Vector

Vector's charge was a large chuck of black ore. Being an armoursmith, he melted it down and forged it into the armour he currently wears. Now he protects his charge, and his charge protects him.

This was a questionable decision, and a number of other guardians would see it as destruction of his charge, one of the most heinous crimes possible. Vector instead sees it as elevating his charge to its highest potential. We'd go into further detail, but guardian philosophy can drive even the most fortitudinous of scholars to hysterics.

Vector views his work as not just an art, but his true calling, and thus refuses to create anything other than armour. Pieces that the clan cannot use are put of display and then sold to those willing to pay handsomely for them. His pride and joy is a full set of armour that's spiky to the point where it's possibly lethal to even touch it. The points are so fine that the ends are impossible to even see, and some have theorized that they may even poke into alternate dimensions. It's yet to sell, as nobody's figured out how to pick it up, let alone put it on.

But despite being an Arcane dragon, the armour he crafts doesn't have any magical properties whatsoever. As far as Vector is concerned, his armour is so well made that your don't need any enchantments. In fact, if you do get it enchanted afterwards, he'll take it as a major insult. Luckily, your shiny new armour will protect you from anything he tries to do.

In response to one of Bozatrox's requests for safety precautions, Vector found himself a pair of goggles. He thinks he looks ridiculous in them, but they make Bozatrox happy, so he'll wear them. Now if only the others would stop drawing googly eyes on them...

Vector is a competent fighter, but spends hours after every battle polishing his armour. This isn't entirely pointless, as sheen the plate develops is actually capable of reflecting some magical attacks. But he doesn't need to spend anywhere near as much time as he does to get that effect. The sweet nothings he whispers to the armour as he cleans it are also just a bit strange.

He is also a dragon of few words, but it's not like he needs many, as most are warded off by his gruff demeanour. And if they try to stick around, it's not like Vector can hold a conversation over the sound of himself hammering metal. Especially when he keeps hammering louder and louder until they get the hint.

Unfortunately for him, with his forge sitting out near the docks he gets visitors quite often. Usually he'll hand finished pieces over to Jenna or Diurne so that they can sell them for him, but that doesn't stop visitors to the clan from visiting the forge directly. They get professionally ignored for their troubles. Unless they're interesting enough to catch his attention. Or rather, if their busted up armour is. Vector doesn't advertise repairs, but for a particularly beautiful or unusual piece he'll make an exception.

When not working, he's usually found in the tavern. He's just there for the drinks, no matter how much Tonukk tries to persuade him to gamble a little. Vector is willing to make bets on chalc games being played on the mainland, but that's not the kind of gambling Tonukk likes. Bijou gives him betting tips though, even if it's just so she can talk smack about all the other players in the league.

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Armoursmithing is not a common trade for an arcane dragon. It's traditional for the fire flight, but Vector's never been to the Ashfall Waste. Nor did Vector show any interest metalwork as a hatchling. In fact, like many young guardians, he didn't put much thought into his future, knowing that any plans he made would be immediately ruined by the results of his Search.

Vector's Search took him into the depths of Dragonhome, a long journey for which he failed to prepare for properly. Instead of edibles, he packed his bags full of rope, cloth, and tools, as images of creating a useful gift for his charge clouded his mind. He was hoping to only have to make a quick trip from the Focal Point to the mainland and back, but instead his Search just kept pulling him onwards, while his supplies quickly dwindled. He was forced to scavenge for whatever food he could find, and quickly learned that, yes, everything in Dragonhome does taste like dirt.

(Vector would later find out that he'd managed to hunt all the most inedible of Dragonhome's creatures, and nothing else.)

Eventually, his Search took him to an abandoned quarry in the Cairnstone Rest, and Vector knew his journey was nearing its end. It had to be. If it took him any farther in this direction, he'd be jumping into the ocean, and Vector had a feeling that in that case he might not be coming back out.

Luckily for him, he didn't need to go much further. In one of the caverns he found an ominous boulder, as deep a black as nothing he'd ever seen before. It brought a tear to his eye, for he immediately knew that this was his charge. He also knew what he needed to do. Get some rope, yank the stone out of the ground, and drag it out of this forsaken realm of dirt and dust.

Compared to taking it back home, excavating the rock was a simple task. Guardians are incredibly strong creatures, so after a few days of digging, constructing a complicated rope and pulley system out of his supplies, tying the rope to a different boulder conveniently lying near the edge of a cliff and then pushing it off, Vector freed his Charge with ease.

But that was only the tiniest fraction of how far he'd have to move his Charge. And while Vector might have been strong, that huge rock was as heavy as, well, a huge rock, so there was no way he'd by flying with it. Instead, he turned his pulley system into a rope and harness, and set about the arduous task of dragging his charge back home. For about five minutes, as then he suddenly realized he was getting his Charge all dirty by dragging it through the dust. Thus, he had to spend another day building a rough sled out of bones scavenged from a nearby cairn. But once that was done, he was ready to start the long journey home!

A few days of dragging later, Vector came to the edge of a deep ravine. He sort of remembered flying over it coming the other way, but that wasn't an option here. Slowly lowering his Charge into the ravine and then even more slowly pulling it back up wasn't going to happen either — just thinking about it made his forelimbs hurt. Vector moped around at the top of the cliff for a while, until his industrious spirit threw enough figurative rocks at him to get his attention. The answer was simple, it said, all he had to do was build a bridge!

Thanking the part of himself that has the good ideas profusely, Vector got to work on that bridge. He'd need to find some building materials, and since there's not much in the Cairnstone Rest other than bones and rocks, he hoped that there would be some very large bones lying around.

Well, there were some large bones in the area, but they weren't particularly fond of lying around. They were more of the moving around and killing anything that dared to be less dead than them variety, actually. As the not dead in the slightest sort of dragon, Vector immediately turned tail and fled the burial cave he'd been searching. And a few hours later he came back, having had the bright idea to reuse his rock-dragging rig as a tripwire and net trap, which with any luck would break the undead monster into its component regular-dead bones.

Turns out there was some luck hanging around. The undead tripped over Vector's ropes and broke into angrily vibrating pieces on the floor. Vector kicked its skull around for a while until they stopped doing that. Once he was convinced the necromantic magic had worn off, he took stock of his new building bones.

Sadly, there were nowhere near enough parts for a bridge. But Vector was now a seasoned undead hunter, so he wasn't giving up! He gathered up his ropes and set about clearing all the local burial caves of their undead infestations. Later, the local dragon clans would be quite thankful for the mysterious stranger who had saved their ancestors' remains from the scourge of the undead.

They'd be less thankful that the stranger had gone and used those remains to build a bridge, but that's what Vector did. A mighty bridge, with supports, trestles, and arches that would help it stand the test of time. As it was so well built, and as it happened to be in a place where it would see semi-frequent use, the angry clans collectively decided to never get around to tearing it down. It's not like they had any way of figuring out which ancestor's bones were which, after all. And it was about time those lazy ancestors started doing something useful again.

Vector, of course, only used the bridge once. It supported both him and his Charge, and that was all he cared about. There was still a lot of journey home left in front of him, and so it was quickly forgotten in lieu of more walking and just a touch of obsessing over whether the constant sun exposure was hurting his Charge.
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