Dulcify

__NOEDITSECTION__Owned by BronzeRattle
Dulcify is a 71 year-old NightWing introduced in "Until Tomorrow". Born under a total solar eclipse with the ability to manipulate memories, she was forced into working for Battlewinner and was eventually abandoned on Pyrrhia after her noncompliance. Following "the incident", she resides alone in a cave near Possibility. She formerly had feelings for Blackbite.
== Description ==
Old among dragons especially considering the era she was born in, Dulcify is gigantic, consistently at least a head and neck above others her age. Her scale colors are often hard to discern from black due to vast amounts of grit and grime from her underground living, but are deep sapphire with green backing and darker flanks studded in blood red scales instead of the usual pale color. Her underside and rounded beak are teal. Dulcify's horns are curved downwards and both them and her flattened spines are dark gray. Her tail is missing spines, having been heavily scratched by cave walls. She is heavily built.
Dulcify has extra red scales the same color as those down her body scattered around her eyes. Similar to a mindreader, she had a large shimmering red teardrop scale just outside each eye that bulges unexpectedly outwards from the scales around it. Her eyes themselves are deep brown
The NightWing's namesake is larger than normal with fewer, dimmer, pink stars in a slight crescent band. Her wings are the color of the late twilight sky, poised higher and closer to her head than typical from years of crouching. Her wing claws are blunt and cracked, yet Dulcify's talons are very sharp and heavy.
She is sometimes seen with craft supplies around her neck.
== Backstory ==
Dulcify was born in 5,000 AS to unnamed NightWing parents under a total solar eclipse. She worked as a laboratory assistant for Mastermind and was interested in science from a young age.
She discovered her powers and used it as a form of consumption to make up for the lack of regular food. Dulcify was eventually caught by Queen Battlewinner, separated from her parents, and was forced to train her powers regularly instead of working with Mastermind. Unsurprisingly, she hated this, and soon refused to work. She stood her ground even after being threatened with imprisonment or being thrown in lava. Finally, she was deemed useless and abandoned on Pyrrhia.
Dulcify lived wherever on Pyrrhia and became acquainted with Sandpaper and Blackbite until some incident with her powers occurred, where she moved to a cave outside Possibility and told them to never return.
=== Until Tomorrow ===
Sandpaper met with Dulcify to convince her to erase a traumatic memory from Paradox. She learned that he had told Hooktail that she had weird powers and was outraged at the fact, but reluctantly agreed to remove the sole traumatic event and disagreed about removing the memories of the two for safety and moral reasons.
She met Paradox and erased the event from memory, making him go into a dull mental state before collapsing.
== Personality ==
"Put simply, she was not a dragon you ever wanted to cross."
:—Sandpaper thinking about Dulcify, "Until Tomorrow"
To Dulcify, the underground is her friend. She is deeply paranoid about her powers being discovered and rarely ever emerges out of her cave for any reason besides food and gathering craft supplies. Even when she does, she always does it in the wee hours of the morning to avoid any prying eyes. She prefers to be alone and is afraid of her powers, having aggressively warded off her friends to prevent harm to them. Dulcify refrains from using her powers if possible and not for immoral reasons; She strongly prefers not to be asked about them at all. Reading faces is not her strong suit.
Her anger is often well concealed, although approaching her with no warning can incite an aggressive response. Knowing that other unauthorized dragons know she has a "thing" as she calls it makes her deeply upset.
She has an affinity for craftmaking. Bright lights are known to hurt her eyes.
== Abilities ==
Besides the typical night vision and fire breath, Dulcify has her moonborn ability.
=== Memory Manipulation ===
Also called dream eating or the "thing" when referred to by Dulcify, Dulcify can manipulate the memories of any nearby organism while in deep focus. Over the years, she has experimented with and refined her ability into several different concepts: Viewing, searching, consuming, adding, and modifying. She continues to play around with memories to find new skills.
Author note: Typing "organism" for every instance of a recipient is lame and general, so note that all the stuff below she can do on any organism with memories.
==== View/Search ====
Viewing and searching is the most basic of these and is necessary to practice other skills. Dulcify can both actively pick up on any memories running through a dragon's head at a given moment and passively rummage through and examine memories at her own leisure. Memories are easier to find when they are memorable, often thought about, actively being thought about, or when the dragon is in contact. She views memories in the same way a seer does, that is, via brief visions or flashes, only that she can actually faintly taste, feel, smell, and think the same way the recipient did if it's significant in the memory. The NightWing is unable to see memories that have been completely forgotten: Viewing old fading ones or "broken memories" comes up distorted, blurry, or stuttering, usually a combination of the three. Memories on the verge of forgetting may not be able to be accessed.
She can access dreams if remembered, but, unless they are very lucid, they are very hard to interpret.
==== Consuming ====
Usually politely deemed as "erasing", Dulcify can devour select memories to derive energy from them, causing the dragon to forget affected memories and any information learned in them. This can range from a single memory to an entire dragon's memory so that they forget how to breathe or eat. Purged memories associated with learning or performing skills can cause the dragon to regress in them or forget them entirely if the "root" memory is removed, although they can be relearned again.
Wiping a large amount of memories or important core memories (heh) takes more time and effort than a small quantity or mundane memories without much content: They are collated and erased all at once rather than one at a time. Most individual memories only grant a small amount of energy to Dulcify—The more information stored, the greater the energy—but this adds up and may result in only partial removal if she gets too full. While wiping minor or few memories has no physical effect on most dragons besides a bit of numbness and spacing out, large amounts or wipes affecting major memories can cause major confusion and stress, distrust, an identity crisis, permanent brain death, or even induce a lethal coma. As a result, Dulcify tries to avoid eliminating too many memories or major memories unless there is no other option.
Purging memories does not erase the dragon's memory of meeting Dulcify, so she usually takes those memories as well and uses their suggestibility to lead them out of sight.
She has been experimenting with the ability to remove only memories that correspond to one idea, such as only eliminating memories associated with flying, with limited success.
==== Adding ====
A relatively new skill Dulcify has learned is inserting subliminal messages in dragon's minds. Like consuming memories, they don't feel this. This is essentially a stored message that only plays an effect under certain circumstances. For example, inserting the message that a dragon is thirsty won't make them beeline to water, but offering them a drink has a greater probability of them actually taking said drink than if not. She is still testing this skill, having never tried it on a dragon, and has reported it to only sometimes work. She has observed that it works best with single basic facts: Multiple messages or complicated messages, especially if they conflict, can cause delay and not have their intended effect.
==== Modifying ====
By far the newest and most advanced skill Dulcify can do is to actually modify the content of a memory so it reads differently than what it actually has recorded. Like adding subliminal messages, she has never tried this on a dragon. So far she can only change basic parts such as the color of something, although she isn't sure of how convincing it will be to a dragon and might have low success rates.
==== Miscellaneous ====
The NightWing is aware that using her ability for malicious reasons makes her more inclined to use it for those reasons, like animus magic, and remains careful about what she uses it on.
Although not a concept and Dulcify doesn't know this, any thoughts she has of other dragon's memories are eerily uncomfortable, difficult to interpret, and tends to cause headaches for mindreaders for unknown reasons.
== Relations ==
Note: Relations with other user's characters is not canon in Bronze's AU to avoid situations with canonicity.
=== Blackbite ===
Little is known about their relationship besides that he was warded away by her for his safety and was apparently of love interest.
=== Hooktail ===
Dulcify has only met her once through Sandpaper and was originally put off guard by the fact, but appears to respect her opinions on helping Paradox.
=== Paradox ===
Dulcify met him to erase some memories. She promised to not harm him before doing so, although wasn't particularly concerned when he collapsed afterwards.
=== Sandpaper ===
They were apparently acquainted with each other at one point before he was warded off for his safety. Sandpaper is one of the few dragons who knows her whereabouts and seems to fear her. She dislikes his reasoning for erasing Paradox's memory further than Hooktail would have intended.
== Quotes ==
Quotes that highlight Dulcify's character.
"What...What are you doing here?! I told you and Blackbite that I never wanted to see your snouts again, that I was too dangerous for both of you and the whole world!"
:—To Sandpaper arriving at her cave, "Until Tomorrow"
----
"What I mean is that if I were to erase his memories of you two and that traumatic event in one blow, we run the risk of serious problems. For both me and him. Remember the incident Sandpaper."
:—To Sandpaper about Paradox, "Until Tomorrow"
----
"Wait until tomorrow for your desired effects."
:—To Hooktail about Paradox fainting, "Until Tomorrow"
== Gallery ==
=== References ===
DulcifyReference2023Clean.png|Without dirt
DulcifyReference2023BaseColor.png|Dulcify with the non-faded colors or scratches
DulcifyPalette.png|Palette
==== Old ====
DulcifyTransparent.png|Old reference for Dulcify
DulcifyHeadshot.png|Headshot with old design
DulcifyRPOTIBase.png|Dulcify with old reference using User:RegularPersonOnTheInternet's teardrop NightWing base
=== Other ===
DulcifyAbilityPlanning.jpg|Figuring out the mechanics of Dulcify's ability (deal with the handwriting)
== Trivia ==
* The word "dulcify" is a rarely used antique one that means to sweeten, calm, or soothe.
** In some ways, she can be interpreted as doing just that with her ability, seeing how she can remove painful or traumatic memories and potentially create peace.
* Dulcify wasn't originally a sona but was decided to be one and eventually transitioned to no longer being my sona.
* She originally had an immunity to animus magic targeting her and the ability to change the properties of matter, but that was complicated to explain, much less write about, so it was changed to manipulating memories to explain Paradox. Also, it makes more sense to be an additional NightWing ability as it's sort of a fusion between foresight and mindreading.
* Her former description mentioned her having two claws that were "tucked" further into the toe. This was a throwback to one of my cats who has the opposite problem—two claws are permanently extended even when all others are retracted.
* Dulcify is the first character whose page was largely made on a phone instead of on a computer. Working on a phone is now standard for my pages.
Category:Characters
Category:Work in Progress
Category:Females
Category:LGBT+
Category:NightWings
Category:Content (BronzeRattle)
Category:Subtype (Moonborn)
Category:Occupation (Artist)