Mapleheart

**Mapleheart** is a Silkspinner Vodros dragoness who lives amongst the Trench Dwellers. Comes off as a sweet, down-to-earth Southern Belle until she sees something she wants. Previously, she was a part of Diabolos's clan for the sake of protection and feeling powerful and partook in cannibalism with glee. After Essix slayed the foul God and Winalagalis was born, she was bestowed with a chance to reform. A chance she took- joining the Dwellers on that very same day, attracted to the leader's display of power. Now she lives as a healer once more, for a sake she feels far more invested in.

Peculiar in nature and still finding herself attracted to the tastes of draconic flesh and blood, she is now discovering her new place in this world. Do not let the Gilded Widow fool you- she is much more than what she lets on.

## Description

*A long, regal-looking dragoness always covered in a gold-silk gown, dressing the entirety of her body up except her head, paws, and tail-tip. This silk gown is rather dense yet appears to be carried weightlessly by its slender owner.* *Her scales, or rather, the lack-there-of, is black and gold. Whatever skin is exposed outside of her silk outfit is visibly soft-looking and speckled with multiple blotches of black and deep ash-gray, and then vibrant and lustrous orange and gold along the long streaks of gold along the sides of her body. Under proper conditions, her skin is shiny and clean, but is susceptible to dryness and heat.*

*Her head is somewhat narrow, though with a robust jaw, creating a balance in her features. Like the rest of her body, her face is covered in delicate skin, however she does have some tiny scales on the top of her head, a row of pointy scales under her eyes, some quills on her lower jaw, and a harder keratinized region down to the tip of her snout, which leads into a small, hooked beak. Along the ridge of her snout, leading into her spine, there are darkened regions that differentiate from her usual deep-gray skin.*

*Set within her elegant features are a pair of yellow eyes, which can sometimes appear hazel or amber depending on lighting. Directly surrounding her eyes, her golden patterns become redder, resembling makeup, before leading into a lustrous gold stripe that extends down the entire length of her body, flanked by black spots along the spine.*

 *She notably has a set of terrifying, blood-letting teeth. Serrated and built for breaking through armor, the several teeth on the lower portion of her jaw have grooves built into them to deliver her yellow venom, which oozes out as she chews and bites her prey.*

 *Framing her regal skull is a pair of pointed horns that end in luminous tips, glittering gold just like her horizontal stripes. Under proper lighting, they gleam like flames.*

*Along her swan-like neck she has a much lighter gray throat and underbelly and dorsal quills with gold speckled banding. On her lower throat and chest, she has several rows of rounded, petal-shaped plates that are quite thin and smooth. Along the sides of them are strange fleshy structures; spinnerets, eight in total with four on each side, allowing her to string together multiple fibers into mega-fibers and really get into the groove of weaving. The placement of the spinnerets allows her to manipulate them hastily with her forepaws and even her wings!*

 *Leading into her slender chest, her musculature is disguised under her silk outfit. Under the extraordinarily rare circumstance that she is without her gown, however, her musculature and wrinkliness of her skin is extremely apparent and reveals that she is not just so slender. She is built for endurance and strength and can lift far more than what it seems she could. From her chest and into her wings, she has a very strong membrane that is equally bespeckled in gold markings and becomes a slight rouge at the tips*

 *From her wings into her other chest muscles, she has powerful and medium-length forelimbs that end in a five-digit paw with long, silver hooked claws. These claws are so long that they must be positioned far above the joints, or ‘sheathed.’ This allows for Mapleheart to move around with ease without fearing her claws being stuck on anything. Along the length of her forearm, she does have some specialized scales that resemble fishhooks and point upwards as anchor points for her webbing.*

*Along her flanks and belly, she \*does\* have some sparse scales that act a bit like velcro for the webbing, though they offer little to no true defense. Following the same patterning on her head and neck, her body gradually darkens altogether.*

*Leading into her dark hind legs, they have a typical digitigrade structure and are slender, leading into a four-digit paw with three primary digits and a smaller dew-claw digit. More so built for efficient walking. Her paw pads are particularly sensitive to vibrations and are built to mute her movements.*

 *Her quilled spine slowly transitions into having backwards-facing thorns that lead along the entirety of her tail, useful in keeping silk from sliding off of her. Her tail is long and slender and gradually flattens like the tail of a monitor lizard and ends in a thorn-like tail-tip with hardened leather-like skin guarding it.*

### Scales

*She has little to no scales whatsoever. Her skin is her primary integument and it’s soft and thin, resembling the skin of a sphynx cat; highly wrinkly, especially near joints and her belly. Thankfully, such strange integument is often disguised under her silk gown.*

 *Her silk gown has a peculiar texture. It’s soft, yet incredibly strong. It gives the impression of being easily pierced and ruined but is quite the opposite. Delicately and dexterously woven, her outfit is specially designed to help retain body heat, humidity, and to protect her vitals. It acts as a powerful armor, stronger than most scales without being burdened by its weight.*

### Abilities

**[Silkweaving]** - An ability she can use frequently for everyday life. The types of silk depend on what section of the gland it comes from, but in general, the silk is extremely strong and durable in all of its forms. Forms of silk include:

*-Major-ampullate* - for draglines and anchoring webs. Higher tensile strength than steel and tougher than kevlar per strand.

*-Capture-Spiral* - sticky part of the web. Very stretchy and tough like the major-ampullate and is very elastic. The glue that is along this web is like golden tar.

*-Aciniform* - for wrapping prey, and is extremely durable, three times as strong as the other two forms of silk she has. Hard to pierce through when fully wrapped. Combined, she can drape herself with silk to create a golden set of shimmering armor, or she can use her sticky webbing to pull objects against her to create a more physical barrier.

>Cons: Maple is extremely exposed across her entire body. Her scales are nearly nonexistent, and her skin is thin and prone to the elements and sickness. Without this silk, she would be dead, and so, it is her entire lifeline. If the silk is removed from her body, then she can be killed swiftly.

**[Touch Sensitivity, passive]** - Her thinness of her skin, while detrimental, is also very sensitive to surrounding movements. She can sense the movements of another in a proximity, even if she cannot see them. When she has a coating of silk on her, the silk acts like ‘whiskers or an extended sensory system, and she can use sheets of dragline silk to feel what’s outside of her lair.

>Cons: Again, she’s very weak physically to the elements without her silk and must take advantage of her silk abilities in every way she can.

**[Venomous, passive]** - Her lower jaws have venom glands. -The venom itself is a mixture of myotoxins and hemotoxins. Initially, the victim will feel stiffness in their muscles, which will then lead to full body paralysis. They will still be able to breathe, and their blood will still flow. Paralysis lasts an hour. Hemotoxins cause the flesh around the wound to weaken and the wound to bleed, making prey easier to eat.

>Cons: This venom is easily waited out. A dragon that waits will have all effects subside within a day, faster with a dedicated healer. The venom delivery is also difficult, since the prey must be immobilized first before she can gnaw and get the venom in.

### Wings

*Long and rather narrow, they are built for quick lift and acceleration. Along the topside of her wings, she has the velcro-like scales at certain regions, mostly congregating near her golden coloration and her wing limbs, allowing for her to dress her wings with silk for bonus armor, though they are noticeably barer than her main body.*

 *As a result of the difficulty in armoring them, the skin along the limbs and membrane are thicker and leather-like, and just under the ‘pit’ of the wing limb is a specialized gland that secretes a lotion-like oil that she can spread across her wings and other parts of her body, sort of like the water-proof oil from the preen gland on birds. This allows her to vent off heat from her wings without sacrificing moisture.*

## Personality

*A sweet and unassuming noblewoman on the surface. She prides herself on her craft and wears her dignity and pride on the sleeves of her gown. She fancies herself as being rather naive and helpless, and often leaves most of her skin showing to really get across how easily harmed she could be. In so doing, she gives the other individual the impression of being fragile, perhaps easy to take advantage of.*

 *Until she was given the chance to reform by Winalagalis, this is how she would catch her dragon prey. Fixating entirely on male dragons, she would use her flirtatious and tender nature to bring them close before spinning them up into a cocoon to feed on them over a period of several weeks, or perhaps even a month. She notably has a streak of sadism in that she enjoys ‘working’ on her new prey and stitching up their wounds and making sure they’re healthy so that she can continue to eat them.*

 *After her reform, she still retains this sadistic- or rather, crazed- remnant in her mind. High emotions drive her into laughter and frenzy, and she follows her obsessions to a nigh unhealthy degree. If she has an idea, she will try to go through with it. Much of her intensity and desire to eat dragons sources from trauma in early life, and it seems to have been a ‘comfort’ to her to murder.*

*Despite this, she’s aware of the suffering she’s inflicted and desires to better herself, somewhere inside there. At least to no longer murder for the mere sake of coping. It would be time for her to confront her past and memories to grow as a person. As a Dweller now, with a far more important stake in life, she will still do as she desires still… within reason.*

## Kin

Born in a large colony in a region of southern islands from *Altuis*, Mapleheart was a hatchling among many in a Tri-Matriarchal society. She had many sisters, aunts and caretakers. A loving family of hundreds, living among the towering treetops and colonizing the interiors of *the Greatwoods*, harvesting sap and other wondrous things. Three main lineages mark their place in this colony, and they own three separate sects. Only those the **Greatmother** approves of can lay fertile clutches, often being their most worthy daughters. Though *‘Matriarch’* makes it seem as if these leaders do nothing but sit at their thrones, these dragonesses were very much active in their sect of the colony and often went to the other sects to meet with their children and the other leaders. In this way, their bonds with one another remained strong.

Her real family is too large for her to remember but she carries fond memories of:

**Yarrowfoot** - Clutchmother. A tender and hard-working huntress in the colony. Remained close to Mapleheart even as she grew into adulthood. Unlike the typical Silkspinner, she is fond of outsiders in that she can learn much from outside their colony.

**Sundew** - Caretaker, one of Yarrowfoot’s sisters. A sweet and playful older dragoness that Mapleheart grew to learn most of her hunting strategies from.

**Apricot** - Yarrowfoot’s mate from outside the colony. A somewhat shy but intuitive dragoness from a different lineage from many islands away, exiled for her genetic mutation that made her markings silver- deemed an ill-omen from her old colony. Fond of Mapleheart and vice versa; a good mother!

**Greatmother Pale-eyes** - Great, great grandmother. One of the reigning Matriarchs in the southern sect of the colony and very active in keeping track of her children’s lives. A powerful and headstrong dragoness with a streak of cruelty in her regarding outsiders; nearly killed Apricot until the outsider proved her worth in caring for Yarrowfoot, and was taken under the Greatmother’s wings as an apology.

**Waterfall** - Older sister. A dastardly little drama-lover. Observes the spats and other conflicts her colonymates have and reports them back to Mapleheart. Together, they make a duo of gossip girls.

**Fenheart** - Clutchsister, looks up to Mapleheart. A lovely dragonet who enjoys playing along with Waterfall’s ploys and will act as an informant in trying to figure out drama and reports it back with flying colors… every time.

## Relationships

**PRE-ALTUIS RELATIONSHIPS:**

**Greatmother Terra** - The second reigning Matriarch in the northern sect of the colony. Disagrees with Pale-eyes’s ways but will often side with her inevitably due to her affection towards her. Firm and powerful, the largest out of the three. Though not militant, her influence in maintaining sap-production and maintaining the safety of the colony is highly important. Mapleheart often came to her for advice on how to use her webs for structural support.

**Flumen** - One of Terra’s daughters, a highly intelligent scholar who discovered how to map stars and track time. Created the “Silkspinner Calendar” and planned many festivals and often worked in reinforcing primary structural webbing of the colony. Became quick friends with Mapleheart through their shared love of figuring out web-engineering.

**Greatmother Mjegull** - An old Matriarch that has run many colonies but struggled due to her lineage’s propensity for certain diseases. Runs the in between sect of the colony. As a result, she has many foreign dragon suitors that live within her sect. Though, these males don’t remain long. As Mapleheart finds out, Mjegull is a widow-maker. Learned from her how to hunt and kill dragons, though wouldn’t act on the information until later.

**Zjarr** - Oldest living daughter from Mjegull, who followed her to this new continent. Alchemical genius works tirelessly to try and figure out ways to bolster their genetic diversity and disease immunity. Mapleheart learned some herbal knowledge from her, which kickstarted her initial affection for being a healer.

**POST-ARRIVAL TO ALTUIS RELATIONSHIPS:**

***Diabolos (Winalagalis)*** - Once reviled him but desired his strength so that she could feel secure in this new land. Views Winalagalis as a benevolent God, one worthy of reverence and worship.

***Mithras*** - Used to find charming, now loathes him. Need I say more?

***Verix*** - Hopes that poor guy isn't eating rotting meat in the beyond with Winalagalis.

***Essix*** - Admires for her strength and willpower, perhaps some other feelings too.

***Hawthorne*** - Respects but will have a field day trying to mess with him.

***Sid*** - Respects in an INSANE way. They will be psychopathic gays together and she knows it.

## Trivia

* Some
* Cool
* Facts