Atlanta

Owned by BronzeRattle, created for an OC contest hosted by Zebraspots. Not affiliated with the [ previous characters] at this namespace.
Atlanta, known under the racing persona Red Lady, is a famous 17 year-old IceWing best known for setting speed records across Pyrrhia and Pantala. She is a competitor in the annual Pyrrhian-Pantalan Scorching Games with an almost unrivaled track record. Outside of racing, she spends time with her brothers at Sanctuary.
== Description ==
Atlanta's appearance alone makes her clear that she's an outcast among IceWings. She is predominantly ice blue with an unusually dark underside, wings, back, and tail tip. Her flanks, wings, and legs have neat lines of white scales. Her eyes are dark, with light purple pupils. Being a frequent flier, she is built lean with very powerful although relatively short wings. Atlanta is deceptively strong for her frame and frequently catches others off guard with her iron grip.
Under her Red Lady persona, Atlanta adopts red paint all along her body in the form of strategic spots or lines bordering her diamond scales. Her horns and head spikes are tipped in paint, and so are two of her tail spikes.
She is usually seen with a distinct amber set of goggles with a nose ring and long gray straps tied around her horns. The goggles are not a fashion choice and are a must when she spends time outside due to her severe photophobia (light sensitivity). The IceWing additionally has a red faded rag she keeps around, occasionally tying it to her neck like a bandana.
== History ==
=== Early years ===
As soon as Atlanta hatched, she started screeching. And wouldn't stop screeching. She wouldn't look at her parents. When she was picked up she would try to claw away from them. Concerned, her parents scooped her up and rushed to their local doctor for advice, worried about some kind of defect.
The doctor, Snowmelt, quickly figured out the problem. Atlanta was, in fact, "highly defective" in IceWing terms. She had somehow hatched without the ability to produce her own coldness or resistance to cold. The coldness of her scales was not her own: She was outright freezing to death with the tundra's temperatures. She calmed down quickly after being set down in front of a huge fireplace in Snowmelt's office, but as soon as her parents tried taking her back outside even in several layers of thick fur, Atlanta began to fuss just as bad as before. Like with the fire, she was silent as soon as she was inside.
Snowmelt realized after observing her sit that Atlanta would never actually look out the windows like most eager dragonets. When she was forced to look in a way where her gaze had to cross a window, she would try to block her eyes as if it was too bright for her. He reasoned that she had some disability that made her sensitive to bright light, and confirmed his suspicions after she was brought outside with a blindfold without any trouble. She was formally diagnosed with severe photophobia and an inability to stand cold, and her parents were recommended to visit every couple weeks for directions on how to manage her.
Her parents were less than ecstatic to hear the news. Managing a dragonet of that caliber, in the coldest, brightest kingdom that suffered pure sunshine for half the year? Still, Atlanta was their only female dragonet out of a clutch of 3, and they didn't want to give up. Keeping her warm was the easy part, by submerging her in the thickest furs they could gather and keeping a fire running, but her photosensitivity was much harder. There just wasn't anything that would let her see but protect her eyes at the same time. For as long as they had the patience for, they tried just about everything besides the obvious blindfold: Glasses, casting a shadow over her face, and even blinders like those on a horse, but nothing sufficed.
After two years, under pressure from Queen Cumulus for her to start attending school, they just had to go with the blindfold. Atlanta was forced to be led and carried by her brothers going everywhere, which she hated, but what she hated more was the fact that because of her conditions she had to take a special needs class. She knew she could do everything the normal IceWings could—if only she could see without burning her eyes. It also didn't help that the "normals" snuck retorts about her "blindness" when they though she wasn't listening. Her brothers, Sirius, Bering, and Dendrite, were well aware of this and the eldest one Sirius would stamp out those in earshot. She grew to appreciate him for it.
After the several months of school, Atlanta decided that she was tired of needing to depend on others. More annoyingly, everyone was learning how to fly; There was no way she could ever fly herself without being able to see. She confessed her anger to Sirius, who suggested she learn to echolocate to get around in unfamiliar locations. They practiced in their cave home, transitioning to an increasingly elaborate makeshift obstacle course outside, and finally she was at least knowledgeable enough to get to her classes without help. Still, she dreamed of flight.
=== With Aunt Tephra ===
With Atlanta's new echolocation skill cemented, Sirius became more absent the following school year as he resumed working on his Circle ranking. The taunts lessened now that she wasn't smacking into things anymore. Instead, the new taunt of the day was her inability to do any combat-related training. The best she could do was sit out and listen to what the others fighting sounded like.
The final straw was an incident about a month into the school year. The largest IceWings bet on if she could do any damage, so one of them ambushed her at lunch, tore off her blindfold, and engaged her. It took all three of her brothers to stop him. She wasn't badly hurt from the experience, but when her parents found out, they were livid. After learning more about the truth of her schooling, Atlanta was shipped off to Aunt Tephra in Sanctuary, an IceWing she had not heard anything of as her mother knocked on her doorstep. Her mother's reasoning was that there were other opportunities for her elsewhere, yet it felt like a confirmation that no one knew what to truly do with her.
Tephra was organizing a marathon to raise funds for the city, so she was less than pleased to get a dragonet dumped in her lap. Atlanta was enrolled in a local hybrid-based school there where she was basically expected to do everything herself. Tephra required her to come along for her morning sprints, partially so she could learn the geography of the city and partially "to build character". While initially hostile toward the idea, she grew to like sprinting because it gave her the confidence to run with the blindfold, which she had not previously done often because she couldn't echolocate fast enough. Their trips would increase in length with Atlanta's goading until she was physically strong enough to run to the nearest summit and back down without stopping. She loved the strength she felt when she ran. When Tephra asked if she would like to participate in the Sanctuary marathon, she eagerly answered yes and began training even harder.
By this time, she was starting to accrue a reputation at her school for her industrious behavior and the hybrids began to take her seriously. She was finally learning some combat and her SkyWing instructor had taught her how to fly low but slow.
== Abilities ==
Atlanta has exclusively frostbreath. While it works mostly the same as any normal IceWing, warm weather doesn't significantly hamper her ability to produce it, probably due to her preference for warmer climate.
As part of her abnormalities, her icy-looking scales do not emit any cold. Her vision and scenting are not as sharp as a normal IceWing. Most noticeably, her eyes are extremely sensitive to brightness.
She is unexpectedly good at getting around while unable to see as a remnant of her dragonethood.
== Gallery ==
AtlantaBasefillMezepheles.png|Atlanta as her usual self
AtlantaBasefillRedLadyNaMezepheles.png|Red Lady, without her goggles
AtlantaBasefillNaMezepheles.png|Atlanta without her goggles
=== Other ===
AtlantaBasefillDiffGogglesMezepheles.png|Scrapped goggle design
== Trivia ==
* Atlanta is named after the city of the same name in Georgia, although it's also a nod to the popular server region in the game Mope.io.
** Pacific was her intended name until I remembered the name was already in use for a different OC and I liked the name Atlanta more than Atlantic.
* For the aforementioned OC contest, her tribe, lineage, and abilities were decided by wheel.
** Abilities didn't have to be decided via wheel, but I decided to anyway. The way I did it was that every non-physical IceWing trait had an option by itself, a duplicate option that allowed for a second spin to get another trait, and an option for all tribal traits. I got only frostbreath.
* She was deliberately made very extroverted because most OCs are very closed off.
* Atlanta's photosensitivity is slightly inspired by my own experience with mydriatics after an eye checkup. I was forced to look at the ground when outdoors because it hurt too much to look straight.
Category:Characters
Category:IceWings
Category:Females
Category:Status (Celebrity)
Category:Content (BronzeRattle)