Sire and Dam: Sidijith & Xanth
Hatching Date: Saturday, March 29, 2008
Theme of Clutch: The Four Seasons
Theme of Dragonets: Weather / Elements / Elemental Things
Hatchling Name: Unquenchable Sun Flare Brown
Dragon Name: Vsuviath
Clutch Message:
From light to dark, Sidijith's next egg is as murky and offcolored as the previous one was lucid and bright. This egg is definitely Xanth's, hued with his self-same potent shades of thick decay and demise.
Egg:
Muculent Monsoon Egg
Moisture appears to bead across the dark swirling surface of this egg that mixes muddy browns with discolored greens and a few unbalanced blotches of what could best be described as black mold. Yet there is also, emerging from this foul compilation of stains, streaks of succulent moon-lit leaf-green, pale night-flower's yellows and a few somber splashes of deep red, perhaps like spilled blood, or vibrant petals whose beauty is not granted in dim light. Incongruous, perhaps are the tiny and brilliant spots of palest glow-green speckled across the whole of the egg, though they condense mostly near the vegetative greens. On the whole, though, this egg lurks quiet and somber, little movement revealing the life within.
Hatch Message:
Muculent Monsoon Egg has reached the point of oversaturation. Amid the Sands' arid plain it swells from within, distorting the streaks of muted yellow and dipping pools of red together within the canopy of rot and mould. Those brilliant spots of luminescence congeal along the sagging baseline and there, finally, the egg splits and belches out a smear of sear and flame: Unquenchable Sun Flare Brown Dragonet spills into the rippling air, plumes of escaped gas distorting into billowy fumes around him.
Impression Pose (what the audience sees):
Unquenchable Sun Flare Brown Dragonet comes upon something interesting and comes to a pause near a pair of dark-haired girls. The first one, apparently older, gets the faintest of glances, and with a nudge that is nowhere near a nuzzle, the sand and goo are wiped off on Imogen's robe. With a blustery shake the rest is sent spraying in all directions before the other girl is closely eyed, and with another trademark soundless bray, she is marked forever.
Impression Message (what you see):
There's no warning before the Sands around you ripple and distort, surging upwards like pillars of flame whose heat and color reach far beyond even your experienced imagination. It feels as if Rukbat itself coils flickering fingers around you, enveloping you in a cage of fire licked by an unceasing wind, and you'll immolate to ash in moments. The low roar of a broken sound barrier presses hard on your eardrums and sneaks inside your throat, threatening to swallow you from the inside out - and it's there that you here a volcano's laugh: « Scared you, didn't I? I am Vsuviath! »
Dragonet Description:
Phoenix fire erupts, radiant, from the darkness born of smoldering embers - this dragon's magnificent wings billow explosively from ebon spires, splaying the mottled gradient of flame: from incandescent white, through sunburst yellow and to a seething vermilion that eats into ominous, less oxygenated umbers, frozen to cold black at their lace-cut fringes. These fevered flames engulf his rangy whole, eating away at the demon-shadows lurking along the sinewy paths of a lithe frame that slims further still to his tailtip set ablaze with passion's vividness. The cataclysm of color obscures his lines overall, making him an elusive illusion of light
Personality:
Vsuviath is meant to be pure flaming fun, the ultimate partner in your ingenuitive quests. You're the font of ideas, generally speaking, and he's the man with the cover story - you know, when you're up to something, he's the one that throws up a smokescreen to shield your true actions. Alas, sometimes said screen comes out sounding a little thin: « Eat the Weaverhall's ovines? Never! We're just taking them out for a picnic. Just a little picnic. » Enough of your Smithcraft technical knowledge will seep into his brain to make any of his more preposterous stories sound believable to the uninitiated: « Oh, this here? It's all busted up. The intake valve is twisted up with some pyroclastic filaments and it's set to explode any minute if we're not careful. Best let us handle it. » He'll say it all completely pokerfaced, too, the straight man on the outside but torn up with laughter within. A devil-may-care attitude towards others leaves you both footloose and fancy free to do as you wish, at least in his mind.
He's a diehard daredevil, too, in the literal sense. You dare him to do it, and he says, 'you're on!' He might even take it a step further: « Eat one of the Weaverhall's ovines? That's no dare! Now, if I /flame/ it first… » The real trick will be making sure your tendencies to do as dared don't end up reverberating off of his tendencies to elevate the dare. This probably won't be evident as a problem immediately - at least, not until you're explaining to the Weyrlingmaster just how it is that you and Vsuviath ended up in the middle of the lake on an island made of scorched herdbeast bones and piles of poor-quality firestone, singing the bawdy version of The Ballad Of Moreta's Ride and waving N'tan's backup pair of undershorts around on a stick to the beat of the music while your lifemate tries to flame them.
Oh, yes. The flaming. It goes like this: if it's Thread, he'll flame it. If it looks like Thread, he'll flame it. If it doesn't resemble Thread in the slightest, he'll flame it. « Hey, these things don't taste half-bad charred to a crisp. » Don't get the wrong idea - he is not an indiscriminate pyromaniac. He knows what he's 'supposed' to flame, and what he isn't. But he gets one hell of a kick out of setting things on fire and watching people run around like headless wherries. « Ha! That one looks like she swallowed a wherry egg whole! Look at her go! » It's not that he's /sadistic/… okay, yeah. He's a little sadistic. Just a little. But never, ever towards you. You and he are the unbreakable pair whose true goal has nothing to do with that silvery menace - no, your destiny is to keep everyone on their toes and laughing at themselves. And if they don't get the joke, you'll just have to do the laughing for them. Darn.
Flights:
Females in heat will only serve to feed Vsuviath's inherent deviltry, though he partakes in flights much like Uncle Ikaroth - for the thrill of it, not necessarily the win. Sometimes he'll be all about the strategy, setting up false leads much like he's about to prank. Other times he's more interested in the most outrageous flight pattern he can manage. In victory or defeat, he's guaranteed to put up a fine show, and some greens are bound to take notice. You may have to finagle your own strategies to avoid being caught in awkward situations by his unflappable confidence: « Fanduanth dared me to fly two greens in the same day. I was thinking Myamurath and Eliketh, what do you say? »
Threadfall:
When Thread falls you two shine like fiery Rukbat itself. This is /your/ day. This is /your/ time. The time where all your mischief and practice coalesces into something tangible, something constructive. Vsuviath, in this moment, is all business, and for all the rest, not showy. No ostentatious display. He knows what he can do, and knows he’s the /best/ at it. No one better on the lines. The pair of you will almost disappear into the background, unpretentious, silent, and then a long squiggling mass of Thread will come into view and that is when the magic happens. You’re not there - you’re there, and the burst of flame is glorious, tearing through acidic fiber and rendering it instantly dust. No flame is bigger. No flame is brighter. No flame is as efficiently effective. Once again you blend, until the next tangle, and then you’re /there/!
Physical…
Brown's such a bland label for a dragon as magnificent as this: his molten rock has a deeper glow at its heart than any metal. It takes much higher temperatures to melt the earth itself rather than the elements in it, after all, and his hide shows all the gradients between cold stone and incandescent sunfire. Not in broad streaks but in mottled blends, like an ember from its hottest core to its coolest extremities. His fire-pebbled coloring makes it hard to see exactly where one part ends and the other part begins, so that when he's on the go it seems like he's pure flame in motion.
Just so, Vsuviath's frame is sizable - he'll eclipse bantam Xanth, though mountainous Ezzith may be just a bit beyond his final reach. What he'll never lack for is lithe power. Sleek-muscled and foxy rather than big and boxy, his form is rangy without being frail or leggy. Sinew-corded shoulders will bulge with the effort of supporting his massive wings - both broad and long, they're the canvas that displays his inner fire, trailing edges black and lacy as if already singed. The fluid mechanizations of his body lend him a grace and flexibility rare in larger dragons.
Mind Voice:
A backdraft is a fireman’s worst nightmare. All the air has been sucked out of a room but the gases remain, lurking, waiting, swirling about, and then it happens… in comes the life breathing, fire feeding air. It starts with a quiet and very eerie whirring suck – the room is breathing, inhaling, bringing new life: spacey, eerie, creepy, whirring, hissing, nerve wracking stillness as the air is sucked inwards. It’s an implosion of tremendous hair-raising proportions. Air was all that was needed and as the gases catch fire in an earth shattering rumbling explosion that can knock a man unconscious, and shake timbers loose in a house. What follows are the raging hot burning billowing flames that consume in a windy torrent.
These are the stages of his voice that follow Vsuviath’s moods. The first stage sounds a lot like you might think of deep space would sound if it made a sound at all. Here’s an example:
http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/archive/Aliens/Alien-reverb-effects/Large-spooky-whoosh/191506
It’s almost metallic, and it’s certainly ‘alive’. This is his quiet voice. His lurking seemingly ‘dead embers’ voice. No oxygen to feed the fire.
Excitement is the implosion! The sucking! Whirring, hissing! Inhale, very deep and quick, and listen to that sound.
Anger! The explosion! The burning! The billowing raging blaze! « Thread! It seeks to wound! It aims to kill! I will blast it to cinders! »
All of this culminates into a ‘Backdraft’. If you watch the movie they describe it very well. There’s a particular part where you can almost feel it. We searched and searched and the best example we could find is a little hard to get to, but it’s good! Not perfect, but good! It starts at 1:43 (counter) and goes to 1:57ish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pRt0em5A0M
Mind Scent:
Gaseous. No, we’re not kidding. It’s only faint, and only at the start. Sometimes not there at all. Any and every kind of gas. Yea, even that one too! Mostly though, it’s scentless. Silent but deadly. Carbon monoxide. It’s the firestarter.
It’s the result of all that burning that is the true meat of his scent. Pun intended. BBQ! The best part of summer is charred veggies and meat on the grill. Campfire charred burnt ewey gooey marshmallows! Burn whatever you want. It’s the smell that lingers – sometimes good, and sometimes noxious. Depends on his mood. Hair? Love that smell. Grass? Garbage? Candles? Incense? N’tan’s shorts? There are no limits to what you can BURN!
Physical Voice:
For all the mind-blowing phonics of his mental voice, Vsuviath won't toot his horn much out loud. Rather than rumble, he rattles like a rain of asteroids off a starship's hull. His croon comes out more as the liquid-metal ripple of a thin sheet of steel, shaken. And the brass bugle other dragons bray with, in his throat, becomes a nigh-soundless thoomp - the noise of a potato cannon fired, more felt than heard.
In these troubled times, your dragon's keen may be heard more often than anyone would like: nails grating on slate coupled with a high-pitched beep that slides right up into the supersonic ranges. Guaranteed headache to go with that of the heart.
Growth:
By and large Vsuviath grows very much like other dragons - perhaps a touch on the slow side, but a fairly constant gain. Every few weeks or so, however (but never the same number of weeks), he will go on an absolute gorge. You'll fret over thick tail; the gas will be abominable. And then, like a dying fire infused with oxygen, he'll explode in a massive wave of growth that has both of you tripping over his various parts as they're suddenly where they weren't before.
Eating habits:
Everything is consumed. There is no slow eating – food is devoured as quickly as possible, which could cause some choking problems, and maybe even issues with indigestion when small. Not all that odd, really, woofing it down is a pretty normal dragon trait. It’s the fact that when he has the time he prefers his food a little charred, sometimes even fully cooked, that causes one to pause. « It brings out the flavor, and I just love singed wherry in the summer! It smells so good. » Feathers? Burn them off! May only be proto-feathers, but they get stuck in the craw, and who likes being seen hacking tickling feathers out of their throat? Hair? Fur? Burn it away first! Your fellow riders will love the smell. Charred heart is a delicacy and must be cooked at just the right temperature. It won’t be always that he does this, but there will be moments when he takes his time preparing his meal, only to woof it down so fast he could barely have tasted it.
Movement:
Ever sat and watched a fire? Flames curling around logs, licking gracefully at the air? Twining, stretching thin for the stars, or lurking in small spikes near the coals? Finding every nook and cranny with a voracious lust? That is your boy. There will be times when you cannot figure out how he got there, or even fit, but there he will be. Odd angles around corners, bent in ways that don’t seem natural. At times he’s a roaring blaze, tearing through space so quickly to blur vision, and others burning slow and real insidious like. Creeping along the ground, or burning like a fireball through the air – whatever it is he is doing is beautiful, graceful, and most always mesmerizing. Remember the fire, remember how it moves, how you’ve been caught staring into it, watching that movement. Apply that to Vsuviath.
Weyr Relationships:
As covert troublemaker with a sly sense of humor, Vsuviath may end up filling the 'class clown' niche. He's not really clownish, just… entertaining: he's always doing something that nobody else dares do (though they may dare him to it) and this can attract a great deal of attention - attention he sloughs off with a cooler-than-thou shrug. Yours is the only focus he really wants.
Expect some antagonism between your brown and Orlaith - her staunch feminism innately cries out for goading, and his outlandish daredevilry often garners her own dry wit. There's an underlying similarity between them that neither will ever openly recognize; instead it comes out in love-hate taunts and fits.
Sister Hestiath, the central hearth of the family and ever watchful of domestic bliss, will frequently attempt to moderate these interactions, or at least soothe ruffled hackles afterwards. Still, she'll never take sides between Vsuviath and Orlaith. With anyone else it's a different story - Vsuviath is family, and family comes first. Her testimony may be key in averting trouble on you and your lifemate's behalf.
Inspirations… (any themes used, what inspired creators)
Egg Inspiration:
(Th'deus) In terms of seasons, some of the most impressive, oppressive seasons I've seen were in Missouri. In this egg, I was trying to bring out both the vile odor and humidity that layers across that state in the summer, replenished every afternoon by the monsoons that never let the place dry out. I was also trying to suggest the incredible life-cycles that come from the water and the heat and warmth - every square inch of Missouri has upon it something living, something dying, something rotting or growing. Last, we were always charmed by the fireflies, which made Missouri evenings (and biting, stinging bugs) almost bearable. As well, this egg /must/ be from Xanth and Sidijith, for it combines the two parts of their life-cycle - his, the death, decomposition and renewal, and hers, the rebirth and growth.
Name Inspiration:
(I'nigo) You mentioned you liked odd combinations of consonants and listed 'Vs' as a possibility, and my mind immediately made the leap to volcano, given Vsuviath's molten nature. Enter good ol' Mt. Vesuvius, the pyrotechnic giant that obliterated Pompeii and Herculaneum, sleeked and updated for a foray into space!
Dragon Inspiration:
The image that started it all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar-filament.gif
N'tan took one look at this image and went crazy!
I did, I really did. I still do. It's on my desk top background. The dragon I see there is so fantastically awesome. Something really bold and magnificently poetic. Dramatic, glorious, ominous, beautiful. I've spent hours just staring at the wings and trying to capture what I'm seeing in words, and for once I felt very inadequate. That's when you know something is just awe-inspiring. I hope it is to you as much as it was to me. I hope the love, and I mean intense love that we put into this dragon will fullfill your every desire, because we desire you. We desire your time with us, and lust after your RP. It makes us smile, laugh, sometimes even wickedly, and always always strive for more. You raise the bar and I hope we raised it one higher on you here with your new lifemate, because we love you endlessly. You're fantastic. Enjoy!
Clutchmates:
Imogen and gold Hestiath
Iona and gold Orlaith
Kyana and green Jianth
O'diah and blue Alysiuth
Taini and gold Birgith
T'jano and green Mrrth
Thera(Esther) and brown Hadamarth
W'ren and bronze Gnaedath