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Futurology Application
Apr. 29th, 2016 04:54 pmAPPLICANT INFO.
NAME: Dray
CONTACT:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
drayma
CURRENT CHARACTERS: n/a
CHARACTER INFO.
NAME: Laedo Ledo
CANON : Original Character from JKat's original world, Avengaea
SPECIES: Askan asandus (a breed of mammalian dragon)
AGE: 69 (equivalent of ~23-25)
APPEARANCE:
Human form:
https://i.imgur.com/g7GPwrz.jpg
An older version of his dragon form:
https://i.imgur.com/N4kyW0b.jpg
(Imagine a variation on the above image where the gold and iridescent white are not so sharply divided; the gold is scattered in thick stripes across his body to mimic those seen in his human form. For size comparisons, an average human would stand up to about the top of Laedo's elbow. He's large enough that he could carry a small team of humans if he were so inclined. Laedo also tends to wear ostentatious clothing or ornamental armor in both forms.)
CANON POINT:
In the world of Avengaea, there are two main species worth knowing. Asandae (Laedo's species) and caetrans are huge, magical, and Goddess-favoured creatures. Beneath them, humans eke out their own civilizations, and a highly variable and alien species known colloquially as daemons fill out most niches that magic and crude technology do not. Laedo's people profess to be civilized and provide local humans with magic, education, and enlightenment. They also tend to be exasperatingly patronizing (or matronizing, as theirs is a matrilineal and matriarchical society.)
At his point in the story, Laedo has been dragging bottom, having been chased out of his home city by his sister and political tyrant, Assera, and into the ranks of the wide-flung asandus militia, known simply as the Guard. From there he's managed to get himself into enough trouble to be slapped with the embarrassing job of guarding a boring human noblewoman, Fara fa Edilion, on her journey across the the continent's deserts to fulfill a marriage contract. Things go badly astray during this trip, and Fara is kidnapped by caetrans. Laedo and a local human guide named Kaitan Friave chase Fara's captors down and effectively retrieve the noblewoman, but this sparks off a series of worsening clashes, the worst of which involve tracking Fara into deep wilds after another kidnapping, this time performed by Laedo's own people. During all of this, political plays from the asandus capitol and from caetran forces culminate with a battle between both species' goddesses over the desert city of Fensirt.
Fara manages to save herself from her second set of captors, though Laedo and Kaitan follow her and the army of daemons she has built as the pair manage to pick off other asandus conspirators. Laedo has discovered that a confluence in factors beyond his reckoning have been pointing towards Fara having the potential for apotheosis, which is a very secret and very real threat on Avengaea for its godless humans, and one that both non-human goddesses have been crushing over past generations with much better success. Due to Fara's limited control over daemon forces when she arrives in Fensirt, she is able to force the two goddess' hands, preventing them from outright killing her. Instead, they work together to imprison her, but in their fury they slay Fara's entire army with their own magic. Laedo and Kaitan had managed to reach the outskirts of this traumatic three-army battle, and they survive the fires of both goddesses, but because the magic of deities is so much more potent than that of mortals, when they are hit by the fall-out they are both warped. Laedo finds himself at a loss of faith because he has seen deeper into asandus conspiracies than he'd ever known to question in his past, struggling to deal with the additional blow that his charge has been made a prisoner and taken out of his protection.
While on one hand, Laedo will feel disgust over interfering with other worlds at ALASTAIR's behest, on the other he feels a strong drive towards penance. Since he can't seek it from his goddess, he will be casting about for some ideals to help bolster his iron shod morals and values.
BACKGROUND:
Laedo was born to a prominent politician in the capital asandus city of Sanctuary. As a dragonet, he entered an ecclesiastic choir and hoped to eventually enter the ranks of askan priests, where he he hoped he could speak directly to Aska, the goddess of his people. That dream was soon dashed: Laedo was a rambunctious child, haughty for a boy, and easily picked on due to his stubborn morals. His sister, a more practical and ambitious creature, managed to oust him from the choir by setting him up for the fall in one of her own underhanded schemes. Laedo, out of a sense of begrudging family loyalty (he'd been double-crossed but could not prove that Assera had puppeted him to take the fall,) left Sanctuary to join the Guards as a young teenager.
He began to carefully foster a new hope: he'd ascend the ranks of Guards to the position of an Askalidan, which was an elite rank sanctioned to be Aska's eyes, ears and hands. This too failed miserably, but mostly because Laedo had a difficult time following the rank and file. He had more direct energy than most other asandae, challenged his superiors, and demanded action over introspection. The asandus military by comparison was mostly utilized to interact with political outposts, human settlements, and positions where disciplined forces were required. Laedo thought his prayers had been answered when a superior officer took an interest in him, but the relationship was doomed. When they got into an inevitable fight, she destroyed his reputation openly and he was stationed to the human city-state of Edilion to babysit human teenagers who needed ferrying between civilized settlements.
Laedo, feeling infuriated with his constant setbacks, had very little to do aside from snipe at his charges and pray for conflict to sate his frustrations. He got everything he prayed for when Fara was kidnapped. After this, he inadvertently paired up with the human, Kaitan Friave, and her daemon companions, Tuanada and Qensuna, when a solid contingent of caetrans attacked Kaitan's home city of Fensirt. While this was occurring, Fara went missing out from under their noses a second time, and it became apparent that the Askalidan--his people's elite guards--were responsible.
Laedo learned over the course of events that the goddesses feared that Fara had potential to become or produce a human deity, as gleaned from the fragmented visions of some of both Aska and Zenite's most trusted augurs. Zenite intended to crush Fara before she could reach her potential, while Aska had intentions to study the human in a scientific flurry of curiosity. Rather than cede to their wisdom, Laedo and Kaitan decided to hunt Fara down and protect her from this unexpected fate. Making a decision to go against Aska's direct wishes meant that he put his human charge and her safety above all of the dogma that he'd learned from childhood. Taking only the practical aspects of his teachings in place meant that he had to shuck a huge portion of his world views and understanding of himself--something that Laedo struggles with even now.
Though the two managed to find Fara, the human had found her own way to escape her prison camp by communicating with the local daemons. This communication had a ripple effect that attracted more and more of the strange, disparate beasts... but it became immediately apparent that Fara was not entirely in control of them. As they carried her away from her prison, back to the desert, Laedo and Kaitan fought off a squad of Askalidan that had been tasked with retrieving the noblewoman. Distracted as such, neither of her rescue party were able to penetrate the ranks of the daemons that swarmed around the noblewoman, and this turned into an infuriating cross-country chase. Zenite and Aska had thought to find Fara in Fensirt, which is why they had gathered their forces in the desert city, but strident disagreements on how to deal with Fara lead to a battle between caetrans and asandae. Laedo and Kaitan were forced to watch the fight--and Fara's use of daemon language, which nearly allowed the hoard to bleed the Goddesses dry of their life force despite the danger of releasing that much energy into the environment.
The Goddesses compromised by imprisoning Laedo's human charge under hard magic barriers the likes of which daemons could not penetrate or siphon away. They killed a lot of creatures in the process, and their bled, uncontrolled magic toxicified the surrounding city, now a wasteland. Kaitan mourned for her home city's loss and Laedo, aghast at what had fallen out over mere guesses by mortal prophets, fully aware that it was the actions of those around them that had caused this and not some unalterable guiding fate, renounced his position as Guard. It's only a few weeks later when he finally arrives in Oska.
PERSONALITY:
Laedo is bitter and entitled, a diva who speaks in a flowery language much like the rest of his species. He is very easily tweaked. Anything from frank language to human equalists to attacks against his fragile sense of nobility and ego are prone to make him retaliate with sneers and scoffs and round-about insults, but luckily his sense of a good insult is laughably tart. With his size advantage (at least in dragon from) he is really more bark than bite, as repelled by eating raw meat and physical butchering is another typical asandus trait. He has long since taken to askan preached prejudice against humans: they are weak creatures who need protection and care, but they are also weak-willed and foolish and below contempt. He holds to his morals with extreme stubbornness, meaning that he takes 'pick on someone your own size' to the extreme that he will defend even those he hates if he sees they're clearly an underdog. He can be easily misled and has been in the past. His querulous nature gives him a lot of difficulty in gaining allies, let alone friends.
Beyond this, Laedo has his better qualities, but they can be hard to find behind his very thick and prickly shields. He's got an incredible sense of duty, a unique sense of justice that favours the underdog, and a very straight-forward attitude that is not hard to win over, at least when the other is willing to ignore his sass and can demonstrate practical skills. He's very kinaesthetically aware in both asandus and human form, and is passionate about doing hard work. Meanwhile, he's got a sense of rhythm and harmony garnered from his youth and he still sings hymns despite his falling out with his goddess. When he is on good terms with someone, Laedo will do everything in his power to do right by them, up to and including chasing them to the ends of the planet. He is incredibly iffy about the idea of anybody riding him, but he will freely give magic to allies in need, healing, feeding, and sheltering them, sometimes to his own detriment.
Laedo is suffering from an existential crisis. His entire life was built around the worship of Aska, the attempt to fit into the rigid mores of his civilization, and the betterment of his place in it. Now that he has seen the dogma of Aska has been conjured mostly by religious politicians, and that the goddess is a flawed creature with too much power at her disposal, he feels a staggering loss of self. He still possesses the muscle-memory prejudices he learned about the superiority of his people, but now he doesn't have his underlying faith to back him up. It's made Laedo depressed and anxious, and poisoned his attempts to meditate in worship. He has an incredible amount of energy and fervour, but without direction he is eating at himself and tends to spit vitriol at others for little reason. He's looking for guidance and a cause to adhere to, but is too ashamed and prideful to admit it. Latching on to ALASTAIR is not his favourite solution, but he's taking what he can get.
ABILITIES:
Magic: Asandus magic is a unique property to Laedo's species, a malleable life force that is bestowed by Aska at birth and that fuels an asandus for her or his entire life. All asandae generate it. It is the property that causes them to grow so large, that allows them to age slowly, and that offsets their feeding habits to keep them healthy. A healthy dragon also has a surplus of magic that can be used to create spelled objects, manipulate surroundings through the use of psionics, or in direct bursts of pure energy. Those who can sense magic will see any asandus with a slight nimbus of light surrounding its body. Those that can manipulate magic can hypothetically drain that nimbus for personal use, though an asandus will recognize the attempt and quickly move to stop it. Asandae who use too much of their magic will gain a dull appearance, even to human or other non-magic-user eyes. They can and occasionally do use too much, which can negatively impact them in the way that extreme thirst or hunger can impact a human.
As for what magic Laedo can perform: he and his species are inherently able to shape shift, but this is limited to a human form, one that retains the same nacre-and-gold pattern of his dragon form. This is a specific gift of his Goddess and, like all of his species, it is a tool by which to interact civilly with humans they're meant to uplift.
-Laedo is quite good with directed force attacks. These act like light 'bullets' and range from scattershot (the better to score wings at close range) to highly precise laser-like bursts. They are meant to tangle with caetrans and specifically are meant to pierce caetran magical armor. They are likely to be deflected off of physically reflective material like polished metal or prismatic glass.
-When interacting with previously created spells, Laedo uses a weaving technique that resembles program recoding. He can analyse a spell for its intentions, break it down, and overlay his own magic on top to redirect it or nullify it. This may not be true for non-Avengaean magic, such as spells that rely on pure will or emotion, or spells that have no structural components to manipulate.
-Laedo can create a number of spells from scratch, anchored in physical objects. Most of these are fairly simple survival spells, like heat (varying from protection from the elements to cooking-temperatures), water purification and water actuation (sucking from the atmosphere, drying extra water out.) These include more frivolous spells, such as those he uses to create his gaudy outfits. Like all Guards who have seen tours of duty, he knows a small cadre of healing spells, from basic first aid to prevention of STI's and pregnancy. Sharpening spells for tooth and claw help him to fight even more effectively in his natural form.
-Lastly, Laedo's magic can be used as a shield. This mostly manifests in his armor, which is more reinforced than is decorative look would suggest. His nimbus can be attuned to protect against normal piercing and blunt-force attacks, but it can be nullified with proper counter-spells or with an equal dose of caetran magic. He can nullify incoming attack spells, but these take focus, so most battles with other magic users come down to the ability to work quickly, strategize to avoid spending more time undoing enemy spells than using his own, and to multi-task (flying in close combat while casting ancillary harmful spells is a good example of his skill level.)
-Laedo has been infected with powerful caetran magic in light of the goddess battle of Fensirt. The purple marks on his face are a physical manifestation of this phenomenon. They occasionally cause him physical illness, much like a flare-up after a sunburn, but they also interfere with his magic. Caetran magic is a direct opposite to asandus magic, meaning that regardless of what Laedo attempts to cast, there is a chance that it will be impeded or diluted by conflicting forces. This caetran magic is in no way sentient, but it is the direct product of a goddess, so it reacts unpredictably to mortal intervention. A skilled magic user might be able to siphon off some of it for their own uses, but it would take a deity to permanently remove the marks.
Psionics: A side-benefit of magic, psionics allow Laedo three traits. Telepathy--speaking mind to mind with those who are receptive to magic or psionics--is one. He can lift extra weight telekinetically--and in fact this is how he can launch his huge body into the sky. He does not use this very often on others, but when he does it is most often as a distractionary tactic (causing something to move behind an enemy to catch their attention for example.) He can also teleport, but in distances of ten kilometers or less. On Avengaea, complicated networks of teleportation nodes dot the landscape and allow larger parties to teleport longer distances. He could hypothetically create one of these (say, from Oska proper down to the lake) but it would take time and work to maintain, and those who wished to use it would need some kind of magically sympathetic device to activate it.
INVENTORY:
Laedo's inventory is composed entirely of magical items that transfer between latent magical energy and physical solid items whether he is in human or asandus form. In human form, he carries a kris dagger (a wavy short blade) on the right of his belt and a flame-bladed sword (a longer wavy blade) on the left. Depending on mood, his clothing takes on more armor-like variations, always in gold, with flowy under-layers that are often ivory, nacre, or rainbow toned. Sometimes he will wear a silk toga beneath a golden breast-plate, other times he'll wear heavily spiked golden armor to mimic the long horns lining his crown and down his neck in his natural form. He will almost always be wearing many rings, bracelets and toe-rings, and always wears a necklace or two with five golden discs a piece--this is a religious symbol of Aska and her four Lords. Even though he's lost his faith, he can't bear not to manifest it as a reminder of his past.
In asandus form, Laedo's garments are more sparse, usually including an ornamental harness that crosses his back and drapes over his folded wings, like pockets in which his folded wing-wrists can rest when not in use. Sometimes he includes extra spikes that remain snugly in place with magic, other times, draping swathes of silk in similar colour schemes as above. He often wears rings on fingers and toes, and sometimes cuffs on his tail in this form. Occasionally he will wear a chain on his neck that drips with golden drops in a similar pattern to the one he wears in human form.
All of these items can be removed, and he can disassemble them back into raw magic and reabsorb them as needed. This means that if he were to take any item off, it would persist outside of his presence and others would be able to use it. Others proficient with magic would be able to dissolve his items for use in practical spells, though overwriting their status as ornamentation and garments means that they would likely resist being turned into items or spells that were more than a step or two away from those functions.
WRITING SAMPLES.
NETWORK SAMPLE:
I am currently looking for a sparring partner outside of the guise of human form. The training hall is sufficient, for the most part, but it lacks the prestige of going tooth and claw against a worthy living opponent. Who of you dares to try?
[In his natural form, Laedo can appear somewhat intimidating. He's both large and predatory and luxuriously coloured, but he seems so full of himself that it might be difficult to take him at his word. Laedo's haughty mug takes on a slightly begrudging cast, ears canted and lips curling.]
I might be willing to attempt to cast a temporary spell, but I can't guarantee the results. I might be able to change my shape for that of a human, but it was never ordained that a human should have the same privilege. Still, we are in trying times out of our element. The prestige of knowing more than your weakened little bodies should come as a privilege.
LOG SAMPLE:
http://buttologists.dreamwidth.org/3680.html?thread=4441440#cmt4441440 (Either thread is a fair example of Laedo's attitude and general actions!)
NAME: Dray
CONTACT:
CURRENT CHARACTERS: n/a
CHARACTER INFO.
NAME: Laedo Ledo
CANON : Original Character from JKat's original world, Avengaea
SPECIES: Askan asandus (a breed of mammalian dragon)
AGE: 69 (equivalent of ~23-25)
APPEARANCE:
Human form:
https://i.imgur.com/g7GPwrz.jpg
An older version of his dragon form:
https://i.imgur.com/N4kyW0b.jpg
(Imagine a variation on the above image where the gold and iridescent white are not so sharply divided; the gold is scattered in thick stripes across his body to mimic those seen in his human form. For size comparisons, an average human would stand up to about the top of Laedo's elbow. He's large enough that he could carry a small team of humans if he were so inclined. Laedo also tends to wear ostentatious clothing or ornamental armor in both forms.)
CANON POINT:
In the world of Avengaea, there are two main species worth knowing. Asandae (Laedo's species) and caetrans are huge, magical, and Goddess-favoured creatures. Beneath them, humans eke out their own civilizations, and a highly variable and alien species known colloquially as daemons fill out most niches that magic and crude technology do not. Laedo's people profess to be civilized and provide local humans with magic, education, and enlightenment. They also tend to be exasperatingly patronizing (or matronizing, as theirs is a matrilineal and matriarchical society.)
At his point in the story, Laedo has been dragging bottom, having been chased out of his home city by his sister and political tyrant, Assera, and into the ranks of the wide-flung asandus militia, known simply as the Guard. From there he's managed to get himself into enough trouble to be slapped with the embarrassing job of guarding a boring human noblewoman, Fara fa Edilion, on her journey across the the continent's deserts to fulfill a marriage contract. Things go badly astray during this trip, and Fara is kidnapped by caetrans. Laedo and a local human guide named Kaitan Friave chase Fara's captors down and effectively retrieve the noblewoman, but this sparks off a series of worsening clashes, the worst of which involve tracking Fara into deep wilds after another kidnapping, this time performed by Laedo's own people. During all of this, political plays from the asandus capitol and from caetran forces culminate with a battle between both species' goddesses over the desert city of Fensirt.
Fara manages to save herself from her second set of captors, though Laedo and Kaitan follow her and the army of daemons she has built as the pair manage to pick off other asandus conspirators. Laedo has discovered that a confluence in factors beyond his reckoning have been pointing towards Fara having the potential for apotheosis, which is a very secret and very real threat on Avengaea for its godless humans, and one that both non-human goddesses have been crushing over past generations with much better success. Due to Fara's limited control over daemon forces when she arrives in Fensirt, she is able to force the two goddess' hands, preventing them from outright killing her. Instead, they work together to imprison her, but in their fury they slay Fara's entire army with their own magic. Laedo and Kaitan had managed to reach the outskirts of this traumatic three-army battle, and they survive the fires of both goddesses, but because the magic of deities is so much more potent than that of mortals, when they are hit by the fall-out they are both warped. Laedo finds himself at a loss of faith because he has seen deeper into asandus conspiracies than he'd ever known to question in his past, struggling to deal with the additional blow that his charge has been made a prisoner and taken out of his protection.
While on one hand, Laedo will feel disgust over interfering with other worlds at ALASTAIR's behest, on the other he feels a strong drive towards penance. Since he can't seek it from his goddess, he will be casting about for some ideals to help bolster his iron shod morals and values.
BACKGROUND:
Laedo was born to a prominent politician in the capital asandus city of Sanctuary. As a dragonet, he entered an ecclesiastic choir and hoped to eventually enter the ranks of askan priests, where he he hoped he could speak directly to Aska, the goddess of his people. That dream was soon dashed: Laedo was a rambunctious child, haughty for a boy, and easily picked on due to his stubborn morals. His sister, a more practical and ambitious creature, managed to oust him from the choir by setting him up for the fall in one of her own underhanded schemes. Laedo, out of a sense of begrudging family loyalty (he'd been double-crossed but could not prove that Assera had puppeted him to take the fall,) left Sanctuary to join the Guards as a young teenager.
He began to carefully foster a new hope: he'd ascend the ranks of Guards to the position of an Askalidan, which was an elite rank sanctioned to be Aska's eyes, ears and hands. This too failed miserably, but mostly because Laedo had a difficult time following the rank and file. He had more direct energy than most other asandae, challenged his superiors, and demanded action over introspection. The asandus military by comparison was mostly utilized to interact with political outposts, human settlements, and positions where disciplined forces were required. Laedo thought his prayers had been answered when a superior officer took an interest in him, but the relationship was doomed. When they got into an inevitable fight, she destroyed his reputation openly and he was stationed to the human city-state of Edilion to babysit human teenagers who needed ferrying between civilized settlements.
Laedo, feeling infuriated with his constant setbacks, had very little to do aside from snipe at his charges and pray for conflict to sate his frustrations. He got everything he prayed for when Fara was kidnapped. After this, he inadvertently paired up with the human, Kaitan Friave, and her daemon companions, Tuanada and Qensuna, when a solid contingent of caetrans attacked Kaitan's home city of Fensirt. While this was occurring, Fara went missing out from under their noses a second time, and it became apparent that the Askalidan--his people's elite guards--were responsible.
Laedo learned over the course of events that the goddesses feared that Fara had potential to become or produce a human deity, as gleaned from the fragmented visions of some of both Aska and Zenite's most trusted augurs. Zenite intended to crush Fara before she could reach her potential, while Aska had intentions to study the human in a scientific flurry of curiosity. Rather than cede to their wisdom, Laedo and Kaitan decided to hunt Fara down and protect her from this unexpected fate. Making a decision to go against Aska's direct wishes meant that he put his human charge and her safety above all of the dogma that he'd learned from childhood. Taking only the practical aspects of his teachings in place meant that he had to shuck a huge portion of his world views and understanding of himself--something that Laedo struggles with even now.
Though the two managed to find Fara, the human had found her own way to escape her prison camp by communicating with the local daemons. This communication had a ripple effect that attracted more and more of the strange, disparate beasts... but it became immediately apparent that Fara was not entirely in control of them. As they carried her away from her prison, back to the desert, Laedo and Kaitan fought off a squad of Askalidan that had been tasked with retrieving the noblewoman. Distracted as such, neither of her rescue party were able to penetrate the ranks of the daemons that swarmed around the noblewoman, and this turned into an infuriating cross-country chase. Zenite and Aska had thought to find Fara in Fensirt, which is why they had gathered their forces in the desert city, but strident disagreements on how to deal with Fara lead to a battle between caetrans and asandae. Laedo and Kaitan were forced to watch the fight--and Fara's use of daemon language, which nearly allowed the hoard to bleed the Goddesses dry of their life force despite the danger of releasing that much energy into the environment.
The Goddesses compromised by imprisoning Laedo's human charge under hard magic barriers the likes of which daemons could not penetrate or siphon away. They killed a lot of creatures in the process, and their bled, uncontrolled magic toxicified the surrounding city, now a wasteland. Kaitan mourned for her home city's loss and Laedo, aghast at what had fallen out over mere guesses by mortal prophets, fully aware that it was the actions of those around them that had caused this and not some unalterable guiding fate, renounced his position as Guard. It's only a few weeks later when he finally arrives in Oska.
PERSONALITY:
Laedo is bitter and entitled, a diva who speaks in a flowery language much like the rest of his species. He is very easily tweaked. Anything from frank language to human equalists to attacks against his fragile sense of nobility and ego are prone to make him retaliate with sneers and scoffs and round-about insults, but luckily his sense of a good insult is laughably tart. With his size advantage (at least in dragon from) he is really more bark than bite, as repelled by eating raw meat and physical butchering is another typical asandus trait. He has long since taken to askan preached prejudice against humans: they are weak creatures who need protection and care, but they are also weak-willed and foolish and below contempt. He holds to his morals with extreme stubbornness, meaning that he takes 'pick on someone your own size' to the extreme that he will defend even those he hates if he sees they're clearly an underdog. He can be easily misled and has been in the past. His querulous nature gives him a lot of difficulty in gaining allies, let alone friends.
Beyond this, Laedo has his better qualities, but they can be hard to find behind his very thick and prickly shields. He's got an incredible sense of duty, a unique sense of justice that favours the underdog, and a very straight-forward attitude that is not hard to win over, at least when the other is willing to ignore his sass and can demonstrate practical skills. He's very kinaesthetically aware in both asandus and human form, and is passionate about doing hard work. Meanwhile, he's got a sense of rhythm and harmony garnered from his youth and he still sings hymns despite his falling out with his goddess. When he is on good terms with someone, Laedo will do everything in his power to do right by them, up to and including chasing them to the ends of the planet. He is incredibly iffy about the idea of anybody riding him, but he will freely give magic to allies in need, healing, feeding, and sheltering them, sometimes to his own detriment.
Laedo is suffering from an existential crisis. His entire life was built around the worship of Aska, the attempt to fit into the rigid mores of his civilization, and the betterment of his place in it. Now that he has seen the dogma of Aska has been conjured mostly by religious politicians, and that the goddess is a flawed creature with too much power at her disposal, he feels a staggering loss of self. He still possesses the muscle-memory prejudices he learned about the superiority of his people, but now he doesn't have his underlying faith to back him up. It's made Laedo depressed and anxious, and poisoned his attempts to meditate in worship. He has an incredible amount of energy and fervour, but without direction he is eating at himself and tends to spit vitriol at others for little reason. He's looking for guidance and a cause to adhere to, but is too ashamed and prideful to admit it. Latching on to ALASTAIR is not his favourite solution, but he's taking what he can get.
ABILITIES:
Magic: Asandus magic is a unique property to Laedo's species, a malleable life force that is bestowed by Aska at birth and that fuels an asandus for her or his entire life. All asandae generate it. It is the property that causes them to grow so large, that allows them to age slowly, and that offsets their feeding habits to keep them healthy. A healthy dragon also has a surplus of magic that can be used to create spelled objects, manipulate surroundings through the use of psionics, or in direct bursts of pure energy. Those who can sense magic will see any asandus with a slight nimbus of light surrounding its body. Those that can manipulate magic can hypothetically drain that nimbus for personal use, though an asandus will recognize the attempt and quickly move to stop it. Asandae who use too much of their magic will gain a dull appearance, even to human or other non-magic-user eyes. They can and occasionally do use too much, which can negatively impact them in the way that extreme thirst or hunger can impact a human.
As for what magic Laedo can perform: he and his species are inherently able to shape shift, but this is limited to a human form, one that retains the same nacre-and-gold pattern of his dragon form. This is a specific gift of his Goddess and, like all of his species, it is a tool by which to interact civilly with humans they're meant to uplift.
-Laedo is quite good with directed force attacks. These act like light 'bullets' and range from scattershot (the better to score wings at close range) to highly precise laser-like bursts. They are meant to tangle with caetrans and specifically are meant to pierce caetran magical armor. They are likely to be deflected off of physically reflective material like polished metal or prismatic glass.
-When interacting with previously created spells, Laedo uses a weaving technique that resembles program recoding. He can analyse a spell for its intentions, break it down, and overlay his own magic on top to redirect it or nullify it. This may not be true for non-Avengaean magic, such as spells that rely on pure will or emotion, or spells that have no structural components to manipulate.
-Laedo can create a number of spells from scratch, anchored in physical objects. Most of these are fairly simple survival spells, like heat (varying from protection from the elements to cooking-temperatures), water purification and water actuation (sucking from the atmosphere, drying extra water out.) These include more frivolous spells, such as those he uses to create his gaudy outfits. Like all Guards who have seen tours of duty, he knows a small cadre of healing spells, from basic first aid to prevention of STI's and pregnancy. Sharpening spells for tooth and claw help him to fight even more effectively in his natural form.
-Lastly, Laedo's magic can be used as a shield. This mostly manifests in his armor, which is more reinforced than is decorative look would suggest. His nimbus can be attuned to protect against normal piercing and blunt-force attacks, but it can be nullified with proper counter-spells or with an equal dose of caetran magic. He can nullify incoming attack spells, but these take focus, so most battles with other magic users come down to the ability to work quickly, strategize to avoid spending more time undoing enemy spells than using his own, and to multi-task (flying in close combat while casting ancillary harmful spells is a good example of his skill level.)
-Laedo has been infected with powerful caetran magic in light of the goddess battle of Fensirt. The purple marks on his face are a physical manifestation of this phenomenon. They occasionally cause him physical illness, much like a flare-up after a sunburn, but they also interfere with his magic. Caetran magic is a direct opposite to asandus magic, meaning that regardless of what Laedo attempts to cast, there is a chance that it will be impeded or diluted by conflicting forces. This caetran magic is in no way sentient, but it is the direct product of a goddess, so it reacts unpredictably to mortal intervention. A skilled magic user might be able to siphon off some of it for their own uses, but it would take a deity to permanently remove the marks.
Psionics: A side-benefit of magic, psionics allow Laedo three traits. Telepathy--speaking mind to mind with those who are receptive to magic or psionics--is one. He can lift extra weight telekinetically--and in fact this is how he can launch his huge body into the sky. He does not use this very often on others, but when he does it is most often as a distractionary tactic (causing something to move behind an enemy to catch their attention for example.) He can also teleport, but in distances of ten kilometers or less. On Avengaea, complicated networks of teleportation nodes dot the landscape and allow larger parties to teleport longer distances. He could hypothetically create one of these (say, from Oska proper down to the lake) but it would take time and work to maintain, and those who wished to use it would need some kind of magically sympathetic device to activate it.
INVENTORY:
Laedo's inventory is composed entirely of magical items that transfer between latent magical energy and physical solid items whether he is in human or asandus form. In human form, he carries a kris dagger (a wavy short blade) on the right of his belt and a flame-bladed sword (a longer wavy blade) on the left. Depending on mood, his clothing takes on more armor-like variations, always in gold, with flowy under-layers that are often ivory, nacre, or rainbow toned. Sometimes he will wear a silk toga beneath a golden breast-plate, other times he'll wear heavily spiked golden armor to mimic the long horns lining his crown and down his neck in his natural form. He will almost always be wearing many rings, bracelets and toe-rings, and always wears a necklace or two with five golden discs a piece--this is a religious symbol of Aska and her four Lords. Even though he's lost his faith, he can't bear not to manifest it as a reminder of his past.
In asandus form, Laedo's garments are more sparse, usually including an ornamental harness that crosses his back and drapes over his folded wings, like pockets in which his folded wing-wrists can rest when not in use. Sometimes he includes extra spikes that remain snugly in place with magic, other times, draping swathes of silk in similar colour schemes as above. He often wears rings on fingers and toes, and sometimes cuffs on his tail in this form. Occasionally he will wear a chain on his neck that drips with golden drops in a similar pattern to the one he wears in human form.
All of these items can be removed, and he can disassemble them back into raw magic and reabsorb them as needed. This means that if he were to take any item off, it would persist outside of his presence and others would be able to use it. Others proficient with magic would be able to dissolve his items for use in practical spells, though overwriting their status as ornamentation and garments means that they would likely resist being turned into items or spells that were more than a step or two away from those functions.
WRITING SAMPLES.
NETWORK SAMPLE:
I am currently looking for a sparring partner outside of the guise of human form. The training hall is sufficient, for the most part, but it lacks the prestige of going tooth and claw against a worthy living opponent. Who of you dares to try?
[In his natural form, Laedo can appear somewhat intimidating. He's both large and predatory and luxuriously coloured, but he seems so full of himself that it might be difficult to take him at his word. Laedo's haughty mug takes on a slightly begrudging cast, ears canted and lips curling.]
I might be willing to attempt to cast a temporary spell, but I can't guarantee the results. I might be able to change my shape for that of a human, but it was never ordained that a human should have the same privilege. Still, we are in trying times out of our element. The prestige of knowing more than your weakened little bodies should come as a privilege.
LOG SAMPLE:
http://buttologists.dreamwidth.org/3680.html?thread=4441440#cmt4441440 (Either thread is a fair example of Laedo's attitude and general actions!)
