i]," parroted the Nocturne, grinning again. "Five thousand." "Coins?" For a moment, Alto looked like he was going to be sick. "Gems." The look of malaise around the Wildclaw dissolved immediately. He scooted a bit further across the table, his head lifting and resting again to accommodate his adjustments. “Ten thousand percent return on investment, huh? Fine, I’ll go out there and get pushed around a little, if that’s what you’re offering, but we’re going to link up alone in the city to make the exchange, just you and me. I’ll send a courier out your way to arrange the meeting when it’s time. That sound good to you?” The captain tilted her head back again, this time to mull Alto’s terms over in silence for a moment. Finally, she eased forward again, reaching her clawed hand across the table to shake on it. “Sounds good to me, Alto. Believe you me, tree boy, there’ll be way more glory than money to be won from this, but we can talk about the details later.” She stretched her hand forward a little further, now nearly straining, as though to make a point. “Now, is it a deal?” Alto eyed her hand carefully, then sighed once more and stood, leaning far over the table to grasp her hand in his. “It’s a deal.”[/font]-----[font=Georgia]Location[/font] [/center]

[center] [img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ohuopl6m6idq40o/shadowfull.png[/img][font=Georgia][size=3] Reserved![/font] [/center]