#about james

Full Dragon form: quadruped, huge batlike wings, brilliant green eyes with catlike pupils, black scales with a subtle rainbow gleam like obsidian, two horns at the back of his head and a third one on his elongated snout, long muscular tail. He is the size of a large horse (think Shire or Clydesdale) in this form and very rarely shifts into it.

Partially shifted Dragon/Human form: Eyes go catlike and lose their visible sclera, wings and tail appear, facial structure changes subtly with sharper angles, skin turns to scales and takes on the obsidian hue, legs partially shift to become more animalistic, and his fingers and toes grow claws. He shifts to this form more often than the full Dragon form, usually if he is engaged in battle, because his speed and strength are increased but the form itself is more subtle and easy to conceal in an urban setting than a large Dragon would be. The act of shifting itself leaves him vulnerable, though, so he has to prepare if he’s planning to do it.

Skills and Abilities: Limited Draconic magic, shapeshifting, Realm-Travel (moves between the mortal world, the Wildermere, and the Wilderland using portal magic). Various forms of martial arts and swordplay, excellent marksman, artisinal carpentry (likes working with his hands), cooking. Halfway decent on a guitar. Lovely singing voice.

Sexuality: Bi. Extremely voracious. Leans toward polyamory, but can be monogamous in the right circumstances.

Alignment: Chaotic good.

Current Occupation: Makes hand-carved, custom furniture, which he sells through local businesses or to private clients. Secretly runs human-society supernaturals (human hybrids, magic users, psychics, etc) who are hunted by the Order to a network of safe houses in Canada, and sometimes also provides protection and a temporary safe house in his own heavily-warded home.

Personality: Introverted, a bit of a loner but likes to make close connections with a few people, kind and protective overall, can swing into a harshly domineering attitude if he doesn’t check himself. He has a powerful feral side as a result of his dragon blood, which manifests as a heightened focus on sensation, hunger, sex, wanderlust, and the need to hunt. His feral nature intensifies when he shifts to full or partial Dragon form, but it is still present in his human form. He is a notorious pack rat, and will collect anything and everything that catches his fancy; the vast interior of his house (which is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and extends deep into the Earth in a network of caverns) is filled with room after room of fastidiously maintained collections, which range from artifacts and art to baseball cards and vinyl records. He has some personality quirks which are in part derived from the dragon clan he was raised with, and in part because he is from another era. For instance, the rules of hospitality are extremely important to him, as is the honor of his word.

He is a very sensory-driven man. He is sharply aware of textures, scents, sounds, color and shape. His natural habitat is deep within the mountainous wilderness, so he likes colder temperatures, though he also enjoys gentle warmth. Dragons are not cold blooded.

He has voracious appetites in everything, but practices moderation in line with his training, not depriving himself, but keeping his appetites in check. He loves well-prepared food, and is a carnivore, so he’ll dine at a fine steakhouse now and again. In his Dragon form, when staying in the mountains away from people, he will hunt deer and elk.

He is sexually active, bisexual, and naturally polyamorous (though he can and does do monogamy if a long-term partner prefers it), but lately he tries to prevent too much of an emotional attachment with his lovers, since he lost someone he loved dearly in recent years. He finds that very difficult, though, so at the present he tends towards more promiscuous behavior than he’s usually prone to, keeping things as anonymous as possible. Despite this anonymity, he always treats his lovers with respect and dignity while he is with them, seeing to their needs and desires as he can without crossing his own boundaries.

When he loves, though, he loves with everything he is. He can be self-absorbed at times, lost in his own problems, but he tries to be conscious of the needs of his loved ones. He may not always understand what they need. He’s been alive for millenia and seen the rise and fall of many civilizations, seeing a plethora of cultures and the mindsets and instincts that are built up from these cultures, so sometimes he can be confused about the more subtle signals many people use such as body language. But he is unceasingly loyal and protective of those he cares for. It would be extremely dangerous to harm anyone that he loves.

He has extremely eclectic taste in things such as music, art, and literature. He loves the arts, as they richly feed his senses. His collections are vast and their dates of creation span the entirety of his existence and even before. Though he has moved around a lot, and has more than once lost everything he has, he has always taken care to rebuild his collections, because they mean a lot to him. If he, as a Dragon, had a hoard, that would be it.

Although he does collect other things as well. Baubles and beautiful or bizarre objects fill the rooms of the living spaces he keeps around the world, especially his lair in California.

His living spaces are clean, but exist in a kind of organized chaos, just because he has so much stuff.

James isn’t fond of crowds or loud, busy spaces, because they tend to overwhelm his senses.

He has an intense need, almost a compulsion, to see wrongs righted, both for the one wronged and for the one doing the wronging. This is partly due to his compassion, which does feed that drive, but it’s more rooted in an instinctual need to restore and maintain balance in the world, which he doesn’t realize is a part of his Dragon nature.

James’ Dragon Magic

* Dragon magic is neither inherently good nor evil, but it is wild, primal, chaotic, unpredictable, and much larger than the individual who wields it. It can be highly dangerous because of its unpredictable nature.

*Deep, intense connection with the universe and the primal forces of creation.

*Dragon magic is similar in some ways to human magic, in that it is wielded with a combination of will, intent, and focus. It packs a greater punch than human magic, though, and can also be subtle while simultaneously having greater reach, rushing through a butterfly effect of fundamental change.

*At first, James was more powerful than a human mage, but less powerful than the weakest full-blooded Dragon. After he was saved by the Sidhe woman, she “gifted” him both with the lifespan and full power of a full-blooded Dragon, but without giving him the mental capacity of the full-bloods to contain and control the magic once he raises it-- unless she helps him channel it. He cannot control most of what he is capable of conjuring up, so he puts severe limits on himself and only unleashes the full extent of his magic when he absolutely has to. He can do smaller things, especially when creating magical objects, which he empowers with small amounts of energy over time.

*James comes from a long line of healers, so he is very proficient in healing magic, though he draws from his own life force to do so, which can weaken him severely for a time.

*James is proficient with weather and storm magic. He can direct lightning, create localized storms and cyclones, call up gusts of wind, conjure heavy fog, etc. This sort of magic is very difficult to control, though, because nature takes over and things can get away from him if the storm he conjures is too big.

*Somewhat less proficient, but still very strong, is his skill in Earth magic. He can manipulate the ground, plants, trees, root systems. Again, manipulating these things can cause a destructive chain reaction that can get out of his control.

*He has some telekinetic ability but very little control over it. It seems to “activate” when his more Draconic side is dominant and he becomes angry.

*James is able to create servitors or egregores, which are limited, often (but not always) temporary thought forms which can gather information for him, carry out small enchantments, or other tasks. They are created by drawing on the imagination, will, belief, and by channeling the fundamental powers of creation inherent in the universe itself. Usually the servitors are invisible and spirit-like, which he can see but nobody else can, but he has one who has learned to take on form. If a servitor hangs around too long, it can develop sentience and become a fully realized, independent being. Because he considers this to be a huge responsibility and ethically questionable, he doesn’t do it anymore unless he has absolutely no other choice.

*He has a former servitor of his design that willingly serves as a familiar, who was created several hundred years ago and has developed independence/autonomy and learned to take physical form. It often appears as a large, black cat with yellow eyes, but it can take other forms if it chooses, including a panther or a raven, and can communicate vocally. Its Name is Scáil, pronounced Skaw-il, but since its Name gives a person power over it, he usually just calls it Shadow, especially around other people who may just think it’s his pet cat.

*Can travel at will between realms (i.e., the Nevernever, if using Dresden Files lore)

The Order of the Ouroboros

Not much is known about them or their goals. They are identifiable by a tattoo of an ouroboros encircling the necks of its members, which is usually concealed with a glamour. They have been systematically eradicating gifted humans and human hybrids, though it’s also suspected that they are taking some of these gifted people as prisoners and brainwashing them. There is some evidence that Ouroboros agents have been put in place within human governments, though it’s not known how much influence they have.

James’ History

The man known today as James Cavanaugh was born in Phoenecian-occupied Sicily, in the eleventh century B.C.E. He keeps his true Name, the Name his mother gave him, well-hidden, and has used a series of aliases throughout the centuries.

His mother was a Dragon, and his father was a sorcerer. His mother was slain by dragon hunters; his father hunted down her killers and killed them one by one with magic. James was ten.

An organized group of humans whose purpose was to eradicate supernatural threats in the world by any means necessary turned their attention to James’ father. Though these were mortals with no inherent magic, they were able to borrow or steal power to fulfill their goals, deeming it necessary. James, being a product of a warlock and an inhuman being, was on the hit list too, because this group believed that such unions were abominations. Dragon culture gave no quarter to hybrids either, but was more ambivalent about their existence, preferring to abandon them as infants if they were born within their demesne, leaving them to fate unless they were a direct threat. Most did not survive. James traveled with his father, staying ahead of those who hunted them. He still looked up to him, still thinking him a good man, but little by little he began to see the truth. His father was consumed with rage and an unquenched thirst for revenge, even though he killed those who had murdered his wife. It culminated in his father destroying a village that had been harboring a dragon slayer.

His father, seeing what he had become, chose to surrender himself to give sixteen-year-old James a fighting chance. After his father was captured and executed, James continued to wander alone for several years.

James went through a period of time where he let himself be ruled by his baser instincts, especially his rage at having his parents stolen from him. He justified this by claiming that he was setting boundaries for himself that he would not cross. However, he kept nudging those boundaries bit by bit, making bad choice after bad choice. He killed those that he judged deserving, and did it with a feral, bestial violence that began to direct his thoughts, his emotions, and his actions more and more. He thought he could control it while simultaneously giving it free reign, simply by directing it– until an innocent was swept away in the path of his destruction. He held the child in his arms as she breathed her last, and only then did he truly see the path he had gone down.

He still had years of allowing his feral nature to control him to contend with, though, and, remembering the teachings his mother had tried to instill in him before her death, teachings on mental and emotional discipline, he sought out human teachers in the world who could teach him comparable skills.

He trained with a number of masters over the years, who did help in many ways, but had a deep lack of understanding of his nature and how to both control it and channel it with intention.

And then he heard whispers of a place, hidden with magic within a mountain, headed by a man who could turn into a dragon at will. He spent years hunting down every hint, every tale, every fragment of drunken gossip he could find about it, until he finally found the place.

He spent years there. I’ll go into more detail about that later, but while there, he met another apprentice who called himself Ahirom, who was, like James, a scion of Dragon and Wizard. Not all of the apprentices in the Cloisters were Dragon scions; there were scions of many types of beings, and a few human practitioners as well.

Ahirom and James (who used another alias at the time) became very close, friends and lovers and, later, comrades in arms. After their time in the Cloisters, they traveled the world together.

But over time, Ahirom lost the battle with his feral nature, and he nearly drew James down with him. Their friendship dissolved into antagonism until violence erupted between them as James stepped in to stop Ahirom from attacking a woman. They fought, and Ahirom nearly killed James, but stopped himself at the last minute, unable to strike the final blow. He left, and James, nearly dead from his wounds, was found by one of the Doñas de Fuera, a Faerie woman of the Seelie.

In another moment of weakness, fearing death due to his past sins, he bargained with the Faerie woman, who healed him in exchange for him providing her with services whenever she required them. James was still relatively young, and, though he had heard of the Sidhe, and had heard the warnings associated with them, the Sidhe woman showed him such tenderness and compassion that he thought the bargain would be worth it.

Of course, the Seelie are not as sweet and kind as they often appear. This Sidhe woman “gifted” him with immortality of a sort. He could still be killed, but he would not live the several hundred years of his Dragon scion brethren, but would have the nigh unending lifespan of a full-blooded Dragon. He would be bound to her for as long as he was alive, to be her champion whenever she called upon him. And she did, sometimes.