scarsolderthanyou (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scarsolderthanyou) wrote2017-08-23 11:14 am
scarsolderthanyou) wrote2017-08-23 11:14 am
Entry tags:
Last Eden; Application
OOC INFORMATION.
PLAYER NAME: Gail
CONTACT: cacopheny @ plurk
CHARACTERS ALREADY IN-GAME: N/A
IC INFORMATION.
CHARACTER NAME: Stone
CANON: Books of the Raksura
CANON POINT: A year or so after the book Harbors of the Sun
AGE: Somewhere in the range of 400 years
HISTORY:
Stone was born to a Raksuran court in the sprawling forest of giant “mountain-trees” known to his people as the Reaches, in the vast planet known as the Three Worlds (Ground, Sea, and Sky). The Raksura lived there in a tree as large as a small town, towering hundreds of feet into the sky and supporting whole ecosystems in their branches and along their trunks. His court, the small Umber Shadow court, had dwelled in their carved and magically sculpted tree-home for generations. Stone was a well-cared-for consort caste Aeriat, one of the winged Raksura. Consorts are the fertile males who can breed with the ruling female queens to continue the royal lines and produce sterile warriors, or with the wingless Arbora castes to produce magic-wielding mentors.
It was uncertain whether Stone would ever actually be chosen by a queen, because he was born, as he calls it, “imperfect”, with his right eye half blind and clouded over, and the Raksura breed for conformation and specific traits. It didn’t help his generally grumpy tendencies when for many years, in the Reaches, he was passed over-- but in the end, it was a needless worry. His queen, Azure, choose him from among the rest of the court’s consorts and from among the neighboring courts’ offerings, and he went on to produce a number of strong clutches, none of them with his distinctive disability. One line of his offspring went on to eventually rule the court, in his great-granddaughter Pearl.
The Reaches were getting too populous, though, and smaller courts were having more and more trouble keeping their territory. When the current reigning queen Cerise died and passed leadership on to her daughter Indigo, the court decided to take off for new grounds, renaming itself Indigo Cloud after the new ruling pair. Stone was still young, and considered the trek an adventure, learning to fly and hunt while they traveled, and developing stronger and more wild than sheltered consorts in the Reaches ever got to be. The court explored for two generations, something like sixty to eighty “turns” or years, and eventually found an old ruined pyramid structure in the east beyond the forests of the rest of their kind. Stone never really felt comfortable there, by that time tired of the “adventure” and missing home, but that was where Azure chose him, and he stayed where she did to raise their clutches.
The court lived away from their ancestral grounds for about eight generations, or a little over three hundred turns. Raksuran consorts live to perhaps a hundred and twenty turns or a little less, with the exception of “line-grandfathers”, or consorts who live many times a Raksura’s standard lifespan and grow well past their standard size, as Raksura don’t ever stop growing over their lives. As the turns passed, it became clear that Stone was to become one of those, as first Stone’s queen Azure and then his children began to fade and die-- Raksura show their age by losing their coloring, fading to gray and then white-- while he remained strong and healthy, and only grew larger and stronger as time went by.
After he outlived his first clutch, and with no queen to keep him settled in the court, Stone began to range further and further from the court, exploring the lands around them. He met groundlings-- intelligent life forms, usually bipedal, who lived on the surface of the Three Worlds-- and sealings-- like groundlings, only who live in rivers and oceans-- and even flew with skylings-- not as intelligent as the others, generally large browsers who lived most of their lives in the clouds. He fought stray Fell, the Raksura’s more violent sibling race, learned the customs of various peoples across the Three Worlds, visited their allies, and checked on their old mountain-tree in the Reaches. He enjoyed his freedom, but it was lonely, so he did always return to visit whichever generation of his family lived in the court’s new grounds, bringing stories of his travels.
Still, it was hard watching fledgings he had seen born and helped raise grow gray, fade, and die, so the intervals grew more and more lengthy, until one year he returned to find the number of his home court much reduced. There had been sickness, he’d been told. And a hunting accident. And there had been more stillbirths and fewer of the flighted, sterile warriors to protect the court born in recent years. All of the other consorts had died, or been sent away by the moody queen Pearl, grieving for her favored consort, and only she and her daughter Jade remained of the fertile Aeriat.
Stone was alarmed, and after conferring with the Arbora and the queens, left again to speak with their allies in a nearby court, to bargain for consorts and warriors to help protect their court-- and help them move, as he was urging that they return to their original home in the Reaches. None of the mentors could auger the cause of their decline, but all of them agreed that something had to be wrong, and sent him in the direction that they thought had the most chance of Stone returning with help.
The allied court, however, had no one to spare, and no real desire to risk themselves by offering to help a struggling court. Stone returned empty-handed… until he stopped to rest on one of the floating island ruins dotting the skies and all but ran into a solitary, courtless consort living among a local groundling tribe. Moon had no idea what he was, or what Stone was, but Stone managed to talk him into coming with him after the groundling tribe left Moon out to die because they mistook his scaled form for a Fell. Moon was suspicious and untrusting and largely unsocialized, but also lonely and curious and obviously aching for a little acceptance. Stone found himself rather attached to the little brat even before he got him all the way home. Moon’s grouchiness and independence reminded him of his own, and the plight of a lost and confused Raksura who didn’t even know what he was pulled at his old, parental heart.
With Moon’s help, Stone and his queens discovered the source of their court’s decline: the direct magical attentions of a Fell flight, including a Fell/Raksura crossbreed mentor with magical powers. Together they destroyed the flight, and finally made their way back west towards the Reaches with the help of some groundlings and their flying boats. It took various adventures, including meeting up and allying with Moon’s original court Opal Night and dealing with yet more Fell/Raksura hybrids, before everything started to settle down and the court could start breeding again-- Jade and Moon producing a clutch of five great-great-great grandchildren for Stone-- at least until the next adventure sent them investigating cities supposedly made by the forerunner race a few years later.
The result of that fateful trip was a half-Fell flight taking up residence in the Reaches in Moon’s birthcourt’s territory, Stone taking up with a misplaced sealing named Rorra for a while (at least as long as she deigned to stay near Indigo Cloud’s home tree), and the destruction of half or more of the population of the Fell by a forerunner weapon that nearly destroyed the Raksura and a large swath of groundling races, in the process. It was only through Moon and Jade’s efforts that the combined courts of Indigo Cloud and Opal Night stopped the weapon before it could complete its horrible task. Stone helped, of course.
PERSONALITY:
Consorts, as one of the most valuable breeding Raksura, are typically delicate, sheltered, and gentle, maybe even a little flighty. They’re fond of children and good at sussing out the motivations and feelings of others, are often shy and moody, and are considered some of the more graceful and polite of the Aeriat, and of the Raksura as a whole. Stone, however, is so old and well-traveled that the only two of those that still apply are his parental nature and his ability to see to the heart of things, though “shy” and “flighty” never even applied to him as a fledgling. Instead, these days, he is grumpy and snide, showing affection more through light cuffs and casual insults (“idiot” is his favorite) than the smiles and kind words of a younger consort-- though even now, he’s more ready with a hug and a comforting lap than any human would be if someone seems to need it. The Arbora, in particular, are very demonstrative with their affection and often find him a safe target for it, so he’s very used to being clung to and climbed on.
Most consorts only leave their homes if they are being traded to another court to share out their bloodline, but even then young Stone’s experiences were different, given the court’s travel while they looked for a new home. After the loss of his queen and his first clutches due to their old age and his unexpectedly long lifetime, Stone has spent more time away from his court than within it. He’s talked to a lot of non-Raksura, killed a number of non-Raksura, and even had sexual relations with a handful non-Raksura-- the latter of which scandalizes his court a little bit when they think about it, even though the Raksura are generally very open-minded and straight-forward about sex. Stone knows enough to be suspicious of strangers, particularly those who smell off or who seem shifty to him, but it doesn’t stop him from engaging with them. Instead, he has a quiet sort of curiosity for new things, enjoying traveling through the various groundling territories and learning about their history-- and especially their food.
It helps that he is also very confident in himself. He grew up protected and valued, allowed to express himself and put himself forward as he wished, and that plus his age and experience have bolstered his confidence and given him a strong base to interact with the rest of the world. He’s used to being deferred to, respected, and obeyed the way a stern but affectionate father would be, and it shows in nearly all of his interactions with others, familiar or otherwise. Even in unfamiliar or difficult situations, it helps him keep steady that he knows his own worth and the exact extent of his own abilities. He might growl about it, but he keeps his head, accepting that any trouble that comes up will be dealt with. The only time he’s ever really shown as losing his self-control in panic is when his whole species is at risk of being wiped out.
Some of Stone’s confidence also comes from competence. Stone has had a long lifetime to learn new skills, and discover the best ways to do things, so usually when he sets his mind to something, he does it well. It also comes from quite literally being a parent many times over, of several clutches of five bitty Raksura each, watching them grow and assume responsibility and make him grandbabies. Because of his age, he’s related to a sizeable portion of both the Aeriat and Arbora, so he sees the rest of the extended court as his responsibility, as well. He has never actually met anyone as old as he is, so he’s used to being the most experienced one in the room. Potentially meeting new people his age or older in panfandom rp will be an eye-opening experience for him, and will likely change his worldview a bit.
Over the course of his long life, Stone has lost a lot of people he’s cared about. It’s admittedly part of what makes him grumpy-- though most of that is just that he’s lost patience with trivial things and is dismissive with what he considers to be stupidity, and some of that has always been there even as a young consort-- but it’s also part of what makes him protective of those he has currently. While many things annoy him, the only thing that really makes him lose his temper is a threat to people he cares for. He’ll lose them soon enough, by his standards, but he doesn’t want to lose them sooner than he has to. Loss doesn’t keep him from loving; it has made him, instead, love more fiercely and with more wisdom.
ABILITIES:
; Shapeshifting: Stone has a human-like “groundling” form, and a dragon-like winged form. As a groundling, he’s mostly indistinguishable from a human, except his teeth are slightly sharper, and his tongue is a little longer and more flexible, not to mention better at picking up scents on the air. He also has gray skin, which might look a little weird, and shaggy gray hair. In his winged form, he’s scaled, winged (obviously), and a faded sort of black, with a mane of spines and frills, or long flexible scales, that he can manipulate for nonverbal communication, which is useful, since he can’t speak verbally in that form. He’s lighter than he looks, with nearly hollow bones like a bird, and his wings in canon are sixty “paces” from tip to tip, which might translate into anywhere between 70 and 80 feet. In the game, with a size nerf, he will have more like a 30 foot wingspan, comparable to the small- to mid-sized dragons and, should he be inclined, he would be able to carry one or two passengers, or one and supplies. Also, his tail is semi-prehensile and he could, if he found anything big enough, hang upside-down from it.
; Blurring effect: In his winged form, Stone is a little hard to see clearly. There’s some sort of mental power he exudes without conscious control, blurring his face, claws, and the edges of his form. He can stop it if he really focuses, and it stops when he’s too injured to hold it up or asleep, but mostly it’s an automatic power. Those with strong resistance to mental influences may not see it.
; Shapeshift stowing: Due to the nature of shapeshifting in his species-- though they don’t understand it, the series creator has stated they exist in both forms at once, only swapping the dimension each form is in-- when shifting from groundling to winged form, Stone takes his clothes with him, into some nether space, as well as anything he was carrying with him. They return exactly the way he left them when he shifts back to groundling. He can in fact hold onto an object and shift with it, hiding it wherever his clothes go it until he shifts back into groundling form. The object can’t really be very big, but it can be anything not alive.
; Magical mass: Again due to the odd nature of Raksuran shifting, in groundling form, Stone can be as immovable as if he were still dragon-sized, though if weighed he wouldn’t have the same weight as his winged form; it’s a magical effect rather than a physical one. Also, when he growls in groundling form, it can reverberate as if it were coming from a much larger body. And yes, he still growls (and hisses) in groundling form.
; Slow aging: No one’s entirely sure exactly how old Stone is, not even Stone. He’s at least several centuries old at this point, many times over the typical lifespan of a Raksura, and has only in the past decade started showing signs of aging: the graying out of his hair and skin in groundling form, and the fading of the black of his scales in winged form.
; Sharp senses: Raksura are predators, and rather more animalistic than humans whose development hinged less on ambush hunting and more on tools and persistence, and as such their senses are more powerful than your average human’s senses. As Raksura get older, they get more powerful, and that applies to their senses as well, so Stone’s hearing, sense of smell (more through his tongue, like a lizard, than through his nose), and distance vision are very powerful. His vision is hampered on his right side by partial blindness in that eye, though, which results in him turning his head more often than he otherwise might, to get a clearer view. His different forms also have different sensory abilities-- touch and taste are stronger as a groundling, while vision, hearing, and smell are stronger in his winged form.
; Fighting: More mundanely, he’s big, he’s scaled, he’s fast, and he’s surprisingly hard to see-- plus he has claws and teeth that are even sharper than they look. After several lifetimes of wandering and killing the Fell, he’s learned more than a few things about defending himself and others.
; Tracking: Even more of his time out wandering was spent searching for things. He isn’t as good a tracker as an Arbora hunter, but he’s pretty damn good, and his mental maps of places are usually near to perfect, especially if he’s been there more than once.
; Politics: Politics are everywhere, including in Raksuran courts. Politics is what keeps a race of haughty predators from killing each other over every little insult. Consorts, in particular, are raised to be closely aware of the political situation in a court, and to manipulate it as needed for the good of the court. Stone may be a century or two removed from when he had to really use his consort role in such a fashion, but he’s been well-trained, and he has a good eye for things of that nature.
; Tea: Stone makes a great cup of tea, and can pour it with great decorum. Not that he bothers with the decorum much lately, but still. He can.
INVENTORY:
; Clothes: Stone’s clothes that he arrives with are as gray as the rest of him, and fairly simple in cut, though of fine quality cloth. It’s a simple tunic and leggings, though he never wears shoes.
; Pack: Stone had put together his traveling pack for a trip outside the colony shortly before he was taken for Last Eden, so it came with him. It contains: a spare set of clothes; a thick blanket; a knife for cutting and peeling fruit; a few cakes of tea; a small metal tea kettle and matching cups with Arbora designs on them; and a couple of flint stones for making a fire.
‘ Jewelry: Though he didn’t pack these, Stone also arrives with two bracelets, one of simple gold shaped like Aeriat flying entwined, the first gift his queen ever gave him, and a bracelet of white gold and bright sapphires, the last gift his queen ever gave him. He usually never wears them, but whatever decided he needed to come across space and time decided to give him a memento of his family.
FACTION:
; Spring: Stone himself isn’t really a great fit for Spring. He isn’t laid-back or a farmer-- he doesn’t actually know much about farming, at all, being more of a hunter and explorer-- nor is he remotely a pacifist. He’s a carnivore, he’s grouchy, and he’s used to getting his own way. However, his court, his family, and his kind, the people that he loves-- those are all Spring people. He might not necessarily be one of them, but he’s comfortable with them. Plus, he can see that power vacuum and, while he isn’t a leader (he’s a consort, after all, he follows queens not orders them around (his great-granddaughter is laughing at him for saying that)), he is a queenmaker. In more ways than one.
OBJECTIVES:
First and foremost, Stone will be looking for people to mentor, protect, and support, whether consciously or subconsciously. He will need a new “family”, as it were. He’ll be exploring a lot, because wanderlust is a thing with him. More politically, he’ll definitely be dealing with that power vacuum in the Spring court, once he realizes it’s there, whether it be by shoring up the empress if she seems like a good queen to him, finding the best leader to replace her (who will likely be female, given his biases), or even just offering advice given he’s interacted with a lot of rulers in his time. Finally, he might start insinuating himself with the local dragons as a friend rather than a master, offering himself as a “smarter version” of them to encourage them to reach their greatest potential. Ice faction may not like this, but he doesn’t care.
ANYTHING ELSE:
For reference, here’s what Raksura look like. Yes, the big one is Stone.
SAMPLE.
Stone on the test drive.
And for another flavor of him, Stone gets to be protective and parental all in one thread.
PLAYER NAME: Gail
CONTACT: cacopheny @ plurk
CHARACTERS ALREADY IN-GAME: N/A
IC INFORMATION.
CHARACTER NAME: Stone
CANON: Books of the Raksura
CANON POINT: A year or so after the book Harbors of the Sun
AGE: Somewhere in the range of 400 years
HISTORY:
Stone was born to a Raksuran court in the sprawling forest of giant “mountain-trees” known to his people as the Reaches, in the vast planet known as the Three Worlds (Ground, Sea, and Sky). The Raksura lived there in a tree as large as a small town, towering hundreds of feet into the sky and supporting whole ecosystems in their branches and along their trunks. His court, the small Umber Shadow court, had dwelled in their carved and magically sculpted tree-home for generations. Stone was a well-cared-for consort caste Aeriat, one of the winged Raksura. Consorts are the fertile males who can breed with the ruling female queens to continue the royal lines and produce sterile warriors, or with the wingless Arbora castes to produce magic-wielding mentors.
It was uncertain whether Stone would ever actually be chosen by a queen, because he was born, as he calls it, “imperfect”, with his right eye half blind and clouded over, and the Raksura breed for conformation and specific traits. It didn’t help his generally grumpy tendencies when for many years, in the Reaches, he was passed over-- but in the end, it was a needless worry. His queen, Azure, choose him from among the rest of the court’s consorts and from among the neighboring courts’ offerings, and he went on to produce a number of strong clutches, none of them with his distinctive disability. One line of his offspring went on to eventually rule the court, in his great-granddaughter Pearl.
The Reaches were getting too populous, though, and smaller courts were having more and more trouble keeping their territory. When the current reigning queen Cerise died and passed leadership on to her daughter Indigo, the court decided to take off for new grounds, renaming itself Indigo Cloud after the new ruling pair. Stone was still young, and considered the trek an adventure, learning to fly and hunt while they traveled, and developing stronger and more wild than sheltered consorts in the Reaches ever got to be. The court explored for two generations, something like sixty to eighty “turns” or years, and eventually found an old ruined pyramid structure in the east beyond the forests of the rest of their kind. Stone never really felt comfortable there, by that time tired of the “adventure” and missing home, but that was where Azure chose him, and he stayed where she did to raise their clutches.
The court lived away from their ancestral grounds for about eight generations, or a little over three hundred turns. Raksuran consorts live to perhaps a hundred and twenty turns or a little less, with the exception of “line-grandfathers”, or consorts who live many times a Raksura’s standard lifespan and grow well past their standard size, as Raksura don’t ever stop growing over their lives. As the turns passed, it became clear that Stone was to become one of those, as first Stone’s queen Azure and then his children began to fade and die-- Raksura show their age by losing their coloring, fading to gray and then white-- while he remained strong and healthy, and only grew larger and stronger as time went by.
After he outlived his first clutch, and with no queen to keep him settled in the court, Stone began to range further and further from the court, exploring the lands around them. He met groundlings-- intelligent life forms, usually bipedal, who lived on the surface of the Three Worlds-- and sealings-- like groundlings, only who live in rivers and oceans-- and even flew with skylings-- not as intelligent as the others, generally large browsers who lived most of their lives in the clouds. He fought stray Fell, the Raksura’s more violent sibling race, learned the customs of various peoples across the Three Worlds, visited their allies, and checked on their old mountain-tree in the Reaches. He enjoyed his freedom, but it was lonely, so he did always return to visit whichever generation of his family lived in the court’s new grounds, bringing stories of his travels.
Still, it was hard watching fledgings he had seen born and helped raise grow gray, fade, and die, so the intervals grew more and more lengthy, until one year he returned to find the number of his home court much reduced. There had been sickness, he’d been told. And a hunting accident. And there had been more stillbirths and fewer of the flighted, sterile warriors to protect the court born in recent years. All of the other consorts had died, or been sent away by the moody queen Pearl, grieving for her favored consort, and only she and her daughter Jade remained of the fertile Aeriat.
Stone was alarmed, and after conferring with the Arbora and the queens, left again to speak with their allies in a nearby court, to bargain for consorts and warriors to help protect their court-- and help them move, as he was urging that they return to their original home in the Reaches. None of the mentors could auger the cause of their decline, but all of them agreed that something had to be wrong, and sent him in the direction that they thought had the most chance of Stone returning with help.
The allied court, however, had no one to spare, and no real desire to risk themselves by offering to help a struggling court. Stone returned empty-handed… until he stopped to rest on one of the floating island ruins dotting the skies and all but ran into a solitary, courtless consort living among a local groundling tribe. Moon had no idea what he was, or what Stone was, but Stone managed to talk him into coming with him after the groundling tribe left Moon out to die because they mistook his scaled form for a Fell. Moon was suspicious and untrusting and largely unsocialized, but also lonely and curious and obviously aching for a little acceptance. Stone found himself rather attached to the little brat even before he got him all the way home. Moon’s grouchiness and independence reminded him of his own, and the plight of a lost and confused Raksura who didn’t even know what he was pulled at his old, parental heart.
With Moon’s help, Stone and his queens discovered the source of their court’s decline: the direct magical attentions of a Fell flight, including a Fell/Raksura crossbreed mentor with magical powers. Together they destroyed the flight, and finally made their way back west towards the Reaches with the help of some groundlings and their flying boats. It took various adventures, including meeting up and allying with Moon’s original court Opal Night and dealing with yet more Fell/Raksura hybrids, before everything started to settle down and the court could start breeding again-- Jade and Moon producing a clutch of five great-great-great grandchildren for Stone-- at least until the next adventure sent them investigating cities supposedly made by the forerunner race a few years later.
The result of that fateful trip was a half-Fell flight taking up residence in the Reaches in Moon’s birthcourt’s territory, Stone taking up with a misplaced sealing named Rorra for a while (at least as long as she deigned to stay near Indigo Cloud’s home tree), and the destruction of half or more of the population of the Fell by a forerunner weapon that nearly destroyed the Raksura and a large swath of groundling races, in the process. It was only through Moon and Jade’s efforts that the combined courts of Indigo Cloud and Opal Night stopped the weapon before it could complete its horrible task. Stone helped, of course.
PERSONALITY:
Consorts, as one of the most valuable breeding Raksura, are typically delicate, sheltered, and gentle, maybe even a little flighty. They’re fond of children and good at sussing out the motivations and feelings of others, are often shy and moody, and are considered some of the more graceful and polite of the Aeriat, and of the Raksura as a whole. Stone, however, is so old and well-traveled that the only two of those that still apply are his parental nature and his ability to see to the heart of things, though “shy” and “flighty” never even applied to him as a fledgling. Instead, these days, he is grumpy and snide, showing affection more through light cuffs and casual insults (“idiot” is his favorite) than the smiles and kind words of a younger consort-- though even now, he’s more ready with a hug and a comforting lap than any human would be if someone seems to need it. The Arbora, in particular, are very demonstrative with their affection and often find him a safe target for it, so he’s very used to being clung to and climbed on.
Most consorts only leave their homes if they are being traded to another court to share out their bloodline, but even then young Stone’s experiences were different, given the court’s travel while they looked for a new home. After the loss of his queen and his first clutches due to their old age and his unexpectedly long lifetime, Stone has spent more time away from his court than within it. He’s talked to a lot of non-Raksura, killed a number of non-Raksura, and even had sexual relations with a handful non-Raksura-- the latter of which scandalizes his court a little bit when they think about it, even though the Raksura are generally very open-minded and straight-forward about sex. Stone knows enough to be suspicious of strangers, particularly those who smell off or who seem shifty to him, but it doesn’t stop him from engaging with them. Instead, he has a quiet sort of curiosity for new things, enjoying traveling through the various groundling territories and learning about their history-- and especially their food.
It helps that he is also very confident in himself. He grew up protected and valued, allowed to express himself and put himself forward as he wished, and that plus his age and experience have bolstered his confidence and given him a strong base to interact with the rest of the world. He’s used to being deferred to, respected, and obeyed the way a stern but affectionate father would be, and it shows in nearly all of his interactions with others, familiar or otherwise. Even in unfamiliar or difficult situations, it helps him keep steady that he knows his own worth and the exact extent of his own abilities. He might growl about it, but he keeps his head, accepting that any trouble that comes up will be dealt with. The only time he’s ever really shown as losing his self-control in panic is when his whole species is at risk of being wiped out.
Some of Stone’s confidence also comes from competence. Stone has had a long lifetime to learn new skills, and discover the best ways to do things, so usually when he sets his mind to something, he does it well. It also comes from quite literally being a parent many times over, of several clutches of five bitty Raksura each, watching them grow and assume responsibility and make him grandbabies. Because of his age, he’s related to a sizeable portion of both the Aeriat and Arbora, so he sees the rest of the extended court as his responsibility, as well. He has never actually met anyone as old as he is, so he’s used to being the most experienced one in the room. Potentially meeting new people his age or older in panfandom rp will be an eye-opening experience for him, and will likely change his worldview a bit.
Over the course of his long life, Stone has lost a lot of people he’s cared about. It’s admittedly part of what makes him grumpy-- though most of that is just that he’s lost patience with trivial things and is dismissive with what he considers to be stupidity, and some of that has always been there even as a young consort-- but it’s also part of what makes him protective of those he has currently. While many things annoy him, the only thing that really makes him lose his temper is a threat to people he cares for. He’ll lose them soon enough, by his standards, but he doesn’t want to lose them sooner than he has to. Loss doesn’t keep him from loving; it has made him, instead, love more fiercely and with more wisdom.
ABILITIES:
; Shapeshifting: Stone has a human-like “groundling” form, and a dragon-like winged form. As a groundling, he’s mostly indistinguishable from a human, except his teeth are slightly sharper, and his tongue is a little longer and more flexible, not to mention better at picking up scents on the air. He also has gray skin, which might look a little weird, and shaggy gray hair. In his winged form, he’s scaled, winged (obviously), and a faded sort of black, with a mane of spines and frills, or long flexible scales, that he can manipulate for nonverbal communication, which is useful, since he can’t speak verbally in that form. He’s lighter than he looks, with nearly hollow bones like a bird, and his wings in canon are sixty “paces” from tip to tip, which might translate into anywhere between 70 and 80 feet. In the game, with a size nerf, he will have more like a 30 foot wingspan, comparable to the small- to mid-sized dragons and, should he be inclined, he would be able to carry one or two passengers, or one and supplies. Also, his tail is semi-prehensile and he could, if he found anything big enough, hang upside-down from it.
; Blurring effect: In his winged form, Stone is a little hard to see clearly. There’s some sort of mental power he exudes without conscious control, blurring his face, claws, and the edges of his form. He can stop it if he really focuses, and it stops when he’s too injured to hold it up or asleep, but mostly it’s an automatic power. Those with strong resistance to mental influences may not see it.
; Shapeshift stowing: Due to the nature of shapeshifting in his species-- though they don’t understand it, the series creator has stated they exist in both forms at once, only swapping the dimension each form is in-- when shifting from groundling to winged form, Stone takes his clothes with him, into some nether space, as well as anything he was carrying with him. They return exactly the way he left them when he shifts back to groundling. He can in fact hold onto an object and shift with it, hiding it wherever his clothes go it until he shifts back into groundling form. The object can’t really be very big, but it can be anything not alive.
; Magical mass: Again due to the odd nature of Raksuran shifting, in groundling form, Stone can be as immovable as if he were still dragon-sized, though if weighed he wouldn’t have the same weight as his winged form; it’s a magical effect rather than a physical one. Also, when he growls in groundling form, it can reverberate as if it were coming from a much larger body. And yes, he still growls (and hisses) in groundling form.
; Slow aging: No one’s entirely sure exactly how old Stone is, not even Stone. He’s at least several centuries old at this point, many times over the typical lifespan of a Raksura, and has only in the past decade started showing signs of aging: the graying out of his hair and skin in groundling form, and the fading of the black of his scales in winged form.
; Sharp senses: Raksura are predators, and rather more animalistic than humans whose development hinged less on ambush hunting and more on tools and persistence, and as such their senses are more powerful than your average human’s senses. As Raksura get older, they get more powerful, and that applies to their senses as well, so Stone’s hearing, sense of smell (more through his tongue, like a lizard, than through his nose), and distance vision are very powerful. His vision is hampered on his right side by partial blindness in that eye, though, which results in him turning his head more often than he otherwise might, to get a clearer view. His different forms also have different sensory abilities-- touch and taste are stronger as a groundling, while vision, hearing, and smell are stronger in his winged form.
; Fighting: More mundanely, he’s big, he’s scaled, he’s fast, and he’s surprisingly hard to see-- plus he has claws and teeth that are even sharper than they look. After several lifetimes of wandering and killing the Fell, he’s learned more than a few things about defending himself and others.
; Tracking: Even more of his time out wandering was spent searching for things. He isn’t as good a tracker as an Arbora hunter, but he’s pretty damn good, and his mental maps of places are usually near to perfect, especially if he’s been there more than once.
; Politics: Politics are everywhere, including in Raksuran courts. Politics is what keeps a race of haughty predators from killing each other over every little insult. Consorts, in particular, are raised to be closely aware of the political situation in a court, and to manipulate it as needed for the good of the court. Stone may be a century or two removed from when he had to really use his consort role in such a fashion, but he’s been well-trained, and he has a good eye for things of that nature.
; Tea: Stone makes a great cup of tea, and can pour it with great decorum. Not that he bothers with the decorum much lately, but still. He can.
INVENTORY:
; Clothes: Stone’s clothes that he arrives with are as gray as the rest of him, and fairly simple in cut, though of fine quality cloth. It’s a simple tunic and leggings, though he never wears shoes.
; Pack: Stone had put together his traveling pack for a trip outside the colony shortly before he was taken for Last Eden, so it came with him. It contains: a spare set of clothes; a thick blanket; a knife for cutting and peeling fruit; a few cakes of tea; a small metal tea kettle and matching cups with Arbora designs on them; and a couple of flint stones for making a fire.
‘ Jewelry: Though he didn’t pack these, Stone also arrives with two bracelets, one of simple gold shaped like Aeriat flying entwined, the first gift his queen ever gave him, and a bracelet of white gold and bright sapphires, the last gift his queen ever gave him. He usually never wears them, but whatever decided he needed to come across space and time decided to give him a memento of his family.
FACTION:
; Spring: Stone himself isn’t really a great fit for Spring. He isn’t laid-back or a farmer-- he doesn’t actually know much about farming, at all, being more of a hunter and explorer-- nor is he remotely a pacifist. He’s a carnivore, he’s grouchy, and he’s used to getting his own way. However, his court, his family, and his kind, the people that he loves-- those are all Spring people. He might not necessarily be one of them, but he’s comfortable with them. Plus, he can see that power vacuum and, while he isn’t a leader (he’s a consort, after all, he follows queens not orders them around (his great-granddaughter is laughing at him for saying that)), he is a queenmaker. In more ways than one.
OBJECTIVES:
First and foremost, Stone will be looking for people to mentor, protect, and support, whether consciously or subconsciously. He will need a new “family”, as it were. He’ll be exploring a lot, because wanderlust is a thing with him. More politically, he’ll definitely be dealing with that power vacuum in the Spring court, once he realizes it’s there, whether it be by shoring up the empress if she seems like a good queen to him, finding the best leader to replace her (who will likely be female, given his biases), or even just offering advice given he’s interacted with a lot of rulers in his time. Finally, he might start insinuating himself with the local dragons as a friend rather than a master, offering himself as a “smarter version” of them to encourage them to reach their greatest potential. Ice faction may not like this, but he doesn’t care.
ANYTHING ELSE:
For reference, here’s what Raksura look like. Yes, the big one is Stone.
SAMPLE.
Stone on the test drive.
And for another flavor of him, Stone gets to be protective and parental all in one thread.