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Please note: You must create separate user accounts for Lore 5 and the ECR forums.Fifth Dragon King Breed: Tricerok
By Jukashi
Submitted on 10 Dec 2006 at 12:09:18 PM ESTLast updated on 18 Dec 2006 at 08:06:58 PM EST
Category: Character Types
An Article detailing Tricerok, a fifth Breed of Dragon King, associated with Earth. Yes, I know the gods lived on the Blessed Isle. Read on to find out how I justify it…
Introduction
In the time before the First Age, the primordials, who had created the world as a sanctuary from the Wyld, dwelt in the heavenly city of Yu-Shan. The Blessed Isle was the place of the gods, the servants of the primordials, who serviced Creation and saw to its functioning. And in each of the four directions, the Elemental Poles of Creation, dwelt the beasts, the beings of flesh and of simple Essence; humans, beings of flesh who had souls, which were reborn through the wheel of reincarnation, stripped of their memories by the peace of Lethe; and the four Breeds of Dragon Kings, who were between beast and god, who had the power to rework Creation with their Essence, and whose souls would persist through death to a new body and, in time, regain their memories of their past lives.In this time, it is said, the chain of life was complete and unbroken.
But the gods laboured on and on, created to work with no end in sight, while the primordials who created them rested, and played the Games of Divinity. In time, the gods’ hearts turned against their makers, and they plotted to defeat them and claim mastery over Creation. To this end they created the Exalted, champions of humanity, to serve as their army, and in the primordial war, so fierce that it burned away the vast majority of Creation, they eventually succeeded.
For the love of their patron, the Unconquered Sun, the Dragon Kings chose the side of the gods and fought against the primordials. And for this the primordials crushed their ranks, striking such blows that millions of Dragon Kings were slain and their souls shattered beyond possibility of rebirth. With the primordial war won and the Exalted triumphant, the Dragon Kings were ruined; their wondrous cities left hollow, their civilisation crippled. Knowing that they could never again attain what once they had had, the Dragon Kings withdrew from humanity, falling into insular conflicts of theology and territory.
But the Solars, the Exalted of the Unconquered Sun, saw this and were concerned for their allies, who had aided them in their hour of need and who had suffered for it. And a small number of the Chosen of the Sun decided that they would try and set things aright.
History: The Tricerok Are Created
When, in the war, the Exalted realised that the Dragon Kings were being truly destroyed, a number of hasty and mostly ineffectual methods were attempted to counter it. The only successes garnered by these desperate moves were the preservation of a few of the tattered shards of Dragon King souls that had been destroyed. Sadly, these fragments, having lost their unity and structure, were but lingering scraps of Dragon King power and memory, bereft of the vitality and personality they had once held.| Sidebar: Chaos Souls
Those first, failed attempts to create Dragon King souls from the Wyld, unstable and unwanted, were left to dissipate back into the chaos from whence they were formed. But although they lacked memory, these souls still managed to manifest some small measure of will, and were able to cling desperately to existence. Drifting through the border between Creation and the Wyld, these souls eventually succeeded in finding those few packs of feral Dragon Kings that hunted these tainted regions, and were incarnated in real Dragon King bodies. Though they number little more than a dozen, these Chaos Souls would occasionally succeed in gaining their due sentience and power, as true Dragon Kings did, and went on to beget a series of dark legends that still persist among Dragon Kings and humans; tales of mad, twisted creatures that fed upon the inhabitants of Creation and who wielded power over the Wyld itself. And these creatures’ souls still flit along the edge of the Wyld, seeking life and power yet… Mechanically, Chaos Souled Dragon Kings are represented as Inheritance 3 Fae-Blooded Dragon Kings, who always possess at least one Derangement(Or Erratic Temperament), and at least one Mutation. |
Though they were studied for many long years, stored for decades in the acadamies and temples by Exalt and Dragon King, none succeeded in making them truly whole again. Sorcerers pored over the myths of primordial creation, consulted the gods, and scrutinised Dragon Kings who put their own souls under study for the chance of restoring their people. Time and again, a breakthrough was thought to be reached, but the pitiful creatures hatched from these attempts were to true Dragon King souls as a scarecrow of tattered clothes and straw is to a man. Without exception, they were unstable, insane, and found their semblance of life to be little more than suffering. Though much was learned, no Dragon King who had been slain by the primordials was ever returned to life.
So, reasoned one sorcerer, late one night, when the shadows danced among his books, and the moon glanced through his window; if we cannot return to life those slain by the primordials, then at least we can restore life to their civilisation. And with assistants and allies and willing Dragon Kings in tow, he ventured out into the depths of the Wyld, to take the form of new Dragon King souls and force it upon the chaos beyond the world.
But the souls he created were chaotic and unstable, for the power of the Dragon Kings is a thing unknown to humanity, and not even one of the Solar Exalted could craft their power as the primordials could. It was only by infusing these souls with some of the essence of Earth could the required stability be imparted. Unfortunately, this infusion of Earth made these new souls unsuitable for birth into the bodies of the Anklok, the Mosok, the Pterok or the Raptok; for each of these Breeds was aligned with the powers of Fire, Water, Air and Wood.
Thus the Solar crafted new bodies for these souls, bodies to match the Earth which allowed them to survive; bodies tough and strong to manipulate stone and soil, and sharp of the senses to feel and see and smell it.
And he brought these new Dragon Kings to Creation, to the slopes of the mountain itself, and he named them the Tricerok, the Dragon King Breed of the Elemental Pole of Earth.
History: Tricerok in the First Age
The new Dragon Kings were met with mixed approval. At first, as they were revealed slowly to colleagues and other parties who had been interested in the endeavour, they were met with approval; such that the sorcerer who originally created them oversaw the creation of more of their ilk. But when the Tricerok were revealed to society at large, there was a controlled yet powerful uproar.Solars had created sentient beings before, but those had been servants, tools; they were built with various safeguards in place, and for a very narrow purpose. For the first time, the Exalted had created a full, separate race of individuals, designed to live their own lives. Many felt that such a move was the first step on a slippery slope, and others worried about the opinions of the gods, that mere humans were emulating the greatest feats of the primordials themselves. As for the Dragon Kings themselves, a new conflict erupted in their society, between those who supported the creation of new Dragon Kings, which might revitalise their whole species, and those who felt that the Tricerok were but imitations that made mockery of their loss and would only serve to cheapen the survivors of the war.
As with all Dragon King conflicts, violence quickly broke out and spread, while the remnants of old groups who had once rebelled against the rule of the Dragon Kings began to whisper again in human society.
With forays into the Wyld as risky as always, and with support drying up, these factors led to the creation of new Tricerok souls being ceased. The process was formally made illegal, and with the Eclipse caste working hard, conflicts over the new Dragon Kings died away. Those Tricerok who had been created- numbering less than four thousand in totality- were left to integrate with First Age society as best they could.
Sadly, the Tricerok were doomed to forever be the second-class citizens of the Dragon Kings. Though possessing the same abilities as others of their species, it was never forgotten that they were not “real” Dragon Kings. They possessed none of the rights or status among spirits that their kin had (though they were friendly with the Mountain Folk, who they felt an affinity for and often worked with), and were of small enough number that they were not trusted to be capable of surviving as a separate nation… although this estimation would, later be proved wrong.
In the meantime, the best way for a Tricerok to live was to assist the sorcerer-technicians of the Exalted, particularly in the areas of architecture; the Tricerok’s adeptness in the Dragon Kings’ Earth Paths meant that a group of Adult Tricerok could cut the time it took to raise a Manse to a fraction of the time that it would take even bound demons to accomplish the same task, and a few individuals even came to be regarded as skilled architects in their own right. Those that did not work in the construction of the First Age’s marvellous buildings generally became artificers, bringing some of the Dragon King’s crystalline- and occasionally vegetative- technology to the human settlements of the Blessed Isle, who were far from the homes of the old Dragon Kings. Some small number also became medics, in particular on the battlefield, using the Path of Yielding Earth to restore both equipment and soldiers to full effectiveness.
It was thus, as a servant race of the Solars in all but name, that the Tricerok lived out the First Age. They worshipped the Unconquered Sun, as did their progenitors, and remained loyal to the Solar Exalted as the First Age wore on… until the behaviour of the Exalted Kings and Queens became more… erratic.
History: The Usurpation, and the Flight Below
Kept close at hand by the Exalted, the Tricerok were the only Dragon Kings to dwell within the heart of the Old Realm. Unlike the Solars who lived out among the original Dragon Kings, the Solars of the Isle were completely secure in their power and mastery of the world around them, and… indulged. The Tricerok were not exempt from the horrors of that time; who, after all, cared what Solars did to creatures whom the Solars had made themselves? The unlucky Dragon King would return in a century or so in any case, so where was the harm?When the Solars were called together, it was traditional that their Tricerok assistants and servants came also, and dwelt with each other while the Chosen Lords of Creation deliberated. It was no different, once, when all the Solars of the Realm were called to a great banquet… and Meru fell in a night of blood and destruction.
Realising what was happening- perhaps alerted by sympathetic parties- the Tricerok fled, as all inhabitants of the great city attempted to do. Rather than brave the paths down the slopes of Mount Meru, however, which crumbled as the Solars fell, the Tricerok took what they could grab… technology, automata, friends… and pressed through the mass of humanity which poured from the inhabited streets under the surface of Meru. The collected host of the earthen Dragon Kings passed down, through the abandoned lower streets, into the darkening depths of the city, evading the disasters that sprung in the wake of the violence above, down deeper… through tunnel into cavern, through the heart of the Axis of Creation, down into the heart of the world: the realms of the Mountain Folk.
But, though they had reached the subterranean lands of their allies, the Tricerok did not intend to stop. Above them, the Terrestrial Exalted were wiping out all traces of the Solar Exalted, and the Tricerok knew they did not have the power to return. Below teemed the chthonic hordes of the Underbrood, a seemingly inexhaustable horde. To preserve themselves, the Dragon Kings struck outwards, wielding the magic of the Solid Earth Path together in a massive undertaking of many years, simply to find three Demenses within the living earth and, within and between them, shape a massive cavern whole from solid rock.
It was here that the Tricerok awoke, through geomancy and magic and blood sacrifice for the approval of the Unconquered Sun, their mightiest artifact, the Mirror of the Sun. This mighty crystal, powered by the greatest of the three Demenses (now Solar-Aspected) and hung within a massive pillar of stone in the midst of the cavern, shone with the light of the Unconquered Sun himself, that the Underbrood would be kept at bay and that plants might grow in that dark place beneath the earth.
They called this place Marilaska, which in the high Holy Speech of the Dragon Kings, means: Reflection.
The Tricerok in the Age of Sorrows
Least of the Dragon Kings, patronised as pale imitations, the Tricerok, who have been scorned by Heaven and condemned to the depths of the earth by the Dragon-Blooded host, have nevertheless accomplished what no other force has truly managed; for, deep within the Earth, their home was completely untouched by the Great Contagion. There, they have managed to preserve, whole and unbroken, a living piece of the First Age.Deep Marilaska, illuminated at all hours by the Mirror of the Sun, teems with life. Whole forests and groves of enchanted vegetation line its streets, keeping its air clean and its people fed. The Tricerok create and maintain wonders of their technology; beautiful and seemingly impossible architecture, high-speed transport systems, large libraries of First Age knowledge stored within a network of beautiful crystals, open hospitals that provide magical healing via artifacts and skilled healers, and deadly weapons forged to battle the Underbrood.
A dynasty of Solar Half-Caste – the descendants of fellow Solar assistants and compatriots brought along on the great flight from the Usurpation- serve an essential role, providing magics that the Tricerok, though more powerful in general, do not themselves possess. Expertly maintained automata aid in the day-to-day life of the city, whether it be in tending the vast root systems of Uliaas, the Manse-Tree which forms Marilaska’s first defence system, or mining for orichalcum and crystal to produce Solstones, tiny versions of the greater Mirror of the Sun that are nevertheless invaluable in exploring the deep caves and in trade to the Mountain Folk for their battles with the Underbrood.
Not that the Tricerok are content to huddle deep below the Imperial Mountain, nor that their lives are easy and peaceful. The Underbrood constantly scheme to eradicate the bubble of light that intrudes into the deep darkness, and groups with a wide variety differing goals within the cavern itself constantly spar and maneuver around each other, kept from the traditional bloodshed of Dragon King conflicts only be the pressing knowledge of their own small numbers.
Whether attempting to expand their underground domain, mounting secret expeditions to the surface to judge the state of the rest of Creation, researching fresh wonders of technology, questing to earn the recognition of the Celestial gods or aiding the Mountain Folk in their eternal battle against the chthonic hordes that surround them, the Tricerok do not lack for purpose or excitement. Though they have managed to survive since the First Age, there’s no guarantee that they will continue to do so… nor that they will remain apart from the turmoil of the Age of Sorrows.
Fifth Breed: The Tricerok
MentalityReflecting the essence of Earth which granted them life, Tricerok generally tend to be calm and careful individuals. In the First Age, the circumstances of their creation developed in them a quiet and helpful posture, and remnants of this have come through even to the present age; the Tricerok are the most outwardly polite and courteous of the Dragon Kings. Those who come into contact with them briefly might describe them as uncaring or distant, but those who come to know the Tricerok well realise that, rather, these large creatures are adept at channelling their passions into their thoughts and crafts; a Tricerok warrior uses her emotions to bring her victory in combat, and does not waste them in casual expression. If one of the central Dragon Kings wants you to know how he feels on a subject, he’ll tell you directly- the Under Hunters pride themselves on their honesty, some would say brutally so.
Because they channel their emotions into their work, a Tricerok’s personality is revealed through their surroundings. Each of the central Dragon Kings, being naturally gifted at craftsmanship, typically does at least a little work on on their own dwelling, as well as their tools, weapons and even their clothes: idly improving on one’s possessions is an almost meditative pursuit among Tricerok, and the main activity when no other work presents itself. As a result, almost every object or structure in their society is very personalised and expressive, if not always beautiful. However, because Tricerok put so much effort into their surroundings, they can also be quite possessive and territorial. This is also why Tricerok keep everything they own very clean and well-maintained. This perfectionism can in some cases apply also to individuals who the Tricerok considers “theirs”; close friends or relations particularly. The Golden Children who live among them often seek solitude purely to escape the well-meaning but tiresome nagging of a Dragon King friend.
Some Tricerok do shun the pursuit of material perfection, particularly as they grow older and attain more enlightenment, turning their personal expression from their possessions to themselves. Instead of channelling their emotions into their work, they shift it to training and meditiation; the majority of Tricerok of Essence 4 and 5 spend their time studying, experimenting and practising their people’s martial arts. This trend, curiously, reverses itself as Tricerok reach the pinnacles of enlightenment; Elder Tricerok, attaining the peaks of mastery of their talents and interests, turn back to enforcing their will externally on their society, often through philosophical debate, teaching or political activism.
Appearance
The central Dragon Kings are the tallest of the five breeds, when stretched to their full height at over seven feet tall. They do not have the bulk of the Anklok, however, though they are still powerfully muscular, and typically stand in a crouch, leaning forward to balance between their long, thick tail and the large bone structure of their skull.
The bones and skin on a Tricerok’s head are very thick and heavy, in addition to three horns and protective shield which covers their neck and upper back. This shield of thick scales over a boney frame covers the Tricerok’s neck and the base of their skull, while the horns are positioned one above each eye and one atop the end of their snout. Like Raptok, Tricerok can eat both meat and plants, and their jaws were equipped by their creators for this broad diet.
Their horns, though deadly weapons, are also used to dig through earth and stone; Tricerok eyes are deep-set and have boney eyelids which, along with muscles that close off their nostrils, allow Tricerok to literally dig with their face without harming themselves. Their hands and feet are broad and tough, with large, hard claws. Using the strong muscles in their arms, legs and neck to shift and compact stone and soil on all sides, a Tricerok can tunnel through the earth at relatively high speeds- speeds that increase dramatically through the use of the Solid Earth Path’s magic, which all Tricerok are adept in.
Breed Abilities
As enduring as the stone they work, Tricerok are naturally adept at craftsmanship and have an innate talent for understanding the wondrous devices of the First Age. Tricerok are naturally grifted at Resistance, Craft and Lore.
Breed Attributes
Tricerok are strong and have sharp senses, but above all else their bodies are powerfully resilient. Tricerok add +1 to Strength and Perception and +2 to their Stamina.
Tricerok have a natural talent at digging through earth and stone. When digging, they may ignore half the obstruction’s soak and may use both their claws and horns to deal damage simultaneously without penalty. When digging through earth, Tricerok usually compact the soil to either side as they go, which reduces the chance of tunnel collapse. An Tricerok may use Shape the Earth to further increase their tunneling speed.
Natural Armour
Tricerok add +3B/L to their soak.
Innate Weapons
Tricerok possess claws, a heavy tail and of course, their horns.
Claw: Speed 5, Accuracy +1, Damage +2L, Defence +0, Rate 2 Tail: Speed 6, Accuracy -1, Damage +5B, Rate 2 Gore: Speed 6, Accuracy +0, Damage +4L/7L*, Rate 1 *Use second number when charging or bracing.
Sobriquets
Under Hunters, Lost Lords, Sun-sculpted (mildly derogatory), Chaosmade (derogatory).
Sample Concepts
Scholar, Architect, Magical crafter, Explorer.
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