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Giving the impression of being hewn out of sodalite rock, the contours of this dragon seem to be craggy and weatherworn over a squat, compacted frame. A pronounced bone structure over all the vista of deepest blue gives the impression of unnatural gauntness. The deep indigo hue of his hide appears mottled and daubed though, with cracking harper-tone paint, giving the illusions of swirls and harlequin patterns, broken only by deep jet that forms his neck ridges and talons. Occasionally, rogue flecks of other more vibrant sky and powder shades, combined with freckles of brown, give him a mud-flecked aspect. His wings are a shadow of veined agate, translucent at the very edge of the membranes, as if the cloak of them were ragged from age and usage.


Egg Name and Description

Lonely Moors Egg
Beneath a pale grey sky, misty moors stretch across the surface, seemingly worn down by weather, ancient and folorn. Splashes of purple stand out vividly in small clumps across a field of faded green, where the line of an imagined horizon is blurred by the feel of distance. Where the land merges the skyline, a mountain beck wends a rolling pathway from close to the apex diagonally, meeting itself once more on the other side — perpetuating the feel of endlessness and a land long forgotten. But here, at the very apex is a singular, isolated tower of rocky grey-blue leans at an angle to overlook the deserted moor - a stubborn monolith that refuses to soften and yield to the elements. The eye might just imagine a single humanoid shape there, looking out over the eerie, timeless majesty, cloak forever frozen in a windswept pose.

Preset Mind Touches

Distant Pipesong reaches your ears, mournfully carried across an endless distance. The mind is not asleep, but its deep in contemplation. Rain seems to slant against you, beating back the heat of the hatching sands, but nevertheless obscuring the landscape of this mind from clear view. There's a sensation though, that the occupant is turning slightly to your presence, just looking out at you for the moment, curious but practical that there's a great intervening distance of egg-shell between itself and you.

Distant Pipesong takes on a slightly more cheerful aire to it, particularly as you've not left it on its own again. The scent of fresh baked scones seems to be a welcoming gift and an invite to approach closer, to share some trailbread and time with this lonely denizen of the eggshell beneath your hand. What is your name, stranger? What brought you here to visit with it? Stay, chat a while…

Distant Pipesong is highly, highly pleased that you're still here! The landscape surrounding you seems to flush with the vivid green of plant growth after a spring rain… and indeed, the endless drizzle that touches this mind becomes quite the wonderful shower to refresh a weary traveller. In the distance, the young mind can almost be seen as that figure that stands beside the tower upon its shell, long shanks stretched out on a rock, leaning back as it looks on toward you. A sense of serenity hits you, of an irrepressable and indomitable pride — not just in what -it- is, but in what you are also. Heritage, a sense of self, knowing what you want and being unafraid to stand the test against the unknown seem to suffuse through to you.

Distant Pipesong seems to be joined by a distant drummer, striking a beat which is almost like a ruathan folk-dance, encouraging you to celebrate a little of what makes you tick, to party with it as it shares a little of itself with you. The rich aroma of loam beneath the bootheels washes across your senses, evoking any memory you might have of good company and good times had in the past. The past seems to be important to it, seeking out bright spots in your own, listening as you might share a yarn with it, or simply the words you have spoken in mind or voice.

Distant Pipesong seems to realise that time waits for noone, you included. With a solemn change in the endless rain, the mists created by the downpour make you retreat from its company, just as it itself moves back and away from your touch. There'll be time again, that it knows for certain, as the pipes bid a sorrow-filled fare-thee-well. You should visit the other hills and its kith and kinnain.

Customised Mind Touches

Talmar's First Egg Touching] Talmar's Second Egg Touching]


Hatching Message

Giving a brief little shudder, the Lonely Moors egg buries itself further in the sand, a scuffle of sound that's lost in the chorus of dragon humming over the hatching sands.

The Lonely Moors egg gives another go at movement, this time bouncing out of the furrow it made for itself and leaning crazily to the side. A crack like black lightning, starts zigzagging from the apex, splits the tower marking assunder as if struck by the force of nature, a network of smaller cracks splitting out from it, then nothing more.

Flakes begin to pour away from the Lonely Moors egg now. Faster and faster as the shell gives in to the internal pressure, falling like autumnal leaves and hard rain, then there's a brazen honk of sound, like pipes squeezed too hard and the egg explodes into shards, disgorging the hatchling onto the sands with a blink and a shudder of long-contained limbs.


Impression Message

It might seem like you're about to pass out. Surely your vision is being occluded, a fog rolling in from your periphery vision, turning everything to shades of grey and leaving you choking to breathe for a second. No more than that though and the distant sound of rain-fall comes to your ears. There's cooling spray on your face, wind that carries a very distinctive cinnamon-like smell to your nostrils, a haunting melody to your ears then a deep, somehow dry voice with, for no reason that's fathomable, a distinctive ruathan accent. «There.» Mists roll back, shades of heather and heath across your eyes part to reveal a distant tower and a figure swimming into focus as a pair of jewelled eyes look up at you from the blue hatchling that's nudging your knee ever so warmly and love. Unshakeable, unquenchable, unending love, devotion, strength, purpose and a fervant idealism. «My A'mar. I am Caldoth, the waiting is done. Neither of us will be lonely again. Now, about the food thing? Then everything else. There's a lot to share. Can we? I'm starved to a fare-thee-well!»


Personality

From the first, this young blue is a passionate fellow. As you sensed in his eggshell, Caldoth possesses deep and abiding beliefs. The first of these is family. It doesn't seem to matter who's family it is, but in those beginning months, it is definately his clutchmates, parents and above all else, you. It may infact, begin to drive you crazy after a while! The reason for this, is the need he seems to have of keeping his family close around him. They are his kin, his kith and his people. He'll actually have a bit of trouble letting them out of his sight. «But if I cannae see'm how do I know where they are?» might come on a hard front of rain, into your mind as you try and explain that he does not have to follow them all around like a puppy dog, nor you for that matter. Getting time to yourself after he's grown enough, to just go and get food or take care of your own hygienic needs when he's in this clinging-to-apron-strings stage of development may well be a challenge in and of itself. Though not given to flat out panic, he will fret and fuss and worry and pace if his kin are not where he can see them, a stage all dragonets go through that will last longer than it truly ought to in Caldoth.

But there is an upside to this. You may well find that his obsession with his clan works out to your favour, for he'll see them as they truly are, understand them much better than perhaps his other clutchmates might and will slowly develop the knack of predicting them, planning their moves and the nascent knowledge of the unit of unity: the wing. As his awareness widens and becomes more acute, be ready for arguments with him or with his clutchmates about all manner of things he thinks they're being daft about. «Achillath's broken yet another barrel with his runnin' around. I'm tellin' ye he's gonnae get the whole LOT of us in trouble, 'less one of us tells him ta grow up! But YOU try tellin' him or his own /anythin'/!» despairingly of course. He's not about giving a good solid tail thwap either, or trying to tackle a dragon much larger than himself. Truly, it is not him being cock sure, more that he believes someone has to do it, you see. This determination to protect and serve his people will likely give him the kind of knowledge that when transposed to the weyr at large, makes for a very trustworthy kind of wingsecond or even a wingleader.

ADOLESCENCE:
Another thing that you will notice about him very early in his development that will hone as he hits adolescence, is his facination for craft and forms of art. Expect there to be many questions about how things are made and done, asked with surprising intelligence. «So this is a cookery from somewhere else other than home? How is it made? It smells different than the other cooking.» or «But how do they actually stop the wood from warpin'? Down by th'lake, there's planks on the shore that're all twisty…» He will always be small and at first it might seem like he's just slow to grow but as he develops through weyrlinghood, it will be evidenced that he's simply destined to be quite a short-ass for his colour, except for his forepaws! Whereas his body will define him as a littler blue, his paw size will always be long-toed and suggesting of a dragon larger than himself. It is a bizarre little physical quirk but those long toes and large hands make excellent tools for shaping and playing around in the earth, rocks and other malleable substances. He may even become quite deft at crafting temporary forms of art, facinated by and sharing your passion for pottery, come wintertime he will adore simply crafting things out of snow and icicles with you, fallen branches, other bits and pieces you might find lying around. Also, due to his small size, he'll be able to get in to spots larger dragons cannot, including compacting himself down to stoop under the lintel of houses, help in cave mouths or hunt beneath trees. His frame after all, is powerful and densely packed, for all that he's little.

As lessons become more complex, he'll become more serious along with it. What it /is/ to be a dragon is the second of his great passions, just as humans have their own cultures and ethnicity of region, so does he emmulate it with his own sense of pride. You may find yourself having to do extra lessons with him, not because of punishment but out of a need to perfect his species pride. You may well have to exert your will just to stop him overdoing it and straining his young body. You may also find yourself developing physically just keeping up with him. Let your big brother beware! This is also the time when his wry wit will surface, but mostly the ability to laugh at himself to counter his own follies. «Well yeah, I guess if'n I'm gonna use my tail for a landing, t'would have been better not to sit on it and go headfirst into the hay bales eh? If there was more of me, I'd be dangerous.»

MATURITY:
You will find in life, that Caldoth's love of simple beauty and handicraft will never fade, only hone. By the time maturity has hit him, your bond's sense of purpose is very finely tuned. He seems almost to be the big brother to you, despite you having one of your own. Expect there to be moments in life when he's standing in your way, not because he's stubborn but just because he wishes to protect you from things you may not wish to deal with, or because he simply thinks he knows what's best. Like decoration of your weyr for instance. His keen eye for what works (at least in his mind) will likely be applied to your own clothing, your furniture as well as those you may take an interest in romantically. The wrong choice in mate is something he seeks to avoid and interfere with. Why?

Well, that's because it always takes something special to catch his eye and fire him up. He is deeply passionate, for certain… but he will not race after every tail that flees through the skies ahead of him, so why should you? He will never tell you though, that part of the reason of that is his love for you, wishing only to be careful of his own passions. They will still be there, buried a little deeper. He may even linger on crushes or a particular female he adores for much longer than a dragon ought to remember, leaving the last little surprise of Caldoth: If something truly, truly, truly should never be forgotten, he never will forget it. It's a peculiarity that goes along with his sense of identity, purpose and pride. He may not recall perfectly and indeed, the longer time goes by, the more the knowledge will fuzz around the edges, but you may find him bringing up the image of your first flight together as the distant horizon over the tree line, or his first kill as leather that's the exact shade of the animal he fed upon. Snapshots rather than full screenplays, if you like.

His sense of pride and identity and by proxy your own, will be the most pervasive thing in your lives together, once his passions have transposed from his immediate kin to the weyr. You may never find a dragon more firmly loyal to his chosen clan, wherever that may be. Injustice and repression of the self he will never, ever tolerate. Remember the mooning image he gave you? Oh yes, that irreverence to those that make your home and your work a mockery will be the target of such cheeky insult and cunning ability to make a fool of the bully or an example of the tyrant. After all, they must learn from their mistakes and not hurt their own people by their foolishness, right? Right! Everyone deserves the chance to make mistakes, but they also deserve the chance to be free to excel, to be the hero that resides in all of us.

In all things though, this inspiration is a guideline. I just hope you enjoy him for all that he is, as written or changed to suit your vision of him.


Mindvoice

Distant Pipesong
Caldoth's mind can be a haunting one. Distant melodies half-heard, echoing on a far-away mountainside, a sense of quiet loneliness and the distinctive aroma of loam across the nostrils. Despite that, his mind is indomitable and practical. Rain will frequent his mind as an indicator of his mood, refreshing and enervating aswell as making everything sopping wet. Emotional state is often given by what kind of rain is falling. Grumpy might be a downpour, happy is a light summer shower, bored is an endless miasma of drizzle that doesn't quite do anything but get you damp. He sometimes colours his mind with earthen tones — hessian brown, pine-tree green, the mauve of heather and a vibrancy (if very happy) of fresh growth. For some unfathomable reason, he also likes to use a ruathan accent over his words.


Inspiration

The theme for this clutch was battlefields. The theme for the dragons was figures of those battles, whether heros, martyrs or peacemakers. The egg was based on Falkirk in scotland, where scots drove back the english forces. It's a lonely, desolate moor with a monument set upon the hill. The dragon himself was based loosely on William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, along with scottish tradition and culture. His description comes from woad. His name Caldoth, is derivative of Caledonia. He was created in full by X'an.


Credits

Name Cry of Freedom Blue Caldoth
Dam Gold Wiyaneth
Sire Bronze Izelth
Created By X'an
Image By Tarish
Impressee A'mar
Hatched July 1st, 2006
Fort Weyr
PernWorld MUSH