Queen Fennec

====This character was created for Mezepheles' Historical Ruler Contest. ==== 
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== ✦ Queen Fennec ✦ ==
 (3,245-3,313)
You sit, you anticipation growing, before an old dragon, ancient as the sun. Her bones creak as she moves and her voice is old and sandpaper-y, but in a lulling kind of way, not unpleasantly. The dragonets around you all quiet their chatter as she begins to speak, and you lean forward and prick your ears up. The Kingdom of Sand is a relatively happy place to be. Sure, it's hot, and the sand gets stuck between your talons and in your scales and in your ears- you get the picture. Despite the- well, sandiness of it, the Kingdom is a safe haven for nobility and peasants alike, for hybrids and purebreds and everything between. But it wasn't always like that. No, it wasn't always like that. Years ago, the kingdom was split by suffering. Loyalties were as changing as the clouds, intertribal relationships were as breakable as a pane of glass, and the sand was sticky with blood. The royal family was a mess, so many dragons loosely related to the throne bringing up female heirs. The queen was challenged and changed every few months, and no one was safe. But one day, something happened. An event that could have been fortold by the greatest of NightWing seers. The greatest queen the SandWings had ever seen was about to rise to power...
==Description==
Sleekly built yet strong, Queen Fennec may not be the pinnacle of beauty, but she does turn heads. Her scales are a dusty orange, each one tipped with a lighter shade of orange. Her horns are slender are bone-white, adorned with simplistic dangling jewelry. Her eyes don't have the trademark black sclera, but rather a brilliant white that brings out the doe-brown in her eyes. Her frill is luscious, one of the few things she takes pride in. It drapes down in front of her right eye like a weeping willow tree. She wears a simple scarf around her neck. Her tail barb is sharp, the thick part glittering with plated gold leaf. The actual sharp point has several small barbs that make her tail hard to pull out once she stabs someone with it, a genetic defect that runs in her family.
== Abilities==
==== Tribal Powers |====
Fennec is a relatively normal SandWing, able to breathe fire and use her venomous tail. However, her tail has several small barbs that make it difficult to pull out once it stabs someone. 
====Agility |====
Thin as a tumbleweed and just as light, Fennec is able to stalk over the sand without making a sound, much less a deep enough footprint to survive the dusty desert winds for long.
====Charisma |====
Despite being born in a non-noble household without many of the courtly manners most SandWings are taught early on, Fennec has a natural air about her that makes dragons want to get to know her. This helps immensely in inter-tribal negotiations. 
Stats
strength
charisma
endurance
loyalty
agility
intelligence
stealth
perception
==Strengths and Weaknesses==
Strengths
Fennec is free spirit: few things can dampen her spirits
She is charismatic and extroverted, able to soothe the grumpiest of council members and befriend the chilliest of dragons
Weaknesses
She is rash and impatient, a 'bite first, ask questions later' kind of dragon
She isn't the burliest or strongest of dragons, though she makes up for it in stealth and agility
==History==
Born to a SandWing couple living in a nondescript house in a chill little town the middle of the desert, Fennec was as non-royal as one could get. Her father was a wanted criminal, a sloppy thief caught in the act of stealing an expensive necklace from a jeweler who lived near the palace. Her mother was a small artist taking commissions from middle-class dragons. Fennec was basically left to raise herself, a feral child knee deep in mud with her snout in every corner of everyone's business. She was as loved as she was hated by every occupant of the town. 
Fennec grew up mostly uneducated. A few older dragons were able to force her to sit through enough lessons to be able to read basic sentences, but Fennec was a free spirit with a wild streak. She'd rather explore a sand cave with a few friends than sit through a lesson. Even as she grew to be a teenager, she was still as untamable as a sandstorm. It wasn't until her father was finally caught by the SandWing guard, tipped off by a newcomer to the small town, that she decided to take her snout out of the sky and make a change in the world, starting with freeing her father. 
Fennec followed the small group of soldiers through the desert to the stronghold. Once she reached the stronghold, she snuck in at night over the wall, a feat that was considered impossible between the attentive guards on the wall and commoners always looking to increase their status with the guard force at the base of the walls. She found her father and set him free, but not before the captain of the guard himself caught her before she could make her own escape. She didn't go down without a fight, however, taking out one of his eyes and giving him quite a few scars. She was thrown into the dungeons to await trail. 
In the dungeons, she shared a cell with a NightWing named Unorthodox. He was an emaciated old dragon, meant to be tried for a crime, long forgotten by the constantly ever changing line of royalty. He befriended Fennec, somewhat against her will, and showed her his secret, the reason he was locked up. Something like a jewel, wrapped in a thick leather case. Dark as the night with small gold wings extending from the sides, a relic that would soon come to be known as the Eye of Onyx. Fennec reached out to touch it but Unorthodox pulled it back, warning of the imminent death is would cause. The two devised a clever plan to escape, forcing the guard that brought them meals to touch the Eye and then escaping through the open gate, escaping into the night. However, a kink in their plan caused Unorthodox to grab the Eye, tossing it at the guard moments before being blown to dust. Fennec, who had no knowledge of how the relic worked, was horrified but didn't want to leave such a valuable tool in the talons of the unworthy SandWing royalty. She carefully scooped it up into the pouch and hung the pouch around her neck. 
Her escape was sloppy and she was caught by none other than the current SandWing queen, a conniving but stupid dragon named Sablo. The queen might not have been the brightest, but she was certainly stronger and burlier than Fennec, who had been likened to a tumbleweed by her father, and Sablo had no trouble dragging her into the center of the courtyard where she intended to have some fun. The commotion attracted several SandWings, including the majority of the guards and nobility within the walls of the stronghold. Some of the dragons waiting outside the stronghold were able to sneak over and watch the large SandWing queen toy with the young tumbleweed of a dragon. 
Fennec put up a fight but she wasn't a match for the much older queen. Bleeding and on the edge of unconsciousness, Fennec forgot all her fear (and maybe reason) when she reached into the pouch around her neck and threw the glittering black stone across the blood-sticky sand. Deftly, Sablo caught the stone and examined it with a sneer. She thanked Fennec for the treasure, slinging the gold chain around her neck, preparing to slice the artery in Fennec's neck and end her life. However, before Sablo could make the final cut, her scales started to smoke, and as hard as she pulled, the gold chain wouldn't come off. It eventually, as slowly and drawn-out as Sablo's torture of Fennec had been, burned through her scales, flesh, and bone before reducing the queen's smoking corpse to a pile of ash. Fennec shakily stood up, scooping the Eye out of the pile of ashes and draping the chain around her neck, somehow certain the Eye wouldn't hurt her. 
The watching SandWings were astonished at the death of their queen (though it was a common event at the time, happening every few months, the challenges had never been so grotesque) and they weren't sure what to do. Out of the blue, an old dragon wearing several leather slings holding scrolls stumbled out of the assembled dragons. He examined the Eye (though it had no official name yet) and explained the nature of the animus spell on the piece of treasure. He told the few details known of the last known animus SandWing, Jerboa, and the her disgust with the current SandWing queen. He then held up one of Fennec's bloody talons and declared her, the free-spirited, messy, peasant criminal as the new queen of the SandWings. 
After the SandWings accepted Fennec as the true queen (after several riots let by would-be heirs that were quickly put down) things settled down. Fennec, after she adjusted from flying around the desert basically uneducated to ruling an entire kingdom, ruled with kindness and charity. She grew to become one of the most loved queens in SandWing history, promoting the mingling of nobility an commoners, building private orphanages where dragonets could flee to, and supporting the building of wells throughout the desert. She was still impulsive at times, quick to lose her temper, but she tried her hardest to make up for it by promoting the common good. 
However, after several good years of ruling, the peasant queen had run into a problem. Fennec was entering her golden years, and she still didn't have an heir. Due to her ace-ness, she couldn't produce an heir with her similarly ace partner, King Aurantius. Being an avid supporter of the now flourishing community of orphanages, the couple decided to adopt two dragonets in need, a newly-hatched pair of sisters they named Obsidian and Onyx. (Obsidian was the older of the two, hatching a day before Onyx. Neither sister wanted to challenge their mother, so after her peaceful death in 3,133, Obsidian rose to power. Onyx had no interest in taking the throne from her beloved sister, but she was forced to rise to power after Obsidian died suddenly of a horrid sickness that swept through the desert, producing no heirs during her short name. Onyx's defense of her family's right to the throne using the Eye led the treasure being officially called 'The Eye of Onyx'.)
== Trivia==
* While Fennec's line was eventually broken, the throne taken by a worthy non-descendent, Thorn is very distantly related to Fennec's adopted daughters.
* A follower of Fennec left the palace with the queen's blessing to help found the Scorpion Den. It was original meant to be safe harbor for dragons cast out of their tribes, but eventually devolved into the criminal empire it became during the modern times
* Fennec was very close with the current queen of the SkyWings, a young SkyWing named Zincite, who became queen long before she was ready. Fennec and Zincite learned to rule together. 
* Fennec met her husband, Aurantius, at one of the balls hosted the Queen of the MudWings, who wanted to take advantage of the young queen by befriending her and then being the true power behind the throne. Aurantius, who was something of a student of hers, befriended Fennec and warned her of the scheme. He was then banished from the Mud Kingdom, as as he scrambled to help Fennec prevent a war with the MudWings, the two fell in love.
G A L L E R Y
File:Queen Fennec.png|Dotholly
Category:Characters
Category:Females
Category:SandWings
Category:Status (Royalty)
Category:LGBT+
Category:Content (Dotholly)
Sun/cloud icon from flaticon
Category:Occupation (Government)