#phamtom of the moonlit mists

[amyrafiercebladeartz]

@serrantsaloto i don't have enough freedom in my replies so I'm making a reblog addition HEHDNDHHSSIJRHEGHRJFJGJJFNDBX FNRNMTNTNTNERRRHJJJEHRHJJRRRRGGRHH

Okay so I have an original character that is an original species of dragon that I made (has its own religion, customs, the main species actually is semi evolutionarily diverged, since one sect lives in the forest and the other stays in the caves of an island but that's a WHOLE other thing but it's also semi related) And sometimes I talk about her. Her name is Phantom-of-the-Moonlit-Mists [Phantom] (current Pfp + bg of my blog), she's a fucking maniacal menace and sad sack of potatoes at the same time. I made her originally just as an oc specifically to torment Viggo Grimborn but she has grown exponentially in character depth and stuff and she's my favouritest character I have ever made hjndrhgrhbfjheyrtrr

Her backstory is a fucking trainwreck, and yeah basically she is a Httyd Franchise (semi AU version but that's also kindof complicated- literally nothing idifferent other than Windrippers exist, so does magic [kindof and it's not likely for a person to ever access it- it's a wild ride] and Viggo has a really ancient pissed off dragon haunting his bloodline, nothing special) oc but is also pretty capable of being standalone from it. Basically, around ~18k years ago from now/current day was when she first hatched, slightly prematurely. Her nest father was watching her and her two siblings' eggs while her nest mother was on hunt, and a small hunting pack of humans attacked. (Btw killing a Windripper [her species of dragon] isn't exactly very hard, their scales are only slightly tougher than our skin) She has a jaw deformity because of this old attack, ripped through parts of her facial muscle and healed where it shows the bone still. She survives, her nest mother raising her until she was about five-ish years old to pit her with the rest of the Hive's fledglings (species social custom, again, there's a lot-). She's also a runty little shit with a temper, and pretty much decides she will fight anything and everyone except for another Windripper fledgling she meets, who will later be named Teeth-Whom-Gnash-Sharply-Upon-Her-Foes [Gnash] (I say later because the species goes through three different names at different stages of their life for different reasons-), who actually gets along with her (Imprinting, Phantom was fighting a bunch of other fledglings, Gnash stepped in to help her) Phantom is rowdy and hotheaded, while Gnash is more level and stoic, especially at this age, which means Phantom is getting a lot of wounds and shit, including tattered wing membranes, one broken and badly healed again foreleg, and her left eye gets pretty much ripped out all before she's 13 years old. Also, at about 13 years old, her hive decides she's too aggressive and pretty much boots her out. Usually, that's a death sentence for a Windripper, as a Hiveless windripper will be attacked on sight when found on any other hive's territory (and if not sighted but scented, they will be tracked down and chased out- if they're lucky), but Phantom is a tenacious bitch, and stays mostly in unclaimed territory (mostly, as she will go in and out of her old hive's territory to meet with Gnash). She survives as a hiveless for about 4 years, but finally gets a bad encounter by getting caught in a different hive's territory and chased off a cliff to almost certain death.

Almost certain.

I should probably mention again that the Windrippers have a religion of their own, and also mention again that magic does kindof exist for these dragons.... including the fact that the deities of the Windripper religion do actually exist.

Basically, before Phantom's soul can depart her broken and mangled body, the All-Mother (basically the Deity of All Windripper Deities) decides to keep Phantom "alive" (kindof?? Really kindof fucked up happenings- I'll explain), making a deal of sorts with her that entails a very (purposefully) vague contract of "I give you free reign with the very magic that I use to create reality and existence itself and you don't use it to kill anything. You can kill things just not with the magic."

Phantom accepts, which means she's no longer dead and her body is no longer broken bones and pain, but it also comes with the fact she slowly loses her "sense of living" (it's a very slow process, at first, she's less and less hungry and thirsty, but eventually it grows worse until she stops feeling her body's exhaustion, which means everything she does has a chance of doing a lot of damage to her) but that's kindof irrelevant right now in her backstory so I'll continue. The most relevant thing is that her scales have become (her signature) semi transparent now, and using the magic will make her pupils turn an icy blue-white color. It also changes her appearance slightly, so that her scars (excluding the ones on her jaw, which it mirrors to the other side) are gone. (Messy subject, basically explained: it forces the appearance of her soul over her old body, and yes, her appearance does change as her soul does later- [also her blinded eye can see into souls of creatures- it can't see like her working eye but it can show vivid colors in the place of the actual entity]) She meets with Gnash after this, and she tells her what happened. Right after this, Gnash gives Phantom her name of "Phantom-of-the-Moonlit-Mists" (it's also when ✨feelings✨ are realised [AroAce Lesbian dragons beloved] ) and life goes back to life-ing... for about two months. Phantom gets it in her head to take over her old Hive (one one Gnash is still a part of), and success. She does it. And immediately makes Gnash her second in charge (it's the simplest way to explain it without diving entirely into Windripper customs- and it just reminded me here that i need to add and adjust a few details again to the big ass doc i got of it-). And for a while after that, things seem okay. Except for the fact that her hive gawks at her, for her strange resurgence. After a whole of questions from others, Phantom tells them that she was chosen by the All-Mother to live anew, and that proves to be an awkward mistake as other Windrippers and hives keep flocking towards hers to challenge her claims. There's a particular fued where, after about three years of the occasional stray attack, a different deity from the Windripper beliefs approaches her. This deity is a trickster deity by nature (and his reason for appearing is another story in its own-), called Lumos. Lumos gives Phantom the idea to study humans (an idea she found particularly contemptuous at first, but once she followed through, she had a begrudging respect of [and later, it develops into a wary fascination, the details I'll save for later-]), to watch how they handle fueds between their numbers. Phantom does this, and decides that some of their methods were disgusting and brutish, but effective. So, she used a few of them, utilising her Hive and its relatively expansive territory to try and reach peace by merging with the other oppositions. It works for a few of them, but there were some larger nests that refused to stop attacking. She was the first of her kind to coerce peace via waging war on another hive or its alliances for more than just territory. (they keep their histories both verbally and by clawing scenes out into stone walls [most of which are hidden in deep enough caves to miss entirely]). It takes a few decades, but she does succeed, earning herself quite the reputation in the process for being both ferocious and cunning in fights, as well as able to use The All-Mother's gifts to her benefits and goals.

After this success, Phantom is content for a while, but soon starts considering... ideas. She learned how to take over and turn her numbers into a massive territory, by watching humans, but that wasn't the most impressive of what they were capable of. Or the most terrifying.

Phantom decides that humanity is in need of guidance from her superior numbers and status, after all, to leave those blessed by The All-Mother with intelligence and blessed by Lumos with inventiveness to their own devices was a dangerous risk. This worry and plotting from Phantom was only fueled by a spike of attacks on her numbers, which is how she decided that taking over their numbers would also be beneficial.

This semi-inadvertantly is what started the Human-Dragon War, as Phantom started to push her influence over the numbers of humans within her territory, only to find they weren't going to be very pleased about it.

For many years, her hive and the humans she was trying to conquer fought back and forth. At first, it seemed reasonably easy, deciding to settle on scaring them into submission, as the humans were in sparse settlements, but after a few more decades of fighting (and before too many questions happen, Windrippers can and will live a very long time, for hundreds of years on average and even longer if they take good care of themselves. And that's without going through periods of stasis, which can last [depending on the individual and the state of said individual] for up to a couple thousand years at a time.[Windrippers are specifically made to be fucked up anomalies to science]. So yeah, Phantom is old compared to humans, even if by Windripper standards she's kinda average rn), the humans started getting into larger groups, making it harder for Phantom's tactics to work properly. Things got even worse for her attempts as someone stepped up to be the leader of the humans, one with a fierce temper and tenacity to match Phantom.

As soon as she figured out that scaring them wasn't working as well, she went to try and learn more. She figured out a way to communicate between herself and the humans- with the help of some magic every now and again, when she wanted to be lazier or save her throat and jaw from hurting- and quickly learned that they were not only uninterested in her guidance, but they saw her only as a blight, a cause of suffering to them.

Her response? To continue the war, this time much more viciously. Those who would bow to her guidance would be taken under her wing, and those who still fought would learn exactly what suffering she could truly cause. Her pride blinded her through many of these years, and she turned to darker and darker methods of fighting. At one point, during a scuffle, she learned that her venom, which had always been weaker than the rest of her kind's, had a unique reaction on humans.

((Uh skip to the next parenthesis pause if this is a bit too much for you))

Normal Windripper venom is fucked up, and deadly. It spreads quickly both through the blood and along the nerves and nervous system, attacking everything and anything any way it can. Generally, the place first bitten feels like it's been stuck into a pot of boiling lava while also feeling like it's been stuck in a block of fresh Bewilderbeast ice, the muscles seizing and locking up. The skin surrounding the area will also darken and rapidly go through a type of cutaneous ossification (most prevalent directly around were the fangs were). The muscles will continue to lock, the pain also spreading the further through the bloodstream it goes. Basically incapacitating a windripper's prey by making it drop to the ground in pain.

((Parenthesis Pause || sorry b that))

Phantom's venom is diluted by the fact that one: premature hatching, and 2: runt. On most smaller animals, it'll kill, but much slower and painfully. On humans however, it's slowness became an advantage, as 1: it spreads further by not killing them sooner, and 2: the effects of Windripper venom basically sets the prey's body into haywire state, and Phantom learned that, with being able to use magic to manipulate her own appearance, she could do the same to humans. Of course, it's painful and she had some very... horrible first attempts, making shambling beasts that clawed and choked on their own tongues before being useful, before finally achieving one human-monstrosity that stayed physically stable enough. It was pretty much become a wild, screaming beast by the time she decided to send it into a human camp as a "Fuck you" warning. (Thus, the Lycanwing legend, for the HTTYD Franchise aspects of her lore).

Around this time, Gnash, who had been a loyal second in command to Phantom, was starting to grow concerned about her Partner's behaviors. She knew the other to be fiery and hot tempered, but sadistic was an unwelcome surprise. She felt a sympathy for the humans, and while she understood Phantom's reasons, she did not entirely approve of the means.

Of course, Gnash tried to dissuade Phantom from continuing her path, but she refused, insistent that her means were the only thing humanity would understand, that their suffering would end in a betterness for the Windrippers and for the humans who submitted. Gnash remained loyal for a time, but after a meeting where the All-Mother gave her a choice of "Find a way to stop Phantom for a time or she'll be removed completely from existence", Gnash chose to betray her.

During an attempted ambush on the leader of the humans, Phantom found herself ensnared in a trap, turned to stone by her own partner. Before she was completely encased, however, Phantom used her magic to lash out on the human, in a fit of rage, and cursed/placed a claim on his bloodline, saying that the last of his line would be what will free her, and that his line was hers.

She was about 283 years old when she was trapped, and spent another ~18k-ish years stuck as a statue (which she was fully conscious during thr entire time of, 🎊🎊🎊)

As for her fate? Depends on the fiction I start writing her into lol

I wanna say 1: I know there's not a lot of historical accuracies in some points, 2: I also know some of what Phantom experiences (especially at hatching) would not be realistic, and to those two, I say I know and I'm not entirely changing it. It'll work out some way. I'll get there. And 3: everything gets fucked up in wording and phrasing and it's because about halfway through I started trying to doze in and out of sleep, sorry

Phantom is a character I've been working on and with for over four years now, and I'm proud to say that. There's still a lot I'm trying to learn about her, to know, as I shape her around and try to figure her out. And yes. She's a flawed character, good and bad, good and evil, and maybe I'll be able to bring proper life to her one day, showcasing her solemnity as well as her twisted gleeful bits.

Also, fun fact: Phantom's voice claim is Ellen McLain, and any time she uses magic to alter her words/voice, she sounds exactly like GLaDOS.

Anybody get the uh the feelings of when wanting to talk about oc but like. Can't ever find a relevant place to bring them up, and don't wanna be too random?