Enoonmai

[Anonymous]

Name: Enoonmai

Race: Astral Dragon

Gender: Female

Age: Unknown exactly – she has never told anyone and is probably not completely sure herself. She is believed to be around 100 years old, making her a young adult by dragon standards.

Appearance: CLICK HERE FOR IMAGE
This lithe, brightly-coloured dragon stands at about seven feet on her hind legs – in body she is no bigger than the average human, though of course her long neck, tail and wings give an impression of greater size. Her hide is silky smooth but tough, her slim head is adorned with a mighty crest of long magenta quills, and her sharp eyes glow a bright neon green. Her claws and her razor teeth are all bright crimson in colour, as if permanently blood-stained – a colour scheme that purposefully demonstrates her ferocity.

Personality: Feisty and untameable, Enoonmai is a wild and eccentric creature who enjoys life for what it is and places her freedom before all else. She is energetic and light-hearted, walking with a lively strut in her step and a dangerous smile on her face. This dragon is no mere beast, but a cunning and calculating being of sharp mind and equally sharp tongue. She speaks in a smooth, sly tone, with a cheeky sense of humour and cool wit, all often disguising the fact that she can be quite flighty and scatter-brained at times. She detests all manner of authority and is well known for being very rebellious.
Enoonmai is, for the most part, tolerant of the inhabitants of Thar Shaddin. She does, after all, live amongst them as a citizen, and so is generally friendly towards all who are respectful of her. However, by nature this dragon is fierce and unpredictable in manner – she has a crazed look in her eye and a fiery temper to boot, making it difficult for anyone to completely trust her. In turn, Mai’s own trust is not given easily, as she is in fact a very defensive creature, constantly wary of everything around her and only able to properly relax in familiar surroundings with familiar people. Even her garish colouring seems to act as a warning for people to stay back and be wary of her often deadly nature.
Her unbridled way of life has ended up creating a vicious circle within herself. This dragon loves run and soar and swim and explore the world around her with no one standing in her way. She has the power to be so bold and carefree, and her love for her own liberty has resulted in a terrible phobia of being captured, hunted, or restrained in any way. If she gets even the slightest sense that she is being hounded or cornered, she panics and reacts violently, becoming a vicious flurry of teeth, talons, and pent-up rage…

Abilities: It can come as a surprise to many that this fanciful and odd-looking dragon does not possess the ability to wield magic, despite being born from it. She has a good sense for magic, and retains the ability to cross some astral planes, but apart from that, Enoonmai is grounded in the laws of physics to the point that even her fire-breathing abilities are limited. She can breath fire, but it is a skill that she only uses when she really needs to, as it can take a frustrating amount of time and concentration to stoke up her fire-gut – the organ within her that produces the flammable gas essential for producing fire. However, fire-breathing comes quickly to her if she is in an especially bad mood, as her fire-gut is automatically triggered into action by violent mood swings.
Mai is also unusual in that she is actually better at running than she is at flying. Her legs are long and powerful while her arms are somewhat shorter, and so she prefers to walk upright like a bird or raptor, only dropping to all-fours when scaling uneven surfaces. And in this upright stance she can run like the wind, reaching speeds of up to 40 mph on an open road. She is also a very good swimmer – this is not a natural skill, but out of her love of water she has taught herself to swim underwater with great efficiency by folding her wings in tight and weaving through the water in a reptilian manner.
And, strangely for a dragon, it is flying that Enoonmai often has problems with. Because she is not particularly streamlined in shape, and because her wingspan is not functionally relative to her size, getting airborne takes a lot of effort and power. She cannot simply lift off from the ground – instead she has to either run straight until the wind catches her wings, or take off from a high point such as a roof or hill. Staying aloft is then a struggle unless she can find a thermal to lift her. But despite this, Enoonmai is a very skilled flier – once she is up and airborne, she seems unstoppable. She adores the gift of flight and loves to spend as much time in the air as possible, having over the years built up her strength and skill in order to cope with being a large flying creature under the laws of gravity. And she has never been the sort to care much for lazy glides through the clouds – instead she prefers to tempt fate by darting low over trees and buildings, often flying impossibly low to the ground.
And then of course there are her defensive skills, involving her teeth and talons and quick instincts. When fighting on the ground she becomes like a predatory dinosaur – strutting and stalking with her wings and hackles raised, talons spread and jaws wide, before leaping to grab the victim and deliver a fatal bite.

History: As is the way for many mysterious oddities set loose into the world through the breached barrier between magic and nature, Enoonmai’s early years were ones of secrecy and seclusion. Far from any kind of human civilization, Enoonmai began her life in an isolated valley – not born into it but churned out by the astral plane. This dragon was unlike the great scaly beasts of folklore, but a strange and wily being, fierce and tricky by nature and sharp of mind – unique, or perhaps simply the first of a new race. Though created as an adult in body, the dragon’s mind was formed new – just like any natural-born being, she had no memory of her ‘birth’ - her consciousness developed just as with any newborn as her understanding of the world grew. However, as the years went by, Mai began to show signs of attitudes and ideas that she could not possibly have learnt simply from her environment. For one thing, she had the gift of speech, being able to talk fluently and wittily in the human tongue. And, despite her secluded upbringing, as already had an uncanny knowledge of the way the world worked. These were talents assigned to her by whatever astral realm was responsible for her creation, and it soon grew frustrating for the dragon to be unable to have a proper conversation with anyone, being that all her neighbours were animals. The only reason she had not left the valley as soon as she had learnt to fly was because she was very fond of her home, especially after discovering that her valley was in fact the only lush spot of land for miles around. But, the dragon’s urge for exploration was fuelled more and more by unnaturally-placed memories of great human civilizations that she began to recall as time went on. Eventually her restlessness grew too great to bear, and so after almost a hundred years spent in the hidden valley, Enoonmai abandoned her home to begin her quest of discovery.
After a few days of travel across wide, barren countryside, Enoonmai happened upon her first human settlement, in the form of a village called Shim. Though the atmosphere was quiet and tense, Mai was fascinated and devoted a whole week to sneaking around the village, mostly keeping herself to herself but occasionally jumping out at unsuspecting locals. Though the dragon could have quite happily settled in the village, she had overheard mention of a much bigger, busier settlement – a city called Thar Shaddin – and so she decided to press on.
Though not the most welcoming of places, Thar Shaddin turned out to be everything Enoonmai had hoped it would be. Home to all manner of races but primarily a humanoid population, Mai would stick out like a sore thumb in the crowds, but that did not bother her – she knew immediately that she had found her new home.
Though still paying regular visits to Shim, these days Enoonmai spends most of her time in the city, living rough and spending the nights wherever she fancies. However, the dragon aspires to find the money to buy herself a proper place to live, but time will tell as to whether she will find work and earn money the honest way, or give in to that draconian urge to steal and hoard treasure…

Note: The character of Enoonmai and all related images are © to me, R Cooper. The featured image was first displayed at DeviantART under the name Chikkennoodul.

[Frug]

My apologies for the delay in reviewing your character. I've been much busy lately, as have pretty much everyone on this board. But anyway, enough excuses. I did read it a few days ago, I just let it sit, and it's not like I'd ever abandon the board.

I think the character fits quite well with the world of pal tahrenor, given the way she was spawned by magic. She hasn't got any magic or abilities that I think are unfair at all. Not many suggestions to give, but I have a few.

Maybe have her labeled not as a dragon, but as some kind of sub-species (i forget the terms biologists use for animal taxonomy. Breed?) of dragon because a dragon dragon is one in the traditional sense, although she is quite close to that. She has no scales, which is a major difference. And she's small.

50 years isn't really young adult by dragon standards. My conception of dragons has them living pretty much indefinately, be that into thousands of years if they aren't killed. 50 is still a kid to most dragons, not that there are many of them.

Also, although you didn't specify anything in her magical abilities, I think you should consider that she would have a very strong innate understanding of the astral plane and magic, and perhaps give her the ability to cross planes. At the very least, she can sense magic better than most people, which means she would get some strong negative feelings from the cemetary in Shim.

[Anonymous]

Alighty then, let's see...

Ok, I see what you mean the age. I've changed it to 100 - because of Mai's history, I can't really change it to much more than that because otherwise it would seem a bit crazy for her to take, say, a thousand years to realise that the valley isn't where she wants to be.

And that's a very good point about her magic-sense, so I've edited her abilities.

I'm not quite sure what to do about her species - I don't mind changing it but I don't know what to change it to. All I can think of are things like 'spirit dragon', which sound a bit corny.

[Frug]

How about astral dragon?

[Chrishton Radu]

Alright, then your character is approved and I'll move it shortly. Now you need to find a party to join and a way to join them.