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Protection Quest Survey
Please answer at least one question, though you are free to answer more if you'd like.
What most makes you unique?
How have your life experiences before Aather made you special?
How do you think people would react if you told them about your past? How did they react if you did tell them?
Do you feel that any of these things are something your team wouldn't understand? Why or why not?
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What most makes you unique?
How have your life experiences before Aather made you special?
How do you think people would react if you told them about your past? How did they react if you did tell them?
Do you feel that any of these things are something your team wouldn't understand? Why or why not?
(OOC) If you threaded anything out, feel free to link to it here!:
IOLITE
Re: IOLITE
The most readily apparent answer to that is that, as you could tell with a look at me, is that I am a dragon. Now, dragons are common enough where I come from, with some countries such as China hosting populations that number in the thousands of thousands, and even small nations such as England should not have their own populations disregarded, though they are but a few hundreds and almost entirely military rather than being a welcome and common sight in and among the citizenry. The point is, is that in my world we are not some unseen, unknown mythical beast. We might be rare or secretive in some places, but we are living creatures like any deer or bird or human is.
Among dragons, however, I am especially unique. I would not imply that I am the only special dragon and all others are rank-and-file the same, that would be untrue and disservice to a million individual and remarkable dragons. But we are not talking about them here, though you might ask Night on Amethyst to tell you of Perscitia, if you would know of another dragon who came into Aather.
My own uniqueness comes of my breeding, and of some other coincidences and efforts that I shall cover in the next segment, being particular as they are to the circumstances of my world. I am a dragon, but more specifically, I am a Celestial, or tien-lung. As I mentioned previously, China is home to a remarkable number of dragons of all shapes and sizes, but the most prized breed among them is my own. Where they have hundreds, our number is but a dozen and all of a single family. We are hatched of chance breedings between Celestials and Imperials, or even more rarely an Imperial pair out of hundreds might produce a Celestial egg as was the case with Grandfather's hatching so many years ago. We are the only breed suitable to be paired with the royal family, as we are considered to have the finest balance of wit, strength, and form. We are also the only dragons in all the world that possess the ability of the Divine Wind, a roar with the capability of building waves, splitting rock, moving clouds, and curshing our opponents with only the force of sound.
My mother is Lung Tien Qian, a Celestial, and my sire was Lung Qin Gao, an Imperial whose companion is a Prince of the third rank. I have not met him, but my mother is a wonderful, intelligent, and wise creature whose opinion is revered most highly by the Emperor and his Court. My hatching is of special note too in that she clutched two eggs: my elder twin Lung Tien Chuan is the companion to the Crown Prince Mianning.
My captain has been made a prince by his connection to me, but he is not of the Court originally, nor even Chinese at all. He is British, and he served as a captain in the Navy before he met me and was brought into the Aerial Corps. In that Corps, I should note, I am now with the rank of Commodore, though it is somewhat on-hold with our brief exilement to Australia, but I have had some indiciations that is only a temporary arrangement, though I have not yet remembered it properly. But I am going on, and the circumstances of this arrangement is perhaps more suited to the next section, so I shall move on.
How have your life experiences before Aather made you special?
Of course, my experiences before Aather are not ones that anyone else here has experienced. There is Perscitia, who I mentioned previously, but she spent most of her thrity-odd years in the breeding grounds in Britain, whereas I have been from China in the egg, to England, to China, and all through Africa and the middle of Asia and to Australia over the sea.
My egg was taken out of China because, as I said before, my egg was in a twin clutch, and that would have created a political mess, as any companion of mine would have had a claim to the throne to rival Mianning's. Indeed, at one time, there was a plot undertaken to have my companion viciously murdered in the hopes that I would take the younger prince Miankai as my companion, which of course I would never do, I will have no companion after my Laurence. It is not necessary for dragons to have captains and companions, though of course I like my Laurence very much, I could not see him wholly replaced, not even if it was Vincent or Yuta or Snow. But so, because my egg could not stay with the Court but could not go to any common lord or soldier either, I was to be sent in the shell to France, to the self-proclaimed Emperor Napoleon. My ship did not arrive, as it was seized by my Laurence's ship. France and England are at war, you see, so my egg was a rightful prize.
I had learned Chinese and French and English and the shell, and it was becoming much more exicitng outside of my shell than it was inside it, and I was becoming very hungry, so I hatched out. Laurence gave me a name and something to eat, and now he is my captain and nobody else may have him from me. I am called Obsidian here, but the name he gave to me is Temeraire, after a ship-of-the-line. In China, I am Lung Tien Xiang. This was an irregular start by the Corps' reckoning, a rare Chinese dragon— they at the time thought I was an Imperial, which are still very valuable dragons without being Celestials —and here I had had hatched out at sea to a naval captain. There was an attempt to have him replaced, but that was not permitted to pass.
I am pleased to say that we have always been irregular, since then and now. I am the first dragon to be given rank after I brought up an army to chase the invading French, I have won pay for the dragons of the Corps, I have assisted in the successful procurement and hatching of a Kazilik, I helped destroy a plotted coup in China, I have been into Africa and seen the dragon-led kingdom there, I have gone all across Australia across land never surveyed before by dragons, I have fought the French all across Europe from Prussia to Poland, and I have been into France too. It was for that last action that we were regarded traitors, but I have no guilt for it except for how it affected Laurence's rank and standing, for what we did was to give them a cure against a plague that had wreaked havoc across the English population, and I did not want to see innocent French dragons nor my friends in their breeding grounds killed sneakily by a trap of disease that they had no fair chance against.
I am more traveled than any other dragon, including Lien who has harassed me all over Europe, because she did not follow me to Africa or Australia. I am a scholar in England where most dragons and many humans do not care to learn reading or writing or arithmatic. I have led battles, and won them too. I have won rights for dragons that they never had before and that noone dared to let them think they could deserve. I have been very busy in my half dozen years of life, and I will be even busier and even more greatly unique upon my return when they will all have to take in what changes I have developed in Aather and the uniqueness I have further become here. I am the first dragon I have ever met to have tattoos, for example.
How do you think people would react if you told them about your past? How did they react if you did tell them?
Oh! They have always been very interested, but really, I do it less by telling and more by showing. I have many memories that I can share, and I am glad to let others see. Most often I share one that recalls a time where I trained the Prussian dragon in new manuevers, since they had been stubbornly sitcking to Frederick the Great's old and out-dated methods which were no longer effective against anyone else who had seen a Prussian dragon fight in the last decade or read the his writings. They are always entralled with the great size of the dragons and properly impressed with my guidance, though it is my own size that is the most remarkable, as I am plainly much smaller here.
Would you like to see the memory for yourself?
Do you feel that any of these things are something your team wouldn't understand? Why or why not?
Some of them might not understand that if I meet Lung Tien Lien here I will try to kill her on sight, as that is an unforgiving act and merciless to an amenesiac, but she deserves neither mercy nor forgivement no matter her circumstances, and I think the teammates I have currently would understand. Vincent agreed to help. New teammates have now and again had the issue of disbelieving that I am rational, thinking person who would never eat them, but they get over that eventually, with some effort. Really I cannot say that I can think of anything that my team would not be able to understand, not with time taken to speak with them or show them my reasonings. I cannot ever underestimate my teammates, they are always remarkable and even those that I have had difficulty with once have their own great characteristics. They are all my teammates and allies, and I trust they will always try to understand me and so I shall to them.
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noooooo