Quicklinks: Bawaru's Story
Bawaru no Aibetsuriku
Bond:
None; currently standing as a Found Persona at Dou Pas
Sponsorlings:
Anede'Sitawi
Age:
7 (~27 human years)
Rank:
N/A
Sex:
Male
Species:
Sou Aki Hou Dragon ("Double-Sided" Dragon)
Height:
6'
Scales:
Light tan with cream markings
Markings:
Splotches/spots along legs, arms, chest, neck, feet, tail, face
Eyes:
Blue
Place of Birth:
Wheig (3rd planet in orbit around Beta Draconis)
Current Residence:
Sitheil Tirean, Daralain (6th planet in orbit around the star Thuban in the constellation Draco)
History/Backstory:
On Wheig, Sou Aki Hou were the dominant, most intelligent life form, slowly evolving their way towards bipedality and opposable thumbs. But the planet was colonized by an industrial family of humans before the Sou Aki Hou could evolve beyond chimpanzee-level intelligence. The humans basically enslaved the Sou Aki Hou as pack and riding animals, as they did not understand the primitive dragons' culture and saw only a double-winged four-legged beast. Newborn Sou Aki Hou had their four ears notched in specific patterns depending on whose "herd" they belonged to, and the wingleather of their four wings were "stropped". This was a practice that involved slicing the wingleather in such a manner that it never healed, preventing the newborns from ever being able to fly. The wings of these "stropped" dragons never grew to full size, and became useless appendages within a few generations. The dragons retained what little culture they had had before the humans enslaved their kind, and spent much of their time in the pastures whispering stories amongst themselves, planning for the day when they would fight against the humans and win back their homeland. However, once the older generations of Sou Aki Hou died out, all that remained were the stunted-winged dragons who had never known anything but life under human rule. For the most part, they became apathetic and resigned to their racial fate.
Bawaru was rescued by Lakota when he was a yearling. He had been wandering the very edges of his herd's pasture when the anthropomorphic wolf popped out of nowhere (in fact, she had taken a Gate from Daralain to Wheig by accident). Her empathic Mindspeak ability allowed the two to communicate, and she was horrified by Bawaru's tale of how he was beaten, used, and abused by humans. She grabbed up the little dragon and Gated back to Sitheil Tirean, vowing to free all the Sou Aki Hou as soon as she could. For some reason, the Gate's magical abilities affected Bawaru in a totally unexpected way: as soon as Lakota emerged from the Gate, she was carrying a young bipedal dragon instead of a quadrupedal one. The Gate seemed to have "hurried" along the path of evolution for Bawaru, giving him opposable thumbs and a digitigrade, two-legged stance. He also had the capacity for speech, and no longer needed Lakota's Mindspeak ability to be his sole method of communication.
Bawaru has grown up with the rest of the Pack since then, and he works hard in hopes that he can help free his people soon. He works as a sort of artificer for the Pack, identifying and catalogueing magical artifacts.
Physical Description:
Bawaru is definately an oddity amongst his kind - they are quadrupedal, and he is not. He is tan-scaled with lighter cream spotty splotches all over his body. He has two pairs of wings, which are small and useless. The wingleather is slit in a number of places, although the slits are kept from spreading further by thick leather stitches that stretch across the cuts. He also has two pairs of ears, which are long and curl at the ends. The left front and the right rear ear are notched. He has a ridge of long brown hair that runs along the base of his tail. The corners of his mouth are severely scarred, as when he was still a quadrupedal dragon on Wheig, he had been "broken in" to riding with a bit and bridle. A cruel human once pulled too hard on the reins, cutting into the corners of Bawaru's mouth with the edges of the bit. He has a perpetually frightened expression on his face, and has a tendency to shy away from sudden movements. He still carries the emotional and mental scars of his first year of life - a year filled with abuse from humankind.
Personality:
Bawaru is a little skittish - but who can blame him? - he spent the first year and a half of his life being beaten, whipped, starved, and ridden. He is friendly enough, but shies away from contact, even a friendly handshake. He is painfully lonely, as he feels like an intruder amongst the anthropomorphic creatures of Sitheil Tirean. He knows that that isn't true, but it's still difficult for him to change how his heart feels and what his mind remembers - running on four feet, not two. He loves to read (now that he CAN read) and spends most of his time poring over ancient tomes. He enjoys his job and researching archaeology.
Bawaru desperately wants to change his shy, fearful manner. He is, at the core, a kind being who would do anything for those he cares for. But he is slow to trust despite his mental efforts to change himself, and those he cares for are as yet few and far between.
Abilities:
ťAn uncanny skill at identifying an object's use and origin. It doesn't matter if it's a fork from an extinct civilization or a religious object from a people living three solar systems away, Bawaru can usually divinate at least some information about the object and its history.
Bawaru's Story
Bawaru heard his mother's voice in a dream. It had been nearly seven of the slow Daralinian "years" since he had seen her; he had been little more than a yearling when the wolf who walked on two legs had fallen from the sky and snatched him away from his herd's paddock.
Bawaru, his mother's voice whispered across lonely years and unthinkable hundreds of thousands of miles. Bawaru, you swore that you would free us all.
The young Sou Aki Hou dragon knew that he was dreaming. His mind was weaving together memory with emotion - his mother had known nothing of his promise to rescue the rest of his kind... in fact, she hadn't even known that her offspring had been saved from a lifetime of pain and servitude. But Bawaru had promised, twice - once before his mouth had been cruelly torn and scarred by a careless human rider - and he had promised once more even as Lakota, the wolf who walked on two legs, had clutched him to her chest and stepped through the magical portal to her homeland, Sitheil Tirean.
Bawaru struggled to wake himself up. He had no wish to relive any part of his youth, even within the safe confines of a dream. But the dream was stronger than he, winding around him with tenebrous tentacles and holding him within its eye.
A young Sou Aki Hou dragon raced across the flattened grass, sunlight flicking across his tan scales. The lines of his body were softened here and there by spreckled patches of lighter, cream-colored scales. His four long, broad ears twitched, angling towards the ground to pick up vibrations and any changes in the stability of the ground below. Two of the ears were marred by still-raw scars, glaring and ugly reminders that this young creature was not free to live his own life, but instead was owned by another as if the bold youngster was nothing more than a bag of grain or a nice pair of pants. Sunlight shone through the cruel cuts in the leathery skin of his wings, showing yet again the hand of interference in the dragon's life. But very little of this had touched the dragon's spirits; he still darted through the grass as if his life was solely his own. Even though his ability to fly had been taken from him, he could still run.
Presently his two pairs of ears brought a slight change in the earth's sound as his paws drummed across it, and he pulled up short, his sides heaving. A few yards in front of him a large metal fence stretched upwards, clawing at the sky. He'd heard stories that the dragons of his great-grandparents' time had had huge wings, two pairs that were capable of lifting their bodies into the air whenever they wished it. He could have cleared the fence in an instant, if he had those wings. Instead he had four stunted appendages that could barely stir a breeze across his scales. He shook himself, snorting a little. He didn't feel a sense of captivity as strongly as his parents did. The humans had done very little to him besides the notching and stropping - and those he barely remembered, as they'd been done to his ears and wings when he was barely a week old. But both of his parents served the humans directly. His father pulled mining sleds, and his mother walked endlessly in place on a strange device that rolled away underneath her paws. If she didn't walk fast enough, the device kept rolling anyway, and she had stumbled many times, scraping and injuring herself. When he had been a tiny whelp, his mother had been allowed to stay in the pasture with him all day and night, and she had often whispered lullabies to him about how wonderful it was to be away from the hated rolling device. But once he was capable of eating solids, his mother was again roped, bridled, and led away to her moving prison every morning.
"Bawaru! Get away from the fence!"
The young Sou Aki Hou dragon jumped a little and looked over one shoulder. His father stood a little ways off, looking at him sternly. The young dragon had been distracted by thoughts of the fence and hadn't heard the older dragon approach. "Sorry, Father," Bawaru said, speaking in an elaborate language of body movement, ear twitches, and sounds that their human masters could not understand.
"Hmf," his father snorted. "Come on, let's go back."
Bawaru followed his father silently. The older dragon looked exhausted. His scales looked dull and dented-in, and Bawaru could clearly see the marks where the heavy work harness had laid on his father's body. He stared at the older, gray-scaled dragon for a moment before venturing, "Father?"
Tserisu looked over his shoulder at his young son. The older dragon felt a wave of despair pass over him. What hope had they, as a race? Why even bother to bring offspring into a changed world where no dragon could stretch their wings without getting the wingsails sliced to pieces by their human masters. And they had resisted - the Sou Aki Hou had resisted at first. But even their large size and ability to fly had proved no match against the wily, advanced humans who had come to drain Wheig of the ore in its mountains. And they had paid in blood for their resistance. "What is it, Bawaru? We need to get back before evening count or we'll get whipped."
Bawaru looked down at the grass as they walked. "I know, Father. But I wanted to ask, what lies beyond the fence?"
"More fences," Tserisu said coldly.
Bawaru snapped his jaws shut. After a moment, Tserisu sighed. "I'm sorry, son. I didn't mean to be harsh. But basically that's the truth. No dragon has seen an end to the fences since before your grandfather was hatched. When I was a whelp, the fences were shorter, and a few dragons actually did manage to climb over or stand on each other's backs to let other dragons slip over the fence. And all they found was that the fence was merely one edge of yet another pasture with a strange herd of Sou Aki Hou in it. And when the human masters of that herd found the strange dragons, they were beaten, re-stropped, and then returned to our pasture."
Bawaru lifted his head slightly. "Other Sou Aki Hou? What were they like? What kinds of stories did they have to tell?"
Tserisu chuckled, but the sound was melancholy. "Were you listening to me, Bawaru? Nothing. They had nothing to say that we didn't already know. All they know is a world of fences and work and pain, just like us."
"There has to be something beyond the fences," Bawaru said. Up ahead, the rest of the dragon herd was in sight, crowding together near the empty feeding bays.
"More fences," his father replied.
"Beyond those," Bawaru said, feeling a strange sort of desperation. He had to make his father understand what he was trying to say.
"I understand what you're trying to say, Bawaru," Tserisu said, lowering his voice as they approached the others. "But I'm trying to tell you that it doesn't matter. The humans have fenced our world, even if you can't see all of the fences." Tserisu stopped walking abruptly and faced his son. "Even if you manage to get beyond all of the fences, there is nothing. The humans have marked you, and all it would take is one to find you and bring you back here, and then they'd make you regret even thinking of escape." The older dragon sighed. "We can't fly away anymore, Bawaru. You might as well just accept that." Tserisu walked over to the rest of the herd, leaving Bawaru behind.
Bawaru watched his father walk away. Tserisu's wings were folded and his tail was lowered. "We are dragons," Bawaru whispered to himself. "We aren't supposed to live like this. I'll change this somehow. I promise."
Bawaru sat straight up in his sleeping cot even as his own dream-voice echoed in his ears. He shook his four-eared head, clearing away the cobwebs of the dream that had only just now released him. The door to his room creaked open just enough to admit a gold-and-black-furred wolf head. "Bawaru? Kaur'taro?" Lakota asked, using the Daralinian word for little brother. "I heard you cry out. Are you okay?"
Bawaru smiled hesitantly. "I'm a dragon, big sister," he whispered. "And I'm going to free my family. I'm going to free all the Sou Aki Hou."
Lakota grinned back. "Of course you are," she said. "And I'm going to help you."
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