Jazelras

Jazelras is a kobold paladin following the oath of vengeance. He is played by Austin in Fragments.

## Appearance and Possessions

Jazelras is a little under 3 feet tall, muscular, with a long tail that almost reaches the ground. Red eyes flecked with black that constantly dart around. Long fingers tipped with sharp nails. Talons on his feet that he paints red. He is covered in dark green scales with a small crest on top of his head. They are soft in most areas, but hard near his feet, chest, and back. He has white symbols painted on his scales in the shape of a dragon wrapping around his body, with the tail lining up with his and the head ending on his shoulder. He obsessively touches this up. The ink/polish he uses is waterproof, but still wears away over time; it’s kind of like a really durable nail polish. He has the ingredients to make the paint stronger and fit for his scales, but still needs to buy the white pigment. Could possibly learn to scavenge this from the environment if necessary.

He wears a pair of dragon scales on a cord around his neck. One is shimmering bronze, shed off of Glimmer when she flew out of the water next to him in the ocean. He uses it as his holy symbol. The other is a silver scale, given to him to signify his tribal membership. He refuses to part with these at all costs. He also wears chain armor around his torso strapped on with a leather belt. A skirt of chain goes to mid-thigh. Another brown leather belt is cinched around his waist.

A covered battle-axe rests in a loop attached to the belt across his chest. The head is covered by a leather hood. Underneath the hood, the head of the axe is intricately carved to mimic crashing waves. The haft is carved to look like scales but isn’t quite finished. Jazelras has been working on this since he landed on Allira. It is his pride and joy and will only use it against true foes of Glimmer or those who have wronged him. He most often uses it for executions and finishers. He wears a shortsword at his hip, one of the few items he keeps from his homeland. The handle is made of bone, the blade of sharpened stone. The blade is slightly curved, with one side being a sharp edge and the other side serrated. He uses this more for utility than fighting. Cleaning fish, field dressing game, sawing off branches, etc.

In battle, he mostly uses his spear and shield. The shield is a simple affair, he scavenged it from some wreckage. It is slightly rusty and chipped on one side. He carries it over his shoulder on a strap when not in use. His spear is also homemade. The spearpoint is made of a piece of sharpened rock he carved before leaving his homeland. He often attaches a small metal hook to the point as well. The haft is made of a sturdy tree branch. This spear saved his life on many occasions while at sea; he used it to both catch fish and paddle his way across the ocean.

All of his other possessions are in a backpack made from leather he made himself out of pelts from animals he hunted after reaching Allira. Hanging from the pack, next to a coil of rope, is a large flask filled with seawater. He collected this from the Slender Sea. This is an important component to his daily ritual.

## Behavior

**Every morning,** he prays and takes a small bit of seawater from his flask and throws it above his head, watching the rising sun reflect off of the droplets. When he is close to running out, he makes it a priority to get more. After this prayer, he mixes some paint and uses it to touch up the symbols on his scales.

**Every night,** he lights a small candle and holds it in his hands as he says a prayer, blowing it out as he settles down. He sometimes makes these candles himself or buys them when in town.

He is sensitive about his height and will get irate and passive aggressive when someone jokes about it. He tries to remember their name so he can prank them later. He refuses to be carried or for help doing things and will attempt to do them himself before begrudgingly asking for help.

He defiantly faces danger head on, refusing to flee or hide; this doesn’t work a lot of the time. This is part of his quest to find his “heart of the dragon” as required of all kobold dragonshields.

Jazelras also has an inferiority complex. He does not believe that he can accomplish anything without the help of someone else or a higher power and will always attribute his success to someone/something else.

Whenever he sees someone making food, he watches intently and attempts to record the recipe in his book and try to make it later.

## History

### Before Fragments

Jazelras, birthname Kulp, hatched in the same way as most other kobolds in the Silverlake Clan, in the middle of the egg pit. It was a free-for-all among the clan for a hatchling after the hatching, everyone wanted to get a strong hatchling to bring them glory. Jazelras was never claimed. In traditional fashion, he was left to die on the mesa. Yet he survived for days, his cries echoing down the canyons. Eventually, an elder from the clan discovered him, and remembering the stories of forgotten kobolds becoming heroes, took him in. His name was Lop the Wise, and he became the only person to ever love Jazelras.

Lop raised Jazelras like a normal kobold, but placed a special emphasis on his specialty: the history of the Silverlake Clan. Lop was the clan past-speaker, it was his job to keep the oral history of the clan, remembering all of the famous leaders, heroes, and events. He filled Jazelras’ head with legends of brave dragonshields, clever tricksters, and famous chieftains. Lop taught him to remember, and of the old traditions of the clan. About honor, bravery, and respect. He learned clan law, and the demands placed on their clan by Ulgiathrax the Radiant, the clan’s patron dragon. Lop raised Jazelras in secret. He snuck him meals and created the dragon scale necklace that signified his membership in the clan without anyone else knowing. At night, he would take him to the lake and show him the different constellations of famous past dragonshields. Of Bar, Gub, and Verp, the defenders of the clan when the humans tried to take their land. Of Chirp, the chieftain who first made the deal with Ulgiathrax. He holds these memories near and dear as Lop, when Jazelras was eventually discovered in his fourth year, was summarily executed.

Yulp forced him to watch as they cut out Lop’s heart. They couldn’t touch Jazelras, Lop had done all the right rituals to make him a member of the clan, and he had committed no crimes. But Yulp said Lop violated clan law by taking in a rejected hatching. They assigned Jazelras to Taskmaster Red and put him in training to be a fisherman. Red hated Jazelras, working him hard and forcing him to stay up late carving canoes and fixing nets. When Jazelras tried to make friends with the other kobolds, Red spread rumors and turned them against him. He was not good at fishing, often watching the dragonshields train. He was endlessly chastised for this; Red often told him that he would amount to nothing, that he wasn’t even good enough to be born a regular kobold, let alone a dragonshield. On multiple occasions Red and others tried to take his dragon scale pendant, but that was the one thing he savagely fought for. Jazelras struggled to meet the strict quotas Red imposed on him, just barely meeting the minimum for the first offering to Ulgiathrax. When the great dragon appeared, Red and Yulp humiliated Jazelras by not letting him present his own offering, making him stand back with the other slaves. He was crushed.

The abuse continued throughout the next year. Red kept up his near impossible requirements and the rest of the clan shunned him. Some pitied him and tried to give him gifts or talk with him, but Red would always beat him and take away the gifts when he found out. He threatened to do the same to the ones who talked to him or gave him the gifts. Jazelras eventually started pushing away anyone who tried to talk to him for fear of their lives. The time for offerings came again, and Jazelras was behind more than usual. He stayed out late fishing one night, and a gang of masked kobolds beat him within an inch of his life and set his canoe, along with his nets and fishing pole, ablaze, letting them drift out into the lake. When Jazelras awoke, it was time for the offering and the entire clan had already left. He dragged his broken and bloody body to the altar just in time to see Ulgiathrax depart in a flash of light. Yulp called him out, denouncing his failure to provide an offering. Red smiled viciously and drew his sword. Jazelras fled west, towards the one place he knew no one from the Silverlake Clan would dare follow: the human settlement of Shaid.

Dragonshields from the clan pursued him throughout his journey. He barely slept in order to stay ahead of them, and finally dragged himself to Shaid. The kobolds stopped following him at this point, declaring him dead. Jazelras stalked through the city, remaining hidden as he stole from food carts and kitchens to stay alive. When he wasn’t prowling around the city, he worked on constructing a canoe, one with a wide base and large oar to get him across the Slender Sea. While in the city, he heard humans talking of a place called the Bay of Dreams. It sounded like a good place for him to run to; nowhere on this side of the sea was safe from his clan, he couldn’t hide in Shaid forever. Eventually, the canoe was ready. He stole extra food that night, taking as much as he could without getting caught. He dumped it in his canoe along with a small barrel of water, a spear he made himself, and a single oar he managed to salvage from the docks. He set off into the Slender Sea, determined to be free or die trying.

He paddled for days, fighting huge ocean waves and the occasional storm that threatened to blow him off course. But he stayed on track, following the constellations Lop taught him. He kept the tail of Chirp in his view when paddling at night, it would guide any kobold seeking aid. A week or two into his journey, he spotted something moving underneath him, a dark shadow. The weather was good, the sun blazing in the sky. The water was as still as Lake Tirol. Jazelras was starving, he hadn’t been able to catch any fish in days. He stopped paddling and readied his spear, certain that it was a monster from the deep, hopefully one he could eat. The water near him suddenly burst upward as a huge scaled figure ascended into the sky, droplets of water cascading off of its glittering bronze body. The sun reflected off of the scales and water in the air, nearly blinding Jazelras. As it reached the peak of its jump, the beast spread its wings, taking off into the air. As it flew away, dead fish began to land back in the ocean, and Jazelras quickly paddled to retrieve them. After amassing a pile of fish, he fell to his knees, sending prayers to the generous god that had visited him on that day. Among the pile of fish, he found a single shining bronze scale, left behind by the dragon. He named it Glimmer and decided that it was a sign. From that day on, he pledged his life to the great dragon, taking on the name Jazelras. It was then that he realized he was being followed.

The initial signs weren’t obvious. The feeling of eyes on his back, the flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t until the whispers began that he knew something was wrong. On the third day he felt a presence poking at his mind, a dark cloud hung over the sea. Jazelras steeled himself and focused all thoughts on his new deity, shutting out the whispers. When he opened his eyes next the whispers were gone, as were the clouds and as was his watcher. Jazelras sent a prayer to Glimmer, thanking her for her protection. He continued rowing towards civilization, arriving in the town of Drommen after over a month at sea.

### In Fragments

While traveling as part of the Assassin Brigade Company (of Death), Jazelras attempted to create a cult dedicated to Glimmer with varying degrees of success. Glimmer herself tasked Jazelras witih finding the fragments of her soul and reassembling them before Ulgiathrax the Radiant could conquer Ei'Vendar. After a brief crisis of faith stemming from a misunderstanding, Jazelras reaffirmed his oaths and began to adhere to the Oath of Vengeance, transitioning away from the Oath of the Crown.

Jazelras died fighting a guardian of the Breggan Taer'The, but not without chopping it up from the inside first. He was given an explosive funeral at the docks of Bistarbrok.

## Fun Conspiracy Theory

Because Jazelras needed a logical explanation for why a distant tornado over the ocean picked up fish and flung them into the sky and was so starved that he hallucinated a dragon and needed some sort of security in his life so he invented a god and started to believe it enough and the influence of the horrible creatures in the slender sea broke his mind and he invented glimmer as a part of his brain locked away to protect what little fragments of his original personality remained and now he seeks a god that doesn't exist so that he can justify the things he did in the name of a god that is in itself his mind and he will keep denying her non-existence by conjuring visions of her and hearing her voice so that he doesn't have to face the truth of what he's done or that it was actually by his own efforts that he survived his grueling journey across the sea.