There is no moving past. There is no better place. There is no future point in time. We will not get away.
"The Background World" - Nine Inch Nails
Class: Sorcerer, Shadow Magic
Gender: Agender (It/They)
Age: 20 (Mature)
Alignment: True Neutral
Dream: Regain her color.
Associated Color: Black
Physical Description: 2'8", 25 lbs, with hollow gray eyes that subtly glow; all the color has been drained from its scales, leaving them mostly black with grey chest & markings and small, white horns. It wears a flowing gown in white and grey, with a metal necklace featuring an inset diamond.
Notable Class Traits: Strength of the Grave
Notable Racial Traits: Sunlight Sensitivity
Key Weapons: None / Magic
Personality Traits:
- I am so quiet that others forget I am there or fail to sense me coming.
- I am trying to express emotions, but they don't come easy any longer.
- Being at sea is the rare thing that makes me feel alive again.
Ideals:
- The sea gives us life, and the sea can bring us death.
Bonds:
- The captain was everything to me... why did she abandon me?
- My old master killed my old self, and made this new one in its shadow.
- My new master is kind, delicate... warm.
Flaws:
- The urge to end my own life has not fully faded.
- I've rediscovered alcohol, and the way it dulls the pain.
Other Details:
- Heartrate has slowed to 1bpm and it does not bleed when pricked.
- It is cold to the touch and almost never blinks.
Story:
A small kobold from her clan, it found a way out of the squalor and suffering of the caves by joining a merchant ship led by a charismatic dragonborn captain. While it was just a meek little squabbie, it became an important part of the crew. It felt truly at home on the sea too, the feel of water splashing against its scales always being a highlight of the day.
One evening, the sea became particularly choppy, and the ship had to slip into a cavern system or risk capsizing. In an adventurous mood, the crew explored the cave system. Little Shimmerscale ventured too deep, however. The cave system started to rock and crack, and while most of the crew escaped, the kobold was trapped behind boulders. Worse yet was the creeping darkness as its lantern ran dry. The light faded from the room, and the shadows encroached...
Shimmerscale found itself drawn into Shadowfell, a twisted mirror of the world it knew. Though this freed her from the cave, it only led her into deeper trouble. The cave abutting a black sea was home to a terrifying shadow dragon. Truendemurke may have been but a young dragon, but his black dragon heritage made him cruel and uncompromising. The only thing he truly lacked were servants... until now. Dubbing the little kobold Vuthra, Truendemurke demanded to be waited on by his little blue lizard. It would have to brave the shadowy beasts of the caves, scavenge from shipwrecks of the coast, and cleanse its new master with that vile and dark water. All while he cruelly demeaned it and degraded every aspect of it. Extended time in the Shadowfell ate at its colors, and its own livelihood.
And it spent almost a decade in the shadows.
It was just Vuthra and Truendemurke for that long, dark period. The cave had been so isolated that the dragon only had the one servant. So despite how much he wanted to just grind it to dust, he had to keep the little kobold around or face loneliness again. All the while, it would sit by the edge of the sea, watching the rolling waves, and trying to muster the courage to simply surrender itself to the currents. Its colors had fully dulled.
One day, another being crossed the veil. A large bronze dragon discovered Truendemurke's lair. The two immediately clashed, Vuthra looking on in dull fright. The shadow dragon was felled, and the kobold thought it would be next. However, the bronze dragon took one look at the poor little servant an took immediate pity on it. Knowing how to cross the veil, he brought the kobold back with him.
The dragon was named Throdenix, a well-aged bronze dragon who had settled into the caves when he found the entrance to the Shadowfell. Felling a shadow dragon came naturally, and usually servants to a cruel dragon would be smote as well, but... there was an obvious suffering going on. When the two returned to the material plane, he was aghast to see its complexion still completely devoid of color. He wanted dearly for the kobold to tell him something, anything about what had happened to it. The kobold could barely speak. Throdenix understood and gave it a new name: Iris.
Iris took a long time to come to grips with things. It knew there was some past life, before that horrid place; but if there was a kobold that entered, that kobold was long since dead. It would begin anew. Iris was a good enough name.
In due time it began speaking again, but that was but the beginning. It began to show the spark of magic within, one powered by the darkness in which it was steeped for years. Throdenix was hesitant to let it investigate this darkness, lest it render it catatonic once more. But with slow investigation, Iris found it could control this magic. It seemed at least one good thing came of that dark time.
With a gentle nudge from Throdenix, Iris is attempting to rejoin the world that it had been cut off from for so long. Just a novice sorcerer, it hopes to maybe one day find its colors once again. It has brief, clouded memories of its past to draw from and guide it forward. It feels grounded in that life, even as alien as it feels. A shadow of the Shimmerscale that was, Iris persists.
