Characters

There is only one Chimenticore aerie where the chimenticores are born black, and that’s the Pitch aerie where the chimenticores are rumored to side with demons to gain some of their power for themselves. If you want something carried somewhere by stealth, or something carried around that no one should be in possession of, you do business with Pitch.

The seers of Pitch cast their scrying runes over every litter their queen births and four month old Jynx got the lot that destined it to be cast out as it could bring harm to the Pitch Aerie. Since chimenticores often trade children between tribes to prevent inbreeding he was sent along in the latest exchange and went to Octave Aerie where he was raised. He has no memory of his time at Pitch but from the rumors he heard here and there he was happy to be raised elsewhere.

At thirteen he was allowed to choose his own name and decided on ‘Ace’ in defiance of his birth name of ‘Jynx’.

Ace was small for a chimenticore but he was fast and dedicated and was soon put to work as a flight courier for messages and a cart puller for deliveries from Aukate’s main town. He was too small to carry more than one person swiftly, but food deliveries and small batches of supplies were easily managed for him.

Although young, he has grown close to Hector and Cobalt and always volunteers to deliver for him or run errands for both when he can. Ace also has a secret passion for racing and teaching younger chimenticores how to fly.

Aileeron hails from the island of February where his father, D. K. Romanoren, is the governor of Purity, the largest city there. His father was very hands-off in raising him and left a lot of his upbringing to the family nanny, a sparrow named Diete. An unintended side effect of this is that Aileeron ended up adopting the nanny’s strange accent after spending so much time with her.

His father held the belief that the whiter your fur was, the more pure and perfect you were. Aileeron fostered and parroted his father’s rhetoric until his father disowned Aileeron’s Sister, Rai, because she fell in love with a non-white lion instead of accepting the arranged marriage that had been prepared for her. Aileeron internalized much of his anger towards his father but a year later he left his home island and joined Overlord Fox’s forces as a means of his own escape. D. K. saw his son leaving as simply the boy looking to see the world before settling back in and allowed it.

Aileeron quickly rose through the ranks and within a year of passing boot camp he became the captain of Fox’s guard. Despite how much the lion irritated the people around him with his temper and haughty attitude, he did have an aptitude for leadership and knew how to get the people under him motivated. It was even rumored that Aileeron was under consideration to be Fox’s next second-in-command.

All that shattered when Fox allowed Darius Steele to become her second instead of Aileeron. The lion was furious that Fox let the man that had commanded the very forces the lair had been fighting against become her most trusted advisor. Unfortunately all of his protests were met with deaf ears and Aileeron could only coldly rage against what he saw as the ultimate injustice against what he had been working so hard to attain. The only thing that kept Aileeron from quitting his job entirely was that Fox had recently hired his estranged sister into the ranks as well and Aileeron saw it as his duty to resume his role of protective big brother to her.

So Aileeron continues his job, all the while he builds up a larger and larger grudge against the Darnathi that took his job and seem to be quietly taking over Aukate.

Alex was always something of a prodigy. Before she even left the tadpole pools she was taking apart the water filter machinery and putting it back together. Although born with weak empathic ability, she was frighteningly intelligent and was quickly enrolled in a technical university at the unthinkable age (for a darnathi) of thirty. She trained in everything she could get her hands on and multiple times was offered teaching positions at the academy. She declined each time as her aim was simply learning all there was to learn about fixing and building any type of machinery be it simple or complicated as she could manage. She studied for almost a century at any university and school where there was something new for her to learn. And when there was nothing anyone else could teach her she joined the colonization initiative in the hopes of learning something new beyond Alvarni.

Titan himself requested her for his ship, deciding that as a highblood it was his right to have the best and Alexandrite was most assuredly the best. While on the ship she soon made friends with a mixed blooded darnathi named Nephrite and the two found they were good counterpoints for one another as Nephrite was a talented chemist with skills in biology. It was through their combined knowledge that Maxfield experimented with copying memories, personality traits, and brainwaves onto a Sirenidae personality chip and potentially making copies of specific people and putting them in blank sirenidae bodies. Max had no idea that, thanks to Timber’s botched attempt to murder Alex, he would be his own first test subject for the sirenidae experiment.

Alex knows deep down that the sirenidae she is close to is not the real Maxfield, and that the real Maxfield died in their field lab and his body is in stasis on Titan’s ship. But Alex is happy to have a piece of her lover with her, even if that piece is now a fluffy snakerat. She hopes perhaps that one day they can put their minds together again and somehow give Nephrite a real body some day.

Ali’i, often called “Lee” by his friends, is the son of Aileeron’s sister, Rei. Rei had fallen in love with a non-white lion instead of the man her father arranged for her to marry. They were to be married in secret until one day he simply never came home. When Rei confronted her father on his disappearance he made no airs at all of hiding the fact that he had arranged for his death and left strong words that made it clear to Rei that if she didn’t do as she was told, she’d vanish too. Not soon after that, Rei realized she was pregnant.

She gave birth to Ali’i on Aperia and kept hidden as best as she could, sometimes dying her fur and wearing wigs and oils to mask her scent. She moved a great deal and for almost a decade she and her son never stayed in the same place for too long. But while working odd jobs on January, Ali’i became ill and Rei couldn’t afford his treatment. It was then she reached out to her brother, Aileeron, and asked him for help.

Aileeron arranged for the mother and son to come to Aukate and live under the Overlord’s protection. Ali’i was treated and soon thrived at the lair. Rei finally had a stable job, a good home, and money to help her raise her child.

Ali’i is a shy boy due to being taught to be paranoid around anyone who might remotely look like one of D.K.’s agents, but he is slowly coming out of his shell on Aukate and learning to make friends. In particular a young Pegasus named Rain has taken it upon herself to help Ali’i out.

Tungsten is a mixed blood who got lucky in many ways. The majority of his family reflect commonblood roots, but Tungsten somehow ended up with pure highblood traits. It’s unknown whether his parents arranged for him to end up that way, or he got a lucky turn, or one of the gene doctors decided to enhance his highblood traits. But whatever the cause or reason and despite his mixed lineage, Tungsten can easily pass for a pure highblood. (With the darnathi obsession with genetics, it was never a question that his parents were not his parents.)

He was named after a highblood writer his mother was fond of (Much to the writer’s chagrin once General Tungsten started making a name for himself), and was mentored by a mixed blood general who taught him to respect those weaker than him and learn from the past. He filled Tungsten’s head full of stories, so much so that even now Tungsten has a soft spot for collectables with stories and keeps a vast array of trinkets that have tales and memories attached to them, including a piece of Ferric the Rustbringer’s final sword from his final battle as a memory to find gentler methods to win his own battles.

Tungsten learned how to battle with his words and quickly developed a knack for getting on someone’s nerves without saying anything overtly insulting. People were used to an aggressive and brutal highblood. But Tungsten developed a quick wit and diplomatic manner rarely seen in his kind. People close to Tungsten shortened his name to “Tung” not as a term of affection, but to note the general’s apparent silver tongue.

His silver tongue did get him in trouble when he began to flirt with a particularly powerful empath. In Tungsten’s attempt to show that relationships didn’t need to be arranged like many of the ruling highbloods seemed to think, he fell victim to empath abuse and ended up having to order the permanent sterilization of the empath to break the partial bond that had formed between the two before she could fully overwhelm him. To help him recover, Tungsten took on a therapy pet, an overly maternal and doting Dolphoria named Temper.

Tungsten is trained to fight and keeps his body in prime shape, but most of the highblood’s battles are fought on the negotiation table. So skilled was he, in fact, that he managed to secure a ship and crew for a cancelled expedition to earth to join the first colony ship to Aukate. Tungsten was chosen to lead three ships and captained the flagship, with Commander Malachite and Commander Cinnabar captaining the other two.

Although his mission is technically conquest, all Tungsten truly seems to want to do is settle on this strange new land and get along as well as he can. He has an odd obsession with befriending Darius Steele, much to the former General’s chagrin. The truth of it is that Tungsten sees commonbloods as people who need his protection and he desperately wishes to push the message that he is not like Titan. But all Steele sees is a highblood getting far too friendly with him.

Tungsten’s only weakness is that he has a taste for the finer things. He keeps a private stock of darnathi plants to distill into drinks and tanks of rare and exotic fish usually reserved for fine dining on Alvarni. He has also developed a taste for mangos and, to Steele’s further chagrin, the local tea. Blends made by Artemis hold a particular fondness for him.

Ammolite was always reaching for greatness. She was a skilled empath and did remarcably well in the initiative program. She even managed to get out of a forced relationship when she started implying that there was a powerful highblood that was willing to purchase her contract. What she failed to mention was that it was a highblood she was manipulating with her empathy and someone she planned to use as a pawn to live the high and easy life. She had almost bonded herself to her prey when he suddenly realized what was being done to him and had Ammolite permanently sterilized to remove the bond and rip her empathy away in the process.

Without her empathy, Ammolite was useless to everyone including the initiative. Her sister, Beryl, tried to teach her the art of dna scrubbing and breeding the animals the darnathi use as servants and tools, but unlike Beryl, Ammolite hated animals. Still, the idea of taking care of creatures planted a seed in Beryl’s mind that later grew into what she thought would be her next path to the easy life.

She adopted an initiative child and happily lived off of the stipend and free housing that came with being willing to raise a high level empath. Although she lacked empathy herself, she remembered her training and was able to teach the tadpole the basics of control and the first levels of empath conditioning to prepare him for the eventual golden cage.

All of that came crashing down when her adopted child grew deathly ill. She tried medicating the young empath herself but his condition only worsened and to save his life she reluctantly took him to a doctor. When the doctor scolded her on her ill treatment she took matters into her own hands and forced the child to draw energy from her to heal himself. It worked, but almost cost Ammolite her life.

To save face (and avoid arrest for almost killing an initiative tadpole) Ammolte paid for her child’s tuition and utterly disowned him. She lived off of her savings for as long as she could, but when she realized that there was no other place that would take her for work on the planet after two black marks to her name. The reluctantly took her sister’s offer to come to one of the darnathi colonies and start a new life. Unfortunately that new life included living near the tadpole she almost killed, a young darnathi named Garret Silver.

Apollo once was only known by his number and served on Titan’s ship as a guard along with the thurvines. With his deep blue pelt Apollo was excellent for night missions and stealth. He was paired with a larger dolphoria that worked alongside him that has been a favored pet of Titan and imprinted on him a little. Unfortunately for Apollo his partner also imprinted on many of Titan’s cruel ways.

When Beryl and Titan were killed the two left to presumably go wild, which Apollo adapted to better than his partner. In fact he found a maternal dolphoria that he started spending much of his time and eventually formed a romantic bond with. His working partner was enraged by this, seeing the romance as Apollo wanting to defect and leave and took his rage out on the mated pair by smashing half their eggs and making it clear the rest would be forfeit if Apollo dared to stray again.

They two soon found a new master in a mysterious benefactor who promised them things would go back to how they were on Titan’s ship and they would be taken care of and rewarded. They performed many acts of subterfuge against the darnathi and the Lair and eventually were given orders to capture a certain white cat. During the struggle Apollo bit her to try and pull her off of his partner, and it was then he realized that the cat's scent was the same as the cat that had mauled his partner and comforted his mate. He knew that if he did not act he would never be free and his mate and surviving children would always be under his partner’s threat. So while the cat was grappling his partner’s head, Apollo rushed in and helped her snap his neck.

After the fight he withdrew, but followed her quietly until he found her home. Apollo had been bred to be a guard and he decided that protecting the person who had helped end his vicious partner would be the best penance he could offer. The cat grudgingly accepts him, but the other members of her household make a point of taking care of him and giving him a warm enough welcome.

Artemis seemingly appeared out of nowhere one day, a white cat that Hector suddenly found himself tending to in his library. At first he thought the creature was a nonsentient beast that he intended to keep as a pet, and later when she asked him for some clothing to wear he took her in as an assistant and confidante. When he asked her name she quietly admitted she didn’t have one, so Hector named her Artemis. Fox thought her arrival out of nowhere was strange but Hector was known for his eccentricities and she was happy to see him with a companion once more.

The truth is she appeared when Fenriria was attempting to summon a familiar, and somehow pulled her instead. As time went by, Hector and Fenriria learned that the strange white cat often gets pulled to other dimensions and worlds and has been traveling in that strange way for as long as she can remember.

Her second secret came when she donated blood to Silver when he was gravely wounded. Her blood heals -- or more specifically an enzyme within it does. A legacy, she said, from her race’s desire to become gods. The secret came out when Cobalt captured her and figured out the secret while running tests to figure out why her body was destroying his nanites and why she was fighting off the illnesses he was infecting her with so quickly. A secret that Hector and Artemis are desperately attempting to conceal once more.

The times Artemis gets pulled to other dimensions, Fenriria pulls her back out of a sense of loyalty to what she still quietly feels is still ‘her’ familiar. And because Artemis’ presence has been good for Hector as well. Both Hector and Fenriria are additionally grateful that Artemis’ recent relationship with Silver will hopefully keep the overeager doctor from annoying Hector too much as well.

On one hand, Beryl was the ultimate of what the breeding program tried to create. She was a powerful empath and a highblood. The problem is that only her sister, Ammolite, displayed highblood traits with her empathy. Beryl was highblood on paper but looked far too comonblood to become part of highblood society. Which meant as an empath she was going to be forced into the golden cage sooner or later.

In school she seemed to have an aptitude with animals, much to her sister’s chagrin. Many of the chirrs and sirenidae she bred ended up winning awards as she just seemed to have a knack as to which animals would breed the most idealized traits.

Her sister urged her to try the colony effort and suggested she hook up with a highblood captain, even implying that she could take the mission over if she played her cards right. Beryl reluctantly agreed, and was surprised to find herself on the same ship as her sister’s adopted son. She kept who her sister was a secret from Silver but kept an eye on the young empath.

She had a brief relationship with Titan, but there was no true emotion to it. She just knew she might live longer than some of the other people on her ship if she warmed the captain’s bed, and it kept her ear to Titan’s plans and secrets as well, which enabled her to usurp him and arrange for his capture.

Beryl met her end when Tungsten’s ship landed. Beryl had planned to use the ship full of highbloods to finally make her move and take over a weakened Aukate. But Tungsten shot her in the face and killed her as he wanted no part in her invasion plans.

Bramble was born the middle child of triplets. Her father, a tiger, cared for her but quickly left the family after her mother’s numerous affairs. Brambi was groomed her entire life to follow in her mother’s footsteps, which unfortunately happened to be on the stage of a strip club. Before Brambi understood why she was put through dance classes and modeling lessons and taught how to dress and wear makeup properly. But once she started coming of age she learned that all of it was grooming to dance on a stage with a pole and to remove her clothing when the money came in. On their eighteenth birthday, the day the triplets could legally dance in an adult club, Brambi and her sisters were put on stage and made their debut -- and any talk of backing out or doing something else was denied firmly and completely.

Brambi hated it. Her mother hammered the lesson of family and legacy into her head and made it clear that the job of Brambi and her sisters was to perform until they became too old, and when that time grew close they were to find someone with money, marry them, and hope for triplets to continue the family legacy. Brambi knew that this wasn’t the life a mother should give their children. When she started to hate the person staring at her in the mirror she began to rebel in ways to make herself look as unlike her mother and sisters as she could. She cut her hair and bleached it, she dyed her stripes and even learned to use makeup to change her face in subtle little ways. Razz made her hide it on the stage and wear a wig, but it only made Brambi’s resolve grow all the more.

The only thing she loved about the stage was the music. The music called to Bramble, but not in the way that her mother intended. Her dream was to create music and dance her own dance, not follow in the footsteps of others, especially if those footsteps led her to a stripper pole. So one evening she slipped away and tried out in a local talent competition for a radio station. Not only did she win, but she secured her first recording contract.

Bramble knew her mother would try to stop her, but also knew that if she continued her life as a stripper she’d grow to hate herself completely. So she gathered everything she owned, sold most of it so she could survive long enough for the contract to start paying off, and ran away. It was a leap of faith... but she made it.

These days Brambi is one of the biggest names in the Aukate music industry. Her concerts are almost always sold out, her albums fly off the shelves, and the radio stations play her songs constantly. Her mother tried to cash in on Brambi’s success, but found herself facing an army of lawyers threatening to sue if her name and music were used without permission.

So now a small little strip club in town has a pair of twins as its main act instead of triplets, and the most popular singer on Aukate tells everyone she owes her success to following her dream and not giving up even when it looked impossible.

Buddy grew up knowing she was adopted. It was hard not to notice when you’re a gray cat being raised by a family of lions. Still, she loved her family and always felt like a lion inside. But at the same time she always felt a tug to wander beyond her family’s home on Aperu. And one day she packed up her belongings and hopped a ferry to Aukate to make it on her own.

She found a spot under a Banyan tree and quickly made a small home for herself. Buddy was a natural at catching small animals to eat and foraging but sometimes it wasn’t enough. So she did what any self respecting feral cat would do and began digging through the garbage of the nearby houses, figuring that if the people threw something away they wouldn’t mind if she helped herself to it. This worked until a white cat from one of the houses caught her and chased her off their property. Unfortunately this only made Buddy more determined, but she was surprised when the cat gave her food and pointed her to a nearby abbey to go to if she needed more after being caught a second time.

Something about the white cat resonated with Buddy and she has taken to spying and lingering near the house more, even if it means getting chased away from time to time. She has also made friends with a misfit Chimenticore named Rook and the two of them will commiserate about how they both feel like outcasts whenever they can spare a moment.

Cabayo grew up resenting anyone he perceived as being better off than him. He felt he was smarter and more skilled (and more handsome) than just about everyone and believed that it is just the universe itself conspiring against him ever getting what he feels he deserves, and that’s why he’s stuck being poor. He is from a traveling band of gypsies who live just a little too far outside the law for most people’s comfort, and who tend to pack up and move to another island when too many people start to grow wise to their ways.

The last time he was on Aukate he dated a young fox girl who lived with an elf that Cabayo was positive would die soon and he could swoop in and live off of her inheritance since he could tell the elf was loaded. After a few months of this the young Cabayo realized that the elf, Hector, wasn’t going anywhere and started to grow bored with dating the elf’s protege. Soon enough they parted ways, partially because the young fox grew wise to the fact that Cabayo had a second girlfriend on the side.

Imagine his surprise a few years later when he saw his ex-girlfriend’s face on election posters as she ran for Governor of Aukate and later named herself the Overlord. Cabayo began fabricating and rewriting history in his mind, turning his past relationship with Fox into “the best thing he ever had” and started quietly believing that he deserved to be on the throne of Aukate and, in fact, it was somehow due to him that she was elected. His grandmother encouraged these delusions and started filing his head with stories about his demon heritage and teaching him bits of fire magic. And it is through this that Cabayo began scheming for his “rightful” place on the throne of Aukate.

Charlotte hails from October but gives very little information about her background beyond that. She has been in the service of the governor/Overlord since before the reign of Governor Queen and is considered one of those things that has always been in the service of the ruler of Aukate. It was Rex who named her, before she was known only as ‘The Seamstress’ and created uniforms for anyone serving the Governor.

Fox was the one who befriended the giant spider when she learned the source of Governor Rex’s uniforms. The giant spider was hesitant to divulge too much about herself but enjoyed the fact that she was treated with respect and like a living person instead of just a machine that created costumes.

It was Charlotte who created the design for the uniforms. Whenever people complain about the design or the cut they are encouraged to bring their disagreements up with her. Very few continue to complain after having a meeting with a spider the size of a tank.

Chiria is known to most of the lair as “The ice queen” or “Oh, HER” to people who have been under her care at one of the Lair’s clinics. She is an excellent doctor but has no bedside manner, no warmth, and is brutally honest. If you are terminal, she will not coddle you. If you are sick because of your own neglect, she will tell you. If you need a treatment you do not want, she will put you through it anyway unless you sign all the waivers stating you understand the consequences of your actions, and then she will wash her hands of you. Most people hate her methods, but some appreciate her terse words and blunt honesty. She isn’t rude or insulting unless the patient says something construed as an insult, but she is all business when it comes to her job, and she does her job extremely well. In many ways her skills as a doctor exceeds Garret Silver’s.

She keeps her personal history private but it is rumored that she came from the island of October where predation is legal. The fact that some of her profanities are “Firelords” and “Fires” implies that she came from someplace where they worshipped the ancient elementals and volcano gods despite making it clear she is an atheist. The black markings under her right eye are also vaguely reminiscent to some of the tribal markings and dyes used by the denizens of October.

Another thing that only people who work close to her know is that in her past she suffered some sort of head trauma that caused her to lose her sense of smell and taste. She also flinches when someone approaches her from behind unaware or touches her back. She gives no explanation as to why and tersely tells people to mind their own business if they try to pry.

One thing everyone agrees with is that there is no ‘befriending’ Doctor Naochi. You will not break through her shell and find the vulnerable woman underneath. You will not crack through her exterior and get to her friendly side. There is no secret yearning for love and friendship underneath her facade. Chiria does not want to be your friend, and longs for the day where she finally saves up enough money to quietly retire someplace far away from everybody so she can finally be left alone.

Fangite was used to getting his way all through his life. When he didn’t, he learned how to push people until they gave him what he wanted. His father was a powerful government official, his mother was a respected scientist, and so he wanted for nothing growing up. It was far too late that his parents realized what they had done when Fangite came home with blood on his hands and demanded that his parents ‘fix things’. Fang had murdered a darnathi he was fond of that did not reciprocate his attention, and expected his parents to make his problem go away.

The best they could do was arrange for Fang to take a spot on one of the colony initiatives and leave the planet before he was discovered. The shame and guilt put his mother in an asylum and threw his father into a deep despair. Fangite, on the other hand, was thrilled. He and his new captain, Titan, got along frighteningly well and he was eager to play out his mission as an infiltration agent.

He had almost secured a spot in parliament when word of his identity was leaked and Fang had to run for his life. During his escape he dove into a river under a hail of gunfire and never surfaced again. It’s assumed that he drowned… Thankfully darnathi can breathe just fine underwater and it got him far enough away that he was able to secure his old escape pod and return to Aukate. He still purposely wears a scar on his face where a bullet grazed it as a reminder of what happened and as a trophy of his survival.

Fangton now acts as operations officer on one of the colony ships and hates every moment of it. He learned that Darius Steele was the one who sold him out and daily plots his revenge, usually something violent and painful. He is also trying to make plans to contact and return to homeworld, firstly to bring Darius home to hopefully use him as a means of having his little altercation forgotten. And then he plans to exact revenge on the father that he feels abandoned him…

Chrysoprase is a pureblood highblood but her family was not one that held power or influence on Alvarni. They had a family farm and sold plants and flowers to make ends meet. It was a simple life but one that Chryso deeply loved. Unfortunately as hatred for highbloods grew on Alvarni, the farm fell into debt and was in danger of being seized by the local council. Sensing that the worst was yet to come, her family scattered and many members went into hiding. Chryso tended to her ailing father but he encouraged her to leave while she was still capable. Reluctantly, the young highblood promised she would as soon as she was able.

Chryso never wanted to join the colonization fleet, but as the highblood purges started spreading over Alvarni she realized that her safest bet would be leaving the planet somehow. So when she received a notice of an opening on Tungsten’s ship she packed up everything she could carry and rushed to join him despite not having any military experience. Her father had used the last of his influence to secure her a role as a botanist and forged a school record that secured her a high level command position. Although Chryso felt uncomfortable with so many responsibilities she quickly adapted and showed a natural knack at leadership and made a good counterpoint to Tungsten with the crew of their ship. Tungsten was aware that her records were forged but trusted her with the leadership role and even mentored her as best as he could.

She misses her home and family deeply, but knows they wanted her to live on and does her best to honor their memory and their wishes. She spends her time doing her best to keep the morale up among her crew, and cultivates the local flowers that she’s taking a liking to. It’s easy to tell when Chryso has been by recently by the number of flower garlands that the dolphoria guards and random crewmembers are wearing.

Being trapped in crystal for over a thousand years really sucks.

Darius is a tactician who climbed the ranks of the Darnathi military to an unprecedented level. He found many peaceful methods in high tension situations, and won many battles where the odds were against him. This earned him the rank of General, unheard of for a commonblood. To take the rank he had to accept mandatory sterilization which most darnathi are required to do for service, but in Darius’ case he was required to permanently sterilize himself as a sign of dedication to the Darnathi military as opposed to the temporary gel that most military darnathi take.

Darius was assigned to the colony ships to claim Earth before other alien colony efforts took it over, which meant the ship was small and the whole expedition was rushed. On the way Titan received disturbing news from the homeworld that caused him to purposely crash the ship into Aukate.

While exploring the new land they had crashed into, Darius adopted an orphaned native pegasus that he named Rain. In an attempt to keep her safe from the mission commander, Richard Titan, Darius attempted to kill Titan while he was recovering from the crash. Titan woke up to find Darius hovering over him with a knife and lashed out unexpectedly, shattering Darius’ leg in the struggle and making Darius swear his loyalty as his price for keeping Rain safe.

The general lived at war with Overlord Rex and slowly settled into an uneasy peace with Overlord Fox when it sank in that they were far too out of their element to ever conquer the island, especially with the sudden influx of financial resources thanks to Hector. Eventually in exchange for the Darnathi keeping to themselves and allowing Rain to go to school, Darius managed to negotiate an end to the long fight.

Titan never forgave Darius for the attempt on his life and when the opportunity to kill him presented itself ten years later he infected Steele with a weaponized virus and attempted to abduct Rain to use as a test subject. Steele rallied his strength and rescued her, taking her to the only safe place he knew… Overlord Fox’s lair.

DJ Deekay started out as an evening radio DJ that nobody believed would ever become as big or as controversial. He played soothing music and nature sounds for the late night and early morning listeners and didn’t put much thought into the content of his recordings.

Then the protesters started picketing the studio.

Deekay had been playing mating calls of birds and insects with no explicit warning. It was an outrage. It was indecent. The ratings shot through the roof and soon enough Radio LZRD became the most popular radio station on the Calendar islands. Unfortunately Deekay had to go into hiding and now only works in secret, but his station manager seems willing to work with him to help ensure his privacy.

All that is really known about Deekay is that he is a brown snake. And although brown snakes are not commonplace on the islands, they’re still too many to make any assumptions as to which one it is. Meanwhile, the official LZRD shops can’t keep the “I’m not Deekay” shirts in stock.

Rose is unusual in that her feather color is pink, and despite being the leader of the empathy elementals, she is not an elemental herself. Rose is considered the mascot for the capital city on February, so much so that when election time comes up, Mayor D.K. Romanoren makes a point of stuffing her in a hotel room under guard to make sure she can’t influence his re-election.

Despite the fact that the mayor does this to her, she still has a close relationship with his family, even helping to raise and educate his son, Aileeron. A side effect of her influence over Aileeron is his accent. She had hoped to instill a loving heart within the boy so that the islands would know a better life, but Aileeron desperately wanted to please his father and adopted many of his cruel ways even though he felt a pang of guilt whenever he hurt someone.

When not educating children or being locked up in luxury hotel rooms, Rose oversees the festival of love where many people on the islands choose to come to the island to either propose to their significant others or get married. She tries to give as many blessing to happy couples as she can, and when she is not overseeing the festival she is often sequestered away administering to her own clan and advising them. The empathy elementals are known for healing the mentally scarred and bringing peace and are one of the few clans of elementals people are hesitant to refer to as ‘demons’.

Cobalt was born in the southern polar area of Alvarni where the commonblooded darnathi are adapted to suit the colder climate. They live more natural lives and managed to avoid many of the governmental checks and balances that the city-born darnathi live through. He came from a big family with dozens of brothers and sisters who taught him to be wary of officials who promise crystal in exchange for genetic material and information on who might be an empath. His entire family learned to hide any empathic abilities they had just in case the wrong people started taking too much of an interest in them.

But as time went on it became harder and harder to avoid the governmental meddling that tried to bend even the country dwellers to the strict standards of raising children. Cobalt’s parents sensed that things were going to get worse as the highbloods of Alvarni grew more and more in control and encouraged Cobalt and his brother Bismuth to enroll in the colony effort so they could escape while escape was still possible.

Cobalt tested low on the empathic scale but charmed his way into the medical field by virtue of his teeth. For Darnathi, his sharklike teeth made him extremely attractive and he used it to his advantage to secure a spot for him and his brother on a colony ship bound for earth.

Like many darnathi he was injected with sterilization gel that removed any lingering traces of his empathy, and like many darnathi sterilization made him colder and more shrewd. This mindset alienated him somewhat from his brother but served him well under Titan, who saw any sympathy and compassion as a sign of weakness and took pleasure in torturing anybody who showed hints of it. The only compassion Cobalt truly showed during these times was protecting his brother from Titan’s wrath as much as he could, sometimes even deflecting the highblood’s ire upon himself instead.

Cobalt specialized in research and lab work with enough medical training to serve as a reserve doctor if the main one was unavailable or busy. This put him in regular contact with Aria Beryl and the two began flirting until Titan took an interest in Beryl as well. Since the two were both highbloods and Cobalt was a mere commonblood he knew his place and went back to his work in the labs and manning the communication array.

Later, Cobalt captured, experimented on, and once he escaped he befriended a white cat named Artemis. His adventures led him to an extremely different sort of life making rum and moonshine for Hector while living in one of Hector’s old cabins.

Cobalt now spends his days brewing new blends of moonshine and has developed a love of cooking. His home is a haven for chirrs, two thurvines and their brood of pups, and dozens of bunny rabbits.

Damba Khari grew up under the knowledge that he would succeed his father and that one day he would raise a son who would do likewise. As a child Damba adored his father and did everything he could to please him. Unfortunately what pleased his father was treating those not born with the purest white fur as if they were the lowest of the low, and using his power to make his authority beyond question. As he grew and took over more of his father’s affairs, he learned when to roar and when to bite, and when to quietly pay someone to make a person disappear.

When his father died Damba was elected mayor by a landslide. Some say it was the blessing of the creator but most quietly agree that the Romanorens just fix the election, and anybody who considers investigating this will either quietly vanish or ‘accidents’ will happen to their friends and family until they decide to stop.

When his son, Aileeron, was born he left most of the care to the woman who helped raise him, a sparrow named Rose. Damba became a little concerned when his son took to imitating Rose’s accent but still didn’t fear too much.

But when his daughter, Rei, fell in love with a normal lion and not the man he had arranged for her he was furious. He did just what his father would have done and had the man quietly vanish. Unfortunately Rei vanished as well, and not because D.K. had paid someone to make her go away despite his threats to do so if she didn’t marry the man he demanded she marry. Aileeron became more aloof after his sister went into hiding and then went to Aukate to “learn about the Overlord”. Damba assumed that his son was merely exploring the world before his responsibilities tied him down too much.

D.K. quietly fears his empire could come crumbling down around him, but has resolved himself to not going down without a fight, even if it means destroying the whole of his island on his way down.

Fenriria did not ask for her powers, but even before they fully emerged they defined her entire life. Perhaps it was a prophecy, or superstition, or blind fear, but when Fenriria was born with a birthmark on her neck in the shape of a wolf her parents started plotting her death. It was the intervention of her older brother Lomani that saved her life. He suggested that perhaps the mark would fade when she grew and it might just be a fluke. Her parents reluctantly agreed but remained cold to her for most of her infancy. She was primarily raised by Lomani who became as much a parent for her as a sibling.

When she turned eight her parents noted that her mark had not faded and it was time to kill her before her ‘curse’ manifested. And since Lomani had stopped them from killing her when she was born, he was tasked with killing her now as penance. He took her to the sacred grounds, did the cleansing ceremony, but could not bring himself to cut her throat. He knew it would mean a life forever on the run but finally chose to take his sister and hide.

At ten, Fenriria started manifesting her powers. She could do cantrips without thinking and before she was twelve could cast spells with a skill usually only shown by wizards that were centuries old. It was at sixteen that her skill truly made itself apparent to Lomani when they were attacked by dwarves and Lomani was killed attempting to save Fenriria’s life. She forced his soul into a crystal and eventually infused him into the body of an elf. Then linked him to her own well of power for the sole purpose of granting him immortality. Not as a favor to him, but because Fen could not imagine life without her brother.

Fen eventually mastered the lost art of plainswalking and took her and her brother to many new lands. She finally left him on earth and after a few adventures left him on Aukate where he finally seemed to settle and establish himself. As a quiet way of thanking Aukate for taking in her brother, she created a mountain made of lapis for Overlord Fox to serve as her headquarters and seat of government.

These days Fenriria walks the plains to serve her own purpose. It is said that her birth parents vanished mysteriously one day. It is said that she has learned how to build and maintain a small world of her own hidden deep in the nether where she rests and recovers. It is said that she can shift her shape like water and summon all sorts of creatures to serve her. But all anyone truly knows about her is that she is someone who knows they would be completely lost without their brother.

On Alvarni, the Darnathi homeworld, nothing is more important than genetics. People who excel at things or are particularly gifted in some way are heavily encouraged to donate to the gene bank. And from the gene bank many children are created, most of whom have no idea who their parents are. These children are often genetic experiments, some successful and some failed. And it is considered a great deed for someone to choose to adopt one and raise it. Often times the gene bank will even pay stipends to help as a reward.

One of those children was Silver, an amazingly gifted empath. Although his body was weak, his mind’s full potential is still unknown. He was raised by a sterilized maternal named Ammolite who, although making sure all his needs were met, was often cold and frustrated with the young child. His empathy was undisciplined and out of control for most of his childhood and his health was fragile with Silver getting sick easily.

When he was about to enter military medical school he became deathly ill. His adopted mother forced him to use her energy to heal himself, but his need was great enough that he took too much and almost killed her. Silver survived but his mother spent weeks in medical care recovering. When she was finally released Silver received word that Ammolite had disowned him for ‘his’ mistake and as a final way of washing her hands of him she paid for the remainder of his college classes. In truth it was a method of her trying to cover her mistake of almost being responsible for the death of a powerful empath, an action that carries strict and heavy punishment on Alvarni ‐ but all Silver knew was that his mother never wanted to see or speak to him again.

When they crashed on earth Silver began to bond with a local named Hector, even purposely using him as a guide for his own prototyping in the hopes that it would make him more attractive to the elf. It was a rare distraction from Titan purposely trying to push him to have an empathic break by forcing him to feel the emotions of the wounded and dying in their battles against the natives.

It was a small blessed relief when Darius managed a truce, but then Titan used Silver to manufacture biological weapons and tricked him into administering a dose to Darius. Titan attacked Silver for helping Darius escape, but with the only person on the ship he cared about gone, Silver also slipped away and went to try and correct his mistake while he still could.

Rex had a difficult job handed to her when she replaced her aunt, Queen, as governor of Aukate. Already the islands were restless and turmoil was growing thanks to a hurricane that had heavily damaged the islands and growing tension over the war that was happening in the world outside. Rex had managed to quell some of it by building the ports and doing trade work, but the island was buying more than it was selling and little by little the economy was suffering.

For some reason, Rex was positive everything was going to be alright. In her later years she even swore that someone promised her that the islands were going to enter a golden age of prosperity soon enough. These words fell to deaf ears as the people of Aukate began to struggle to feed their families as the native currency meant less and less. Crime began to grow and education began to falter.

She was a staunch environmentalist and refused to allow machines and items that would pollute the islands to be built, and was the one who struck the deal with the chimenticores that made sure no car or land vehicle would see use unless heavily regulated. But she also saw education and industry failing and put every last resource she had into trying to solve this problem.

Rex wanted everyone on the islands to have access to education and information. After much thought she decided the best way to do this would be to make cheap and easy to obtain computers for all the residents of the islands. Thus, the tablet project was born. Under her rule the first of the RexOS tablets were created, and alongside them the RexNET that linked the islands and the tablets together. Since they were designed from the ground up using the world’s computers only as a base they are not compatible with outside tech and are truly unique. Rex wanted every person on her islands to have access to this technology and after years of development and work (and a quiet financial boost from Hector Fen) her dream became a reality. The tablets brought education to even the most remote parts of Aukate and brought in new jobs. And the newly developed technology gave the islands new things to trade to the outside world that helped the floundering economy as well.

A year before her death, Rex declared that the islands should rule themselves and went into near seclusion soon after. It caused the economy to flag once more -- and after her death and her edict of dissolution took hold it began to show signs of collapse. Thankfully, a Fox showed up on the political scene and promised the golden age Rex predicted if she was elected. And soon enough, Overlord Fox took up Rex’s mantle.

Greg wanted nothing more than to serve the Governor like his father did. He remembers his father coming home with stories about how his day went and even the most boring of days was a strange delight to Gregory. He dreamed of being the dashing hero that would save the governor and protect her with his life. And then one day he got exactly what he dreamed of. He was hired and tasked with protecting the ruler of Aukate.

Although the work was not what he expected, Greg still was thrilled for the prospect of being so close to the Governor, or the Overlord as she oddly wished to call herself. He could still be the protector he dreamed of. Serving Fox was an honor and a job he cherished. He even quietly found himself falling in love with her despite the fact that she was attached to one of those strange alien creatures.

He’s fine with living the life of someone with unrequited love, so long as it means he can be the protector he always wanted to be.

Harvey is the son of Hartford Torn, the leader of the Torn clan of Fire Elementals. He has an older brother named Hartley and a younger half-brother named Aaron. Harvey’s mother left soon after Harvey’s birth to seek her own path and not live under the rules of the Torn clan.

Perhaps taking after his mother, Harvey also longed for a life outside his father’s clan and one day simply vanished, not to be seen or heard from for several decades. Then one day a club mysteriously opened up on Aukate called the Red Velvet. Although alcohol or even burlesque clubs were not illegal on Aukate, it still ran itself similar to a speakeasy in that you had to give a codeword to enter via a bookstore front. It was there that Harvey began to build up his little empire.

Harvey learned to collect information and secrets and worked himself into a position where even the Overlord herself needed to go to him to learn a secret or two that her own web of contacts can’t tell her. If you need something illegal Harvey can get it for you… but it will cost you in favors and secrets.

When people first encounter Harvey, he seems almost laughable. He loves dressing flamboyantly and wallowing in his hedonistic lifestyle. And yet his favorite article of clothing is a stole made from a mink named Percival, a mink that was at one point a walking and talking member of Aukate society. There are also rows of heads and rugs made from other citizens on his walls and decorating his private halls, many of them taxidermied to wear expressions of horror and terror. It is rumored that if a particularly nasty criminal vanishes, they probably ended up on Harvey’s wall.

The half demon is a creature of contradictions. He is one of the very rare half demons, which means he constantly dances the line between losing his powers through atrophy and embracing his demonic side completely by overusing them. As a half demon he can use his powers sparingly and carefully but is immune to many of the tricks used to hurt his full demon brethren. It is a path few demons are capable of following, and yet Harvey walks it with ease, perhaps a sign of the tremendous will hidden underneath his carefree facade.

Hartford lived the life of a normal member of the fire demon tribe for most of his life, but all that changed when his father was killed by an unknown assailant when Hartford was fifty. His father was everything to the young fire demon and he swore to avenge his father’s death. All he knew was that it appeared his father’s corpse was partially eaten, which made him think a predator of some sort had done it. Because of this, Hartford grew to hate all predator species on Aukate, silently blaming every single one for his father’s death.

As he grew he inherited his father’s gem, the master gem that commands and controls all the fire gems on the island. He organized the fire clan into an army and seemed to double down on his hatred of predator races as his power and followers grew. Even when his wife and children distanced themselves from him, he continued his crusade. It is rumored that Hartford’s anti-predator hatred went from a grudge to full on war soon after he appointed a gazelle as his second, but anyone who questions her role quickly run into accidents.

As impractical as it is, as insane as it is, Hartford seems to want nothing less than the removal and destruction of every single predator on the islands. And is willing to commit genocide to make it come to pass.

Hartley was groomed to replace his father when his grandfather died as his father’s fear and paranoia that “the preds” were going to get them grew by each passing day. Although Hartley loves his father deeply, he saw the insanity that was claiming his father and began to wish for other things than the inevitable mantle of clan leadership. Hartley was happiest in his clan’s forge, making weapons and armor to arm his people.

His opinion of predator species changed when he found a village of otters living off of the sea and land on the coast of Aukate. They were surprisingly sheltered and naive and welcomed the demon without any fear or hesitation. He noticed that they had a long abandoned forge in their village and, as thanks for their hospitality, he rebuilt it. And after time he began to go there and build tools for the village as a private escape when his father’s pressures overwhelm him.

When Hartford declared war on all predators his son couldn’t live with it anymore and abandoned his clan. He vanished without a word and went to become a fulltime blacksmith for a small unassuming village on the coast of Aukate.

Hector’s life changed forever when his sister Fenriria was born. In the minotaur clans from his homeland, it is a curse to be born with the mark of the wolf. So when the young minotaur girl manifested the dreaded mark on the back of her neck, Lomani Fenhoof, the eldest son of the Fenhoof clan, was tasked with ending her life. He took her to the sacred grounds to cleanse her spirit and end her life but couldn’t bring himself to do it when the moment of truth finally came. Instead he took his younger sister and fled into the wilderness, hoping to hide from his clan and protect his sister. Unfortunately a tribe of dwarves he attempted to seek refuge with tore him to shreds while he bought time for his sister to escape.

But the mark of the wolf was a sign of great magic power, and Fenriria refused to let her brother die. Instead she trapped his soul in a crystal and fled, holding it close until she found a new body for it. The body came in the form of a mad wizard who had all but destroyed himself from the overuse of magic. He attacked Fenriria but she saw an opportunity to finally give her brother a living body once more. The rules of magic forbade her from killing, but she was able to force the elf’s soul out of his body, seal it in a crystal, and put her brother’s soul in the empty husk that remained.

Lomani awoke to find himself in a frail and feeble body where he was once mighty and strong. He was a slight and delicate thing instead of massive and powerful. What was worse, he was in constant and agonizing pain from the magic poisoning his body had endured over the centuries. He pleaded with Fenriria to undo her spell but she refused. So Lomani Fenhoof became Hector Fen, a very grudging companion to his sister whose powers were growing stronger by the day.

As the years passed, Hector shifted his focus from being a sharp hunter and warrior to being a shrewd businessman and accountant. He gave up on hunting completely after his beloved hunting companion, Euripides the lynx, passed away. At first he fell into a depression and refused to eat and began to drink heavily. Soon all he was subsisting on was liquor. It was then that Hector learned that his sister was devoting part of her power to keeping Hector alive when he suddenly had a heart attack and collapsed, only to rise up a few minutes later with the damage healed after he was sure he had died.

Hector’s depression and self-destructive behavior grew even worse after that and it taxed his sister’s powers more than she liked. So to try and boost her brother’s strength she made arrangements with a werewolf clan and had the alpha infect her brother with lyncanthropy, hoping that the regenerative nature of it would help heal her brother and take some of the strain off of her own powers. The alpha of the werewolf clan, Tiber, took responsibility of Hector and helped care for him.

Within a year the two grew close and married, and for a decade the two lived together in what Hector saw an an idyllic life. That all ended when a rival with eyes on Hector’s fortune tried to kill him with an arrow. Tiber hurled herself in the path of the arrow and it pierced her heart, killing her in moments. Fenriria appeared and whisked the two of them away, but it was too late to save Tiber.

The death of his wife sent Hector into an even deeper depression and for almost a century he locked his feeling away and became an even more shrewd businessman. Fenriria brought Hector to earth for a fresh start. He spent time in England, then relocated to America during the revolution, then spent time in the old west and the gold rush, and even worked with Capone during Prohibition. When Prohibition ended he became a talent agent in New York until Fenriria moved him to Aukate, fearing that America’s involvement in WW2 might put him at risk again.

Hector resented having his world yanked away from him once more, but grudgingly admitted that it was nice to live in a place where he didn’t have to hide anymore and quietly reveled in having a new economy to play with. He grew close to governor Rex and tried to advise her as best as he could and worked under her radar to keep Aukate’s floundering economy from completely going under. In Rex’s twilight years Hector secretly took in a young fox who played around his shack and started carefully grooming her to take over rulership of the islands when he realized that Rex’s plan to dissolve the governor role would utterly collapse the economy if allowed to happen.

When Rex passed on and his groomed replacement, now known as Overlord Fox, was in power, Hector settled in as an advisor and accountant. Very few people know that Aukate owes much of it's technological and economical prosperity to him, and he’s happy with that.

Hekili is the son of Pahili but was born mute. Were he the son of any other dragon he would have been killed the moment his fault was noticed. But since Pahili is his parent he was spared.

Hekili is withdrawn and keeps to himself most of the time. He was never mistreated by his family but often handled the way one would handle a pet. He was provided for but treated with a certain amount of distance. Since it’s the only life Hekili knows, he doesn’t really understand that his treatment is different or special compared to anybody else.

The one boon he was given was a stone that gives him the ability to talk, even if he often doesn’t use it. He claims that there’s a mermaid inside the stone and he prefers to hold it and rock it back and forth to simulate the rolling of waves so the mermaid can feel more at home.

Ian is technically Cobalt’s twin, but a fraternal one as they both came from the same twin clutch of eggs. Since Darnathi are monogendered, fraternal twins in their society means that each parent contributed an egg that the other fertilized. So Ian’s father was Cobalt’s mother and vice versa. While Cobalt favored his southern born mother with her stocky build and fluffy fur, Ian more closely resembled his father who was a central darnathi with shorter fur and a more slight build. Despite these differences, Ian and his brother were nigh inseparable as tadpoles. This became a problem when Cobalt outgrew the nursery pool where the tadpoles stayed until they could manage being out of water for long periods of time and their legs were strong enough for them to walk. Ian developed slower and while Cobalt was walking around just fine on his own on dry land, Ian still needed to spend time submerged while his skin and lungs continued to mature.

Cobalt was moved to his own room but missed Ian’s company, so he would routinely pull Ian out of the nursery pool and carry him around. His parents tried to put a stop to it fearing that the time out of water would affect Ian’s development, but the opposite happened and Ian began to grow sickly and listless without regular contact from Cobalt. So his parents finally decided to install a second and smaller nursery pool in Cobalt’s room so the two could be together once more. It was the habit of tending to his ‘bruvver’ that sparked Cobalt’s interest in medicine later in life.

Ian always remained a little small and sickly compared to Cobalt. As the two grew up they both chose to join the colony initiative. Cobalt managed to get the both of them on the same ship so they could remain together, but they had to act somewhat distant so as not to draw the notice of the other people. His shipmates were vaguely aware that the two were related but didn’t know they were twin siblings.

When Cobalt left the ship Ian felt abandoned and alone, and a nagging part of his mind feared that the worst had happened to him. Beryl was the one who attempted to comfort him during this time and took advantage of Ian’s vulnerability. She used him to try and weaken the lair while the second Alvarni colony ship arrived -- and Ian took a great measure of comfort in knowing that Beryl had been shot dead the moment the ship landed.

As penance, Ian serves at the abbey on Aukate whenever he can, taking a vow of silence whenever he’s within the abbey’s walls. Outside the abbey he assists his brother as much as he can and tries to enjoy life on the seaside.

Ironsides was one of the unfortunate ‘mistakes’ that came from the genetic scrubbing and experiments on highblood children to try and give them stronger empathy. When his empathy started manifesting it was wild and lashed out uncontrollably at the people around him. They tried putting a collar on him to simply reign in his empathic abilities but it only made him physically confrontational or so depressed he refused all food or water. Finally his parents took the only option they felt was left to them beyond euthanizing their son, they had him quietly prototyped into a dolphporia, a creature with empathic ability but not empathy strong enough to hurt people.

The highblood was young and adapted surprisingly well to his situation, even eventually working shifts at one of the local asylums to help the patients there. His life was idyllic until the Highblood purges began. His parents were arrested and Ironsides’ face was smashed with a spear, almost snapping his upper beak off and leaving a gaping hole in his face. His parents lied and said Ironsides was on loan from the asylum, so after arresting his parents he was taken to the asylum to work permanently.

Ironsides loses himself in his work now and tries to hold onto the hope that his parents are still alive. In the meantime, he helps heal scars where he can and waits for his own to eventually heal.

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Jade was raised in a smaller, out of the way village on the island of Mé, having always been part of a small family where nothing very interesting ever happened. She never really knew what she wanted to do with her life, since in this town there really wasn't much to do. In her early teen years, Jade started hearing whispers of interesting happenings on one of the nearby islands, a new ruler elected into power. At first people acted as though it was just another thing that would pass, but as time went on news of the exploits of this empire became more frequent, and it became obvious that this was no temporary thing.

Socks marveled at the thought of becoming part of something big, something important; part of something that could actually influence the archipelago, if not the world. For a few more years, she studied and practiced lots of different subjects, still unsure of what part she wanted to play in this new empire, but now she had a goal to strive for. Finally, on her 18th birthday, she gave her goodbyes and set off for the Overlord's empire, enrolling in the university on Aukate.

Once she arrived, Socks found things very different from the home she knew. Strange new devices from what seemed to be another world, though she would later find were actually created by the engineers at the Citadel; species she had never encountered from islands elsewhere in the chain; and a much wider range of educational opportunities that may help her decide her path. Alas, the expanded selection of vocations didn't help her find one to settle on; quite the contrary, she wanted to do them all.

Her inability to decide would show, however. While she knew a little about a lot, she never studied a particular subject enough to truly become proficient at it; a prime example of the phrase "jack of all trades, master of none." She would often grasp the basics of a subject, then be distracted by some other opportunity to pursue. Feeling that she was not strong or fast or quiet enough to participate in the armed forces, or studied enough to participate in R&D, she was very nervous when she finally bit the bullet and submitted her application with the hope that someone in the lair would know where she belonged.

Bootcamp was a strange experience for Jade, having to quickly adjust to the more military-like organization she figured would be present at the Citadel. She was assigned to R&D as a lab assistant, which after a few weeks Jade decided was a good fit. She could see a project through to completion but wasn't under the pressure to come up with the ideas driving R&D, and was exposed to a wide variety of fields of study. After a couple of years and a glowing review Jade was assigned to be Bane's personal assistant, tasked with helping her on any project; no matter how dubious the usefulness.

James was raised in politics and it was never considered that he might not want to do anything else, even by James himself. His father was the mayor before him, and his election was all but given when he ran after his father retired. James has been the mayor of June for about a decade now and still doesn't feel prepared for the job. Thankfully his best friend Nathan helps play the voice of reason when James is feeling particularly overwhelmed.

June has been ruling itself for as long as Owen has been in office and the off and on cold war his island has with July. It has made him paranoid and somewhat pessimistic. He expects everything to go wrong and is suspicious when it does not. Still, he keeps an optimistic face for the crowds even if he’s positive his world is going to come crumbling down upon him at any moment.

Every ship has a supply of chirrs and dolphoria and Titan’s ship was no exception. Chirrs provide therapy for overstressed crew and provide raw materials and recycle damaged items to keep the ship in working order.

Jet is a natural therapy pet who was clever enough to damage his control collar when Beryl removed all the control chips from her pets to prevent Uru from taking control of the animals that served under her. He was quickly adopted into Artemis’ family and does what he can to keep everyone in Hector’s household centered. Jet is very loyal to Artemis and seems to know before even Silver sometimes when she’s overwhelmed and stressed.

Shimmer is a bit of a runt, although many chirrs are deliberately stunted so they’re smaller and easier to manage. The smaller chirrs often compensate by having stronger pheromones when they become adults and more sensitive empathy. But so far Shimmer seems to mostly focus on biting people and making sure she’s the first to be fed. She has a particular bond with Ian and likes to cuddle up with him whenever he’s nearby.

Knight is the newest dire on Aukate, created by Darius Steele to be a companion to Wolfbane much as he was a companion to Overlord Fox. Although the general didn’t want to force a relationship between the two dires, the two got along very well and easily reflected the love between their counterparts.

Like all dires, Knight is the embodiment of Darius’ instincts and primal thoughts and urges. Knight is very wolflike, even compared to Bane. He finds himself forming minions into ‘packs’ and trying to lead them like an alpha.

One of the interesting things about Knight is that his voice resembles Darius’ before it was damaged by the weaponized virus Titan infected him with. It’s rich and almost musical and yet when Knight speaks in a commanding tone many people find it hard to disobey.

Lapis is a very traditional darnathi that bears the marks of the southern species. The northern highbloods are large and muscled and brutish, while the southern commonbloods are chubby and fluffy. She is the mother to Cobalt and Ian and dozens of other pups that she’s happily raised with her city born comonblooded spouse and her brother, Lodite.

One secret that she has kept as deeply hidden as possible is that her entire family are extremely powerful and gifted empaths. Not all of her children have the family gift but there are enough that they have taken special care to never tip off the empath initiative to their ability. They are all registered as low level empaths and whenever they are visited and tested they can find no evidence to show that the family are anything more than low level commonbloods that aren’t worth bothering with.

But Lapis knows that one day their secret will come out. Either they’ll miss something on a test or someone will say the wrong thing and their secret has been discovered. Because of that her and her brother have trained and honed their children to have a special mental shield on themselves at all times that makes any non-family member forget that they were empaths within minutes. And recently she has encouraged her family to leave the planet when they are able before the highblood purges turn into something worse.

Although Malachite appears to be a commonblood darnathi, he is actually a hybrid with quite a bit of highblood in his genes. His family had recently moved from the more rural areas of Alvarni to try their hands at city life and Mal adapted with ease. He had the down to earth attitude of his rural family members but the savvy of a sophisticated city dweller. Because of that he easily rose in rank at the academy and secured his own ship as captain when the highblood purges began on Alvarni.

As he’s physically a bit of a ‘runt’ compared to his family members who show their highblood traits a bit more prominently, Malachite is obsessed with fitness and exercises regularly to keep his body in as peak physical shape as possible. He also has a fair understanding of darnathi nutrition and physical rehabilitation but he rarely gets to put it into practice with his captain duties. He secretly conspires to get Fox into shape and has a quiet fascination with Artemis, but is similarly terrified of Silver’s jealous side so he just quietly peeks at her tail when nobody’s looking.

Much of Malachite’s background is something Mal himself keeps a secret. But the fact that he arrived on earth as a refugee with the highbloods implies that his family ties weren’t enough of a secret and Mal himself was at risk of being tossed into the arena. When pressed for more information Mal deflects in his own little jovial manner and keeps his remaining secrets to himself.

Mella does not discuss his past lightly but does not hide it either. When Rex’s rule was waning a heavy criminal element was starting to grow on Aukate which included child trafficking and smuggling a few natives off the island. Mella’s parents sold him to such people to try and break themselves out of the poverty that many of the islands’ denizens were suffering through at the time. Mella has no memory of this part of his life but does remember growing up in cages amidst human doctors and men in suits. “Grande! Mas grande!” he remembers hearing over and over again as doctors stuck needles into him and made him run and fight. Soon enough his caretakers got what they wanted as the young boy grew into a seven foot monster thanks to the cocktail of steroids and growth hormone they subjected him to.

The young honeybadger had ended up as a pet to a drug lord in Mexico who wanted to outdo his compatriots who kept lions and tigers on leashes with a seven foot beast at his bidding instead. Mella did as he was told and played his role well, having not known any other world. It went like this until Mella was in his mid teens and began to spend time in his master’s private chapel. The lessons spoke to him and he began conversing with the priest there, even when his owner tried to dissuade him from it, insisting that beasts like him did not have souls.

When he was approximately twenty, Mella had an epiphany. On Easter morning he went to the chapel, listened to the sermon about love and forgiveness and the resurrection, and ripped his collar off. He quietly asked the priest if there was a way for him to escape, and after many tense moments it was arranged. A week later a truck came, which brought him to a boat, which brought him to a strange new island full of people that were similar and yet very different from the people he knew. He insisted he be taken to the closest church to give thanks, which happened to be the local abbey.

Mella later learned that the Vatican in Rome knew of Aukate and through one of the inhabitants there, had paid for his safe release and arranged for his return home. Knowing that his freedom probably did not come cheap he pledged the rest of his life to the church and became a monk of the abbey. Eventually he even took seminary classes and became ordained, and when the abbot of the monastery he lived at needed to step down it was unanimously decided that Mella take his place.

Mella has made some effort to find his parents and let them know he forgives them, but has had no luck as of yet. He tells his story in his easter sermon every year so that everyone who listens knows that even in the darkest of places, even when you are far from home and alone, there is always hope and God always listens.

Morganite is a puppet in a vast political game and struggles to simply not be consumed by it like it has consumed his wife and only child. He was born into a normal family of commonbloods but was good at playing the political game even as a young darnathi. He was a spy and later became a war hero, and managed to use those skills to climb the ladder enough to have influence when the Highbloods controlled everything. When the purges began he leapt on the opportunity to gain power, soon finding himself elected councilor of his province and gaining a substantial foothold on the continental council. It is rumored that even the Orichalion bends an ear to Councilor Morganite.

His life was going wonderfully, he had a wife and a son and a comfortable home. And then it all collapsed when his son came home covered in blood pleading to make a mistake go away. All Morganite could do was send his son on a colony ship to earth and hope the murder was never solved. Meanwhile he watched helplessly as the guilt and shame made his wife’s sanity snap and caused her to be interred in an asylum permanently. Losing both his wife and son turned Morganite from a confident politician to a broken man that was easily manipulated by other members of the council.

Deep down he wishes to atone. To make up for the sins of his son, to bring his wife back from her despair, maybe even heal his broken world. But for now all he has the strength to do is sit and watch as everything he loves crumbles away.

Nathan took over his father’s hotel in his twenties and by his thirties had already turned it into the most luxurious tourist spot on the island of June. He was one of the first to start writing up contracts with the cats of Neko Tokyo that allowed them to visit and walk among the ‘Kaiju’ in exchange for discounts when the dinosaurs of June wished to visit their island for a bit of pampering. Many of them even get a free vacation if they agree to participate in the Kaiju festivals, where the natives build paper buildings and the younger kittens pretend to fight massive battles against the Kaiju.

But the hotel life is only half of Nathan’s life. The other half is helping his best friend who just so happens to be the governor of the island, James Owen. He plays the devil’s advocate sometimes, or the skeptic, or the voice of reason. Whatever Mayor Owen needs to hear at the time. People who know about their friendship often jokingly call Nathan the vice-mayor, when he’s really more of an advisor and confidante. It was through Nathan’s encouragement that the island began to embrace trade and new ideas from outside the island, and slowly work itself into rejoining the collected governing that the Overlord intends.

In the long run though, Nathan is just looking out for the best interest of his hotel. When you’re in the tourist trade, new ideas and new people are great for business.

Father Nigel grew up the son of a very reputable family in Manhattan. His father was a lawyer, his mother was a respected psychologist and journalist. He was expected and groomed to some day follow in his father’s footsteps and had no doubt in his mind that he would one day grow up to become a lawyer as well. That was until he caught meningitis as a teenager. He doesn’t remember much from that time, but in the midst of his fevered dreams he is positive he met his guardian angel. And although his fever broke and his body healed, Nigel was never quite the same person ever again.

When he told his father that he felt called to the priesthood, Nigel was told that he would have to earn it on his own with no family support. Nigel nodded, and vanished from the house with only the clothes on his back. He spent time in the Job Corps and helped build roads and schools in South America until he had enough money saved up and had gained enough sponsors to pay his way through seminary.

He eventually reconciled with his parents who still quietly wait for their son to grow out of his ‘church phase’ and settled into a small church in Washington. Things were calm and normal for him until he got a call from an archbishop in Germany and a letter from the Vatican informing him that he was about to receive a very special and unique charge. And despite questioning it daily and waiting for someone to tell him it was all a joke, one day a creature walked into his office, pulled back the hood of her coat, and revealed herself to be a fluffy white alien cat who worked for a magical satyr out of a building a few miles away from his church.

Nigel believes that all of this is part of God’s plan, and takes his responsibility as the spiritual leader and advisor for Artemis (Or Clarion, as he calls her) very seriously. When she ended up on Aukate, he even managed to pay her a visit to help heal several deep spiritual scars that had formed from her recent encounters on the island. Nigel and Artemis write letters to one another regularly, and when possible, call. And through all of it, the young priest quietly marvels at the amazing world God has made and presented to him.

Since as far as she can remember, Octavia knew that one day she would rule her home aerie. Dual winged females are always the chosen leaders for the Chimenticore aeries and she was the first one born in twenty years. The aerie was starting to fear they would be leaderless as their current queen’s health had been failing. Chimenticores are superstitious and saw Octavia’s arrival as a sign of what her rule would bring. The fact that she was born in a time when the aerie was beginning to fall into despair predicted that her rule would be full of turmoil and conflict but that she would lead the aerie into prosperity.

Dual winged Chimenticores don’t often live beyond fifty years and the ruler of the aerie started to show signs of failing health not long after her birth. Octavia found herself the new ruler at the age of fourteen, but even at the start she was both a stern but compassionate leader. She refreshed old trade agreements and helped modernize the aerie in her first five years of rule. Many of the Chimenticores in the Octave aerie call her ‘mother’ instead of ‘queen’ because of her compassion for all the Chimenticores she rules over.

Octavia also has two successors that she is already grooming to carry on her legacy. And the birth of two dual winged Chimenticores was seen as yet another sign that her rule will continue to be one of greatness.

Overlord Fox keeps a great many details about her origins a secret. But she surprised many of the inhabitants of the Calendar Islands by stepping up as a leader from seemingly nowhere and in the span of a few years helped pull the island out of the brink of financial ruin and into a thriving and healthy economy once more.

Before she came into power she was meticulously groomed for the role in secret by Hector Fen, who disagreed with Governor Rex’s decision to dissolve her role and let the islands govern themselves. They were already in economic dire straits and without the unity of the islands Hector feared that they would fall too far to ever recover. So when a young teenage fox who had been thrown out of her house by a resentful parent started poking around his cabin, Hector started making plans.

After many years of training and six months after Rex’s death, Fox stepped up to take on the role of governor, promising relief from the economic stagnation and hardship the islands were suffering through and promising jobs and education. The public had doubts, but then as a goodwill gesture the Governor Rex Memorial University broke ground in central Aukate and provided inexpensive education for the natives. She was elected by a landslide despite the fact that Aukate and the islands had been ruled by a female cat for as long as history was recorded. This was doubly amazing that it was a fox who took the mantle as foxes often are treated with a quiet racism against ‘Reynards’.

Once in power Fox began focusing beyond the islands’ borders and began reaching out to the other governments of the world. Aukate was not unknown to the outside world but needed to remain a secret. And yet since it had developed a great deal of it's technologies independently from the rest of the world it could offer fresh new viewpoints for manufacturers to try. She gave the other countries little tickles and tastes of Aukate, enough to whet their appetites and enable her the influence she wanted.

After all, why rule a few islands when you can rule the world?

Paria, like all dires, is the essence and a reflection of the person she was formed from. In this case Sagitair. What was a shock to so many people, including her creator, was that instead of reflecting the cruelty and sadism of her progenitor, Paria was deeply faithful and devoted to good. It was as though the last smothering dregs of Sagitair’s goodness were distilled and formed into a whole independent being.

But Paria was not perfect. Upon her birth she was a stereotype of an angry Christian, harshly judging the sins of those around her. But when she fled her creator and took refuge with Father Mella and the friars of the abbey she quickly learned the error of her ways and recanted, slowly becoming a more understanding and loving creature.

Her link with Sagitair remained though and her creator used it to torment her daily and force her silence regarding her plans to kidnap Fox and take over the lair. As much as Paria wanted to warn people, Sagitair forced her silence. So Paria focused herself on being a comfort to the people around her and making peace with herself.

Percival is dead, and he makes a stunning piece of clothing. Despite being dead he is very sensitive and you should apologize for snooping into his private business. APOLOGIZE!

Pyrite basked in the fact that she was a favorite of the ‘Mother’, Beryl. She had been specially bred for her thick coat and venomous spines that served as excellent tools for assassination. All the Sirenidae knew that if Beryl sent Pyrite on a mission, someone was going to die. And Pyrite reveled in her power. Usually her kind were relegated to disposable animals and tools, but she had become a creature that even the Darnathi officers on the ship cowered in the presence of.

She thought it would be her shining moment when Beryl reluctantly sent her on a mission to kill Darius Steele. She had planned on cutting a bloody path of death through the Lair and return home to bask in her mother’s praises, but her plans were cut short when she was snatched up in midair while about to kill Garret Silver. The last sound she ever heard was her own neck being snapped.

Pyrite’s body was returned to Titan’s ship and she briefly was worn around Beryl’s neck as a strange tribute to how much the darnathi loved her. It is unknown what happened to Pyrite’s body after Beryl’s death, but it was rumored to have been stolen away by Pyrite’s rival, Goldi.

Rain has no idea that she was the primary reason the Darnathi on Aukate formed a truce with Overlord Fox. Almost nothing is known about her life before Darius adopted her beyond the fact that she was abandoned by what is assumed to be her tribe when she was a few months old. Darius found her near a stone obelisk and took her in with the intention of finding a sympathetic member of her species to adopt her. All of that was shattered when Titan sent his agents out and murdered the entire tribe of winged horses. Darius feared Titan would do the same to Rain and pleaded with Titan to spare her. He agreed, in exchange that Darius would show unwavering loyalty to Titan from that moment on.

The young pegasus never knew the price her adopted father paid for her protection, and as she grew she became an unofficial mascot for the Darnathi ship’s crew, with Garret Silver particularly bonding with her and becoming an adopted uncle for her. Silver also attempted to help what he saw as a physical defect in Rain by using the darnathi prototyping technology and surgery to shift the infant pegasus from a quadruped creature to bipedal. And eventually Darius negotiated a truce that included him officially becoming Rain’s guardian and allowing her to attend school like other child her age.

Despite this idyllic life the threat of Titan forever loomed above her even if Darius and Silver did all they could to shield her from it. But eventually Titan’s hatred of Darius outgrew his desire to control and humiliate him, and when he tricked Silver into injecting Darius with a lethal virus it was the last straw. Steele used the last of his strength to rescue Rain from Titan’s clutches and bring the one thing he truly cared about to the sanctuary of Fox’s lair.

Triplets run in Razzle’s family and she was no exception. She grew up with two sisters and seemed to always be vying for the attention of her parents. Razz did not have an unhappy childhood nor did she have a difficult one, but her family was poor and Razz often found herself craving the luxuries she jealously saw in the hands of other people. As her grades in school were mediocre at best she knew that the only way she would come into money was either marry a rich man or find a way to make cash in a manner that did not require her brains too much.

In the end, Razzle did both. She took a job dancing at Harvey’s club and tried to catch the eye of a potential suitor. Harvey often had to scold her for drinking her paychecks away at the bar and doing lackluster work. But she did bring him someone she claimed was a cousin who performed excellently. Little did anyone know that cousin was a darnathi named Sagitar who had paid Razzle very well for some of her genetic material so she could prototype into a more native form.

Soon though Razzle could feel her body aging and knew that she couldn’t dance on the stage forever. Either Harvey would fire her or her body would give out, so she opted to marry a tiger who tipped her well and used his money to build her own club that she and her sisters who had shared similar fates danced at. Razzle had children as quickly as she could and danced at the club every night, and when her girls came of age Razzle retired and convinced herself that her daughters would bring in enough money for her to sit back and enjoy herself. When the middle triplet Bramble rebelled Razzle was seething, and to this day Razz quietly sits in the back of her club plotting for a way to destroy her daughter’s career so she’ll come crying back to her, pleading to dance at the stripper poles once again.

Titanium was born in full highblood culture, being raised and groomed to see himself as the perfection of society. And yet all of his life he bore a burning hatred for people who seemed to have things better than him despite being told constantly that he was the best at everything. Even for a highblood Titan was exceptionally strong and chose to prove himself with the colonies by taking over a planet.

When he was assigned his crew he took an instant dislike to Darius Steele as the man seemed to have a natural ease and charisma with his men that Titan never knew. He resented Silver for being such a physical weakling despite all of the accolades touting his strength as an empath and viability as a mate, and wanted to prove to everyone how weak Silver truly was by constantly making him feel the pain of the people around him. If anyone on his ship excelled him in intelligence or skill, Titan made sure they knew that he was still the strongest and held their lives in his massive hands. Everyone on the ship quickly learned to fear Titan and give him a wide berth as often as possible.

It was when the ship was about to land that things changed permanently for Titan and his crew. He received a message from homeworld ordering them to turn around and go back. Titan erased the message and then purposely crashed the ship to guarantee they would never return. While he was unconscious from the crash Darius Steele attempted to kill him, and the rivalry between the two took a dangerous turn. Titan awoke to see Darius holding a knife and attacked him, breaking Darius’ femur in the process and forcing the man to walk with a cane. After that Titan made it clear that if Steele crossed him again he would not only kill him but kill everyone Steele had tried so hard to protect… including his adopted daughter.

When Steele escaped with Silver, Titan called for the death of him and everyone who helped him. The other members of his crew were either too terrified to leave out of fear of their lives or slipped out quietly when they saw an opportunity for the same reason. This only fueled Titan’s rage all the more. Not only because so many had defied him but also because he refused to believe that anybody could escape his grasp.

Titan’s original mission of world domination is all but lost to him, and now his only goal is to seek revenge on Darius and the members of his crew that defected and joined the Overlord.

On paper, Cinnabar is everything the empath initiative wished to create. He is the product of a highblood mated to a powerful darnathi empath. He even had the added bonus of being born an albino, which makes him particularly exotic and attractive to his race. Thankfully as he was heavily genetically engineered, many of the life threatening issues with albinism are not present in his genetic makeup beyond a sensitivity to sun. Cinnabar was also one of the lucky few children of an arranged marriage where his parents actually did love one another. His mother was a darnathi doctor who helped children that had mental trauma, and his father was one of the extremely rare mid-spectrum highblood empaths. Cinnabar’s test scores listed him as a mid level empath, but the truth is his parents deliberately avoided training him so he wouldn’t be at risk of getting caught up in the golden cage.

Cinnabar was always accused of making his accomplishments through favoritism and because of it developed a cold shell as his public persona. People not close to him see him as aloof and distant and sharp to discipline. But he’s also fair and does not hold his men to any standard that he does not hold for himself. This trait is further exacerbated by the fact that although he’s a highblood on paper, he does not have the physical size, strength, and endurance of one, so he feels he must excel at everything to prove himself. He even took up the ancient art of darnathi swordfighting, a form of fencing, to show his skill.

Cinnabar barely escaped Alvarni and his ship was the one that mostly had last minute refugees who were desperate for an escape before the purges began. Because of this his crewmen tend to have the least amount of discipline, but Cinnabar does his best to keep everyone in shape. He has also formed an odd friendship with Captain Malachite who makes a point of dragging Cinnabar out for ‘fun’ to local bars and trying to get the commander drunk as much as possible.

Rook serves the Pitch aerie but is stationed on Aukate for a great deal of work. He was befriended by Ace after the delivery Chimenticore noticed that Pitch didn’t have many friends on Aukate and the two often were seen together after that.

Of course one of the reasons why most Chimenticores are hesitant to befriend Rook is the fact that everyone assumes he’s a spy or some sort of nefarious agent for Pitch and their dark dealings despite the fact that Rook is very shy, mild, and even a bit clumsy. But the mere stigma of being a member of Pitch is enough to make the average Chimenticore keep their distance.

One thing Rook has taken a liking to is helping Rain with her flying lessons. While Ace is a remarkable teacher, Rook knows how to handle more emergency situations like how to handle high winds or heavy rain and how to land safely with a wing disabled. Darius finds these training sessions to be terrifying and usually needs a drink and a long sitdown by the time they’re done.

Rubeus, despite not being a full blood phoenix, was still an extremely skilled fire mage back in the day when magic was easier to use and play with on Aukate. It was Rubeus who also realized that the magic was growing more powerful and unstable, especially without the creator to keep it in check. And it was Rubeus who developed a means of regulating the power by creating stones and instilling within each of them a living guardian to help control the wild magic threatening to rip the islands apart. His first experiment was on a volunteer, a sparrow named Diete who was merged with a rose quartz and who became the avatar of the heartstone. His experiment was a success and gave him hope.

Little did he know that when he presented his findings and his means of saving the islands to his fellow mages, that they would use him as a conduit for his solution. He and several other powerful elemental mages were tricked or trapped and forced into stones, their living bodies destroyed and only their souls remaining in the magical gems. He found it insult to injury that he was placed in a ruby, the stone bearing the nickname he hated so much.

His only solace was that his lover was also placed in a stone, a mermaid that was sealed within the waterstone and thus trapped with him. He can sense her along with the other stones at all times, and it is only that feeling that keeps him from going insane like some of the others similarly trapped have long since done.

Born under the name Tennantite, Sagitar started life as a commonblood darnathi that was born sterilized. Lacking the natural empathy darnathi have she was ruthless and manipulative at a very young age. Most Darnathi born without empathic ability still live normal lives, but Sagitar reveled in her ability to avoid many of the natural mental consequences a Darnathi suffers when they hurt someone. She learned early on that doing too much would draw attention, but there were always ‘accidents’ around her. When she attended the academy she was eager to play the role of the spy, showing a natural knack of being a social chameleon and integrating herself into new situations quickly. Once she graduated she became part of the initiative to colonize earth.

Sagitar was part of the advance infiltration unit sent all over the world to learn about earth’s governments and begin to seed people into important places. Sagitar ended up on Aukate and after getting over the initial shock of how different it was from the rest of the planet, she began to settle herself. She made contact with a dancer named Razzle Berry and in exchange for a good sum of gold was allowed to use Razzle’s genetic material to prototype herself and set herself up with a fake identity and background as a distant relative of Razz’s.

While dancing she perfected the art of manipulation and during a recruitment run for Fox, she fed the young Overlord a long string of bad luck stories and eventually quit Harvey’s club and joined the Overlord’s minions. She slowly worked her way into a job where she had access to many of the Overlord’s secrets and could perfect her art of manipulation and reconnaissance.

Somewhere along the way, Sagitar’s interest in world domination in the name of Darnathi waned and a desire to simply take over Aukate by herself grew within her. Complaints began to trickle in regarding her methods in the holding cells, but every investigation came up clean and she made a point of acting like the wounded party every time Fox would try and have a heart to heart with her. People would complain to Fox that Sagitar was a sadist, and every time Sagitar would cry her crocodile tears and proclaim that she was doing her best to help and plead to Fox to give her a chance.

The end result was that Fox inadvertently had a monster in her dungeon, and everyone who was sent there knew that nothing they could say or do would spare them from the torture that would soon come down on them the moment they entered.

Like all of the military Sirenidae, 229 was born and bred as a useful tool. Sirenidae are not sapient creatures in and of themselves. But they are implanted with chips that merge with and augment their brain functions and make them biological artificial intelligences. 229 was born on Aukate along with dozens of other Sirenidae created to help maintain the Darnathi ship and to scout for supplies. Because of this his programming 229 had full knowledge of repair, fabrication, design, programming, and stealth tactics. Eventually he was chosen for a stealth mission in an attempt to get to Darius Steele at the lair.

Thankfully his attempt failed and the general lived, but 229 was captured and after confessing his mission he was turned over to Bane for study. Oddly, the two started a clumsy friendship, bonding over the fact that both of them were often considered animals and not taken seriously even when they had something useful to say. 229 also observed that the horrors he had been told the Overlord brought down on the Darnathi and their creations were untrue, in fact his treatment at the Lair was better than his treatment on his home ship.

Being a creature of logic, 229 believed that he could explain that the enemy was not so bad to his brethren. So when he found Pyrite, an agent of Beryl’s, attempting to finish the job he had originally started he thought he could reason with her. Instead he took a poison spine to the back and almost bled to death.

Pyrite ended up being useful in saving 229’s life after having her neck snapped by Artemis. Bane realized that she might be used as a blood donor to save the dying sirenidae and quickly attempted a transfusion. 229 regretted her lost life but decided that the disregard for him and his words was the final nail in the coffin. He cast aside his assigned number and asked Fox to give him a real name. As the Overlord possessed a sense of irony, she chose to call him ‘Spike’ after almost losing his life to one.

Spike now works alongside Bane as a personal assistant, acting as hands and dexterous fingers when she needs them. Currently the two are working on a method of continuing to supply power to the AI chips in the sirenidaes’ heads so their technological brains can live as long as their organic bodies can.

Terry has almost always been seen with Harvey. When one is a rogue fire demon there are often many members of the clan trying to pull you back in or seek revenge for straying. The ones who have gone after Harvey often leave with broken bones, burns, and (if they’re part of the Torn clan) their antlers snapped off. Terry has been with Harvey for so long that they are often easily overlooked, but if you cause trouble, Terry loves reminding you.

Wherever Harvey goes, so goes Terry. Like a loyal butler who relights his ‘cigarettes' when he spontaneously explodes them in his moments of anger, to a bodyguard when someone starts to cause trouble. It is even rumored that Terry lives with Harvey and prepares his meals, cleans his home, and privately advises him on certain matters regarding the club.

Perhaps Terry is the real power of the Red Velvet. One never knows.

The creator’s original plan for the islands was to leave a dragon in charge of every island as a caretaker and overseer. Uru was going to be the dragon of Aukate but had greater plans. At first he tried to be quietly manipulative, trying to curry the favor of the creator and learning as much magic as he could.

When Uru made his move he was unprepared for the fact that the Creator had protocols engaged in case one of his creations turned on him. Uru had cast a spell to lock the creator in crystal, and with his last breath before he was fully encased he cursed Uru to be trapped forever in his cavern with a shield that would strangle and kill the dragon if he tried to escape.

Despite being trapped, Uru still has power and slowly works to reestablish his power on Aukate. He befriended governor Rex with the hopes of using her to whittle his prison down from the outside, but Overlord Fox’s appearance and rebuke of him shattered much of what he built up. Still, he has one of the greatest underground networks on the islands and much of his power. His failure stings and after having his freedom ripped away he has begun taking more risks, but only time will tell if those risks pay off.

A dire is the embodiment of the id of their host. They contain the feral urges and instincts and many of the natural impulses that their creator held. The id’s host is not without emotion after the creation of a dire, but many of the more base and pure emotions run a great deal stronger through the body of a dire.

Bane is very much like a twin sister to Fox in many ways. Both of them have a strong desire to see Aukate and its people thrive. They both seek knowledge and have inquisitive natures, and they are both fiercely loyal and protective of the people they hold dear. But Bane is the one who is more feral in nature and is quick to remind others that she is as much a beast as she is a sentient being.

At first Bane and Fox were inseparable and you rarely saw one without the other. But as time passed Bane became more independent, perhaps reflecting the independent nature of her host, and eventually even had her own quarters built in the lair so she could have some measure of privacy. She became a great deal more reclusive and distant when Fox began to seriously pursue a relationship with Darius Steele, but did what she could to hide her growing dislike and resentment of the man. Deep down she could not begrudge Fox’s desire to have a companion and to be happy. Thankfully Darius saw the growing distance in Bane and created a dire of his own to help.

These days Bane loses herself in work with R&D, enjoying the influx of new technology to study thanks to the Darnathi. And she appreciates that out of all of the places in the lair, she is never treated like a talking dog in the one department where she signs all the paychecks.