Rihzome the Deserter

Name: Rihzome

Gender: Male

Type: Western Dragon

Species: Chaos-Shadow hybrid

Age: 783

Date of Birth: Can’t remember, celebrates on Winter Solstice

Personality: Quite a sociable and intelligent individual, Rihzome usually prefers his own company and that of his books to that of other dragons. Of course, it would be wrong to assume he doesn’t enjoy the company of other draconiformes, the opposite in fact. He simply chooses his own company due to his fear that both someone will discover his darker side, and that someone could learn about his past if they grow close to him. To Xøyan dragons and those who seem to know him better than he knows them, Rihzome is extremely cold, almost rude, preferring to keep his cards and larger personality to his chest. Interestingly enough, due to his time spent in the Xøyan military, if given an order by anyone of higher rank (Stormcaller or otherwise), or someone with a commanding tone , he will often snap to attention and start to carry out said order, before realising what he’s doing.

To neutrals, as in those he has never met, or who have never met him (Knowing simply rank and name does not class as knowing), Rihzome is more open and less rude, but still just as closed with his abilities and most of his personality. He’ll happily engage in a conversation if the subject is of some interest to him, and will often inquire to his companions comfort (this usually only applies to situations where he is the host). It is also, quite unfortunately, extremely easy to destroy your reputation at this point with him. Topic such as the Xøya, his past and his family will cause him to clam up and become unresponsive, usually breaking off the conversation mid-way and simply walking out. Of course, it someone was quick enough with a follow up or changing the topic, they could avoid this. Keep him chatting for long enough, or impress him, and he’ll open up.

To his… acquaintances, Rihzome is often extremely open about his feelings, and, if prodded and coerced correctly, will tell about the topics that he detests. Preferring more to listen and watch than directly interact, he’ll happily sit and listen to a monologue or lecture, especially on a topic that he enjoys, but would do so on anything. While completely unloyal to strangers, to his friends is in incredibly loyal, doing things short of murder with unfailing accuracy and gusto. It’s also in this close company that one of his two less… admirable traits are expressed.

As a Chaos dragon, Rihzome has an intrinsic love of Chaos and disorder. Often mistaken with insanity, the two are closely related, and sometimes intertwined, but different. This takes the form of innocent sounding and often (at first) pointless gossip. When it comes to this gossip, he is just as happy to spread lies as truth, or a combination of both. He does keep this under control in some cases, mainly important outings, where class is in order, or conversations with important persons, but will usually let it reign free in company. His second, deeper, and feared trait, is his love of causing pain. Physically, mentally, both are acceptable, however causing death is not. Life is sacred, after all. It’s not so much the trait itself he fears, but rather the aftermath. To put it simply, he hates the fact that he loves causing pain. Normally, the mere thought of causing pain is abhorrent to him, but as soon as adrenaline kicks in, this thinking is inversed somewhat, the thought of leaving someone unschated sickening. The aftermath of an episode such as this, especially if he DID cause some kind of damage, will usually leave him feeling sick and weak, as he deals with what he did.

Hobbies:
~Reading
~Studying magic (currently looking into the symbols used to sustain the Tempest Ring, to see if they could be reproduced to use on regular storms)
~Stargazing (The views from the desert are simply astounding)
~Swimming (mainly in the ocean).

Likes:
~Reading
~Music (with a penchant for classical)
~Seafood
~Darkness
~Eastern dragons.

Dislikes:
~Being exposed in a large, open area
~Drakes
~The Xøya tribe.

Fears:
~Being recognised by any member of the Xøya tribe, military personnel specifically
~Hurting (and enjoying hurting) one of his acquaintances
~Wyrms.




Place of Origin: Unknown, but his preference of extreme cold over warmth seems to suggest that he may have originated from the Iceilo Region of Layrian.

Tribe: Stormcallers

Position: Scholar, Xøyan deserter

Language: Xøyan , Universal

Home: Verula desert, for the majority of the year, but also has a small dwelling in the alpine area of Layrin he visits during warmer preiods

Parents: Mother is a Spion, father is a scholar, both from the Xøyan tribe, and both (he hopes) still living.

Siblings: As far as he knows, none

Relatives: No, none that matter / live

Mate: Nope

Offspring: Nope

History: Long story short, deserted the Xøyan military after slaughtering a number of undefended and innocent draconiformes, an event which caused him deep personal trauma, not least of all due to his enjoyment of doing so.




Height: 73 feet

Length: 198 feet

Wingspan: 290 feet

Scale/Fur/Feathers: Coal black. That is, shiny black, with nicks and scratches often appearing silver in high light conditions.

Eyes: Constantly shifting between gold and silver, in an effect similar to a star. This often gives the impression that he is hiding something even when making eye contact.

Accessories: Often wearing nothing, seeing jewelry as tasteless and clothing as pointless, he does break this rule on certain occasions. To symbolise his new-found mutual understanding to the Stormcallers, and to mark himself as one of them, he wears a lattice anklet, on his front right paw. Made of silver, it has a large sapphire inlaid in the front, directly opposite the clasp.

Armor: Rihzome has his old set of Xøyan armour, which he has dedicated a sizeable amount of time to modifying and customising. Inlaid with silver and decorated with a number of sapphires along the neck and chest, it could almost be mistaken for a high ranking officers, if it wasn’t so.. Out of place. He almost never dons it, only wearing it to make sure it still fits adequately. Normally, he is without any sort of armour.  

Horns/Spikes: He has a single set of horns on his head, projecting from the back of his skull. These, along with all of his other spikes, are almost identical in appearance to smoky quartz, albeit much harder. Along his neck, starting from the base of his skull, and down to roughly halfway, he has a number of large spines, a thin, grey / black membrane strung between them, a frill. His tail has a single large, speartip like point at the end, almost a foot long, with jagged but extremely sharp edges.

Overall Appearance: Rihzome’s spine, between the end of the spikes on his neck and to just after the base of his tail, is covered by heavier thicker scale-plates, bonus protection to his spine. Interestingly, he often appears hesitant in his movements, taking care when moving and speaking, especially around smaller dragons. When falling back into his soldierly attitude, he stands straight and to attention, almost frozen in movements save for his breathing, and will respond with short and concise answers and phrases when spoken to.




Abilities: Rihzome has a form of telepathy under his control, which he finds extremely useful. Of course, this ability is not without its drawbacks and limitations, some of which render the ability next to useless. When focusing, ideally with closed eyes or in darkness, he can faintly see and feel the mind of every magic abled being in a 50 kilometre radius. By ‘selecting’ one of these, he can form a small bond with them, something akin to holding out a paw for a handshake. The target will know intrinsically know what will happen if they accept this bond, a telepathic bridge forming, and what will happen if they don’t, nothing. If the connection is accepted, it functions much the same as regular speech, but with perfect secrecy between the two speaking, and a much longer feasible distance. Idle proof, only information what is specifically shared is given to the other being linked, stray thoughts not able to slip through. An added benefit of this is that it cuts out language barriers. Thoughts are more-or-less shared between species, and easily able to be understood, due to their base nature. Of course, like speech, it is incredibly easy to lie, but it is also just as easy to sift out lies. Large, blatant and badly executed lies will seem… off. As the severity of the lies shrink, the feeling of something being out of place or wrong will shrink, until it’s nothing more than a small, usually unnoticeable twinge at the back of the mind. If the being he is ‘speaking’ to allows it, he can set a sort of beacon, allowing him to identify the target in the otherwise indifferent mass of minds in an area.

Rihzome also is quite accomplished in shadow forming. He can form small objects out of shadows, which function exactly as the real object would. This can vary from the basic and mundane, such as simple three-dimensional shadow shapes, to more complex items, such as a large telescope of his own design that he uses for stargazing. Depending on the complexity of the object and his familiarity with creating it, it takes between 25 seconds and two minutes to form something. His main and most familiar creations are his telescope (46 seconds), a set of shadow gauntlets (33 seconds) and, oddly enough, a small medal, one he was given by his mother, when he joined the military (25 seconds). The durability of these items is variable, but often sits somewhere just above forged iron, with a lifespan of somewhere between 1-3 hours (With a maximum of 3 objects formed at once). The gauntlets, the claws in particular, are much tougher, able to pierce and crack dragon scales when used with enough force. When forming this equipment, Rihzome has to have some measure of concentration at that task at hand, otherwise the object will simply blink out of existence. Additionally, while he is in complete control of the object and the shadows used in creating it during the forming process, he loses this once the item is complete. If he were to combat an aptly trained dragon that could also use shadow based magic, it would be almost trivial for them to dispel whatever he had formed, the same being said of any light based dragon.

His final ability is more of a passive blessing than anything else. His Entropy Field. Along with part of his personality, Rihzome also inherited his entropy field from his chaos side. Permanently thriving as long as he is conscious, it causes probability and luck to skew in his own favour, until reaching a point at which it will horribly backfire, sending him down a painful bad-luck filled road. In day to day life, this usually manifests itself in small actions, like finding something lost, getting a particularly nice piece of fish or fruit or blitzing a game of chance. Of course, the counter is much worse, an example being he then trips, losing the thing he found, ruining his food, and upsetting said game, at once. He is terrified that this will occur in combat, allowing him to escape from a fight almost unharmed, only for the bad luck to occur and quite probably kill or severely wound him.

Strengths:
~Thanks to his size and training, Rihzome is surprisingly enduring, able to fly for hours without a hint of tiredness.
~He can put a large amount of force and strength into his claw to claw combat.
~Knowledge. Thanks to his, and his father’s position, as scholars, he had and has access to a large amount of information

Weaknesses:
~While he is enduring, this only applies to regular flight. Aerial combat and maneuvering drains him incredibly quickly, cutting down his flight time to less than 10 minutes in a fight
~His lust for causing pain often causes him to make bad decisions in a fight, trying to go for deliberating but never fatal wounds, with almost reckless abandon
~The entropy field. Quite literally a timebomb, a smart opponent could engage in a drawn out ‘fight,’ using only a small amount of their skill or ability, and wait for it to charge, before striking as the consequence of his luck is unleashed.
~His honour and loyalty. If engaged in a battle, a combatant could simply yell ‘stop’ or ‘halt’ or something along those lines with authority or in a commanding tone, and while it would not last, it would give Rihzome a measure of pause, instinctively reacting.

Fighting Style: He tries to avoid combat, seeing it as a sign of a weak mind, and scared of others seeing what he becomes. When forced into a fight, his sadistic side will take over, and will prefer to land painful and debilitating blows over damaging and deadly ones. While often effective, it means he takes much longer to down an opponent than what it should have, as he quite literally toys with his prey.

Magic: Aside from his abilities, Rihzome has learned only a single spell, mostly for his own personal comfort than anything else. A simple Ice rune, which when summoned on any non-organic item, will create a sphere of slowly cooling air, with a radius of roughly 150 feet. This is stopped by solid objects, but has a tendency to seep out of places less than airtight. The maximum temperature drop is 50*f (28*C), and cannot drop lower than 75*f (24*C).

I like how he likes company of draconiforms, but dislikesdrakes and fears wyrms. XD

~1/2 Approved~

Spooky ( just in time for Halloween :D )

Approved 2/2

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