Profile
.
| Masque Sengihr Meridian Weyr Halloween When this page is up on my site it will be at the very cumbersome url of: kshau-protectorate/dragonsites/zekiran/dmz/ablan_cherry_festival/candidates/masque.htm | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| "Yes, I'm going," Masque sighed, removing the goggles and face mask he wore, and stretching his back in a rather cat-like manner. "Well finally," Sabre grinned, "it's about time you lived up to your potential." Masque blinked his violet eyes, the white markings over his eyebrows accenting the expression when he narrowed them. "I'm going because your annoying dragon continually pestered me until I agreed, father," he stacked the samples he'd been working on back into their safe container, and untied the cord keeping his long hair out of the way. "My potential is here," he took a gaze around the lab, followed by a graceful wave of his long nailed fingers. "Yours was, until the dragon came along." "These are special," Sabre goaded, "you'll like this, it's a fancy party - costumes required." At that, Masque's eyebrow raised way up. "Oh really," he finally devoted more attention to the idea of attending a hatching of any sort - be it a Zekiran nest somewhere, or, as was their family's legacy, to be held offworld for far more interesting dragons. "I don't really believe I'm up to being a Dragon Master," Masque admitted. "My work is here, but I suppose that it cannot hurt to try." "That's the spirit," Sabre slapped his own long hand on his son's shoulder, anyone else outside their family would risk certain death to do that. "Now... what to wear..." *** "Your mother did this," Sabre said, appraising his son... well, trying to even find him in the costume was a trick. He could barely see those violet eyes peeking out through mesh-covered holes on the bird-head, and absolutely wracked his brain trying to get around how those feet worked. Ah, he saw that Masque's feet were disguised as shadow below the 'talons'. "I have to say, she hasn't lost her touch, I didn't realize she'd be able to do such quick work." "She has a hundred Bayaran and two dozen Budak," Masque said, his deep voice muffled slightly - the beak of the costume moved with his words, and Sabre wasn't sure whether it was a cleverly designed internal device or Masque's own telekinetics at work. Definitely the latter when the tail feathers rose and fell; he could see the way the arm fingers worked, at least anything he had to hold or pick up would still be easy to use. "How are you supposed to drink or eat?" Sabre tilted his head curiously. "How am I supposed to do anything in this?" Masque chuckled. "I suppose it's better than the natural history lesson I got while she was fitting it on me." "Oh?" Sabre asked. Masque's mother was a well known chemist and textile maker, as well as a fashion model that rivaled his own mother Mirage. It was clear that she'd dyed the faux feathers and materials using her brightest and most solid pigments. "I picked the idea out after seeing a Pelatih with a trained bird," Masque said, reaching up to unhook the head from the body and free himself from the costume. "How was I to know what a fascinating and positively deadly species it is? I heard its name, Shockfeather? I make shocks, right?" If his hands had been free he would have demonstrated with a little bit of electricity between his fingers. "But they don't even have an electric shock, why are they called that..." Sabre was about to start answering and then realized this was part of the story. "So while we're taking measurements and mother is calling up her pigment factories, she turns this vid on so for three hours I got to watch all about how these," he raised his still-feathery left hand, "go out and slowly murder things and leave a trail of rotting corpses behind." "Well that's... charming?" Sabre chuckled. "I mean. You--" "I have yet to leave a corpse where it didn't belong," Masque said, and though his voice was dark, his expression was impish. After all, he was known to take a mostly-dead body and revive it with a combination of psionic power and electrical energy... He wondered, while they were putting the costume parts into a carrying case for the trip to Meridian, was this trip partly to keep him from working on his private education? The laws were reasonably clear (they were crystal clear) on this matter: he was in training as a healer, a Sehatan capable of fixing wounds and mending bodies. But he was also looking at creating life. Not... not normally in the way that the other side of the biology-spectrum worked, not as a Peridian. He wasn't breeding people, he was making them. The only reason his lab - his secret lab anyway - was hidden away in White Valley like this, was because that research was patently illegal. He had numerous tubes filled with partly-created proteins, ones which emulated the earliest forms of biological life on virtually any planet. And he could then spark them into being more. It was hardly unheard of: his grandmother, Sabre's mother Mirage, had been able to speak to the dead. Masque combined Sabre's powers so perfectly with Urd's, she who could summon lightning and change coal to diamonds in a matter of hours. He couldn't do that. But was he too powerful? Probably for his own good, that was certain. It might have been also that he needed to be distracted from recent developments - well, recent, that was a little more than eight years prior to now. They were why he actually even came to White Valley. His children? The ones that he had not even known were created by their own former Holder? Liishai had been Exiled for his troubles, but not before several of his 'projects' ran away from his Holds far to the north in Zekil. Meezha and Diyahn along with half a dozen others, and their children of various ages slipped away from both their Breed Lord as well as the authorities. Those children - bred using illegally obtained cell samples by that same Breed Lord. When the news hit the world network, quite a few people went into a tizzy: would this knowledge of 'random inheritors' cause trouble? Well not for Masque, at least: he tracked down these errant children of his, rather easily. There had been a Steed race up in Zekil that he attended - the focal point of many of these collected genes. Most of the children created from those stolen samples of spit and hair (and blood, why they even realized there was a connection between the event and the illegal Breeding) had been born about twenty to thirty years before. Meaning, samples from Masque were gotten while he was still a teenager, he'd been on hand to help aid some of the Sehatan when that race went bad. He recalled the event vividly, two Steeds got into a very nasty tangle - which was determined to be triggered by a person outside the race - and they fell from the sky into the stands below. While at the time, many reports of this event mainly focused on how tragic it had been that the Steeds didn't survive it, but it was revisited later on when one specific runaway Budak showed up on a Zone official's doorstep with her young son - that official's son, in fact. Masque had taken one look at the records of the event as filmed by numerous local video systems, and remembered that one green-gold colored man in the center of the crash, more because he'd already healed himself from the grievous wounds on his arm and didn't need attention from the Sehatan. Turned out: he hadn't been injured at all, that was all blood that got splattered and collected for use later... Masque spent quite a lot of time recently wondering just how many other children he had out there. No one knew the exact numbers since Liishai had burned down his lab in his attempt to escape authorities - and who had one of his own Budak wipe his mind, to keep from having to testify. It was a brutal mess, that whole affair. But it left Masque with two young-adult children who lived free of Status, completely outside of Zekiran society. They, and many others, lived in this isolated desert community. White Valley was a haven now, for escaped Budak and runaway Bayaran. They'd been rather distressed when he showed up out of the blue, but his children recognized him if no one else did. Masque had been adamant that they remain safe here, and swore to them all that he'd keep their secrets, even if he would travel back to his massive Holdings elsewhere and continue to participate in regular Zekiran society. On one hand he was just as curious as any other about how this little society could work? On the other... he was doing his own incredibly illegal work. What better way to keep it safely away from prying eyes than in a completely hidden spot like this? Hidden, except the dragons, but that was beside the point. The dragons were a bonus. Their world was changing, with the invasion and sudden needs for weapons causing a massive shift of money and effort... But it was never to the exclusion of things like fancy parties and inheritances. Masque would be going to a fancy party all right. And he would inherit so very, very much. With his father's dragon being the sire of this clutch, it did feel 'right', going there. He wondered who he would meet. And steal genes from... *** Some random facts since I can't really work them into this story properly without twisting my own arm and updating ALL my White Valley information (which is sizeable)... ** Note that this specific version of his timeline takes place around 10550, which is about 2 generations later than Vanya and Mirage and the other Zekiran "stock" characters on the DragonMasters timeline. However, those characters ... might still overlap and be alive? Well it's confusing that's why I'm not dealing with it just now :D ** Masque is definitely a Rogue at heart, meaning that even though he maintains his properties (seen below) and has a considerable amount of actually-earned wealth, he prefers the isolated labs he's made at White Valley to have the freedom to just... make people. He does this. Yes it's a bit distasteful to some of those living in the place, but he is actually doing this there to aid them, boost their population, and give them some genetic variety. Plus he serves as an exceptionally good healer... It's a small price to pay for such a service. He knows how the legal system works, and flagrantly breaks laws whenever it's easy. He does concentrate on following Hard Stock law rules, he'd prefer to make sure that the people under his care don't wind up being like Meezha and Diyahn, wanting to run from him, and honestly they know they can rely on him to keep White Valley a secret. He's even bought Budak and taken over Bayaran contracts for people who absolutely needed to be raised and freed, bringing them directly to that place to live in peace. ** He has avoided entering the political arena, somehow. 'Somehow' being a combination of skill in knowing the right people to pay off to keep him off a roster, and a power in the form of his Mind Cloud causing people wanting to vote for him to just... not. ** He truly relishes 'first contact' with people, so much so that he has been known to use some of his powers to 'reset' a person's memories so he can do it again a few times. In AU versions this goes on for years, since using a mind cloud power on someone repeatedly in short order will cause them to develop a resistance. But there are a few people who have had him on their contact list for decades and don't even recognize him when he comes to their office. It's always 'the first time' they meet, and he absolutely loves doing this. It's not malicious, if they have something important to work on, he won't do it, but if it's just someone on the street or a client that will only be present for one healing or health review he'll make them forget they were around him. Notably, the zpara baristas (Zekiran coffee) are left alone, he wants to have the right order every time... In a setting like Meridian's fancy Halloween party, he won't have to exert even a little energy to make people not realize who he is, not that he's even from this dimension. Eventually he will come up against people who can absolutely break his psionic shielding, but then ... he breeds with some of those (see below). ** His properties include those below, note that IoS = Inheritance of Snow, which is Vanya Sengihr's family home that has been turned into a massive Breeding and Healing center in the rugged mountains of Emer, which has been grown by Vanya's descendants over the following 250 years; and from his mother's side the Obelisk Island off the northern Ka coast, a large chemical and mineral provider but also quite a beautiful place. The character sheet lists the main ones only as the total Land Holdings for voting and political purposes, however in this Dragonmasters AU he will add a massive amount of land in White Valley, since that's a location that sports other dragon riders and is close to the spots where the barriers between dimensions is weak. His dragon hold is enough to propel him into Area politics (see below), but that won't slow him down. A neighbor in the desert area is Ski'nahket, Black Mesa, whose interdimensional portals provide non-riders with a way to and from their destinations, as well as the naga-maker Frusiu who has an office in Aakal near Masque's. "Inhabitants" indicate his Bayaran (indentured) and Budak (owned) holdings, but also obviously have hired Kaumburuh (workers) and other staff on hand. (None of either of those are allowed in White Valley, they came here to escape being owned and he respects that fact.) Many of his 'hard stock' (people) were inherited from either side of his family, and are well suited to their duties on clinic and estate sites. Those who work in mines are given particular attention medically, to make sure that they're still healthy when they're done with their service. All of his hard stock are carefully monitored for health or genetic issues, he's never been known to keep a servant that is better suited to be freed or raised, but he does depend on their work in his Holds because well... he has a lot of stuff to maintain. Servants and staff do not generally get access to his private labs, they work the offices and maintain records (when they're legal), and security (when they're not).
** His powers and mutations / disadvantages are as follows. His Genetic Purity of 19 indicates that he's been very strongly modified by his father in the development stages (B6 = genetically engineered), and his Power Rank of 1 means remarkably few people are stronger than he is for raw ability. This score is used when in direct psionic combat or to resist other power users.
** His offspring list is ... extensive. However, it does cover his 'entire' lifespan, so right now in 550 he has two children, Pyre and Sedona, both living in White Valley with their mothers Meezha and Diyahn. NOTABLY: Meezha's daughter Seezh is the 'naga donor' among the Zekiran Naga giveaway. They are not directly related to Masque, but he certainly is interested in this weird breeding project going on nearby creating them. Sedona, Diyahn's child, is female, orange with white markings, and has many of Masque's powers in a slightly weaker form, and is deer-like in her mutations with hoof hands and feet, and gracefully spiraled forward facing horns, a slight deer-like face, and a short tail. Meezha's Pyre is male, and visibly resembles a brighter-rust colored version of Masque including the very long hair though it's in gold, he is a strong pyrokinetic and lightning-creator, and thrives in the hot desert environment thanks to his mother's tolerances. In the near future, a group of Zeddian aliens arrive to Zekira, and he does breed with one of them, but mostly for the rest of the 500s, he keeps to White Valley for his partners, and there are plenty of them. When the kids have more of his power set, he tends to be a better 'father figure', than those who do not or have more of their mother's influence genetically. He's training some to work on healing and breeding. Nearly 100 years from now, he will definitely mix with the Vahh clan, spending time in the desert inevitably brings him closer to Ski'nahket and those weird aliens... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ** Dragon Info will go here! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
.