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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 15:21:34 GMT -6
NoaFisherman lvl 4 Wisdom of the Reef Rabbit's Luck Encounters: OFF Note: Rhys is currently present but not gaining levels; he will be RPed IC but will not be counting towards the word count 
| Nightshade
Level 91, Loyalty 157
(3/5, 0/10)
| STA: 8
STR: 6
RES: 8
DEX: 9
MNT: 6
Special Abilities: Fly, Iron Will, Refined Senses, Survival Instincts, Empathetic Link
Moves: Shadow Bite, Poison Sting, Euphoric Vapours, Projectile Poison, Demoralizing Cackle, Shackle, Balefire
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Tools:    Finds: none (updated Aug 13, 2023) |
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 15:27:27 GMT -6
It was a beautiful day to go fishing. Or, well, it was beautiful a day in the broad and general sense of it, anyway. It was sunny and the weather was clear, which honestly wasn't the best sort of day for fishing, but it did make being outdoors in general much more pleasant than it otherwise would have been. Aster hated the rain, even if it made for good fishing weather. Now that he didn't have to concern himself with fishing to sustain himself for food and the like, there was absolutely no reason for him to come out on a fishing trip during the rain, so he didn't.
He was only heading out to give himself a little time to relax, which was why he had only one creature with him, rather than a gaggle of three Sarane hatchlings like he had been dealing with lately most of the time.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 15:31:58 GMT -6
It had been his idea to raise the three of them together, since he felt like that would help them... bond, maybe, or maybe learn from one another as he tried to teach them things. And as far as the latter went, well, it worked alright, but boy was it ever a workload.
Three of any creature that he was having to keep an eye on was already a hassle to begin with, but Sarane hatchlings? Forget about it. It was the unholy combination of a territorial predator and a baby. Maybe they weren't so territorial as whelps, but they sure were a lot more baby than he bargained for when it was all three at once.
Those guys were getting a well deserved rest in their nest enclosure right now though, still asleep last time he checked. Aster felt as though they had enough adventures recently to keep them for a while anyway.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 15:42:45 GMT -6
Instead, he had started the slow walk away from his home and towards the river in the company of a Wiurn, and a fully grown Wiurn at that, rather than a whelp.
It wasn't Avander, since Avander was being rested in preparation for his entry into an agility contest. It was a shame, since Avander was Aster's favorite, ever if he did have more of an attitude than Aster would have preferred to put up with.. But no, he supposed by now he would miss Avanders banter, having grown accustomed to it. Indeed, it would be unnerving to change anything about him now.
But in Avander's place was a different Wiurn, one named Nightshade, that Aster had purchased some time back. Aster had yet to start working with Nightshade in earnest, but as far as Aster could tell, he had a fairly even temper, and was easy to be around, at least.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 15:47:01 GMT -6
That boded well for any training they might do later on, once Aster finally decided how he wanted to work with Nightshade, and on what.
For now, they were just slowly building up their rapport with orie another. Aster didn't mind that either. It was nice, in its own way, taking the pressure off. Aster had been working fairly intensively with Avander again recently too, so it was nice to take a breather, even it it wasn't with the Wiurn in question.
Or maybe even specifically because it wasn't the Wiurn in question, actually. Too much time together, and they were liable to get sick of one another, even if they pretty much couldn't really go their separate ways anymore. This was especially true if they'd spent a lot of time together training. Aster never had a family growing up, but he suspected this must have been what actual family was like.
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Post by Noa on May 24, 2020 15:51:50 GMT -6
You couldn't live without them, but there were times you really needed a break from them, just to keep things tolerable. But then again, he supposed not many family members trained with one another, so maybe this wasn't the metaphor he was looking for after all.
The walk was long, but eventually the two of them arrived at the river's edge. Nightshade had followed Aster here dutifully without complaint, and without bribes either.
It surprised Aster somewhat, but the more time he spent with Nightshade, the more he felt convinced that the Wiurn just happened to be. fond of him. Which shouldn't have been strange; he was a custom commissioned creature from the labs, and all such creatures were predisposed to band more quickly to their companions, as a fun little side bonus, he supposed. He never saw the need for it, but watching it at work felt even more unnerving somehow, since he wasn't used to experiencing it firsthand.
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Post by Fiera Ferella on May 25, 2020 17:51:31 GMT -6
  You manage to catch two critters! The limpet was admittedly easier to catch than the fish, of course. |
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Post by Noa on May 31, 2020 23:16:34 GMT -6
He just wasn't used to it. Creatures warmed up to him, sure, but there was an order to these things, and it happened more slowly, over time.
Or else, as was with Avander's case, he raised them from birth to where they were now, so it didn't feel as strange or outlandish that they liked him well enough--- and in Avander's case, he'd had to break the Wiurn back when he had still been a drake, so a little respect seemed like the least of what he deserved after going through all that. Not that he got any respect, but at least Avander did mostly do as he asked, out of samething like affection.
Well, it wasn't like he didn't have any custom commissioned creatures of his own, but the one he had the most firsthand experience with up until recently was Grunty, who was kind of... a special case.
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Post by Noa on May 31, 2020 23:20:21 GMT -6
Which was to say, Grunty didn't show much affection for anything except food. Not even the giver of food got that particular benefit. If Aster had food and didn't give it over quickly enough, he was pretty sure Grunty would just bowl him over for it, and that would be the end of that. Grunty liked him alright, but not enough to make an exception for him to that extent.
And as for the other candidate, which was Rhys. Rhys was telepathic and sentient to boot, sa it was a lot more like raising a kid or having a sheltered roommate than it was like training a creature, or getting a dog to trust you. It shouldn't have been a bad thing that Nightshade was so quick to take to him, and in theory it really wasn't, but in practice, Aster wasn't sure what to do with it, or with him.
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Post by Noa on May 31, 2020 23:24:41 GMT -6
"It's just you and me now, buddy," Aster said, patting the Wiurn's shoulder. Nightshade responded to his words, or maybe the pat, by turning his head around to regard Aster, though Aster was still hard pressed to read him.
Unlike Avander, Nightshade lacked additional forelimbs, so he walked on the knuckles of his wings like the majority of his species. It made him look less like a dragon in the traditional sense, which was just as well, considering Wiurns really weren't dragons. They weren't even dragons in the way that Sarane were dragons, even it they sometimes did rather look the part. And as much as Nightshade was a weird-looking specimen, he was more of a Wiurn's Wiurn than Avander was, having the headplate and no extra forelimbs to speak of.
Even so, he made an odd profile when he walked, as the claws on his wing... hands were particularly long, strange, and wicked looking.
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Post by Noa on May 31, 2020 23:42:39 GMT -6
Aster had wondered whether Nightshade could even fly with his wings looking like that, but apparently it was at least theoretically possible, even if he apparently didn't know how yet. But if it was just a matter of teaching him, then Aster didn't mind. He'd done that plenty before. Together the two of them made their way to the edge of the river bank, while Aster took in the sights.
It was sunny but not completely cloudless, and the air was even a little chilly for June. It was early June, just barely the start of the month as of yet, but still. This was the beginning of summer, so Aster was fully expecting the blistering heat of his favorite season to come in swinging any day now. There was a comfortable breeze moving over the water and the grass, and for a moment Aster simply took it in, breathing deep.
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Post by Noa on May 31, 2020 23:46:53 GMT -6
It was green as far as the eye could see, save for a ribbon of water through it all, and there wasn't anyone else in sight. Just the way he liked it. With the solitude of it like this, fishing really wasn't a bad way at all to pass the time, even if he didn't think his prospects of actually catching anything were very good. But that was the nice thing about the way he lived now; it wasn't really a concern whether he could catch anything or not, and nothing would happen even if he couldn't. Aster had never quite had to rely on fishing to sustain himself like he had once feared, back when he had been teaching himself how to do it in the canyons with the draconics, but there had been times in his past where he had at least come close, when he had barely a penny to his name.
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Post by Noa on Jun 1, 2020 21:01:53 GMT -6
After all, when he had first come here to the city, he had barely any skills, and he was only barely recovered from everything that had happened to him to put him in the path of those draconics in the first place. So he had been this recently convalesced drifter with pretty much no marketable skills and plenty of unprocessed trauma, looking for work in a city that had little time to babysit newcomers. There were, mercifully, at least plenty of newcomers; it was a free city and they hadn't turned him away, even though he very tangibly had nothing to offer them. And there were a few resources to help new immigrants, though due to negligence or strain or what have you, most of them had been sparse, or else poorly managed and not very informative.
At the time, it had been excruciatingly hard to find ways to make money.
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Post by Noa on Jun 1, 2020 21:02:29 GMT -6
But there had still been ways, which in a way was a lot better than could have been said for the city he grew up in. Or maybe it was just because he had made a real effort to stay clean this time, and that he was an adult. Whatever else might be said, it was true that adults inevitably had more power than children in any situation they were in, all other things equal. He didn't know if he would have fared as well as he did if he had immigrated as a child with no protectors. He hadn't seen the underbelly of this city, because he hadn't gone out of his way looking for it, but he felt that it was there, waiting for him. Waiting for everyone, really.
A nudge at his side, and Aster turned to see that it was Nightshade soliciting him with a bit of contact this time.
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Post by Noa on Jun 1, 2020 21:02:53 GMT -6
He hadn't expected it--- normally Aster was better about sensing these things, but he did have the bad habit of letting his guard down around those of his own creatures that he was familiar with. This had never gotten him in any real trouble before, and to be honest it wasn't a habit he felt that he absolutely had to break immediately, but it did bother him a little whenever his attention was called to it again by some small incident such as this. And Nightshade hadn't really been Aster's for long enough, nor had he been worked with enough, that Aster could tell what the Wiurn was thinking, or what he meant by this.
He looked at Nightshade and frowned. "What is it?" he asked. Not that he was sure he could understand even if Nightshade tried to communicate anything to him though; he wasn't actually that familiar with Wiurns.
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