![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mercyisweakness〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Devi
AGE: old enough
JOURNAL:
deviroarsIM / EMAIL: devimelete@hotmail.com
PLURK: devimelete
RETURNING: Yes; Carl Grimes from Walking Dead
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Crematia
CHARACTER AGE: About roughly 5000 years old in her canon point
CANON ORIGIN: Dragonlance; but she comes from a mini-series called The Lost Histories that chronicles various races and their histories before the Catacylsm.
CHRONOLOGY: post-death
CLASS: VILLAIN ALL THE WAY
HOUSING: random, but she will abandon it for her lair she made when she was in the game.
BACKGROUND: Crematia's history marks the earliest ages of her world, so she has a indirect link to the cosmic history that involves the creation of her homeworld.
(Disclaimer: This is also where canon history gets complicated, as various authors of the Dragonlance storyline made reference to two different wars, and there are different sources saying different things, with the details of the All-Saints War and the All-Dragons War being flipped around, saying the All-Dragons War was the first real war, while other sources said the All-Saints War was the first one, creating A LOT of continuity problems. For my sanity's sake, I'm using the short story Aurora's Eggs that features prominently Crematia's father Furyion and Takhisis and use it as a basis for Crematia's backstory, with the All-Dragons War happening before the All-Saints War.)
A timeless age ago, there was a cosmic individual called The High God, who then planned to create a world and wrote them down in a book. Another primordal entity, Chaos, also existed, but he kept to the outskirts.
In a deep, cosmic realm known only to the High God, he called forth two deities: siblings, one god powerful in light, the other rules in darkness. Paladine and Takhisis agreed to help the High God to put the plans in motion in creating a whole new world. Noting the stark difference between brother and sister, The High God summoned another diety, Gilean, the god of knowledge, to take responsibility of the book's contents and to provide a counter balance to both Paladine's and Takhisis' extreme personalities. The High God then departs to the Beyond, allowing the three gods to create the world they are summoned to do.
All three gods decided they need more assistance. Paladine summoned following gods: Mishakal, trusted partner and goddess of restoration; Majere, god of meditation and friend of Paladine; and Branchala, god of song and inspiration. Mishakal presented to Paladine two twin gods: Kiri-Jolith, the god of unity and Habbakuk the god of persistance. Paladine accepted them and became the leader of the good god faction. Takhisis summoned Sargonnas, the god of vengeance as her consort as she found Morgion, the god of decay and disease; Hiddukel the god of greed and exploitation; she saved Chemosh the god of the fatalism and the undead from the Void of Chaos. She at last summoned Zeboim, the goddess of anger and strife.
Gilean called forth Reorx, the god of crafting and creation, the two companion gods Sirrion, the god of transformation, and Shinare the goddess of interaction and wealth. Finally he called out to Zivilyn, the god of wisdom and enlightenment.
With everyone together, all the gods set to work on creating the world. Reorx forged world of Krynn with his hammer, and the sparks that sprung from his works became stars. All the deities blessed the young world, each gift given to the new world individually yet merging with others gifts, churning out fire and ice, stone and water, mountains and seas.
As Krynn slowly comes into fruition, Paladine and Reorx worked together to create the first living beings: dragons. Reorx carved them out of various metals, and Paladine gave the metallic statutes life to them. However, Takhisis craved control over Krynn, and saw the dragons as a first opportunity. So behind Reorx and Paladine's backs, she corrupted the five dragons into her own image, claiming them as her own by tarnishing their metallic colors into her own: red, blue, green, white, and black.
Paladine was in a period of mourning over the dragons he had lost, until Reorx had Paladine to pick out more precious metals from Krynn, this time gold, silver, bronze, copper, and brass. Still heartbroken from losing his sons, Paladine breathed life into the statues once more, creating five more dragons that he can call his own.
After Paladine and Reorx's creations of the new dragons, a war among gods broke out as news of Takhisis' betrayal went out. This war, called the All-Dragons War, nearly destroyed Kyrnn, causing a momentary truce among the gods as they realized the damage they have caused. In the end the gods decided to leave Kyrnn to a distance place where they created home planes for themselves, while still close to the world they created: the Dome of Creation for the good gods, the Hidden Vale for the neutral gods, and the Abyss for the evil gods. After that, the gods had never fought directly on Krynn again.
But the peace didn't last long. The gods have discovered that the stars have spirits within them, and greatly coveted them. The evil gods wanted to subjugate them, the good gods wanted to set them free from their celestial bodies. This created another war, the All-Saints War, and for the first and only time did the High God intervene to stop the fighting. He instead had all the gods to grant the spirits three gifts. The evil gods created placed desire and ambition to the spirits, the good gods physical forms to enjoy the world's pleasures, and the neutral gods gave them free will. From the evil gods, ogres were created. From the good gods, elves were created and from the neutral gods, humans were made. After the three races were created, the High God withdrew to the Beyond for good. To make the truce have more solid standing, the gods produced more gods: using the power of his mind Gilean created Lunitari the Red, the goddess of neutral magic, while Paladine and Mishakal produced a son, Solinari the White, the god of good magic, and Takhisis and Sargonnas had Nuitari the Black, the god of evil magic. These three new deities are represented by their own respective moons: the red moon, the black moon, and the white moon, and they stand between the world and the gods.
Takhisis still coveted power, but as she can no longer directly fight over Krynn she was forced in a stalemate. It was around the same time Paladine and Takhisis discovered the means to mate with their dragons and lay a clutch, but Takhisis housed her eggs in the Abyss while Paladine's remain on Krynn, inside the Kharolis Mountains in a hidden grotto.
Realizing the opportunity given to her, she used proxies to conquer Krynn: her corrupted dragons she had mated and spawn eggs from. She sent her dragons, the Sons of Takhisis as they called themselves, to slay the metallic dragons. One by one, each metallic dragon save for Aurora the Gold was slain. In return, Aurora methodically killed off each Son of Takhisis one by one, until Furyion the Red was the last one standing. In her battles, Aurora obtained many wounds, and was weakened and unable to kill the red dragon on her own strength. So she used trickery instead, grappling the red and turning herself into a stone monument, to be an anchor to drown Furyion in an lake inside the mountain - the very mountain that housed the eggs.
Over the millennia, more races emerge, mostly in thanks of the Graygem that accidentally entrapped the physical entity of Chaos and transformed many humans and elves and creatures into new races like dwarves and kender and sea elves. Ogre civilization rose in prominence but only to fall into scattered tribes into the Khalkist mountains. Humans settled into the plains, and the elves retreated into the old forests. And then one day, Takhsis' eggs hatched, and this is where Crematia's story really begins.
Crematia's early life was basically a sheltered life in the Abyss, learning her mother's memorable lessons such as the future red dragon creed: "Mercy is weakness, and weakness is death." Crematia took these lessons to heart and became Takhisis' greatest achieving child, selected to lead Takhisis' followers to world domination. When Crematia became old and strong enough, Takhisis blessed her with magic and sent her on her way, leaving to her daughter to find out out how to conquer Krynn by herself.
And she did a very good job of it. Within moments of arriving she discovered the ogre tribes and quickly subdued them, anointing one ogre tribe leader as her general for her future ogre armies. She gathered so many tribes of ogres and bakali and united them under Takhisis' name, she and her chromatic siblings and her army took the elves by surprise and destroyed their city and villages. Of course, the destruction of the Silvenesti elves' land gain the attention of the metallic dragons, the elves' most powerful friends. However, she laid a trap for them, and in one fell swoop, killed three out of the five patriarchs of the metallic dragon clans. This officially resulted as the beginning of the First Dragon War.
However, Crematia faced her defeat when Aurican, son of Aurora the Gold, managed to returned the long-lost magic to Krynn (it was mostly gone thanks to the deaths of the Daughters of Paladine), by the power of dragonstones. These dragonstones captured the magical essence of her chromatic kin and as a result, sucked them and entrapped them within these stones. Taken aback by her battle wounds and without the support of her kin, she goes into hiding, hibernating for half an millennia. When she finally woken up, she was healed, and had a new plan for domination, which was more or less the same plan as before.
The only exception is that this time, she had her own children to provide back-up, with her son Deathfyre as the de facto leader of his siblings, and as a result her chief second-in-command. Unfortunately for Crematia, Aurican was alerted early of her plans, and brought the fight to her. This time, she was slain by Aurican from an ice spell that shatter her wings, causing her to fall to her death. Her son Deathfyre took up the mantle and discovered the metallic dragons' secret lair and attacked in vengeance, culling most of the metallic wyrmlings and killing Aurican. With the metallic dragons weakened and unable to provide defense to the elves, Deathfyre turned his attention to the elves. However, before he could attack the elves, the three mages that helped Aurican to return magic to the world wracked the land with wild magic, destroying cities and forest and other landmarks, but also sucking in the chromatic dragons into the earth, eventually killing them except for Deathfyre, who survived and managed to bring about the next Dragon War that will eventually led all dragons into a millennia-long exile.
PERSONALITY:Vain, arrogant, cruel, warmongering and greedy, Crematia cares nothing about being good - except, perhaps, being the best dragon her mother is ever proud of hatching. She cares only of two things: domination and violence. Crematia is narrow minded in her goals, and she almost always succecced. Friendship, loyalty, love - those are meaningless to her (except maybe gaining more appreciation and praise from her mother). While even metallic dragons (her most powerful enemies) will agree that dragons are not meant for love, she doesn't believe in the power of friendship like they do. What she does believe in is enslaving or destroying others, and showcasing her natural might. The orge armies that she led? She merely killed their leaders and elect the ones that declare themselves "her slaves" and follow her willingly. And those who beg for mercy: she gives them none of it. She even accepts her son Deathfyre's killing and eating one of his nestmates when she was slow to bring food, as it falls into Takhisis' creed: "Mercy is weakness, and weakness is death."
Despite the image of an hellfire and brimstone monster she makes herself out to be, Crematia is very sly, and can withhold secrets when she feels the need to do so. She understands the value of discretion and the need to retreat, and does so in an orderly fashion, much to the frustration of her enemies. She understands the cruelty of being appearing fragile to her enemies, and uses such appearances to mock them, or even set a trap for them. Crematia, for a lack of a better word, is wild but she doesn't lack discipline. As much as she enjoys revealing herself quickly, she plans ahead to make the best effort at the best time for the best result (even though a dragon's idea of "planning ahead" might count as "too damn long" for a short-lived species like humans - dragons are rather notorious of taking their time).
But she does have some "positive" points to her character, if you consider the obsessive loyalty to her mother and to her megalomaniacal pride toward her son Deathfyre to be really a good thing (although it's been hinted that she may have some rather incestuous thoughts toward her most favored son, further showing that her depravity have no bounds). She does have positive professional relationships to those who serve her well, and while she may find them expendable in the long run, she is at least considerate to their well-being.
She's also somewhat reminiscent of a drill sergeant, especially if she taken those under her wing for her mother's goals. She grinds them constantly into being evil, even to her own children. If she sees one child of hers that not behaving like a true red dragon would, she puts them in their place immediately. For other races, her rule is more stern, but more fair. She's charismatic to her troops, rallying up and even gave them feasts of elves to gorge themselves on, rallying their aggression to her enemies, using them as a path to true domination.
I have to emphasize that it is really unknown how she might get along with anyone who is her equal - her mother stressed in teaching her the lesson in finding her strongest enemies and kill them before going after the second-strongest enemies and kill them as well. As she grew up in the Abyss, she had killed all of her red nestmates (including one unnamed brother who also happened to be her mate) to have the honor of being the most ruthless and most powerful of all red dragons. If Takhisis hadn't taken the other chromatic dragons somewhere else to turn into powerful soldiers, she would have killed them as well. When she finally emerged on Kyrnn, all the chromatic dragons followed Crematia's lead as per Takhisis' instructions, so there was no dragon to challenge or be equal to her authority. Crematia never had to learn how to tolerate peers of equal standing, and in some ways that lead to her failures in losing the first Dragon War: she may have subordinates, but that wasn't enough to encompass the friendship that the metallic dragons had with not only elves, but with humans and gryphons and all sorts of races. She's so good at subduing and enslaving, she never did realize the potential of allowing others - especially her allies - to be as strong as she is.
It has to be noted that several thousand years after Crematia died, her goddess mother Takhisis was made mortal and was slain. Takhisis' death did a monumental change with the chromatic dragons, particularly red dragons whom Takhsis had a personal connection to them and had an iron grip on their lives, making them somewhat mollified to take orders, especially hers. With Takhisis gone, red dragons are less inclined to take part in any major "evil" plots like Crematia did when she was alive and in Takhisis' service, and will often refuse to take part in such plots if they interfere with their own plans or there wasn't enough payment to incite them. Speaking meta-wise, it is entirely possible for Crematia to become something similar without the influence of her chaotic mother.
POWER:PHYSICAL:
Crematia is a red dragon, so she is far from human. She is enormous, reaching up to the length of 120 feet, and her body is large and bulky. She can snap people up in her jaws in a flash, or can tear down three-story structures with her large size. I'm gonna list the unique abilities she has that comes with her naturally as a red dragon, and what will not be there in the game setting, or be extremely modified.
Blindsense - the ability to see obscure or invisible objects - limited; can only see within 100 ft
Darkvision - the ability to see in the dark as clearly as day - limited; can only see within the range of 200 ft.
Each dragon species have a spell-like abilities that come naturally - for example, a gold dragon can naturally produce a bless (a good luck spell) casting without having to learn it in their own personal cache of spells, but a red dragon will have to learn it. For red dragons, these natural spells are:
- Locate Object (finding things easily), used twice a day
- Suggestion (a mind-affecting spell)
- Find the Path (a spell that finds the quickest shortcut), used once a day.
Crematia will NOT have the suggestion ability.
Her breathe weapon is fire that spreads out like a cone; she also has fire immunity (meaning she fire doesn't hurt her that easily), but with a severe weakness to any cold or cold related powers that can lead to her death.
Shapeshifting
Crematia has the power to shape her body into other forms - a human form, a vulture, ect. She has the ability to cast spells in her various of forms, along with the limitations her spells have.
She won't have her dragon senses her human form will have, nor will she will have the strength of her dragon form as a human (something dragons have in canon, apparently).
Spellcasting
Dragons in general are gifted with the power of magic, and Crematia is a master of it. In general of the canon, dragons are basically the ultimate god-mods in their own universe, with the exception of the gods, so I'm only limiting what spells she did in canon, and I'll limit how many times she can use it so she won't be a godmod hack.
- Haste - capable of increasing speed and agility tenfold; can use only once a day
- Teleportation - able to go to one spot to the other in a second; this spell will have a limited range of 80 miles and can only use it five times a day.
- Invisibility - turn invisible; can use only twice a day.
- Levitation - can cast herself or other people/things into levitating into the air; three times a day.
-
- Wall of Stone - construct a large wall of stone out of stone
- Illusions - this is a very vague ability, but she was seen casting imaginary walls to hide her nest, and according to Deathfyre he was taught the illusion mirror spell that shows three images of the caster. I'm gonna limit it it's usage to only once a day and if someone sees though it, then it's a wasted spell and she has to wait until the next day to use it again. She can conjure up whatever illusion she wants, but she has to be conservative about it.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
[ There is a video, showing the night sky. You don't see the speaker's face, but you don't have too: the slightly distinctive feminine voice; the deep growl, the whispering accents make it no question that the speaker is not human. ]
I have returned . . .
[ Oh, what a blessing and a curse. She died as she lived, and now she is, alive and with potential, but lacks a course. Takhisis was her goal, her life, and now her goddess mother is not here for instructions. For once, Crematia is truly on her own, which in part she finds terrifying, but shall not admit it. Her pride will not allow it. ]
Heroes. A hero slain me. I suppose he's what you would call a hero.
[ There, the speaker steps into view, but only at an angle - from below. A crocodile visage appears, bright red with a yellow underbelly, with teeth as long as a sword showing. Her yellow eyes burn brightly in the dim night, barely lit by the stars and nearby civilization. ]
But in the end, he'll burn. He and his children and his charges and his friends, they will burn and be struck by all the hate and power that my followers. I know, for my son Deathfyre leads him.
[ Smoke starts to drift from her nostrils. ]
Do you know what the smell of raw flesh cooking is like? I do. It smells wonderful. I love it how it sizzles and pops.
But I enjoy the screams more.
[ The massive head swings back, back out of view. ]
Perhaps I can give a demonstration for the ignorant, shall I? Heroes will approach me. Will they be as strong as Aurican, son of Aurora?
That, I doubt. After all, he did kill me.
[ And with a terrible, shrieking roar, Crematia comes into view, her talons merely inches away from her transmitter device. There is a large whoosh and the sound of things burning.
She had lit a patch of trees on fire, and already car alarms are being set off. ]
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:
Rage is a wonderful weapon. Rage gives her strength, give her frenzy, allows her to move erratically, but not too much so that she can use her cunning.
But there's not much cunning involved with it comes to burning. She swoops down, fire spilling out of her massive jaws. Cars, houses, people, little animals - they all burn easily. Their screams pleases her. She flaps her wings once more, attempting to make another dive toward the suburban cluster of houses. So neat and orderly, those houses.
Not anymore. Instead of using her fire, she landed on a burning houses, destroying their foundations with her weight and size. A tree next to it was unburnt, but Crematia quickly corrects that.
For several minutes she takes delight in just bulldozing her way through several houses with her strength alone, snapping her jaws at metal poles that shower the town with yellow, dimmed light. The electricity of the poles strike at her teeth and gums, further driving her rage, opting to melt the metal and wiring within with her breath.
So many people running for their lives, some of them already on fire and withering as they do. Some aren't running at all, instead weeping over corpses.
Within a few seconds, they won't be making any sounds at all.
But wait - a force, huge one at that, seem to come out of nowhere and nearly knocked her off her feat. Instead she staggered, stepping on cars, crushing them underfoot as they obnoxiously bleat their protest.
She turns and see various individuals charging at her, all dressed in outlandish colors, in one way or the other. Tiny fists were raised and feet rooted, they all the look of steady determination.
"You challenge me with death?!" Crematia roars. "Then come! There is nothing here but fire!"
And with that, she charges at them, this time desperately hoping that one of them might be as strong as the dragon that has slain her before.
FINAL NOTES: n/a
