Ancient and ethereal, wild and winding, this brown’s moon-bleached hide stretches tight over long, lean musculature. He is a force of nature coerced into bestial form, one whose body cannot help but rebel against the constraint of sharp edges and mortal dimensions. One might once have called him stone-sculpted, adonic, but eons of unknowable wear has softened some edges, honed others to deadly shears, each as unpredictable as the last. His visage remains utterly predatorial, malice subtle but stunning; his is the kind of beauty that is as much warning as lure, constructed to draw one's gaze to hypnotic eyes, smoke-stained lids, the sweep of arrogant brows up to pointed headknobs, anything other than the very real threat of bone-white teeth and feral claws. Wind-worn sandstone picks up where a strong jaw leaves off, contours fading in and out of sight down the length of his neck and sides in a winding knot that would once have been elaborate. Now it's merely a shadow of its former weaving, a secret subtlety meant only for those that can see past discordant neckridges - some broken, some blunt - to his true, beating hearts. These he so often hides even from himself, titanic wings pulled tight around his shoulders, dextrous thumbs stretching to press just above his collarbones, giving the impression of a clasped cloak. Though seemingly plain, it is only by dusky light that one can admire the faded sky that paints the underside of long pinions, clotted cream and soft umber clouds otherwise ruined by his wings' translucence.
Egg Name and Description
Exaltation Of The Sun Egg
This is a big'un. Huge and eerily roundish, it looms over many of the clutch, a watchful splash of bright red. A sulfurous haze casts a pall over the nadir of the shell, dimming roaring scarlet to sluggish rust in patches and swirls. Round the rotund middle, clear scarlet returns, brightening to near-magenta at the apex. Wisps of vibrant yellow several shades closer to fire than the sulfur and brimstone of the base dance here and there, never lasting more than a spark's width. The overall effect is a red-hot iron, or maybe a blistering inferno, or pool of bubbling fire. Whatever imagery this hefty shell invokes, it seems to shine in whatever light strikes it, never far from some perfect spotlight. As it should be.
Hatching Message
Wobble Message
Exaltation of the Sun egg is just streeeeetching towards its dam, reaching for something sun-like even if – YES, OKAY, SHE'S MUSTARD YELLOW. Way to ruin an eggs vibe, y'all. NOW IT'S GOING TO MAKE YOU WAIT.
Crack Message
Exaltation of the Sun Egg thinks you've waited long enough – or perhaps it is the one that's waited long enough. Fissures race like licks of lightning across its once brilliant shell, something almost violent in the sudden appearance of ruin over what some might have considered perfection mere moments ago.
Hatch Message
Exaltation of the Sun Egg roils on the spot, a vicious twist of ovid vengeance that finds it tipping over onto its side and then shattering open, leaving bits of egg and goo clinging to the wilting wings of a nearly-hatched hatchling.
Sands Pose #1
Labyrinth's Lock Brown Hatchling should probably go back into his egg. There's something wrong about the all at once too-beautiful and too-strange creature that stands amid the ruin of his shell, baleful eyes peering out from beneath bits of egg that slide slowly, slowly, slowly down without ever causing him to blink. His attention swings slowly to Leirith and Xermiltoth both, a curious chip-chirr-cheep crooned as his head tilts to one side. He waits, perhaps for an answer, perhaps merely curious, but it takes a moment too long before his attention turns to the candidates aligned and waiting on the sands.
Sands Pose #2
Labyrinth's Lock Brown Hatchling is already a predator, there's no other way to explain why this little hatchling seems so at one with his limbs when too-oft egg-wet younglings are prone to missteps and tumbles and accidents on the sands. His steps are slow, yes, but even, measured, purposeful. That's a curiosity in this movement too, a stillness as he brings one paw up to inspect with his eyes, the soft hiss of sand as he rolls it beneath talons and seems to enjoy the play of it shifting beneath his weight. His eyes go to the crowds lining the arena and focus for too long on what he finds there – curious scents, roaring sounds, the myriad of colors and faces watching him. But then he's on the move again, small and confined but somehow insidious.
Impression Message
Public Message
Labyrinth's Lock Brown Hatchling doesn't falter the way other dragons might. There is no need for him to prowl the sands, to walk the candidates, to stare into the eyes of each hopeful face eager for him to be their one. None of these are good enough, none of these will do; he can already taste the obscenity of their pairings like a flavor on his tongue, rejects them before he can even consider tenuous bonds because there is one sweet song waiting in a sea of white robes – him. This one. The one with hair dark as pitch and eyes blue as skies. He rises just enough to press paws to chest and sinks with him down to the sands as talons pierce through white-material and latch into skin.
Private Message
It happens so slowly, and then all at once. At first there's only a scent, thick and cloying, masculine and wild. It's like someone's pressed a winter's night against your nose, a deep sea down your throat, cold bark scraping every other flavor you ever knew from your tongue. It's deep, and heady, and woodsy, and the very instant that word springs to your mind, it becomes. There are no more sands, and in a moment, there will be no more you. You are as sure of that as you will ever be, for how else does one explain the excruciating pain that punctures into your shoulders, secreting poison that floods your veins, or perhaps shreds them from the insides. Those are branches bursting from the tips of your fingers, roots punching out of your spine, vines crawling between teeth, from your nose and eyes, from unspeakable and unwholesome places as whatever has crawled into your mind slowly but surely obliterates your existence, and replaces it with his. His. That concept coagulates slowly, as slowly as the pool of viscera that's surely beneath you, seeing as how you're floating in it, held aloft as though for someone else's consideration. Something growls in a voice both soft and thunderous, something that moves between the trunks of vast trees with a slow, predatory gait. You don't know how you know this, with all of you ruined, but you do, as surely as you know that the vicious pulse of red that throbs through the atmosphere is the last of your blood leaving your body. It backlights a winged figure, one whose destiny is bound with yours. Even as your heart slows, so do his, his dual ba-dum-thumps slowing… slowing… slowing… Gone. For just a moment there is him, and there is you, and then there is neither. « Y'riel, » you are instead, the word - the name - slammed into your fraying consciousness with the light of a dying star. It takes every shred of what you know about yourself and burns it to ashes, your vision going black as the last aspect of who you were - who you both were - solidifies into a singular, massive tree at the heart of a forest. As quickly as the image sears to your brain, it is gone, replaced by the heat of the sands, the pain in your shoulders, and the cruel, cunning visage of a brown dragon, now known to you only as, « Bhalahhaith. » Just that, for at the end of the world, when everything is ablaze and the light of every universe has guttered out, these are the only things you need to know: that you will be Y'riel, and he Bhalahhaith, who will forever be at your side.
Personality
“I knew little else, but I always knew you.” (Queen of Nothing)
Welcome, Y'riel, to your inevitability. Perhaps you did not recognize the binding threads of destiny cinching tight the moment you laid your hands upon its shell, but it knew you. It perceived you, your smallness, your insignificance, your need; it saw those secret parts of you, those things you think you are so good at hiding behind your fast smiles and your pedigree. You might pretend you do not, but you draw from your family, take from their fame, benefit from your station in a thousand little ways you never really knew.
And now that is gone. Kyriel you are no more. There will never be that particular plurality, that sense of a large group coming together, forming a hivemind to benefit the whole, because now there is only him, and you. That isn't to say your Bhalahhaith will isolate you, will raise a claw to disrupt that aspect of your life, it's just that that dynamic will never be the same. The minds that once were died and were reborn, and he became himself, and you became you, each uniquely dependent on the other.
It's a shame that dependency begins so very, very poorly. Bhalahhaith is, alas, more other in his early days than you (even with your undeniable dragon experience) might account for. His mind is ancient, alien, and basic concepts are utterly foreign to him. Base needs - hunger, thirst, exhaustion - are obeyed only because his body must, but anything requiring abstract thought is utterly nebulous and painfully impossible for him to understand. This is because your bond is strong, his attachment to your mind, your thoughts, your memories, the very breath in your lungs so very keen that at times the two of you are inextricable. Why experience the world for himself when he can live it through you, take it from you, lick the sugar from your tongue, feel the bath-heat through your skin, run your fingers through soft hair, even hair that is not your own, and the skin below it, and the ridges of bone below that, lower— NO.
"If you are the sickness, I suppose you can't also be the cure." (The Wicked King)
And it will take that level of command, that much will to disentangle him from overriding your thoughts, catching upon your emotions like thermal winds, letting them take him higher than he could ever go on his own. You will need to be the voice of reason, the architect that designs the foundation he will build upon, or who knows what wild pattern his half-feral mind might contrive. He certainly serves no master but himself, not now, not ever; you might even suspect that you are merely a convenience, a vessel for his manipulation, and it is very muchly recommended that you break him of that notion if you can, or, well… There's worse things than boars.
With time, with guidance, with assimilation, that foundation will be assumed, his primordial mind grounded in some sense of reality, comprehension of the world around him built brick by brick… It might be by his own hands (er, paws) and ergo a little strange around the edges, but with it comes the slow blossom of his personality, the invariable development of thoughts that are singularly his, unbound and unfettered by your very human reservations.
And boy, you just might find yourself wishing you could go back, to once again suffer the pressure of his domineering but nevertheless simplistic mind. Anything must be better than this creature comprised of wicked whims and even wicked-er wit, whose aims point only towards what he can do for himself and - sigh, he supposes - secondarily, what he can do for you. Allegiances beyond that are few and far between, friendships and promises easy to slip between his claws, abandoned, sometimes slain in pursuit of the better, easier path.
“I may be rotten, but my one virtue is that I’m not a killer.” (The Cruel Prince)
This isn't to say your Bhalahhaith is a coward or a murderer - in fact, it's rather fair to say he's anything but - but he is self-serving to a literal fault, and if a person, place, thing or action won't in some way bring him that horizon, then you can essentially forget about convincing him to tolerate it. Lessons? Feh. Ridiculous if weyrlingmasters think they can force him to attend. They are dragons and riders too, he doesn't need to respect them. Playing nice with others? If he can get something out of it, even if it's just cruel amusement, then fine, but if he thinks they're annoying or a bore? HAH. You've never met a brown so heavy, so impossible to shove out the door.
Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, there is a lifehack you can employ, a persuasion that will always pique his interest enough to get him to accomplish any task, and that is to stoke his curiosity. His aching need to know the whole world has never really left him, and there is nothing more delicious to him than offering up an experience he's never had before. It doesn't even have to be an experience for him - he is more than willing to borrow your mind to soak up the heat of a new friend's hearth, bask in the scent of a designer's latest cologne, relish the taste of some new drink or confection the likes of which you've never experienced before. Even the brush of a random but still-technically-new feather or leaf against your flesh or his will count, even if he might grumble at the exploitation of his charity (it's a proud grumble, though, because you're learning).
“Words have power everywhere, but nowhere more so than here in Tir n’Aill. You must learn to be more careful.” (The Unseelie Prince)
He’ll also have a deep, abiding need to know the deepest, darkest aspects of language and its use. Bhalahhaith will hunger for knowledge of words and their precise use, or perhaps their lack thereof. Turns of phrase, tongue-in-cheek, and doublespeak will enrapture him, puns and euphemisms will provide an uncanny delight, but words that break and words that bind… those, those he will covet, obsess over, hoard away like a pile of human treasures deep in the heart of faerie. The more words you can bring him, the more voracious he will become, seeking, yearning for more, prising the very words from your lips if he must, anything to sharpen an already silver tongue.
Unfortunately, this obsessive curiosity extends to everything else, including the actions and psyches of others, and his ability to provoke them both. The further into weyrlinghood you venture, the more you’ll come to know that Bhal sees little in the way of limits, isn’t above seeing what others will do in response to statements, prompts, suggestions, and outright provocations. He relishes in delving - as he did with you - into just what makes people tick, by any means necessary. Sometimes they're cruel; sometimes they're kind; at all times, they are to his benefit, one way or another.
You are uniquely situated to understand Bhalahhaith best, and it’s what you do with that knowledge that will define his successes and failures. He might build the scaffolding, build the architecture of your life, but he isn’t one to stop you from taking a hammer to it and forcing him to build again - after all, how could he hold you to a moral code he refuses to obey himself? It might well be you that betrays him to others, that reveals that the only thing about them they can trust is that he is untrustworthy, that he’s as likely to help someone to see them succeed as to see them fail with literally no care as to which outcome it’ll be. It might also be you that holds your tongue, that keeps his secrets like the obedient little beast you are. Go ahead, ask him which he prefers, with the awareness that the answer will seldom be the one that you expect.
“I know what it is to say the clever thing because you don’t want anyone to know how scared you are. It doesn’t make me like him any better, but for the first time he seems real. Not good, but real.” (The Cruel Prince)
Likewise, you are uniquely situated to understand why he’s like this, understand that beneath Bhalahhaith’s naturally mercurial exterior is just a dragon, a youth, one suffering the very same fears and realities as us all. He wants so much: respect, power, love, perhaps not of the epic, swoon-worthy quality, but mutual adoration at least. He wants to be seen for himself, for everything he has to offer without fear of loss, but rejection, misunderstanding, judgment are constant companions to any life, and they’ve shaped him.
One time too many, those freefalls in his egg’s mind didn’t lead him to fly, found him abandoned, imagined body sundered upon the jagged peaks of disappointment. One too many times, his interactions were lacking, veiled, insubstantial, outright toxic, poison in his veins because they were not you. You, who righted his course, fed him truth rather than glamored mush, stayed even when he left you behind. You offered what was actually important to him, what he needed, not just a soul to latch on to, but one that understood him in some intangible but wholly necessary way.
“He closes his eyes. When he opens them, he releases my hand and turns so I can't see his face. “I can see why you thought what you did. I suppose I am not an easy person to trust. And maybe I ought not to be trusted, but let me say this: I trust you.” (The Queen of Nothing)
And that, dear Y’riel, is the kind of faith that will carry you both through, see you past the aches and pains of growing up together in literally every sense. Yes, your Bhalahhaith is strange. Yes, your Bhalahhaith is horrible. He is masked and changeable, with priorities that will change with the seasons, ebb and flow with the tides. Some days he will be bold (but not too bold), some days he will be charming and smooth, and some days you may swear you do not know him at all, so foreign is his personality, but there is something that stretches between he and you, some understanding that ties you both together, and he would sooner die than see that connection severed. You see him; he sees you; you see each other, and at the end of the day, that is all that truly matters.
Mindvoice
Inside of You, In Spite of You
“He smelled like winter, crisp and sharp. Or like the breeze that drifted from ocean cliffs. No, he carried the scent of night itself. Of grass, and trees, and darkness.” (The Unseelie Prince)
The very first and most obvious thing about Bhalahhaith's mind is his scent. It is pervasive and clinging, more than masculine, just shy of overwhelming, and utterly unquantifiable. It's made from the heat that lingers upon the world long after the sun is set, but also, somehow, the clammy cool of the heart of a forest, the height of great mountains, and the icy depths of the sea. It's the scent of darkness itself, the last collective breath of a dying world, of the friendliest of hostilities spun up in one glorious cologne.
It precedes his words, betrays his presence, lingers in the then and now and the inbetween as only a son of Xermiltoth's might do, blanketing great lengths with the entirety of his awareness because he can. Bhalahhaith is not one to argue that perhaps his mind is endless and all-encompassing, a world-eater bound only by the contract of peace coded into his very genetics. He is nothing more than he was made to be, and if his making allowed him the chance to fling his mind far and oh-so wide, to tap the minds of dragons and mere mortals alike, why should he do any less?
Following on the heels of unfettered masculinity is a mind that is both unexpected and not, predictable only in its unpredictability. It makes sense that it is a forest, ancient and primordial, with vines as thick around as a man's leg, deadly flora, and trees that rise so high that it would take eyes far keener than his to see to their tops. They shield any attempt at sunlight from reaching the forest's floor, casting everything in omnipresent gloom even when he's at his most cheerful.
It is what lives beneath the boughs that one should worry about, however - after all, it's not the dark that mortals fear, but the terror of what lives within it. Provided visitors to his mind stay on preordained paths, they are in relative safety, and may even bask in wonders the likes of which they might never see on Pern - mirror-still ponds ringed with dainty flowers, depthless lakes topped with twinkling fireflies, caverns of glowing fungi, wonders that are small but made special by the subtlety of their splendor.
But to veer from Bhalahhaith's preordained path is to court danger, is to realize that these locations are not a destination but merely singular features meant to distract from the reality of the whole: that his mind is a maze of his own manipulation, one whose myriad paths are never what they seem. Glamor sundered, it becomes clear that every leaf, every insect, every blade of grass is aware, is him, and is not entirely as welcoming as previously conceived.
“The forest was alive, and it seemed set on herding her down the path toward where, she did not know. And the living forest was filled with creatures that cackled at her but hid when she turned to see them.” (The Unseelie Prince)
And maybe it never was. Bhalahhaith is no stranger to looping visitors around, forcing them to repeat the same route, traverse the same paths almost to the point of madness, and with each fresh visit, more and more sinister details might be noted. That patch of sunlight, previously thought of as a guiding light, actually makes no sense compared to where the sun hovers in his mind and is almost certainly a trap. The crooked stairs of dirt once climbed are suddenly understood to be made of massive bones, rather than pale wood. Those twinkling lights dancing upon dark waters are not actually being reflected, or rather, the reflections are too many, spread too far out to be from bobbing insects alone. There's something in those waters, something whose lights beckon and glow, urging you down down down down—
In fact, it's not unreasonable to presume that most things in Bhal's mind are some measure of a trap. His scent might alter, subtly at first, then less so, becoming something tempting, alluring, drawing the memory that smell provokes up and over until it blankets you entirely. Enjoy reliving that purloined memory in its entirety, whether you wanted to or not, and try not to imagine what the man behind the curtain might be up to while you bask in your distraction. Where there is not joy, there is most certainly fear, specters both real and imagined wielded the way only a fae made mortal can, by tapping into the very roots of human terror to lead as much as chase, drive as much as hunt, forcing you wherever he wants you to go.
Sometimes these destinations are rooms, if one can call them that, half-formed ruins with some purpose. Sometimes it’s to share a particular thought, sometimes it’s a retreat, a space of safety and neutrality where you can both simply be yourselves with no incentivation to be otherwise, and sometimes… well. It wouldn’t be Bhalahhaith if sometimes he didn’t make you dig through piles of seemingly random objects just to get to the bottom of a point he’s trying to make. Nobody said living with him would be easy. To be fair, nobody said it would be worth it, either, so take the whole thing with a grain of salt (or maybe five or ten, sprinkled into anything you’re encouraged to consume).
But there is somewhere in this vast maze that is worth your effort to find, or none of this would exist at all. Every labyrinth has its center, every beast has its hearts, and Bhalahhaith’s blood pumps so loudly through every living thing in his mind that it’s almost a cacophony, can be heard echoing beneath every dusky word he speaks. It is encouraging even when his mind is at its darkest and most spiteful, wound up in cryptic asides, promised in those quiet, tender moments when Bhal is at his most vulnerable: somewhere there is a piece of him that he yearns for you to find, Y’riel, burns for you to discover if only you can. Perhaps some day you will get there, and when you do, you may well find a whole new chapter of your life is set to begin.
Physicality
“Faerie might be beautiful, but its beauty is like a golden stag’s carcass, crawling with maggots beneath his hide, ready to burst.” (The Cruel Prince)
For now, there’s just this, just him, though perhaps ‘just’ is an unfair word to use. He is not just anything, your Bhalahhaith. He is everything. Imagine a word and it will describe him, no matter how lovely or horrible its connotations. There is an appeal to his lean form, an enchantment about his features, an uncanniness about the way he moves that goes beyond elfin and spritely straight into the marvelous. It’s as though his body has conspired with his silver tongue, agreed to make his path easy by making him handsome and capable, colluded to assure his allure is as deep as his wit.
But there is also an ugliness to him, a wrongness that speaks as many volumes, if not more. There are pieces of him that are fundamentally broken, unnervingly hidden, or perhaps both. His whole body, while sculpted, shows the wear of time he cannot possibly have lived, ancient stone forming cliffs of his cheekbones, spires out of neckridges. Every line was drawn in a master's hand, a vicious study in collusion, conspiring to make one second-guess that spine-tingling disquiet that manifests every time he moves, that eldritch, hungry, something glimpsed beneath every ripple of muscle.
He will inspire poetry; he will require warsong.
“But there was unwavering malice in his eyes, marring his expression and turning it into something more akin to the way a wolf might look at his meal. No. It was worse than that. Where a wolf might kill for food, this creature before her clearly took great pleasure in her fear. There was fiendish delight etched in the smile that split his features, revealing once more those too-sharp eyeteeth of his.” (The Unseelie Prince)
And that doesn’t even count the way he moves. There’s no hiding the predatorial intent behind whirling eyes, the sheer confidence of his step, the way his weight always seems to balance on his toes, poised to strike at a moment’s notice. It is perhaps why he lies idle so often, why one is as likely to catch him sprawled in a sun’s beam as they are to find him perched upon his makeshift bed, looking for all the world like a king assuming his throne - because perhaps he can lie, but his body cannot. It is bound to represent the truth of him, that no matter how beautiful or bold one might be, it cannot camouflage the chaotic heart of him.
“The new High King of Faerie lounges on his throne, his crown resting at an insouciant angle, his long, villainously scarlet cloak pinned at his shoulders and sweeping the floor. An earring shines from the peak of one pointed ear. Heavy rings glitter along his knuckles. His most ostentatious decoration, however, is his soft, sullen mouth.
It makes him look every bit the jerk that he is.” (The Wicked King)
But oh, how he tries, using every means available. Your Bhalahhaith might be ultimately simplistic in his coloration (the better to fool you, my dear), but he is no stranger to adornments, for either of you. Metals and jewels might be scarce enough that even he wouldn’t dare add to their endangerment, but there is plenty of finery to be made of wood and cloth and stone, and you can call him selfish all you want, to wish to garb himself, because you wouldn’t be wrong.
You see, there is a part of him that hungers for a human social life, and always will. If he can’t express it like this (and sometimes even when he can), he will send you in to do it in his stead. Revels. Parties. Masques. Gathers. Parades. Debauches. Each is its own experience, has its own unique flavor, and - most importantly - never go the same way twice.
It’s something that pulls out the hedon in your brown, makes viscous the dark of his eyes, a slow, heady hum that is almost dragonsong rising in his throat. Such things please him in ways little else ever can, ever will, and should they take place indoors in some place he cannot strategically lurk to watch the chaos unfold, then you might just find yourself commandeered, dressed by his hand (er, mind), and sent forth in his stead.
Flights
“Have I told you how hideous you look tonight?”
“No, tell me.”
“I cannot.” (The Cruel Prince)
Flights, too, are a true obsession of his. Fear not, for he is not the sort inclined to chase every green that should rise - he is more discerning than that, thank you - but those that do interest him interest him wholly. It’s probably a little unsettling, the ferocity of his regard, the sudden promotion of importance the second a female he’s identified as ‘fascinating’ begins to glow.
If only his charm translated to wooing half as well as it does everything else, for he might have inherited Xermiltoth’s widespread mind, but it’s Leirith’s flirtations that he received from his dam. His praise often takes the form of insults or strange, backwards compliments, ones fully intended to go over well while only partially hitting the nail on the head. If a female doesn’t appreciate being complimented on her barely suitable comeliness, or her resemblance to a particularly fascinating amphibian he recently happened upon, or on her having the type of tail he could wrap himself around, well… Isn’t that just too damn bad. Perhaps he’ll chase her anyways, just to frustrate her all the further should he prove the victor.
But there is a line even for a beast such as him. Bhal doesn't suffer being made to look the fool with grace, will not find a wild appreciation in those greens and golds that might seek humiliation in their quest to weed out suitors. He will enjoy this, of course, will pitch his own barbed iniquities against her scathing tongue, but suddenly it will be less a game than a point to be made. He will not limp away and lick his wounds, he will make her the fool for having dared try to make it him, and every brush with her will give rise to a particularly vicious kind of scorn if not an outright refusal to acknowledge that she exists. This will no doubt last until he succeeds in catching her or somehow fails, until the time that dragonminds do you all a favor and all perceived sleights slip between the cracks of his memories.
“Most of all, I hate you because I think of you. Often. It’s disgusting, and I can’t stop.” (The Cruel Prince)
But beware if he meets a dragon who speaks to his soul, who calls to his heart, that unravels some of that ugliness, some of that primordial otherness in ways perhaps even you won't understand. He will seek her at every rising, drag you from one end of Pern to another despite what duties and how important they might be are urgently keeping you. She is the one that he will follow high, higher, too high, the only one where his loss will feel less a defeat to be dismissed and more a starfall, crashing and burning and scorching the earth because there is no other dragon he wants so much as she. It's not exactly love – dragons are quite incapable of that – but it is an obsession.
And as we all know, there are rare occasions upon which browns are capable of flying queens, when they might become clutchfathers and their riders Weyrleaders. There's no doubt (in his mind) that your dragon was meant to lead, Y'riel, but his size will more often than not ruin his chances at success and he will become so frustrated in his pursuits that there's a very real chance he will simply refuse to chase a gold at all. But should he win a goldflight, should he find himself caught sand-bound with duties, Bhalahhaith just might surprise you.
He is surprisingly attentive for a creature so usually self absorbed. Part of this might well be a play on his curiosity, that thirst for knowledge - he’ll have a need to know every candidate and what makes them special, what quality of progeny he will produce, the colors and personalities and myriad of lucky-hopefuls they might pick to spend the rest of their forevers with. He may not be nearly as attentive to their dam (though he can be reasoned and bribed, and may at times simply dote if only to see how she reacts), but he certainly will not ignore her or her whims as they wait for hardened shells together. He has just as much of a vested interest as she does, after all, even if their end goals might not be quite the same.
Inspiration
WHASSAAAAAA KYRIEL– OR SHOULD WE SAY, Y’RIEL <3333
WELCOME TO WEYRLINGHOOD, WE SURE AS HECK HOPE YOU REALLY THOUGHT HARD-HARD-HARD ABOUT THE KIND OF DRAGON YOU WERE ASKING FOR BECAUSE… WELL. BECAUSE WE TRIED OUR BEST TO GIVE IT TO YOU, FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE. 8)
Starting at the top, our egg theme this cycle was The Zodiac, and his eggo was based off everyone’s favorite butthead headbutter, ARIES! The Exultation of the Sun egg was written by the ever-marvelous Citayla. <3
Your brown himself draws heavily on the distinct Otherness of the faerie, with draws on Valroy, Cardan, and various chaotic neutral stereotypes, as per your request! We also tied your songs of choice into pieces of him, including his mind and hatchling name. Bhalahhaith (which we’ve been pronouncing Bah-lahh-hi-ith) contains the ‘lahh’ sound you mentioned loving, whilst also tying in lúbra (gaelic for ‘maze’) and Bhaldraithe (the creator of the Irish/English dictionary). Idk about you, but it seemed amusing to pull a man famous for words into the name of a dragon that so loves to twist them. We also wanted to focus on the idea of his name being a curse or perhaps an invocation, and hopefully we succeeded - if nothing else, I suppose one could sigh ‘Oh, Bhals.’
All of this said, this beautiful beastie is yours to play, tweak, and change to your heart’s desire! Hopefully we’ve fulfilled your vision and gave you a solid foundation to build upon, and we welcome you doing so with all care or recklessness as pleases you!!
– <3 R’hyn and Risali
Credits
| Name | Bhalahhaith |
| Dam | Leirith |
| Sire | Xermiltoth |
| Created By | R'hyn & Risali |
| Impressee | Y’riel (Kyriel) |
| Hatched | July 25, 2022 |
| Xanadu Weyr | |
| PernWorld MUSH |