VeiledWings (BronzeRattle)

The VeiledWings are owned by BronzeRattle and were . Please only edit for obvious typos.
== Usage Rights ==
Reply hazy, try again later. For real though, this tribe is closed as I transfer most things over.
== Introduction ==
"Get down!"
If reflexes aren't your strong suit, it's in your best interest to keep away from the VeiledWings' swampy territory. Highly secretive in the murky waters, they are swift to use their bone-slicing canines on clueless prey of any size—like you! Towering height and black tar aside, the VeiledWings are a colorfully feathered tribe with an even more colorful tragedy behind their creation, leaving them more closely related to an array of tribes than many would think.
== Biology ==
=== Description ===
VeiledWings are large strong dragons built like longer-legged MudWings. Their scales are entirely coated in feathers, mostly in the form of short feathers forming a distinct fuzz. Their flat heads are more narrow than MudWing snouts, with two long tusks forming an overbite, short horns, and feathers surrounding their eyes and extending up into a long antennae. Short fins can be seen behind their head and they have spikes under their lower jaw. VeiledWings have a flap over their short necks, disproportionately small wings with only 3 digits and a long thumb claw, and spikes running down their neck and tail. They have a thick paddle-like tail lined in long spines.
VeiledWings are very heavy and taller among most other tribes. They are slightly under MudWings for weight and slightly over for height, although their natural posture of angling their necks downwards makes them seem shorter than they actually are.
==== Coats ====
VeiledWings shed small amounts of feathers constantly and completely replace (molt) all of them about twice a year. They change drastically in colors between three coats: Natural, brilliant, and winter.
# The natural or camouflage coat is used throughout the year, considered to be their "default" coat.
# The brilliant coat is reserved for summer or spring breeding.
# The winter coat is very rarely used and not always able to develop. It was traditionally used for freezing weather when IceWing blood was more present, but since then tribe habits have changed and many VeiledWings either don't have a winter coat or only a partial coat. It's expected that VeiledWings will devolve the winter coat entirely within the next couple centuries.
In descending order, the winter and natural coat are more insulated than their brilliant coat. The more southern the VeiledWing, the less thick their coats are. Cold weather stimulates VeiledWings to grow feathers faster.
VeiledWing dragonets, called pups, are hatched with just down feathers. After a week, they shed their down for true feathers. Pups molt more often.
==== Dental ====
VeiledWing tusks are their sharpest, longest canines. Their tusks grow continuously throughout their lives, requiring gnawing to wear them down to a comfortable size. Since VeiledWings themselves grow proportionally as they age, older dragons allow their tusks to get longer than younger dragons.
VeiledWings produce sodium bicarbonate from their diet in a highly concentrated form to keep their mouth clear of leftover tar and as a natural toothpaste. It also has the unintended side effect of making their saliva sting considerably when it lands in a wound, although at more diluted concentrations it has mild antiseptic properties.
==== Gender dimorphism ====
Males have a dewlap drooping from their necks and shiny crescent scales throughout their bodies that are mostly concentrated on the tail. Females are 10-15% smaller, with longer feathers overall. Contrary to popular belief, males and females have the same-sized tusks.
=== Colors ===
VeiledWings are colorful dragons whose colors depend on which coat they have.
In their natural camouflage coat, they have a similar color palette to MudWings, made up of earthy tones including gray, and can easily be confused from a distance or at a quick glance. Their antennae is brown, yellow, or green to resemble reeds or ragged branches whilst underwater. Small parts and margins of their body, mostly their shoulders and extremities, have a faded tint in pink, purple, green, or blue. Individuals may have mud or growing moss on the their flanks. They generally blend well in their muddy, forested environments.
In their brilliant coat, they adopt a vibrant purple or pink and less commonly blue or green. A rare orange and green "cinammon" morph exists in some populations. Their feathers and wing membrane gain a strong pearlescent property, with the latter sometimes gaining faint stripes or eye spots. Colors are brighter the healthier a VeiledWing is. Males are naturally brighter than females and often present a contrasting dewlap.
VeiledWings in the rare developed winter coat are primarily white, pale lilac, or pale blue. Their sclera darkens and their pupils dilate in response to sunshine to avoid snow blindness. They are more uniform in color than in other coats. Since most VeiledWings don't have a proper winter coat, their "winter coat" is just lighter, patchy strands of feathers.
Both sexes have green, blue, amber, or rarely red eyes. VeiledWings have dark purple, almost black tissue lining their mouths and a tongue the same color, causing the inside of their mouths to look like a void. Their teeth are more white than in other tribes.
Leucistic and melanistic VeiledWings have been occasionally recorded.
=== Diet ===
VeiledWings are opportunistic hypercarnivores, ambushing large animals like crocodilians, snakes, coyotes, and hogs. They voraciously devour any smaller easy prey in reach, such as fish, amphibians, and even young dragonets left unsupervised by other tribes. Humans are a favorite of the tribe—VeiledWings have been recorded destroying settlements to round them up for consumption. Their stomachs are extremely acidic and powerful enough to safely eat rotten carcasses, but VeiledWings don't typically seek carrion and instead take advantage by stashing food without worrying about spoiling. The rare plant material includes moss, lilypads, and flowers. They have a strong distaste for it and will only graze if prey is minimal or when low on oil.
VeiledWings additionally lick rocks (almost exclusively limestone) for calcium and ingest tiny amounts of saltwater for brine to produce sodium bicarbonate. They are fairly tolerant of salinity. Females take in more calcium during the breeding season.
They commonly go days only eating small meals and fulfill their needs for the week with a single large prey item. Their enormous stomachs can fit up to 300 pounds of food for this purpose to fast for up to a year.
=== Reproduction ===
They are live bearers. VeiledWings have large litters, being anywhere from 3 to 8 pups. Pups are largely independent.
=== Longevity ===
VeiledWings can live for up to 200 years. Few attain this age however due to territorial conflict. They sexually mature at 6 years and are considered adults at 9 years.
== Abilities ==
=== Tar-spraying ===
Well-fed VeiledWings at least a year old conserve a small amount of ingested organic matter (anywhere from 1-3%) in a tiny air tight chamber in their stomachs. This chamber exposes the matter to prolonged extreme heat to carbonize it into a tar over the course of a couple weeks. When it is of a certain density and viscosity, they bring it up to a pouch in their upper throats. The pouch can hold around 300 milliliters in a new adult, increasing with age, and can be felt as a small lump when nearly full.
Throat muscles squeeze their throat pouch to release a spray of tar from their mouths at blinding speeds, often mislabeled by other tribes as "spitting". The tar hardens in exposure to air and becomes extremely difficult to remove if not immediately cleaned off. VeiledWings use their tar primarily against prey, aiming for the legs to trap them, but are known to use it defensively by spraying in the face of an attacker. They may purposely aim at openings in an attempt to asphyxiate attackers. As a warning display before resorting to spraying, they gape and expose the dark tissue lining their mouths to offenders.
Similar to RainWings, they can test their relation to other VeiledWings by spraying tar on top of one another. Hot vigorous bubbling indicates a blood relationship, being strongest with siblings of the same litter and is absent past the fifth degree of separation. VeiledWings test their tar before mating to avoid inbreeding.
=== Electrogenesis ===
VeiledWings have electric organs distributed throughout their body, being most concentrated at the head, sides of neck, wing spikes, and tail. Discharging at low voltages in water allows them to echolocate. Higher voltages are used to stun or kill aquatic prey. They have enough electrical output to seriously injure and permanently paralyze dragons, although deaths are almost absent from this alone. Making large discharges reduces their ability to echolocate and requires some time to recharge.
=== Other skills ===
Like MudWings, they are stronger by default, with powerful wide-gaped bites that can either slice or shatter bone. As mentioned prior, the sodium bicarbonate concentration in their saliva causes it to "burn" injuries like hand sanitizer. They can swallow large chunks of flesh without chewing.
Their aquatic habits make them great swimmers with enough lung capacity to stay underwater for 90 minutes at a time or longer while sleeping—they can subconsciously go to the surface for air. They are slow on land and very sluggish in the air but are prone to sudden bursts of speed to catch enemies off guard. VeiledWings can dig well, used primarily for making nests or creating small pools of water.
They can predict the weather and sense nearby movement with their unfurled antennae. This ability is weaker than the SilkWing variant.
=== Weaknesses ===
VeiledWings are an absolute menace up close, being nigh impossible to overtake alone except by the very skilled. Despite their huge size, their preferred method of attack is to suddenly inflict massive damage with a sneak attack using the environment to hide them beforehand, and thus they can easily be foiled in a clear environment. Fighting from a distance is also heavily problematic as their only ranged ability, the tar, is limited in how much they have stored. Their supply of tar is large but can be exhausted in long length fights. As fast as they can be they are slow 90% of the time, are easily tired by moving quickly, and rely on their tar to glue enemies in place so they can get closer.
One significant weakness with VeiledWings is getting them to even fight in the first place. Naturally, with the exception of the MudWings, they don't see other tribes as a threat and rely on their bulk to absorb attacks until their attacker gets bored. It's only when they get annoyed when they might react by poofing up or roaring and especially exposing their black mouths. They only attack when truly angry and even then usually do so once with a powerful slam or discharge. A VeiledWing needs to more often than not be moderately injured before they actually commit to striking back
== Territory ==
thumb|right|upright=1.2|Example of ideal VeiledWing habitat (original image by Bernd Schade on Wikimedia Commons)
VeiledWings lack political borders since they have yet to be formally classified by other tribes. Their current natural range is a rough narrow border between the Mud and Rainforest Kingdoms. In this range, they reside in semi-flooded, forested swamps. Cover is extremely important to VeiledWings: if they can't hide well they won't live there, period. It's difficult to define their exact territory size due to their roaming habits in accordance to weather.
Their range has been declining and shifting southwards for several centuries due to an increase in MudWing agriculture, MudWing resentment, and changing weather patterns making the northern range drier. They will likely become a fully tropical tribe in the near future.
== History ==
(Currently no exact dates until I'm about done. Also keep in mind that I haven't read Guide to the Dragon World yet, so no spoiling please)
=== RainWing contact ===
VeiledWings are a complex hodgepodge of tribes, but their start originates from a merchant population of MudWings in southern Pyrrhia that frequently traded with their RainWing neighbors. Over time, they settled closer and closer, becoming acquainted with one another, but wouldn't dare hybridize for fear of either of their tribes condemning them.
In spite of the fear, five MudWing-RainWing hybrids were hatched and kept secret sometime around 3000 BS. They were accidentally discovered by a RainWing called Raintamer one evening. Raintamer convinced them that they would never be accepted the way they were unless they got out and did something for the world. Inspired, the five ran away from home deeper into the rainforest and together started a restaurant. With Raintamer being the public face of the operation to hide the hybrids' true identity, their restaurant skyrocketed in popularity and stayed that way for decades. It became so popular that even the RainWing queen Brilliant visited.
The visit was all fine and well until she asked to meet the chef behind the meals. The smallest hybrid Nightshade blew their cover. Luckily, Brilliant didn't find any problems with the hybrids and laughed it off, but when the news reached the MudWing queen Everglades, she was livid. She demanded for Brilliant to turn them over so she could punish their existence. Brilliant refused initially, but Everglades began threatening to invade if she didn't follow, so the RainWing turned to the hybrids and asked them to come along for a diplomatic solution.
Through the combined wits of the "bigwings" Tufa and Queen Brilliant, they settled on a compromise: The hybrids would be seen as proper citizens of both kingdoms and would not be punished, but other hybrids wouldn't be allowed. Brilliant was impressed enough with their behavior that she assigned Tufa and Beetroot, the second largest hybrid, to be her formal diplomats. From here on the family broke apart, with Nightshade and Sable continuing to manage the restaurant, Muskegon returning back to the MudWing Kingdom to work as a historian, and Tufa and Beetroot resolving disputes.
=== Beetroot Affair ===
Tufa and Beetroot developed different purposes to their diplomacy work as the years went by. Unhappy with the diplomatic compromise, Tufa wanted other hybrids to legally exist in the MudWing Kingdom. He worked tirelessly on negotiating with Everglades with the help of the more legally savvy RainWings in secret.
Beetroot, on the other talon, was off savoring other tribes' rich cultures. In particular, she loved how perfect the IceWings were, and in the process of negotiating a better messaging system between the RainWings and IceWings, ended up falling in love with an IceWing peasant simply known today as Trouble. This was a big no-no; Brilliant had advised her diplomats to never fall in love with another tribe. Nonetheless, Beetroot and Trouble dated. Beetroot was with eggs by the time she flew out of the kingdom and didn't tell anyone.
She feigned an illness as an excuse to lay her eggs. She realized she didn't want to raise her dragonets with a double life, so after a few months, she left the kingdom without even a peep. This just so happened to be at the worst possible time: The new SandWing queen was aggressively demanding more wares from the RainWings and her disappearance was highly believed to be a kidnapping to force the RainWings to comply. This seemingly innocent departure transformed into a monstrous several year long affair now called the Beetroot Affair. RainWings demanded for the SandWings to return her; The SandWings confessed they didn't have her; The RainWings thought they were lying, etc. It got so bad that both tribes prepared to war over the missing dragon, all the while the actual dragon was living in the middle of the wilderness obliviously raising her four dragonets.
The other four hybrids believed the SandWings were correct and over a family reunion agreed that they had to find Beetroot to prevent the war. After several months of scouring the entire continent, Tufa finally found Beetroot in northern Pyrrhia with three nearly grown dragonets. He explained the whole situation to her and they returned back to the RainWing Kingdom to explain it all to the dueling queens. In response, Brilliant officially exiled her and her dragonets, barring them from ever entering the kingdom again.
The IceWing queen learned of the affair a couple weeks later. Beetroot and her dragonets were caught, but she refused to tell them who her mate was even after her dragonets were tortured and killed right in front of her. She took her own life in protest, leaving them with no way to ever persecute Trouble.
=== Dark Ages ===
Following the Beetroot Affair, many RainWings were angry at Beetroot and the hybrids as a whole for nearly instigating a whole war. The hybrid restaurant was forced to close, Tufa was laid off, and Nightshade and Sable followed suit after Muskegon to live in the MudWing Kingdom for their safety. Tufa kept working with his legal advisor friends, but even they were distancing themselves from him like a disease.
The more radical RainWings pressured for Brilliant to prevent more hybrids or even punish them, but she refused. In response, they rallied behind her daughter Sabre who promised to carry out their requests. Sabre officially beat Brilliant in the royal challenge, declared hybrids to be illegal, and began to pick on Tufa. He was forcibly moved to the central RainWing village and only allowed to "legally exist" in a small radius outside his home, subjecting him to endless insults from the RainWings at all times of the day. Sabre's supporters grew more powerful and extremist, forming a group they called the RainWing Pureblood Movement (RPM) to oppose and destroy all RainWing hybrids.
One evening, Tufa was visited by a strange white dragon. The dragon introduced themselves as Vulpine and reasoned that there was no hope for them in the rainforest. The only course of action to take was to multiply with more hybrids outside of the kingdom and wait for them to attack so the RainWings would look bad. Tufa wasn't particularly interested, but Vulpine kept visiting him every night for a response and the RPM harassment was getting worse by the day, so after a week of procrastinating he agreed. Vulpine snuck him out of his house in time to avoid an arson attack and they took up temporary residence at the exact same border town where Tufa had grown up in.
To Tufa's surprise, there were dozens of new hybrids there. Vulpine explained that he had been working with the now elderly Raintamer to pressure cross-tribe couples to actually have dragonets.
== Culture ==
=== Dens ===
TBA
Category:Tribes (Fanon)
Category:Content (BronzeRattle)
Category:Work in Progress