let’s talk bogsneak dentition 

i have a habit of mammalifying dragons when i need to fill in the gaps so i decided No More and tried to make bogsneaks actually reptilian. which means, for the purpose of herbivory, a set of peg teeth in the front (and a diastema that i didn’t illustrate on the upper mandible because i’m a dumbass). and for the purpose of carnivory, a set of homogenous rearward facing fangs. the fangs grab and hold onto prey sure, but they also are pretty good at introducing the bogsneak’s toxic saliva into the prey (think komodo dragons), basically seeding hard-to-cure puncture wounds with a cocktail of fun pathogens, or even actual venom

because, to the creature - or, rather, the person controlling it - he no longer counted as a dragon. 

now it might be a coincidence that emiliano just happened to undergo bogsneak reversion just then and there, which made him escape the creature. but it probably isn’t. i mean it definitely isn’t but leaving that aside

he is faced with 2 problems, and one of them is his charge. it’s gone. smashed to bits, pulverised, then the remaining fragments were burned up by the CSI/purification squad robin sent in to stop the spread of disease. emiliano’s charge no longer exists. he has time to reflect that it feels weird that he doesn’t care before noticing that the reason for the apathy his that he is no longer a guardian. 

problem 2 comes to a head within half an hour, when the shock of not being trapped in a horrible cyclical nightmare starts to wear off. the realness of the beach hurts a little. it’s very cold and the salt stings. his gills don’t work in seawater anyway, he’s an inland guardian - was an inland guardian, he has to remind himself. and he’s very far from home. but he doesn’t want to go home. something inside him tells him to go north, which is the opposite direction of the sky spire empire, the only safe haven nearby that would take him (as long as he promises to be good). 

he has very little directional sense, he’s basically been living underground his entire life, and his short visits to fallon’s home never really focussed on the wilderness of the arcane lands. but he knows north. and that’s where he has to go. fallon will just have to wait a while longer

court dorchadas got smashed up and all its occupants are missing/dead, except for a couple of imperial survivors

clan fuil darach has been fooled by Capitalism into becoming the staff of a merchant company without really realising it 

i have a new clan called clan aoire who are wyverns and unrelated to any other dragon species and they might have something to do with what happened to the court. maybe

theres an emperor somewhere 

thats about it 

so court dorchadas is comprised of a single large city surrounding the base of a fortress built into a hollow mountain (a dead volcano actually), and a dozen or so smaller holds and associated towns spanning the entire country-sized territory in dragonhome. the fortress and city were the equivalent of the capital city i guess. originally, it was just the fortress, which was a small town in its own right, but since the foundation of the court the population has grown exponentially. mostly due to the court bringing smaller clans into its fold, but also due to immigrants arriving from eastern dragonhome, the growing desertification of which has pushed out a lot of vulnerable populations (the verza among them btw)

the fortress and capital city are gone. they were smashed to bits in an event that is not clearly understood by any of the court’s allies and neighbours, since there were no survivors. in other disasters, like flooding or invasion, there are always witnesses who flee into the nearest settlements, bringing a pretty clear account of what happened along with them. that isn’t the case here. no one made it out, except for prince fallon. because fallon fled straight back home to the sky spire empire and is in recovery, his eyewitness account wasn’t made publicly known for several months following the event

what is left of court dorchadas is made up of the nobles’ holds scattered around the countryside. of the surviving nobility, Lord Adagio is the most senior. one of the main changes that emiliano made after becoming king was the banishment of the traditional dorchadas nobility - the rich and useless aristocrats. Adagio was appointed as senior in place of the banished nobles. He is a highly experienced and practical military man. unfortunately, he has little to no experience when it comes to court power games (he doesn’t even have a collection of blackmail nudes, which is like the basic possession of every other noble the court has ever had)

despite the scattered and mostly clueless nature of the remaining dorchadas dragons, an emergency ruling council was quickly elected. Lord Adagio is in charge and he answers to Commander Robin, who’s all the way west in Rezann’s citadel. together, Adagio and Robin are trying to work out just wtf happened. the citizenry of the court have begun to flee in large numbers, scared of a repeat disaster, so the remaining council members are trying to keep the peace and ensure resources are distributed evenly. one of the council members is Lord Friday, the head of an older dorchadas noble family who have, until now, been very good at flying under the radar in terms of terrible behaviour. 

under Robin and Adagio, a team of basically CSI agents were sent to the fortress to check out what happened. none of them survived past their first report, most of which consisted of “oh god i touched the ground near a dead body and now my lungs are dissolving” 

this kind of elevated the situation from “maybe an earthquake?” to “potential biohazard event”. Robin sent in her best team of healers to figure out wtf it was that had leeched into the ground and rock, and whether it would spread and become a danger to the court’s neighbours. they determined that it wasn’t the shade, and it wasn’t an emperor, but the exact nature of the contagion is still unknown. however, the dragon equivalent of biohazard suits must be worn at the site of the fortress at all times

one of the healers was Aiteal, a necromancer who was sent along because she also had a collection of ghouls under her command. these already-dead dragons, bound to their necromancer by magical contracts, could not fall victim to the contagion and made great workers. they were made to burn the dead and bury the ashes in the hopes that it would make the place a little safer to be in 

anyway the team of healers is still working stuff out. but by now, word has spread that whatever happened might happen again, and has the potential to infect others. there’s a quiet fear that might at any moment be pushed into full-blown mass panic, and migration from Dragonhome to the Starfall Isles has taken a sharp upswing. because the pervading rumour is still spreading - that an emperor destroyed the court, seeded the land with disease and rot, and might even now be moving towards the next most populated area (Robin’s citadel). 

rezann’s (and regie’s) death was carefully arranged by Ideal to cause some extreme backlash in the fabric of magic and reality. it took place in the Starfall Isles as close to the observatory as could be risked - an area of immense magical energy and crisscrossing leylines. Rezann and Regie were both beings that were more magic than flesh (in regie’s case, no flesh at all, though rezann was more magically potent) and their simultaneous demise resulted in shit going wild in northern Sornieth. leylines broke, magic erupted uncontrollably into the wild, no longer bound up tightly in leylines and these two magical creatures. the very fabric of space tore apart, leaving rifts that Ideal (and... others) could pass through. 

Ideal has made itself manifest in the body of Eladrin, a young skydancer with in-born chaote powers. Eladrin’s involvement in the whole ordeal was not planned - he was sent in by Rezann’s enemies in the hopes that his magic-backfiring aura would disrupt Rezann’s regenerative powers. it worked, but Eladrin also unwittingly disrupted Ideal’s powers, too. Ideal possessed Eladrin out of desperation, hoping that by residing in the boy’s body it could shield itself from his powers. it worked, but also meant that Ideal could not risk leaving its new host.

Ideal’s goals are difficult to discern. But its influence seems to have caused the sudden surge in bogsneak numbers over the past few months - Ideal has been intentionally twisting dragons out of their god-given forms, turning them into something that is the domain of no deity - basically, the dragon equivalent of opensource software, if that makes sense. unregulated. and because they’re ... untethered from most divine powers, they can be easily swayed, as a group, by an outside power. an outside power like Ideal, perhaps

at the same time, something rather unusual is happening across Sornieth, but particularly concentrated around the sunbeam ruins. a mass resurrection event that is finally starting to become Big News. dragons long-since dead are returning. some of them seem just the same as before, but others are almost unrecognisable personality-wise. they all have one thing in common, though - a new devotion to their deity and a militant drive to defend their home and religion. 

these two events seem unrelated. but a keen observer might note that there is a line of battle being drawn down the centre of Sornieth - in the east, the resurrected dragons. in the west, the bogsneaks and magical anomalies. 

basic facts

at the bottom of a remote chasm in eastern dragonhome is a village of undead dragons, spirits, and ghosts. it is known as the village of the dead, or the silent settlement

the main draw to tourists is a massive market, where the villagers sell rare materials and resources only found deep underground. living merchants can come to trade there but there are Rules

everyone stays in bipedal gijinka form all the time, due to being dead and unable to transform (there are ofc dragon-sized ghosts but they won’t fit in the village)

everyone wears a painted wooden mask that resembles their dragon forms. u rarely see bare faces there. the living must wear a mask before entering the village

everyone speaks in low voices. for the aesthetic i guess

sunlight only reaches the village during high noon. all other times of the day and night it is in perpetual twilight and lit by torches. it never rains and it’s so dusty that u can barely breathe down there

two spirits, scorch and sear, tend to the torches

yarrow is the guardian of the village and he decides which living dragons get to enter

uhhh i really only want to talk about delta today because he’s my boy. i mentioned in response to an ask a few weeks ago about rich and tiber that delta had been purposefully avoiding rich, even when the rest of the clan had long since moved past the initial distrust. 

although it is forbidden in the clan to make light of delta’s trauma (not one of delta’s rules. but if anyone jokes about that shit they have to answer to luke), there were a few moments where people absently advised rich to maybe not go near delta. especially not when delta was handling any kind of heavy equipment or weapon-like object (lots of dockwork involves heavy wood planks and crowbars, soo)

rich doesn’t believe himself in any way linked to or responsible for his mother’s actions. what xandra did was entirely unrelated to rich. rich has a rather disconnected, dispassionate view of his family (except his younger twin brothers, he’s very protective of them) and sees himself as an individual rather than a prince or whatever. he is also very quiet and a little shy, and he would never be one to force a conflict with delta over intergenerational trauma. rich is more a live and let live kinda guy

anyway, delta avoids him. like the plague. now tiber has been taking precognition ‘lessons’ with rúth, which often leaves rich and luke just kinda sidelined together, and delta has found that he can’t even spend time with his own sibling without being around rich. everyone just assumes that delta hates rich and is purposefully limiting the time they spend in proximity, for fear of making poor decisions in a fit of anger. which has, historically, been one of delta’s worst traits.