Application for mayfield_rpg
Name: Sam
Personal LJ: blue_raven64
Contact Info: AIM/ironbirdobserver
Other Characters Played: idkmybfforin, there_were_none
Preferred Housing: N/A
Character Name: Iskierka
Character Series: Temeraire
Character Age: 3
Background: http://www.temeraire.org/wiki/Iskierka
Personality: Iskierka certainly fits the moniker of “firebreather”, literally and figuratively. She is the only pyrogenic dragon in all of Britain-something she knows very well and flaunts at every opportunity-and, because of her unique status, something of a brat. A large something of a brat. And a princess and a pirate-a quite bloodthirsty one, too, with very little in the way of actual manners. Being of unmatched ability and fighting weight combined (at least in Britain) she has very little to fear in the air-at least, when opponents obligingly come at her one at a time. Mobbing her en masse is both highly effective and highly decried by the young dragon as very unfair. As is shooting at her with cannons, rockets, and any number of anti-dragon weaponry. All unfair. All of it.
Her ego might be born of nature or might have been a learned behavior; Turkish Kaziliks (which is what she is) were renowned in Europe for their great size and firebreathing abilities; only three (named) breeds in Europe are capable of the feat, despite what one normally thinks of when “dragon” comes to mind. Her parents seemed rather mellow and obliging right up until her egg was taken away-then their fury lit up the sky. Iskierka herself was born on, if not quite a battlefield, very close to one; she broke the shell whilst the dragon Temeraire and his crew were fleeing towards Danzig. She had been hearing Prussian soldiers speak around her egg for weeks-with the way these particular dragons learn, in the shell, she not only understood German but that they were in a war. She hatched breathing fire, challenged the some twenty-ton Temeraire over a cow, and brought an enemy patrol down on their heads that pursued them all the way to besieged Danzig.
Iskierka’s only thoughts on the matter was that if she were allowed to fight, things would have been much different! Chains were required to keep her from leaping into battle with fully-grown dragons flying overhead, something the then very small dragon was irritated at.
Later on, when Iskierka was in Britain, all the dragons that would have been her senior and finally taught her discipline were either ill, deployed to Africa, or dead. Instead of learning signals, formations and obedience, her only real companions were a gaggle of feral dragons-who themselves had no concept of military discipline. They only reinforced her bad habits and held Iskierka in a kind of idolatry; she being three times the size of the largest of them, breathing fire and of proper mind. As a result of their influence, Iskierka has come to like telling stories of her own exploits (only slightly embellished!) But has very little patience for more civilized poetry. She quite liked taking prizes, after she learned what the concept was-most ships tended to strike their colors when a firebreather came so much as in range, rather than risk their powder magazine.
Iskierka holds her captain, John Granby, in great reverence; it is only the threat of being parted from him that will make her obey orders (and even that is rather temporary). With the prize money she earned from capturing French ships, she purchased increasingly gaudy costumes and swords for him to wear-and sulked whenever he didn’t, even though by that point the decoration had grown so ostentatious that he could hardly move, save in the third-best coat. Iskierka’s great affection for Granby can and has been used against her, however. She was captured by the French, once-all they had to do was threaten Granby’s life and it is something she is quite bitter about, though her imprisonment in this manner was brief. She was also pressed into (temporary) obedience with the threat of being parted from her captain, something that distressed her terribly.
There is a slightly more sympathetic side to her, though it would be easy to assume otherwise. It’s just under all the scales and spikes and bravado. Her greatest weakness of all is her captain-due to a kind of imprinting at birth or something else poorly understood and something Iskierka herself has difficulty articulating in an understandable manner. If you can navigate her prickly personality first to get there.
Abilities: Iskierka is an entirely unmagical creature; the gifts of flight to a twenty-ton creature and pyrogenesis are all explained by the modern science of the 1800s.
Which is to say not very well at all, and with a lot of fuzzy logic.
Iskierka is able to breathe fire for a solid five minutes without pausing, and can ignite targets eighty yards away-the flames can presumably reach a bit further, but won’t do much structural damage at that range (though it would probably be really uncomfortable). A downside to this is the fact that the spikes all over her body vent steam almost constantly, regulating the Kazilik’s internal pyrogenic system. The spikes release excess pressure; if she cannot expel steam for any length of time (such as when she was near to hatching), Iskierka becomes very grouchy and agitated and prone to spitting random and poorly controlled jets of flame instead. The steam vents make life rather uncomfortable for anyone currently on her back; the condensation tends to make every stitch of harness she wears wet and slippery. They will also cause her to dehydrate more quickly than a similar dragon (such as Temeraire). That water has to come from somewhere.
Iskierka can also fly without too much effort; presumably with the help of “air sacs” embedded in her body as well as a healthy dose of handwaving. On very hot days or in desert conditions, the air sacs become especially buoyant and Iskierka especially lazy. Without these, she cannot fly at all on muscle power alone; only glide at best and fall over at worst.
Being (normally) a creature of some twenty tons, the dragon’s strength is admirable-a little more than what one would expect of a flying thing her size, but then again, Iskierka is in peak fighting condition and at full growth. She was untouched by the Dragon Plague that devastated Britain, and the trip around the world lounging on a transport didn’t seem to cripple her fighting edge at all.
Notably, her scales are not impenetrable, as might be expected; tough, maybe, but not much stronger than would be expected of a regular animal.
Sample Entry: Iskierka was bored.
There were no prizes here; no ships to capture or wars to fight or Bonapartes to defeat. No pavilions, either, so it was wretchedly cold and damp sometimes-and no Granby, the worst insult of all.
She spent her time alternately pacing back and forth across this postage stamp of grass called a lawn, her long tail following after her like a snake-or crouched like an enormous, scaly, orange and green-spotted cat. And she sulked. And brooded.
And occasionally charged at the mailman-or whomever was entering the yard, for whatever reason. She still wasn’t very large, but that was about five hundred pounds of scaly, spiny wrath coming downrange.