Name: Taene
Age: Much older than he looks.
Class: Kindred; Manakete
Weapons: Dragonstone, Ice Breath, a dagger for emergencies.
Fighting Style: Despite Taene's ancestry/draconic heritage, he fights very calmly and with an odd grace that distinguishes him from any other beast of his kind. He takes special care to remain non-lethal unless instructed otherwise.
Personality: The easiest way to describe Taene would most likely be "Bored." He's a very quiet and stoic individual who tends to dismiss people and things for the aggressive pursuit of thrill. Having lived many years of life more than most of the people he knows now, Taene's no longer content with the life that he lives and lusts for something much grander and meaningful. Due to his feelings about this, he tends to come off as rude to people that don't know him well. Does he have some redeeming traits under his cold exterior? Kind of..? He is a very diligent worker despite not finding satisfaction where he is and has a high amount of pride for his work. At times, Taene can even be very loyal and protective, but only when he has the energy or the effort to even fight without being commanded to.
As previously mentioned, Taene can be described as a selfish thrill seeker. He bides his energy, then uses it in random bursts in the pursuit of something more than he has. This tends to lead to him acting impulsively and even idiotically in any situation where this urge rears its ugly head. He has quite a few scars on his body from occasions where he would throw himself into the heat of a battle or even simply demand someone stab him to initiate a challenge of some sort. When challenged, he refuses to back down from said challenge no matter what, unless he sees very clearly that it'd lead to his death. And, despite Taene's lack of tact when it comes to his job, he refuses to leave in the middle of a deployment and avoids drawing attention to his partners as much as he can.
History: Some time ago, Taene was born to a large tribe of Manaketes living in a jungle to remain mostly hidden from the humans that lived in the surrounding areas. The Manaketes did want to avoid conflict at the time, and simply watched the humans tear each other apart from afar for several years as Tae grew up. His mother and father were very protective of him after having spent years trying to birth a child and they garnered the envy of some of the other couples in the tribe who couldn't have a child no matter what major deity they prayed to. This lead to Taene wishing that he could be a bit more free in his actions instead of having to be under the watch of his family almost constantly. Tales of Manaketes who could transform to their "True Form" lead to him idolizing these heroes from the past and wondered if he would ever be able to do so.
As he got on in the years, albeit never appearing any older than about eight or nine, Tae became more and more aware of the threat that humans posed towards Manaketes and pushed to become a soldier for his tribe. His parents tried to stop him on several occasions, but his father eventually gave in and convinced his wife that he would do it anyway even if they were to stop him. So, into training Taene was thrown so that he could learn how to use a weapon competently and he trained diligently during his training. But more and more he wished that he could become one of the grand heroes that he heard tales about from the elders of his tribe.
Taene couldn't have graduated at a better time, it would've seemed, because only a couple of moons after his training was finished one of the smaller villages that was situated around his home. This was his time, Tae thought as he prepared for battle. He ran out there ready to be a hero and found out that it was much harder than he thought. Despite the advantage that the Manaketes carried due to knowing the more dense areas of the jungle like the backs of their hands, they still got hurt pretty bad. Slashed up, stabbed, etc. During one of many excursions that took place during this little mini-war, Taene was stabbed in the shoulder from behind and in return, killed the man that attacked him. When he returned to the village, he was hysterical and no one could comfort him despite many people telling him that he was justified in his actions. It took time, but he was finally able to go back into the field without losing his composure. But the death of the man haunted him as he wondered what the human's family reacted to receiving the news that he was killed almost every night as he lay trying to sleep.
Fast forward a couple hundred years, a generation or two of war in the human village and allies of the humans coming and going, Manakete innocents were being killed while doing things they had spent their entire lives doing as a job to help their community. The elders decided that enough was enough and that they were not going to take the deaths of their people sitting down. Word spread fast throughout the village that authorization was given for Dragonstones to be used by the older soldiers to help put an end to the war. A few of the more rebellious soldiers decided that they were going to steal from the stockpile of Dragonstones so that they could help out. Since Taene had a couple of friends that were among this group despite them being somewhat older than him, they snagged him a Dragonstone and Tae kept it hidden well and found himself excited almost constantly due to the chance that had been presented to him to finally be like his heroes. Him and the other rebels followed the older team out into the forest to the village that had been attacking them during the night, although he was lagging a bit behind due to the fact that he was having issue simply moving through the forest without being completely paranoid. When he caught up, what he saw made his skin crawl. Taene saw the people that he'd known for years utterly destroying the opposing village with reckless abandon, even the younger cadets had joined in and were smashing apart buildings and killing livestock. Taene couldn't take it, and he took off in a random direction running into the jungle trying to escape before they saw that he was there in a completely uncalled for neurotic frenzy. It was only when he stopped to catch his breath that he realized that he'd ventured off into a part of the jungle that he didn't know. He wandered aimlessly for hours trying to get back to his tribe. Hours turned to days. And he sat in the jungle, dirty, tired, eating raw meat for survival when he finally saw it. There were dragons flying about overhead, maybe looking for him. But how would he get their attention? Taene remembered, suddenly.
He reached into his pants and retrieved the gem that he had forgotten about during his desperate attempts at survival in the jungle. But he didn't know how it worked. Tried, tried, tried, and he watched as his salvation flew overhead over and over again and more slowly each time. Tae realized his chances for survival were slipping away from him every second that he waited, and his instincts kicked in. Suddenly he found himself transformed into a large blue dragon, pushing away all sorts of foliage around himself. This caught the attention of the rescuer who landed and lead Tae back to the camp as a humanoid after teaching him as well as they could how to turn back. The rescuer assumed that Taene had just been flying with his authorization and had harmed his wing somehow and Taene didn't attempt to dissuade him from thinking that. When he returned home, he was greeted with open arms and waggling fingers. They found out about the Dragonstone and confiscated it from him, suspending his position as a soldier.
As luck would have it, after attacking the village, the Manaketes were never faced with much more challenge from anywhere in the area. They assumed most of the other villages assumed it was just too far and not worth the danger to attack them any further. So they all resumed their normal, boring lives. Tae. Couldn't. Stand it. Despite his break-downs and utter lack of tact when it came to being a soldier, he missed the position greatly as it was the only exciting thing to happen around town. He waited for several hundreds of years for something to happen aside from wars between the humans, but nothing ever came. Tae decided that he was done waiting. One night, while everyone wasn't paying too much attention or were asleep, he sneaked his way into the stockpile of Dragonstones and stole a particularly breathtaking one that twinkled and sparkled with blue and white glimmers across its surface. He also took enough provisions to last him, and he set off into the jungle but this time with an idea of where he was going. He made his way to a human village where he was greeted with open arms, if not intense amounts of fear towards him. Tae settled down in the village and took jobs scaring people. Not killing them, unless he had to, but more putting the fear of Naga into them. For a LONG time he did this, so long that he became a very important name in this village. People came from everywhere to attack him, meet him, hire him. All the while, he was very slowly maturing physically and becoming more and more bored with what he was doing once more. It became a chore to him, eventually, that which used to be a something to avoid living life like a chore. That was when he was approached by a recently formed mercenary group that said they would require his services. He told the leader repeatedly that he wasn't going to go for it and that he was retiring, but they kept pestering him over and over again to join to the point where he finally snapped and said yes. But only under one condition: He wouldn't be deployed for simple missions like everyone else.
At first, this was considered insane. He would essentially never work but would still get paid. But they hired him anyway, leading Taene to believe that he'd suckered them. However, whenever he was relaxing on the job, a girl would approach him and give him some sort of inspiring speech or pep-talk about how he'd probably find himself more interested if he actually tried and etc. like that. And, despite his skepticism about her stupidly optimistic words, Tae always fell for it and did the job. Little did he know, this girl was his superior, and she was good at letting him know without ruining the illusion.
Rationale: Taene would join The Reclaimers because it's the break that he's been looking for for a few centuries now. A chance to do something more meaningful with his life and maybe do something a bit more interesting.
Appearance:
While he's not a flying fancy reptilian, Taene spends his time as a stone-faced bipedal humanoid male. His skin is quite pale and smooth, and his features are very definite; like a soft jaw, lightly sunken-in cheeks, and thin lips which typically press together into a scowl of complete and utter disappointment. Even when he's attempting to be friendly, or is simply relaxing. His ebony black hair flows down a bit past his shoulder when it's down, but he often ties it up into a ponytail whenever he's out on a mission. His clothing is very exorbitant and serves to add to his facial features to make him look quite noble. Tae's Dragonstone is on a string of beads which he wears around his neck at times, and he holds a dagger at his side for use when he can't make good use of being a dragon. His draconic nature is quite noticeable at times, with his longer ears, sharp nails, pointed teeth, and wings protruding from his back.
As for bodily figure, Taene's very fit. He exercises almost daily, a habit among many that he's built over his years of life. He stands very tall, with his back straight and his arms crossed over his chest when waiting for instruction. His hands, despite being quite large and capable of inflicting a good amount of damage, are tended too very well and have a very dainty look to them with the nails filed and a surprising lack of scars despite the battlefield that his chest look like. His chest, brought up in the previous sentence, would have quite the story to tell if it could speak. It's covered all over with different kinds of scars. Stabs, pierces, slashes, etc etc. These scars are actually a great pride of his, and if you bring them up, he'll get into a very enthusiastic conversation with you about them.
Tae's appearance as a dragon is quite elegant, all things considered. A large, light blue dragon with large plate-like scales that overlap very tightly on his under belly to form a good natural armor for the softest part of his body. The rest of his scales are very typical dragon scales with an ovular form that tapers off into a point at the edge which is the part that most people see when looking at him. His scales are quite reflective and twinkle when he's in the light.
As for limbs, Taene has two arms and two legs which are pretty proportionate to his body and he can use well enough to carry himself on the ground, other people in the air, and even lift things when he needs to. His arms are attached to his wings at the "pit" of sorts. Taene's wings are made of a semi-rubbery membrane which is present in most dragon wings. The edges of the membrane have an odd sort of red tint to them that really serves no purpose. Tail-wise, Taene has a long-ish tail with spines going all the way down it to the very tip which have an orange membrane in the areas in between. His tail ends in two barbs.
The most important part of a dragon (arguably), the head, is one of the more interesting parts of Taene's dragon form. It has a rounded snout which tapers into a sharp point which overlaps his bottom jaw. Inside his mouth, there are several rows of very sharp teeth that wouldn't feel very good in someone's leg. The back end of Taene's head tapers into two horns that point off into the side which are seemingly made of several layers. In between the horns, on the top of the head, the tip of the chin, and on the bottom sides of the jaws there are spines which are filled in by orange membranes similar to those of his tail.
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