Straka » Hibernal Den » Carina

Carina

(#49666105)

How does it feel to be your own deceiver?

Familiar

Marsh Kelpie

Energy: 50/50

Personal Style

Apparel

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

22.55 m

Wingspan

16.43 m

Weight

7804.83 kg

Genetics

Sunshine
Skink

Rust
Noxtide

Green
Capsule

Hatchday

Feb 24, 2019
(5 years)

Breed

Adult
Ridgeback

Eye Type

Lightning
Common

Level 25 Ridgeback

Max Level

STR

117

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

none

Offspring

Biography

Carina Konechna

Founder
She/her/hers

Once you had the power to effect monumental change, would you let fear consume you?

Founder and leader of Nova Carinae, Carina carries the weight of worlds on her shoulders. Ahead is an impossible choice, a choice that’s been made countless times in countless other realities and has led to nothing but death and destruction. And every moment she delays, the clock ticks down to mutual annihilation.

Perhaps they should never have looked, should never have asked the questions that other researchers shied away from. The questions started innocent enough. Where did magic come from? How could one create energy from nothing? Perhaps more damningly, they’d wondered: what was the Shade? When even the Gods warned them not to look deeper into the fabric of reality, they could have stopped. Instead they chose to hide themselves away and continue to pry at the fabric of space itself, to pick away at the connections holding the world together, to puzzle over the fact that magic simply wasn’t consistent with the laws of reality.

Around Sornieth, space is frayed, pockmarked, permeable; a thin tear between the fabric of two realities. On the other side of this Rift lies the roiling core of a star. Every joule of magical energy on the planet is leeched from this core. One could call Sornieth a parasite; but parasites don’t kill their host. When they finally realized why their sun was dying, the Riftkind fashioned a weapon out of the primordial fabric of the universe, out of emptiness and spacetime and the violence of quantum mechanics. They gave it intelligence, in a way; but most of all they gave it hunger, a hunger for the energy the Enemy sapped from their sun, and a desperate drive to do one thing and one thing only: sever the Rift, and make sure it was never opened again. As a last resort to save themselves from annihilation, the Riftkind had created the Shade.

And thus Carina is faced with a dilemma no mortal should have to resolve. Should she tell the world the truth, try to convince a planet that their Gods have lied to them, that they must give up magic willingly and find another way to survive? Should she close the door between worlds, cut off Sornieth’s lifeblood, plunging the world into chaos and possibly killing millions? Or should she step back, pretend nothing has changed, and let fate take its course as an entire civilization dies through her inaction?

She should be proud of their accomplishments. They’ve gained a great understanding of the nature of reality, the ability to tap into the fabric of space itself. They’ve built a hidden city in the ocean, a secret place safe from the gods dedicated to the pursuit of truth, understanding, and a brighter future for both Sornieth and the Riftkind. They’ve found ways to power magic without stealing what doesn’t belong to them; they’ve found ways to keep themselves alive independent of the elemental ‘life-force’ that’s long been viewed as the source of all life. They’ve built portals of their own, and used these to construct a fleet of starships, braving the ancestral fear of the Shade to prepare for an eventual migration to the stars.

Instead, she is haunted by the ghosts of her own failures, versions of herself from parallel universes where everything went horribly wrong. Tell the world the truth, and destruction will follow. Take things into your own hands, force their compliance, the result is the same. Do nothing, and you only prolong the inevitable.

Five Years, Six Months Ago
xxxSensors, emergency generators, and all manner of inscrutable machinery crowd the cold room. It’s huge, large enough for several Imperials, and well-lit, but much of it is taken up by metal carapaces protecting impossibly sensitive equipment. A low electrical hum permeates the space, along with the faint smell of disinfectant.
xxxA thick transparent tube rises from floor to ceiling in the center of the room. The glasslike exterior of the vacuum chamber is thin, but beneath its surface, another layer shimmers and moves like plasma. This is the real barrier: a force field sustained by an appalling amount of energy. There’s three backup systems for that component alone. The Stormcatcher would be proud, Carina thinks wryly.
xxxAt first glance, the tube appears empty. The ridgeback takes a few solemn steps closer, and stops when her face is only a few inches from the glass. Glancing upward, she catches sight of something tiny and dark suspended in the center of the tube, and inhales sharply in spite of herself.
xxx Although she can’t see them, she knows that all through the tube there are force fields coiled around the splinter, folded up so tight that the tiny isolated particle of Shade can barely move a millimeter. But at close glance she can see that it is moving, very slightly, extending short appendages and quickly retracting them again, writhing with what appears to be hostility. Carina knows it’s not sentient, but watching it like this, it is difficult to put aside the deep-seated dread, the thought that they had trapped a tiny shard of purified evil only a few meters away from her. The room suddenly feels colder, the warnings of danger on the sealed door all the more severe.
xxx She knows she can’t allow herself to think this way. The others need her confidence. The tiny piece of Shade, whatever it really is, can’t hurt them, not while it’s contained in the vacuum chamber. They have safety measures in place, years of planning and theory to make sure they accounted for any possible contingency before beginning the investigation.
xxx When she turns around, she’s smiling. It’s not a warm smile, but a professional one, the smile of someone who knows they’re one step closer to uncovering an unpleasant truth. There’s an air of reverence in the room as she congratulates the team. It’s a brief occasion; she doesn’t need to explain to them the gravity of their work here, the significance of the breakthrough they have just made, the vital need for research to proceed as soon as possible. She simply congratulates them, and with that, the team follows her out of the room, sealing the door behind them. They’re eager to begin monitoring sensor readings. And Carina, well- Carina needs some coffee.

Five Years Ago
xxx There are thirteen of them approaching the edge of the territory, howling ocean gales ripping the words from their mouths as they struggle to stay aloft. Several meters down, the dark ocean sends up a spray that chills her to the bone. Steam hisses into the air as water comes into contact with the shifting form of Regulus, the flames of the Imperial’s body sputtering in the wind and casting a golden glow over the frothing ocean. Airell’s little claws dig into her waterlogged coat; he’s far too small to fly in winds like this. They’re almost at the edge of the territory now, almost at one of the pylons, whose golden-yellow light winks at them like a lighthouse in a storm. Somewhere deep beneath the cold surface lies one of the boundary pillars, and beyond that… what? Why has Regulus brought them here?
xxxCarina is just about to shout the question when the howling of the wind and ocean is shattered by an unearthly scream. The alarm pierces through the mist like a banshee’s cry, a portent of death that cuts into her brain with a cold serrated edge. She knows the sound, knows what it means, but only the way a dragon may hear a bird’s call and identify the bird; the meaning eludes her, and trying to understand is like gnawing at clean white bones. When she turns around, the bone cracks in her jaws, and the dark marrow tastes like death.
xxx Near the horizon, where dark land juts from the water’s surface like a tooth, the sea has turned ink-black. It’s different from the darkness of water; the liquid is alive and absolute, thick like clotting blood, and it boils and writhes like a living being, extending outward and raising tendrils into the air at impossible speeds.
xxx Regulus’ voice, a twin harmony, breaks through the sound for a moment, as if they were speaking directly in her ear. “Containment breach. Go.” Carina’s wings don’t move, and for a terrible moment she plummets toward the ocean, but Airell shouts something that gets lost in the turmoil and she’s jolted back to reality again.
xxx“We have ten seconds.” She knows this, of course; she helped put these security measures in place, helped plan for the worst. Ten seconds from the start of the alarm: that's all the time they have to evacuate in case of a breach like this before the countermeasures kick in. Anything longer, they'd decided when they first built the facility, would've left too little margin for error. But it was never supposed to happen. Ten seconds? What is ten seconds? Right now it’s an eternity and nothing at all. Time enough to have everything she’s ever built come crashing back down, but so little time for those still on the island. She can see them from here: tiny forms lifting off from the rock, some flying desperately toward the boundary, some trying to flee toward the clouds, and some picked off by tendrils of darkness. Already they are depressingly few in number. Their wings cannot beat fast enough, cannot possibly allow them to outrun what is coming.
xxxBut ten seconds is enough for her, if she hurries. She banks sharply and dives toward the border, her wings beating so quickly it hurts. The sound of the alarm is inside her head now, pulsing deafeningly to the beat of her heart. She doesn’t look back to see if the others are following, but after a moment Adriana and Tureis pull ahead, with Taiyi following close behind them. Airell’s tail intertwines with the spines along her back, and he presses himself flat against the wind threatening to blow him away. In her head she tries to count down those ten seconds, but time doesn’t make sense anymore; her wings, her heart, her breath, the ocean below, it’s all moving so fast and her thoughts have no frame of reference to latch onto.
xxx The boundary is still almost a hundred meters away. How many seconds now? Eight? Five? Three? She keeps her eyes focused on the glowing light of the pylon, tucking her legs toward her body tightly. The wind hurts her eyes, so she closes them, and time exists only in her head.
xxx A moment later it feels like she’s ripping through the boundary. As soon as she’s through, rogue magical energies tingle against her skin, seeping between her scales. She doesn’t stop flying, doesn’t open her eyes until she feels ocean spray against her face and realizes she’s too low.
xxx And then the alarm goes dead. For a moment, there’s a lull in the noise that leaves her ears ringing. She whirls around and feels Airell nearly lose his grip; the fae’s claws dig through her coat and scrape against her scales. The relief she feels to see her companions have all made it is quickly replaced by numb horror. Within the perimeter of the boundary, which now hums with enough magical energy to power a city, the water moves sluggishly, and far away her clanmates’ movements slow, and stop. They’re suspended motionless in the air, like some sort of morbid painting. The Shade no longer roils angrily; slow undulations pass through the dark mass, until finally, those, too, stop.
xxx She knows time is completely frozen within the dome when it suddenly goes dark. Even photons are held completely still in the little microcosm. It’s a spherical snapshot of a single infinitesimal moment in time, impenetrable and inescapable even for the Shade itself. A bubble like this could hold a deity or a star. All it holds now is a tiny sliver of the void; that and Carina’s entire world, the home and purpose she’d spent so long building.
xxxCarina feels sick.
xxx The sounds of the wind and the ocean return to her attention and she glances around to find her clanmates. Except Alastrina and Regulus, they all appear shell-shocked. A quick headcount confirms they all made it. All thirteen survivors. Sixty-seven left behind.
“Regulus, why didn’t you warn them?” Her voice comes out raw and hoarse; she doesn’t remember yelling but she feels that she must have.
xxx“There wasn’t time. We couldn’t. They had to stay. I’m sorry.”
She wants to scream; wants to throw something; wants to grab Regulus by the throat and drag the flaming ghost into the ocean. She wants to cry, too- but she can’t. She’s too numb, certain it was somehow all a bad dream. And even if she could, she wouldn’t. Her clanmates need her.
She wants to say something, but there’s nothing in her head she can put into words. Part of her wants to stay there for hours, days, linger by the edge of the darkness that separated her from her clanmates. They’d trusted her. This was her fault.
There isn’t time for that, though. She can feel her shoulders burning, the water soaking through her coat, and she can see her clanmates gasping for air. It’s time to leave. They can return anytime.
After all, those left on the island will have all the time in the world.

Strength
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Constitution
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Dexterity
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Intelligence
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Wisdom
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Charisma
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Magic
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Quick Info

Carina Navis
Lightning-born
Origins uncertain
Adult
No magical ability
Female, panromantic asexual
Neutral good
Former particle physicist

Relations

mate
friends
enemy

Theme Song

Unfettered - Ocean Jet

Tigerlily
The Manticore

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banner credit

notes:
-tert gene is not capsule in lore; her stomach plating is an iridescent aqua like her wings
-secretly really wishes she had some neat lightning powers. she wants to zap people so bad

I'm on this road chasing tomorrow
I don't know where today has been
And I've been told that all my sorrows
Are just the daughter of my sins

I surely hope that you can find me
There when I reach my journey's end
We'll talk of love and ties that bind me
And then I'll end up here again

Now I don't know if speed can help me
But I'm going fast as a man can
The sun goes down, darkness surrounds me
Her shadow lies upon this land

I surely hope that you can find me
There when I reach my journey's end
We'll talk of love and ties that bind me
And then I'll end up here again

I climbed about and roared off through the night
I never really know what's wrong, what's right
My thoughts have followed through until the end
I'm turning back again

I'm on this road chasing tomorrow
Lord tell me where today has been
And I've been told that all my sorrows
Are just the daughter of my sins.

Chris Hadfield - Space Sessions: Songs from a Tin Can

“We were trying to do the right thing.”
“I know, Airell.”
“How many died?”
“Airell, we don’t even know if they’re dead. We’ve found survivors. Alathfar, Tureis, Alastrina- they made it out.”
“And how many didn’t?”
For the first time, she is silent.
“Too many, Carina. Too many.”

art by me

xxxCarina Navis is old, much older than the small clan she’s learned to call home in the last few years.
xxxFor a clan leader, she’s strange, really. Since birth, her blood has been devoid of any magical potential whatsoever. Few dragons are born truly gifted in magic, but to be utterly devoid of it is nearly unheard-of. It’s everywhere, collecting in the scales of every dragon before they’re even hatched, entering the body continuously through food and potions, collecting in the blood and bones. And yet Carina has none. Magic simply slides off her scales as if she were oil and it were water. Her eyes are all that mark her as a Lightning-born dragon; that and her horrible coffee consumption.
xxxMost would consider this a disadvantage, perhaps even a disease, but Carina has found two distinct advantages of her condition. One: curses don’t work on her. Oh, magical fire will burn her as well as regular fire, yes; but spells that are not so physical in nature are practically useless against her. The second, and more important by an order of magnitude: no magic means no interference.
xxxOf course, the minor interference caused by ambient magic is nothing that would concern one in their everyday life. Particle physics, however, is a different beast entirely; one that, as it turns out, Carina is quite well suited for. She’s meticulous, patient, ambitious, and full an insatiable curiosity for the precise inner workings of this universe. Her fascination with the idea of figuring out a scientific explanation for magic as a whole, and how it interacts with the universe on the most basic scale, led her begin a rather unconventional career in the Shifting Expanse.
xxxHer clan began as a small group of researchers undertaking an ambitious but underfunded project that Lightning dragons viewed as having no practical application and that Arcane dragons viewed as an unnecessary waste of resources put into tackling a question from the wrong angle.

-went through the process of transforming herself into a Ridgeback due to a need to prove herself to her clanmates when she survived an assassination attempt and regained control of the clan from Adriana

-etc etc lightning was too organized for her so she took the clan and hecked off to shadow to become a feral scientist
-a feral particle physicist, in her case
-Horizon Seeker project, Aquila-Aermead conspiracy, first encounter with the Shade
-disappearance of Airell and his return
-construction of new base just offshore of the Tangled Wood, dedicated more purely to constructing a spacecraft
-Regulus’s ‘death’ on first manned spaceflight, and his return with Celeste
-investigation into origin of Shade
-accident with Shade experiments that destroyed most of old clan (actually it wasn’t destroyed, but it activated a failsafe that froze the entire facility in time to prevent the spread of the Shade fragment when it escaped containment)
-Carina, Airell, Alastrina, Alathfar, and a few others from the old clan survived
-initial grief over the loss of their friends and horror at what they had nearly done brought them to the most remote regions of the Viridian Labyrinth, where they decided to set aside their past and try to make a new lives for themselves
-but oh uh. old habits die hard huh
-took advantage of proximity to the Ocean surrounding Sornieth’s mainland to build a facility outside the reach of the Deities
-whole deal of “ok energy cannot be created so where the hell does magic come from” and celeste is like “my world is literally dying guys. and the entire void of space is trying to kill you. that energy DOES come from somewhere your deities either don’t know where or don’t want YOU to know”
-nobody would be surprised if she started day-drinking at this point. someone help her she has had Enough

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Exalting Carina to the service of the Stormcatcher will remove them from your lair forever. They will leave behind a small sum of riches that they have accumulated. This action is irreversible.

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