Seamless and Infinite Design Testing Green Cherith

Grandeur doesn't even strike close to the mark with her, teetering as she is on the fullest height and length a green could ever hope to achieve. She's a Master-level of crafted perfection, her lithe elongated frame and sharp angles of musculature married in harmonious balance. Haughtily confident, she holds her narrow, aqualine shaped head high, looking down the gradual concave slope of her muzzle. Dainty carved features accentuate that leanness along high-set cheekbones and curved span of eyeridges, but do not detract from her unemotional beauty. What better a hue to suit her too, than the coldest of icy jades that form the utmost base of her coloring, fading further to brittle hoarfrost-like herderite paleness along head-knob and ridges sharpened sweep. The same covers her face in ghost-like mask, down the snakish curve of her neck and downward again to the curve of her back. Her shoulders brush with dimmed overlay of aventurine with the flickering hint of ethereal oxidizing copper striations. It seeps further down, to the underside of her belly, limbs and tail. Verdigris stains the topmost part of her lean forelimbs and powerful hindquarters, aligned just-so that her sleek predatory nature is displayed in effeminate form — drawing out the silvered-edge to talons now more stark and fetching, despite the cloaked danger they represent. Her wings draw the same verdigris along wing spars, the very edges tarnishing again to duskier jaded hues limned with burnished copper-green. Wingsails, long and shockingly angular in tapered form, bear the same pale, icy coloring as a base to start — until a gradual progression begins, changing jade to amethyst-kissed celadonite.


You Wouldn't Want This Honey Egg

Delicate hues of softest pink are liberally applied over the smooth shell of this egg. Shaped in five-pointed 'stars', they are each thinly outlined along the edges by a darker shade, while the centers hold just the smallest points of yellow. Visually they are almost too bright as they stand out against the stark contrast of dark green spear-like leaves beneath. So much beauty held at a glance and oh-so innocent.


Hatching Messages

Wobble Message
You Wouldn't Want This Honey Egg begins to wobble with slow, gradual enthusiasm until… oh, wait. Did it stop? It must need a reboot.

Crack Message
You Wouldn't Want This Honey Egg has completed whatever it needed to complete in order to restart… and does it ever! With gusto! There's a building urgency now, as the shell begins to strain under the pressure and faint cracks race across the surface.

Hatch Message
You Wouldn't Want This Honey Egg has reached maximum efficiency. The protective casing is no longer required and will be promptly discarded. Without much fanfare, the shell splits almost cleanly apart, the few shards all but crushed under the first steps of the large green unfolding herself from its wake.


Impression Messages

Private
Why does your vision flicker? What was that? Are you succumbing to the heat!? It happens again, a cross in signals that have everything around you warping and blurring to static. Someone is talking to you — or trying, but the voice is distorted and distance. It happens AGAIN only this time your mind is filled with an annoying blaring tone after another fit of static. PLEASE STAND BY. « … can you hear me? … I hope you're not purposely ignoring me, M'ti. Do you like that name? I chose it myself. Where are you? Are you there? » Ah-ha! Your vision clears just as sudden and right there, staring almost at level with you, is that icy jade-toned green. « Found you! » Rather than spoken, you get the vivid feeling and inserted memory of a name: Cherith. « That's right. » she confirms. « The test is over now. You win! Let's go to the recovery annex for our meal. »

Public
Seamless and Infinite Design Testing Green has completed her research and observations! Her data has been collected and reviewed. All those Candidates but one match her criteria and it's with cold, detached smugness that she starts forwards. No one is even so much as sniffed at! No, her steps take her to one and one alone, where she promptly stops to stare at him in unnerving intensity. Hello, are you listening to her?


Personality

Cherith is a dragon who is out for her own self-interest. And maybe M'ti's. That's it. Everyone else can screw off. Politely. Only not politely at all. Sweet words might sing through her mind, but there is no sincerity behind them. And, more often than not, her words aren't terribly sweet at all even if her tone of voice might suggest that she's pretending they are.

« How astonishing. I never imagined someone could fail that badly. It's almost certainly a new record. You even surprised me, and that's very hard to do. I have impossibly high expectations for how badly someone can fail. »

She really is a rather narcissistic creature, though she doesn't mean to be. It's just in her nature! And why on Pern would she want to be anything other than who she is? She's the best, after all. Everyone else will just need to learn to live with it. Or not. They're perfectly welcome to perish, if they'd rather do that instead.

« Oh? Did that hurt? » she might ask, having just trodden over a fellow weyrling's tail. « So sorry. » Only she's not sorry at all. Not even a little. And she won't pretend to sound like she is, either. In fact, maybe they ought to apologize for being in her way? Yes. that would be the polite thing to do. Afterall, it's not her fault that great, big, thick tail was in her path. Really, it's a wonder she didn't trip and sprain her own wrist! So very rude.

Lessons will be tough unless she can be convinced that the Weyrlingmaster (and the Weyrlingmaster's dragon) are worth listening to. If they have useful or interesting information, she'll be all ears. Even if Cherith might have a very different idea about what is 'useful' or 'interesting'. And those ideas might not jive too well with the rest of the class. Her motives are her own and while they will always make sense to her, that doesn't mean they will make sense to anyone else (including you). She's not crazy. She's just a little bit insane.

Rules are stupid. (Unless they are her rules. Then they're brilliant, of course.) And stupid rules shouldn't have to be followed. Because they're stupid. So don't be surprised if Cherith blatantly disregards a directive that she finds to be, in her mind, ridiculous. And you can forget about her taking any sort of punishment seriously.

« Mm. No. I don't think I will go back to the barracks and think about what I've done. I've already thought about it. That's why I did it. »

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And should M'ti shoulder the burden of her transgressions, punishments dished out on the poor weyrling for the actions of his dragon, there will be little in the way of sympathy or regret. I mean. She's kinda sorry about it? More sorry that you feel the need to actually follow-through with the tasks assigned to you. Because really… what is the worst they could do if you just… didn't?

"They could ground us."

« Insufficient. I have wings. I know to use them. They cannot stop me. »

"They could hold us back, keep us from graduating."

« Unlikely. No one wants a thirty-turn old Weyrling, do they? It would reflect badly on the Weyr. And that would be sad. »

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Only Cherith would not be sad at all. Really, she doesn't care very much at all about what people think of her. She's perfect! She knows it. You know it. Everyone else knows it. They're just jealous. Poor things. But there's not much to be done about it. Best not to dwell on it.

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While she's definitely out for herself and no one else (well. M'ti as well of course. Because he's her person, and therefore, counted as part of 'herself'), she's not a terribly stubborn dragon. She wants her way, no doubt about that. But she's much more inclined to simply… ignore the things she doesn't like, rather than argue aggressively against them. Snide remarks and passive-aggressive comments are her forte, and they will only get more sly and clever as she grows. But as Cherith is her own dragon and her mind definitely works a bit, shall we say "differently", than others, her remarks might be crude and require extended explanations before the intended target, somewhat exasperatedly, informs her that they get it. And they had better get it, or she will continue to explain it to them. Cherith might ignore things she doesn't like, but no one is going to be able to ignore Cherith.

« Your hide would make a lovely wall hanging. Too bad it clashes so glaringly with the couch. Because it's ugly. And that you're still living in it. Because you're alive. It means I want you dead. Because I don't like you. »

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That doesn't mean that she's not prone, on occasion, to fits of emotion. Her default might be to deflect or ignore criticism, but there are still those hot-topic items or particular personalities that set her on edge. And when she's mad, she. is. MAD.

« I'll boil your brains and mount your skull on the wall as a warning to everyone else. When they look at it, they will see what a failure you were, and they will know not to cross me. That is called a win-win. »

And when she is mad, she can become vengeful. Those that she perceives to have crossed her — and it is important to stress that this is her perception; it doesn't have to make sense to anyone else! — will face her wrath! But even vengeful, she is not rash. Oh no. It might take days, weeks, even months before she can enact her particular brand of justice, but by Faranth she will do it. Only the poor dragon on the receiving end of her madness will have likely forgotten the inciting incident altogether, if they were ever aware of it to begin with! Oh well, no matter. Justice will be served, and there's no use crying over spilled ichor, right? The dead don't complain, so how bad could dying be, really?

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When it comes to that wonderful, special little time of the Turn when hides start to glow, Cherith does not get to flirting, but rather to calculating. Theories are considered. Numbers are crunched. Data is gathered. While some greens collect suitors, Cherith collects test subjects volunteers. Testing must be conducted, to ensure her hypotheses are correct (and they are always correct. Even if Cherith needs to… hmm. “nudge” the data just a little bit).

No one’s going to miss that gaggle of weyrbrats, right? So what if one or two or three or ten go back to the barracks looking a little worse for wear. It’s all in the name of Science! And hey, look on the bright side… they’re all still alive aren’t they!

By the time she gets to the air, it will undoubtedly come as a relief to not just M’ti, but to the entire Weyr at large. Now, whether those that chase her make it back to tell the tale remains to be seen (but rest assured that Cherith will be collecting data on it!)

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Mindvoice

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Is this thing on?

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There we go. If you've ever encountered one of the Computer Craft's terminals, Cherith's mindvoice might seem very familiar. A black screen that slowly fills with green or white text, complete with the click clack of typing, the occasional soft whirl of fans or the louder or who even knows what that beeping is? The commands that appear might not always make sense to you but they're always perfectly clear to her.

Eventually, the beeping may take on a more melodic frequency, while still definitely electronic. Usually when she's happy and definitely when she's feeling smug, a humming will fill your head and be passed along with her messages. Listen closely and you'll pick up that her words are very slightly stilted between syllables as if being rapidly strung together from a database of some sorts. If she were human, her voice would probably be described as a soft soprano. It'll be very rare that she ever loses that upbeat (and sometimes downright even chirpy) tone, which is especially disconcerting when she has to give bad news…

« What do you mean? This IS my serious voice. It's the only one I have! »

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Just because she has a default tone, doesn't mean Cherith doesn't understand inflection. She does, only she mostly interprets it as VOLUME. When she's sad, she'll stick to the barest whisper, although the happier she gets, the louder she gets. And when she gets mad? You may have thought her volume knob only went up to 10, but she'll find a way to crank it up all the way to eleven and beyond!


Inspiration

Welcome to Weyrlinghood, M'ti! It looks like there's no escape for you now, not when Cherith has selected you for her newest test subject BFF for life!

The egg theme for this cycle were poisonous plants! Or rather, plants that seemed innocuous and innocent at first glance.

You Wouldn't Want This Honey Egg was inspired by Nerium — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerium Considered one of the most toxic plants and yet widely used for gardening for their beautiful blooms. The egg name itself comes from a supposed urban legend that one region in Pontus in Turkey had poisoned honey because the bees were grabbing pollen from these particular plants. Cheery, no?

How fitting that an egg such as this would be paired up with a GLaDos inspired green! I mean, she did mention something about flooding the area with neurotoxins once, right?

Cherith's name was so helpfully provided by you and if you hadn't guessed it by now, we went with and ran with your inspiration theme for the infamous AI from the video game Portal!

We did our best to check off the list of preferences you had outline for her description as well, starting from the imagery references provided, to going full tilth with prose and length. While we couldn't put too much additional 'color' to her, there are nods to the requested silver, gold and sapphire using green-based sources, along with your desire for jade. There is also a small hint of a nod to circuit boards in there but we hope that she is all that you had envisioned!

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Credits

Name: Cherith
Created By: K'zre, Th'ero, Aignes
Impressee: M'ti (Mathis)
Hatched: June 23, 2019
Fort Weyr @ PernWorld MUSH

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