Difference between revisions of "Dragon:Pterath"

Latest revision as of 09:12, 16 December 2015

Yellow Monster Egg

Almost completely round this egg is shockingly, brightly yellow. The color is unrelieved by any shifts in hue, solid and unrelenting but for the sudden and startling intrusion of a circular black splotch on each side, high up on the egg's surface. A yawning, gaping maw, likewise dark opens up on one side, eager to snap up the unwary (or so it seems). Often hidden by deep drifts of sand, the yellow side may appear deceptively sunny and benign.

With a final powerful shove, the hatchling within the Yellow Monster Egg tears free, sending large chunks of shell sailing in her wake. /She/ has no time to waste on them: the sands are calling, her wings are flapping, the whole world lies ahead. Now, if only she can stop stepping on her tail!

Rambling Brambly Bacchante Green

She's wont to sprawl, the hawk-nosed young green, her long limbs carelessly every-which-way. She also may not seem particularly bright at first, not even physically, with her deep-hooded eyes and her muted coloring that's drab and faded as though from some old stain. Brown, jagged lines slash up her legs like so many thorned brambles, pricking dots of ichor green here and there against the faded background, becoming a tangled thicket across her narrow flanks. They might as well be real, given how ungainly with youth she is, as much an impediment as her already overgrown wingsails: translucent as though with foliage's new growth, a fine-veined net to trap the unwary if only they are strong enough to hold.

Temperament

Pterath is no flash in the pan. She'll help you pan for joy (better than gold!)... even if those joys aren't necessarily what you thought they would be, back when you had this idea of being a healer-rider and playing ambulance. See, Pterath isn't just transportation. She's /herself/, and she'll transport you all right, though possibly into lands more psychedelic than you could have dreamed. Your Pterath (if you really can be that possessive of her, as opposed to being possessed /by/ her) is not only protector but predator, and quite often more the latter. Born as Pern wheels towards spring, she has that same sense of burgeoning, escaping life. Talk about a distraction from your studies!

Young Pterath can have seemingly limitless energy for getting into things, for scratching things, for digging, for scoping out her world. Of course, she'll also be known to pull her wings over herself and huddle, to hibernate, and occasionally to sulk. She's not as recalcitrant as Kynith can sometimes be, but Pterath definitely does need her time to be cherished and, yes, cuddled, even coddled. Not by everyone, though, and she certainly doesn't want pity: just you. Only you will do. (The upside: she probably won't think to do so now, but when she matures and doesn't just see you as an extension of her own needs and desires, she'll likely realize that you need to be comforted and protected too... and might even pull you away from conflict when she thinks you need it. Which may even be when you really do.) Pterath likes to sprawl out and listen to stories, at least for a while, and then she often likes to do them, but better. (She may have fun with Balyeroth, say, in that way. She may have more fun with him than he's ready for, but at least she'll get to tell her own rambling tales in her turn.) Drills are awfully regimented for her tastes, but for you (if you can bring yourself to want to do well at them), she'll pay attention. After all, you do want to fly together, right? She'll need your help to keep more long-term goals in mind, rather than losing yourselves in an admittedly glorious moment. (If nothing else, lest you step into something gloriously fecal...)

We're sorry, but you're never going to be your own man. Or, well, we're not sorry at all. Pterath can understand your drive for perfectionism, but she's no perfectionist at heart: after all, perfection is the enemy of /doing/, of the life and rebirth she's wholly a part of. She has a harder time understanding that you want to be, or at least want to be /called/, a Good Person. After all, you're you, and you are what you are, and... maybe she does have something in common with Akuath after all, even if she's less the rider of the wave than the more-forest-than-water wave itself. She still likes to sprawl, still likes to have mementoes of her excursions here and there and everywhere, will like to have visitors over to her ledge at any old hour. She likes to play with her food before biting its head off. She isn't always good for your temper, though woe betide you if you turn it on her. (There will be yelling, and she knows you well enough to come up with something truly stinging to boot.) Her primary goal isn't so much a goal as a need, to move with the seasons of life in all their brightness and darkness, unhampered. (She may not understand why you might want to save some people, but she'll support your desire to try.) She'll want her straps off as soon as you get home. She'll have no truck with your old daydreams of offing yourself to save Pern. She's your protector, after all. (Though like any shepherd, she's also a predator, and sometimes she wants to do what /she/ thinks is best for you.) But there's one thing to relax about, at least a little. How can you mess up with her? She's a force of nature. She's Pterath.

Pterath doesn't rise as often as some, and certainly not as regularly, but when she does, it's a doozy. Sometimes proddiness will be a long slow process like a leaf unfurling (or like being stung beneath every fingernail, one by one), and sometimes her instincts will slam into you with barely any warning. You could get high on her. Sometimes she seduces the innocent by her very nature, and sometimes she's taken against her will by larger predators. You teenager, you, did you hope for a green? Did you think you'd get plenty of hot sex? Sometimes you don't get to remember anything but her, and have to piece it together afterward. Sometimes you'll need help picking up the pieces. Luckily, she's happy enough for you to have friends, so long as she comes first, selfish beast that she is. She likes her own friends too, particularly if they have their wild side. Is Kynith uptight? Is Teivoth just too stagey? Maybe she's in the mood to loosen them up, maybe she just doesn't care. Does she want to give Linieth and Akuath a little more fire, does she have the sense not to play with Iskiveth's? You'll find out. (But our guess is yes, and no.) Now what will you do?

Public Impression Message

Rambling Brambly Bacchante Green Hatchling's eyes whirl faster and faster, redder and redder. In the end it's sudden, the end to her hunt: a swerve with wings akimbo, heedless of those who might be standing around her prey. Him. The slight one, the freckled one. Gabrion. Crouched before him, looking up, that red turns to blue like bloody water into wine: /mine/.

Private Impression Message

So you're on those sands, you're standing there, and... do you have any idea? /Any/ idea what's coming, /who's/ coming for you? It's increasingly hard to concentrate in the chaos, and this is no time for your own body to distract you (and did you even remember to go pee? again?), except somehow you're... itching. No. That's not the symptom. It's almost like something... bit you. Stung you. Sand fleas? Except there's a swarm of them, and you heard about candidates getting gored but this flea thing, it's new. And it's stinging and stinging from the outside in, making you more and more aware of everywhere it touches, and it's hard not to wonder where it's going next, and already you're reacting, you can feel your fever rising, your ears buzzing. Can you be delirious already? Because you hear that voice: « G'brion... » Like she's tasting you. « /G'brion/. » Definitively, this time. Warm, sweet, intoxicating. And /hungry/. No sense of guidance, no prompt towards the barracks. Just you, and Pterath, and hunger. Like she'll eat you all /up/.

Mindvoice

When Pterath uses words, it's in a burred alto, while her images are wildly colorful in a way that her youthful hide is not. Perhaps more importantly, there's a buzz to her, eternally embodying her mood: a soft hum of background noise that rises with excitement and slows in sleep, stuttering in rarer uncertainty or becoming a deafening roar in anger. She can be sweet and intense and intoxicating like the mead the maenads drank. She can be stifling like the next day's hangover or walking into a swarm. And, she can sting when she wants to or just when she's cornered (and without dying, unlike real bees!): light endorphin-stirring pinpricks or harder, sharper, more painful jabs. The sensation of beestings, for some, is a way of driving them out of body, freeing them from their normal selves as with madness, ecstasy or wine. So may it be for you.

Itchyspots

Blame her sire again, but sometimes, Pterath really likes lifting a hind leg and scratching like a canine. (Careful with the claws!) She's a sybarite, and never more prone to itchiness than when the oil's right /there/, particularly when you're near the bottom of the barrel. Often she may not notice her hide flaking until her attention gets drawn to it, might even put off dealing with any low-lying itchiness like a kid who doesn't want to stop doing fun stuff to go to the bathroom... only then she's buzzing at you, take-care-of-her-now! now! now! And if it means you wind up spilling the oil to do it fast enough, well, that's just the way it has to be.

Dragon Inspiration

Your idea of Pan lent a sense of vivid, natural chaos and internal conflicts that was fun to write for. Your Pterath even has hairy, okay, /brambly/ legs. ;) Maenads were naturally associated as well, and bees: Pan is said to have been the guardian of bees as part of guarding flocks, and to have used beeswax to make his pipes. There may be no bees or honey on Pern, but their echo carries through your Pterath. As for her name, you said you liked names with meaning, and you seemed to like those that weren't traditionally feminine. "Pterath" refers to the zoological order Hymenoptera, to which bees belong, and we hope you'll forgive us for not using the first part of Hymenoptera instead. XD

Egg Inspiration: PacMan. I always found his voracious appetite to be vaguely disturbing, though it was one of my favorite arcade games of the 80s.