Zephyrdynes

A city of many different clans, marked against the horizon by the collection of airships held aloft over it. It is a neutral zone hosted in Wind territory on a plateau just across the river from the Zephyr Steppes; though it rides the wind, it yields no allegiance to any god and has no stakes in the ongoing war for dominance, instead using mercenary bands for its own preservation. The clan that runs this city carries a dirty legacy behind it, one that it is always striving to move forward from...
There are people of all different walks of live in Zephyrdynes. Dragon and Beast alike, of all elements, share the roads as they go about their business.
(CONSTANT WIP)
== The Story So Far ==
Scryer and Kyros never imagined their empire of stolen eggs would grow so large. Never in their dreams did they, woman of broken spirit and man of broken dreams, envision that they would forge a family larger and more beautiful than they had ever been afforded in their life.
Neither could they have predicted their own downfall at its own hands. Scryer, fueled by her own fantastic beliefs and taken by her own power and grace, stole the clan away to the Tangled Wood to live out a darker existence. A clan comprised solely of stolen eggs, raised as their own, belonged in bramble, did it not?
But not everyone agreed with her.
Young upstarts Ata and Vergil saw through her beauty and grace. Though raised by their very two claws, they witnessed the true suffering of their own clan - their family - and staged a coup d'etat, the likes of which no clan had ever seen.
It was no revolution, but to them, winning was everything. Scryer held out, holed up in her magical den, protected by those who still stood by her, but there was no contest.
She conceded, and the clan shattered, split clean through. Many abandoned their posts, now disgusted with - or freed from - their home.
Ata was shaped by arcane and thicket, but her true calling was the wind that carried her far and wide across the shadowy landscape. Vergil, her lover-in-arms, would go only where Ata dared to go. He saw no beauty in the world, but Ata brought to his eyes a dream of glory: peace, prosperity, and unification.
They carried the clan back to its original homeland, and bore a family larger and more beautiful than its progenitors could have ever thought possible. In their claws, peace triumphed, and their pride and joy Vrindi would be next in line. Her adopted brother, Osoroshi, would have led alongside her until she chose a suitable mate to help her lead the clan in their old age.
Vrindi was the clan's next symbol of hope. Their next loving leader, who would carry them into the new age with the gale at their wingtips.
And so she was, and so she became... at the cost of her parents' lives.
The end of an era came, and with it a new one was born. Vrindi grew into her role as a true leader, and at the height of her prestige she saw opportunity in the skies. With the knowledge of a traditional Wind airship and the carried knowledge of dragons from other lands, the first modern airship was born.
One ship became ten, and ten became twenty. The ships were a huge success, for they could travel large distances even without the wind, and they were perfect for delivering aid to faraway locations.
Aid... to faraway locations?
Suddenly, it became so clear what they should be. Rather than simply idle as a clan, they should do more: they should bring to the world relief from suffering! The revelation gave Vrindi all she needed to make the next step in the clan's history...
As Zephyrdynes.
AND SO THE STORY CONTINUES...
== Acts ==
These recordings are scrawled in a careful, neat handwriting belonging to Malzhan.
=== Act 1: Saint and the Sin ===
The clan's beginnings were humble. Kyros was part of a clan of bandits swarming the lower regions of the Reedclift Ascent. Scryer was a weak dragon with no history and no life, with nothing to her name - not even memories of a past - but the gift granted to her. Her days began when she was captured and held by the bandits, to be held for ransom and used as they saw fit. However, when Kyros laid eyes upon her, he fell deeply in love, and it was by his claw that the two escaped and fled as far as they could from the bandits.
The visions Scryer saw through her gift were of unattended eggs and hatchlings, quite clearly distanced from their brood. Once, these visions confused and scared her, but after her brief stint among the bandits as their victim, she got it in her head that she could do something for these children instead. No-- she MUST do something. With Kyros at her side, the two began to thieve through the night, stealing children left and right under the guise that they were saviors who had come to give them better lives. These hatchlings would know no better and grew to believe that their dear and loving parents were the very ones who stole them away.
The nameless clan would quickly grow in popularity and infamy, as reports of a pair of thieves - and then, a group of them - became known all throughout Wind's territory, and soon after, the neighboring territories among them. Many attempts to take back what they had stole were launched, but no one could ever find Scryer and Kyros. They had no lair to speak of; they had no home to return to. Their family would move with them, and they would go wherever was temporarily safest. So long as they could keep their little family together, that was all that mattered. But there were times when they were close to being caught, and times when the scrapes between them and the families they stole from became far too dire. Lives were lost and dragons disappeared in the chaos. And when Scryer finally came out on the other side, agonized by their losses, she found herself afraid and faithless. 
Terrified of losing everything again, Scryer began to pray to someone - anyone - in hopes of having her pleas heard. The answer she received after several days of intensive prayer was not the one she expected to hear. It was not Windsinger who answered her call, but the Shadowbinder, in the form of a mushroom growing steadily in the cave she chose to stay in. Scryer's choice was then clear, and instead of staying in Wind's domain any longer, she uprooted her family from the Windswept Plateau and carried the clan straight into the Tangled Wood. "Where better to live for a thief than in the shadows?" Was her justification. 
But the bramble was harsh, and the creatures of the night, even harsher. Though it suited Scryer just fine, the clan did not take to the darkness nearly as well. While Scryer and Kyros lived carefree and joyously, their failure to nurture the clan they had built up was beginning to take a toll, as food stores would often run dry and dragons were left to fend for themselves against the terrors that lurked between the trees. Still, no one could bear to speak up about their plight; this was now their home, and their parents raised them out of the goodness of their hearts. Who could bear to see Scryer in such a dim light? 
=== Act 2: A New Page ===
Enter Ata and Vergil. They were introduced to the clan around the same time, and raised tenderly by Scryer's claws. Even early on, the two could sense that something was off, by the way the clan acted so disorderly and distrustful of one another. Food was fought over and whispers to one another under snarled breaths said that, under the surface, something was brewing. What, exactly, was not clear to the hatchlings, but as they grew, they would find that the love they sought from Scryer would soon soften, dilute, and then vanish entirely.
Something was happening to Scryer. She was becoming more distant from everyone... from her eldest children, who she truly loved dearly; from her adopted babes, even the ones she had just taken to the clan; and even from her mate, who still stood stalwart beside her no matter her choices. Scryer's eyes were dulling, her actions were growing stiff, and her decisions were coming more rashly, more confused, more incoherent. No one could understand why she was claiming certain insects were not to be touched, or how a certain method of prayer was suddenly totally ineffectual. Nor why certain clan members were loved so dearly, only to not be trusted, to be scorned and leered at when they had done no wrong. It was strange, it was frustrating, and most of all it was heartrending to see her become this way.
Someone had to do something. And so, still young Ata decided enough was enough after she witnessed one of her elders collapse from exhaustion and hunger. She took the steadily-simmering rage of her family and raised it to a boil as she announced in the very center of their bramble that she was taking the helm by force. The events that followed were built on a landslide of righteous anger for the way they had been treated; smashed pots and crates, brief stints of drunken brawls, and eventually a pitchfork storming of the cave that Scryer holed herself up in the second she whiffed of dissent.
They stood outside for seven hours. Ata led chants and protests, and Vergil raised sticks and stones, ready to fend off any dragon who dared swoop them. But even their resistance was weary, for many guards laid down their weapons and joined the steadily-growing group. They could not fight any longer; they wanted the madness to end. Even Scryer's closest guard and first child, Arioch, eventually conceded... she, too, wanted to know what happened to her dear mother. And so, when they opened the cave and stepped inside, there was Scryer and Kyros, watching and waiting for the end.
The end never came. Ata demanded spoken allegiance to her cause, and Scryer eventually gave in, mumbling her word in front of her many children. She did not stop there, either; along with her compliance, she admitted to her sins, to her failures, to the madness invading her mind, and in a broken heap on the floor sobbed her apologies. Their proud, beautiful mother, now reduced to a pathetic mess... what was left of this clan now? Disturbed by the sight, many turned their backs and left - either to their beds for the night, or scattered to the winds to find a true, loving home.
For what remained in the morning after, Ata immediately set upon delegating dragons to finding what was left of their meager home and packing it all up. Scryer and Kyros were to be imprisoned and work closely alongside their new leader, so that they could see first-hand the hell they put their own family through. As for the rest of the clan, the next stop for them was a glorious one, for they would be returning to the home that called Ata's name... the home she was ready to see with her own eyes for the first time in her life. They were heading back home to the Windswept Plateau!
This time, Ata was not interested in continuing the "family business," so to speak. Knowing only vaguely what legacy Scryer and Kyros left behind, she landed the clan on a small plateau beside the Zephyr Steppes, not too far away from the Gale Sanctum. Here, she began constructing a real home, and she would spend the rest of her life seeing it to its completion. In that time, she and Vergil fell deeply in love with one another, and their love produced a single child between the two of them: Vrindi. They also adopted a young boy named Osoroshi, and raised the two as siblings.
=== Act 3: Warm Oil, Cold Blood ===
The family that Ata and Vergil raised was a far kinder one than the falsehood that Scryer created with her own claws. There were no more secrets, no more dangers invited by their own actions, and no more violence that would span generations. In place of a single acting leader, there was a council of 13 leaders - one for each element, plus one for speaking with the Beastclans. For once, there was peace, and the few dragons who remained in the clan decided to pledge allegiance to their new leaders for this. A traveling clan of sparkling jewels and gems, noticing the stragglers, came momentarily to help Ata establish herself in the Steppes, then went on their way once the clan could stand on its own two feet.
Thieves no more, the clan had to find a way to sustain itself. When it was still small, each dragon could sustain themself on the lay of the land, but as it grew in size, so too did the need for more gold, more food, more of everything. And when enough people find themselves along the shore of a river, a village is inevitably born. This village spawned traders, and the traders spawned guards. And before the leaders' very eyes, the beginnings of a real community - the Zaffre Tempest, they called themselves - was starting to form. However...
Where there is fresh blood, vultures will lurk. A menace of Miths were starting to form along the Wind-Fire border, and following their way up the river, they were sure to reach the village. While Ata was adamant on forming positive relationships with the Beastclans all around them, she noted these Miths were rogues from their own lands and seemingly had no interest in trading or negotiating with them. And the machines they set on the land were both dangerous and relentless, urging her to take up arms and fend them off. It didn't help matters that she heard Shadetouched individuals were slowly making their way toward the Zephyr Steppes, a troubling dilemma for both her and the fledgling clans that her village stood in front of.
And so, Ata and Vergil began setting off on raid missions. They would often take their son Osoroshi with them, as he was of age to learn how to hunt and fend for himself; as well as the then-young Rusty for the same reason. The four of them were more than a match for most rogue Mith camps and their oddly-violent machines, which they dressed up as going out for hunts in front of the young Vrindi. But, one day, the four of them went out on a hunt as usual... and on that day, only Rusty returned, heavily scarred and shellshocked. Vrindi, at her side, asked where her family was, but she couldn't answer.
Their bodies were collected some days later, nearly unrecognizable except to the grieving daughter of a growing clan who needed Ata's guidance to lead them onward.
Vrindi felt the weight of the world on her shoulders. The sudden disappearance of her entire family left a sizable hole in her heart, one that she desperately tried to fill as she distantly tended to her new duties. She welcomed a poor orphaned boy into her family, who she named after her fallen brother, as her younger sibling. She leaned heavy on Rusty, who was given the title "Bot Killer" as she coped in her own way, destroying swathes of the Miths' creations in the name of her village's leaders. And she fell in love, a slow, churning love that made the expectations set on her shoulders feel light as the sun's rays, when she finally found her mate in Rusty, who promised to support her in all ways until the end of time itself.
The pain would never go away, not fully. But she had a village to tend to, and she would make sure that such tragedies would never become commonplace. To that end, she enlisted the help of a wandering mercenary group, spread her wings far and wide to create as many trustworthy connections with the neighboring clans as possible, and even began exploring other options for fast travel and information highways in the form of couriers. And as Vrindi spent her time and gold on more services, more dragons found themselves attracted to the village like ambrosia to a desert. An inn grew from the ashes; a base for records to tell their story made the land a tourist attraction.
This humble little village became a city practically overnight, and it came to be known as Zephyrdynes.
=== Act 4: Rise to the Skies ===
Brewing in the pits of the Reedclift Ascent was trouble itself. While the Zaffre Tempest was experiencing a boom of activity, what remained of Kyros's former allies had dwindled away to nothing. Those who did not die on their raids splintered off into other groups, especially as leadership was exchanged from a well-trusted, competent leader to the dimwitted boy he was rather fond of: Vixangi. What he lacked in leadership skills, he made up for in his inventive prowess and explosive personality - as well as his beloved partner Isaiye, who handled the leading for him. This all resulted in the two of them using their clan's resources to build aircrafts, reinventing themselves from simple bandits to sky pirates.
At this time, Kyros stood as one of Vrindi's advisors, and had long ago left behind his past. But his past had a way of catching up to him; Vixangi held a grudge against Kyros, and would spend his time researching where the dragon had gone and how to track him down. And once he did, he would use his new ship to lay waste to the city he holed himself up in, along with the mate he selfishly stole for himself. Of course, his first few attempts were abject failures - the city's Tempest Armada was simply too powerful for him to compete with, and the sky pirates were chased away as little more than a footnote in the Zaffre Tempest's eyes.
But they did leave behind a nugget of an idea that Vrindi found herself fascinated with. It was Wind's specialty to use their land's innate wind magic to fly ballooned airships about the Twisting Crescendo and Cloudsong, but she had also heard reports of ships being built in Lightning, Fire, and even Ice's territories. No doubt Arcane must be interested in the technologies as well, if only to get closer to their beloved stars... but none of them have Wind magic to keep their ships afloat! Which would mean that they're finding ways to stay aloft all on their own.
A ship that can stay in the air, and go wherever it pleases...
Vrindi knew she had to commission such a ship. For this, she hired several builders across the world to prototype. A seafarer, an ex-Keeper, and another who left shortly after leaving plans behind from his own ship... it was their guidance, and the talent of the engineers of the city, which formed the very first self-propelling airship: the prototype Mothership. Simple, by modern day standards, but it would quickly become Vrindi and Rusty's new home, as well as the meeting place of all Vrindi's connections and the council of the Zaffre Tempest. Enamored with it, she commissioned several more ships, which would go on to be used by the Tempest Armada for carrying supplies on the go when commissioned by the Windsinger's army exalts.
Shipbuilding became talk of the town. When it wasn't about construction of a new landing pad, it was about the use of ships in general. It was a new technology! A combination of several flights' most esteemed elemental prowess, a work of art spanning multiple cultures! What Windite wouldn't be ecstatic over such bold flavors? Of course, there were some naysayers, worried about city funds being used for something so frivolous and before-its-time, but with the city's protection being provided by the clan that spawned it, few complain too harshly.
== Navigation ==
You can hyperlink the rest of your pages here.
=== Notable Locations ===
*Location of Home Base and Traveler's Den
[CENTRAL GOVERNMENT: The Mothership]
The home-away-from-home that oversees the clan from up above. A neutral zone for individual dragons or ships to dock beside, as well as the host for the governing body of the Clan of the Zaffre Tempest. Most governing decisions and inter-clan meetings are made from this ship.
[PROTECTION: Tempest Armada]
The primary fleet that hangs around the Mothership. The largest ship sends out orders which are received and processed, then performed as necessary. These ships often act on their own in order to respond to threats in a timely manner. Its primary staff are Althosir's Company, who protect the Motherbase; and the Zephyrdynes Guard, who overlook the city. There is also a grounded ship that can take off at any time which houses a medical ward, when emergencies become too great to leave unattended.
[REFUEL: Home Base]
A small section of buildings built around a massive landing pad whose duties are of primary interest to the Clan of the Zaffre Tempest. These include recordkeeping, ship docking and refueling, and weather and shade predictions. Couriers are also employed here to send and return important messages to and from the Mothership when it is flying overhead.
[ARTISANAL: Artisans' District]
A grounded district which produces exports of many different goods, to either be sold in-shop directly or to be carried all across the world via airship peddlers. Often any ship that leaves from the Mothership will be trailed behind by the peddlers looking to make a deal and leave with their claws wealthier than they began.
[TRAVELER INN: Traveler's Den]
A massive inn close to Home Base which offers temporary lodgings to passing-by dragons. Owned and run by Popcorn, it's staffed by highly-trained chefs using only the most high-quality goods, and regularly houses entertainment by the traveling Poitox troupe Venomtroika.
[ABREAST THE SEA: Seafarer's Folly]
A ship owned by Malmur that makes frequent trips all across the world, and occasionally makes pit stops at Traveler's Den. Its eccentric crew all sail for various reasons, but they're an incredibly tight-knit group.
[RULING THE CLOUDS: Hellion]
The remnants of the no-good rogue bandits Kyros hailed from, who have now taken to the skies. Although at one point they may have been a dangerous group, their current members have dwindled to nothing; of those members, few can be taken seriously. But they still intend on carrying on the name for the sake of their fallen leader. Hellion's base can be found in the depths of the Reedclift Ascent, among the caves just above the rushing rapids.
=== Notable Members ===
*Vrindi, the Matriarch
*Rusty, her second-in-command
*Scryer, the ex-Matriarch
*Kyros, Vrindi's primary advisor
Category:Clans
Category:Wind