Blacknovelist » Lair » Zeviam

Zeviam

(#60027325)

Teach and be Taught (they/them)

Alum

Raptorik Wanderer

Energy: 47/50

Personal Style

Apparel

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

23.63 m

Wingspan

15.34 m

Weight

7914.68 kg

Genetics

Berry
Starmap

Pistachio
Bee

Spruce
Opal

Hatchday

Mar 17, 2020
(4 years)

Breed

Adult
Imperial

Eye Type

Arcane
Unusual

Level 14 Imperial

EXP: 50786 / 54161

STR

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

Steffan
Rhox

Offspring

Biography

I'm the first to know,
My dearest friends,
Even if your hope has burned with time,
Anything that's dead shall be re-grown,
And your vicious pain, your warning sign,
You will be fine.

Hey love, here I am,
And here we go, life's waiting to begin.

- The Adventure by Angels and Airwaves

Oh, there's a river that winds on forever
I'm gonna see where it leads
Oh, there's a mountain that no man has mounted
I'm gonna stand on the peak

Out there's a land that time don't command
Wanna be the first to arrive
No time for ponderin' why I'm a-wanderin'
Not while we're both still alive

- Ends of the Earth by Lord Huron (courtesy of Ebony3 here)

ZEVIAM
[zeh-vee-am]

•Wind and Thought•

_____________________

B I O G R A P H Y

A young wanderer of a teacher and researcher, who seems to have settled — or at least, made a base — in Clan Novalis. One day they arrived with only red goggles and the companionship of the raptorik known as Alum to their name, in search of a place to stay. Yasmine gave them the same terms she does all others who come upon the borders of her clan's territory: "So long as you make yourself a comrade, you will be welcome here."

Zeviam's extra feathered appendages are often a point of curiosity among those trusted with the knowledge of their existence, though they remain so blasé about it that others can't help but find it unconcerning. Shed feathers have been donated towards studies, and were it not for the unusual color, the clan scholars would accuse Zeviam of handing over Alum's feathers or fakes altogether. As it is, no one has managed to confirm anything, save for Zeviam's health and that their many small, extraneous limbs, though odd, are completely natural.

In their travels, Zeviam collected -- and continues to collect -- many tales and skills. They love to share these in exchange for anything, from willing ears to others' very own stories and skills. Ranging from near death adventures to the bi-weekly marketplace visits, lessons in swordplay to the technicalities of stamp collection, they'll tell and listen with equal amounts of enthusiasm. Rumor has it that Alum taught them a few things too, but... that's absurd, of course. It takes a great deal of learning to understand even one beastclan dialect, let alone one as difficult for most dragons to parse as that of the talonok.

Clan elders and younglings alike come to find them, should they need open ears, advice, or distractions. Though one of the youngest among Novalis, Zeviam collaborates often with the other members of the clan to handle schooling and lessons for any hatchlings (or those who wish to learn in general) -- when they're not out and about looking for new lessons, of course.

Alum himself is a raptorik who hails from deeper within the Windswept Plateau. His clan, while not strictly allies, has something of an accord with Novalis that stems both from their previous tenuous relations with other beastclans and their acceptance of Alum. Half the coin he makes as a guide and in assisting Zeviam with their teaching and research endeavors often makes its way back to them.

From "The Tale Of Seven" — a translation of an ancient book, which detailed seven alleged second-age deities and their domains:

Zeviam -
The Sage
Deity of Wind and Thought
Symbol of Inspiration.

Said to sweep up the dead earth with four massive wings in order to make way for new life, stringing the whispers of stories and journeys long past on the breezes.

"Sage, Sage,
tell us a tale,
tell us of the mountains
and the lonely vale."

- An exerpt from "Old Folk Rhymes",
dated several millenia ago.

O L D F R I E N D S

R E N D R I X

M Y R E A U

R A K I

C H E S T N E R

L U V A L A

M Ä I T I

Zeviam's Reflection

Our first memory of the world is chaos.

Of course it is. We — my siblings and I — would not have been born, squeezed from nothingness by the force of hope and desperation, otherwise. The wills of life, amidst panic and suffering, coalesced from a wish into something more — not quite Gods, not quite akin to the titans whomst once created the world, but not quite mortal, either. Us, born from the void. So often we forget the coin all of existence is.

Our mission, at first, was to defend. To hold at bay chaotic and wayward forces, in lieu of the Gods who yet slumbered in their stone monument — though, we did not know that at the time. We knew only three things, then: something was wrong, it needed to be fixed, and we were not alone.

The creatures of the world sought control, prosperity, strength. They sought the fulfillment of their prophecy, the unity of all the elements. What needs to be understood is that those who wished us into existence were not of dragonkind, of the race that now so populates this world. Nor were we. They did not know of dragons, then, after all. Shaped by heart and soul, we were made to be — to embody — what was wanted by these creatures, and we continued to be that until we learned to be what we wanted.

I suspect there could have been more of us, had their project not gone wrong when and where it did. We do not encompass all the elements as we are. Then again, their far more successful attempt, centuries down, led instead to the Arcanist and the destruction of the realm, the start of a new age. So perhaps it was always to be just us. I suppose we'll never know for sure.

But I digress.

As charged, we protected. We contained the elements loosed by the remnants of a war-torn era who sought to harness it for war, for greed. It did not take long, though difficult the task may have been. We came forth to keep it from getting worse, after all. After, we saved and restored and destroyed what we needed to.

Rendrix played no small part, here, on either side of the small conflict — his spirit was born long before ours, in the form of a mortal, a member of the sect that caused the magitech to go awry in the first place. He saw the havoc they and their actions wreaked, and he alone sought to fix what was made wrong. If there is one gratitude I have, it is that he no longer need carry that guilt with him.

And then... we were bereft. All we knew was our mission, a now-forgotten and unneeded wish. All we had was our power. Our presence was known, but we had no physicality, not as the not-mortals we were. Only approximations of forms that felt right, to serve us should we need – certainly unsuitable for any more than they were used for. So we cast off this ethereality and donned flesh and blood, and for one lifetime learned to reconcile our natures and abilities with an ordinary short life.

Raki and Myreau joined the echelons of society, influenced for the better from the inside. Mäiti, Rendrix and Luvala went low, sought out those underfoot and worked to lift them high. I travelled, as did Chestner. Solid, stationary life made itself unsuitable to us. She — at the time, as pronouns can shift like clouds in the sky, and I will respect what was chosen in a different life — departed for the sake of the journey, to satisfy an itch to see miles, devoured beneath step after step after step. I wrote our stories, consulted with others who did the same built on assumptions, listened for the tales and lives and memories of others, both alive and dead, and carried them with me. I hear my stories, our stories, their stories still.

One day, I died. I became one with a place filled only with nonexistence — knew it only because it was from whence we came. Then I became un-one, and my newborn eyes opened to a world both the same and different to what was left behind.

My existence has been filled with this for centuries. Sometimes, I meet my siblings again — and we know we are siblings despite the wrong elements answering to our call, because our hearts thrum just so when we lock gazes, and sometimes we tease one another over the strange forms we find ourselves born to, in those days they remember just a little more.

There are lifetimes I forget about our first, where I forget the chaos and technology and immateriality. I'll get swept up in the thrill of the hunt, the euphoria of progress, the rages and joys of society and other people, and that first life will slip from my mind altogether. I don't know if the others remember quite as clearly as I do — my domain is, was, of thought, after all. I don't know what it is they recall beyond the innate siblinghood we seven always have carried. Sometimes they ask me for answers and I give them — sometimes they do not ask, and live happily in ignorance of what came before. Sometimes I ask if they would know, and they decide whether the distant past is something they need carry with them.

My spirit coils and thrums, deep beneath my skin. It is always there, and I know that my siblings feel it too, when they look. Once it made me — us — up in its entirety, no room or time for anything else. It's lonely sometimes, knowing how much lies forgotten outside of me. But I am mortal now, and that power — that other self — is not all that I am. Not anymore.

________________________________________

Bonus tale:
Alum's Reflection
originally written and posted for day 23 of the mistral march 2020 event

Alum watches the hatchling carefully. They're so small, too small for a dragon out on their own, though they still nearly dwarf him. Look at them, all oversized feet and wings, speckled in pale blue-green stone and white stars. Goggles, cinched as tight as they go, hang off little antlers, and their eyes shine vibrant pink. He can't even play at speaking to the hatchling. The only noises they make are soft squeaks and the rumbles of a purr.

But the hatchling listens -- or tries -- when he points and chitters in his home tongue, and stays close when he hides from the more vicious of the other Beastclans, or from other dragons who would do nothing good to an imperial hatchling that yet stumbles over their own feet. It's more work than the raptorik meant to take on, when he set out across the plains.

Except. Except Alum thinks to old tales, the few saved from his people's age, before the dragons and their gods came. The Beastclans had their own beliefs, gods and not-gods alike. Spirits, more like. Deities, maybe even. They came from nothing and nowhere in the clan's times of need, reigned in forces gone wild in lieu of the great draconic titans. The legends vary, sometimes, as spoken folklore so often does, but the end never changes: after these spirits save Alum's ancestors from their mistakes, they take on the faces and bodies and become mortal. They cast off the ethereal for the ephemeral and, across the world somewhere, their spirits still wander among them.

He knows the color of arcana in dragon eyes. Except this hatchling, through that vibrant pink, has eyes that remind Alum of siblings and wide gazes and downy-wings. Of stories of a many-winged traveller, with a name like sharp wind and the twirl of leaves, that sits around fires and curls among strangers like friends. And sometimes he finds feathers not his own that glimmer in the sun, fluffy and stuck between leather flaps and glittering scales. And the hatchling looks up at him while they press together in alcoves and hidey-holes, and what he sees in those gleaming eyes makes him think if this little one isn't a dragon at all.

And then he blinks, and he's the same old raptorik, and the hatchling is the same old baby, and it's foolish to wonder. But he does, nonetheless. And he can't just leave a baby behind, dragon or no.

Alum, slowly, shifts the goggles back over the little dragon's eyes, tightens it the littlest bit he can. They chirp twice, long then short, a facsimile of 'thank you'.

"You're welcome," he murmurs. And it's no dragon name, it's forbidden for his people to tell dragons their names, to let them use them -- too much power, it is -- but he thinks he's never met anyone, dragon or talonok or harpy or whoever, that suits the name Zeviam more.

(He calls for the baby in the morning, threads gentle claws through their fur and asks to name them -- offers the name -- even though the child surely cannot understand.

They croon, and tip their head, and he swears the stretch of their lips could be something like a smile.)

Bio template by Mibella, find it here.

Fun Fact Corner:
Name etymology: "Zeviam" is derived from a mix of zephyr, Latin for sky (caelum) and Latin for traveler (viatorem).
The name has gone through three iterations: Nycaelum (based off caelum and the romanization of Nyktos, which is Greek) --> Zevialum (same etymology as above} --> Zeviam (shortened further to match the other names, which were all fairly short)
I ripped all of these words from Google translate so there's a percentage chance they're not wholly correct, but it doesn't matter because they get mashed up anyway.
This is, generally speaking, how I make up any names in general, when I want to be fancy.
"Alum", the name of Zeviam's friend and guardian, comes from the end of "Zevialum".

by EifiCopper

Amazing Art by ShadowPiper

Edited using resources from Drytil's Art Resource.
No aspects or elements of this image - save the dragon it was based on - are owned by Blacknovelist

By Quetzy

Lovely art by Wrenn!!

By GuardianLioness <3333

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Exalting Zeviam to the service of the Windsinger 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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