The Dragon Karenji


Have you ever seen a Dragon? There are two basic types of them - Eastern (or Oriental) and Western.
Eastern Dragons are wingless, sinuous, and travel by magickal means, wriggling or squirming through the air. Eastern Dragons are very long-lived, and noted for their wisdom and power. They are intrinsically magickal creatures, and generally on the side of Good.
Western Dragons are the dragons of Europe. They generally have four legs, a large body with a tail, and large wings. They may or may not have breath weapons eg.fire, magical abilities, and mental gifts such as extreme intellect, facility with languages and/or telepathy. It is the Western Dragons who were the prey of Dragon Slayers...
Sometimes people may also refer to a third type, the Pernese, which refers directly to the Dragons dreamed up by Anne McCaffery for her Dragonriders of Pern series of novels. Pernese dragons share some of the qualities of Western dragons, but are large, telepathic, can teleport, travelling 'between' from place to place, and bond permanently with one rider shortly after they hatch.
For more information on all of these types of dragons, see my Dragonlinks page.

About Karenji

Physical description

Karenji is a Western Dragon. She is still young, and fairly small as dragons go, measuring approximately 3 1/2 metres from nose to tailtip. She is very fond of Goodies, especially the wondrous substance known as Choklit, which has made her midsection very plump.  She is a Silver Dragon, and her hide is covered with gleaming metallic scales on her back and sides, with more flexible silvery hide on her belly and wing membranes. Her wings are both transluscent and iridescent, rather like a dragonfly's. They appear very fragile, but they are actually much stronger than they look, and quite capable of supporting her considerable bulk in the air. In the picture below, they are still partly folded, spreading to approx. 1.5m when fully extended for flight. They are not yet fully-grown, and Karenji has only recently developed enough control and wing-strengh to fly reliably. She isn't yet up to acrobatics, but can sustain level flight for approximately one hour before needing to land and rest.
Karenji normally walks on all fours, but when she needs to hold or manipulate something, she can rear backwards, supporting herself with her strong, muscular tail, and use her front claws for the job. They are much more nimble than they look, and lack of human fingers is no handicap to her.
A row of broad finlike spines runs down Karenji's spine. These are purely decorative and quite soft, as is the long, (apparantly useless) fringe of wing-style-membrane hanging down below her chin. The spikes down her legs are more functional - they are responsive to her emotions. While she is calm, they lie almost flat against her limbs and may not even be noticed, but if she becomes agitated or agressive her leg-muscles tense involuntarily, pulling the spines erect. Their tips are razor-sharp, making them a formidable weapon of self-defense. The end of Karenji's tail broadens out into a wedge-shaped club, which can deliver a powerful blow to an opponant, while her mouth contains several rows of razor-sharp teeth, normally concealed behind her cheerful grin. All the same, Karenji is a very placid dragon, and much prefers to keep her arsenal to herself, so many beings meeting her may never become aware of her natural weaponry of claws, fangs, spines and tail-club.

Senses

Karenji has a very good sense of hearing, but if she needs to focus more carefully on something that's happening in the distance, or is very faint, her earfans spread out, and can act as a built-in ear-trumpet, funneling the sound directly into her small ear-openings (not really visible in this picture, but located directly in front of the ear-fans.) Karenji's sense of smell is keen enough to detect a one-gramme fragment of chocolate from 100 metres away. This is necessary because, unlike some dragons, who may be carnivores, omnivores etc. Karenji is almost purely chocolatarian. Her eyesight is also very good, and her long flexible neck gives her the ability to swing her head through almost a full 360° radius. There is only a very, very small blind spot if she does that, though of course she can only look in one direction at a time. If she's looking over her shoulder and someone approaches from the opposite side, she won't be able to see them, though she will certainly smell and hear them, and swivel her head quickly to react. This makes it almost impossible to sneak up on her while she is awake.

Special Abilities

Because Dragons are creatures of Magick, many of them have powerful natural abilities such as the ability to breathe flames or other substances, teleportation, telepathy, immunity to magick etc. Karenji is only beginning to explore the potentialities of her magickal nature. Her breath weapon is the Soap Bubble, an ability which is more useful than it sounds - she can blow bubbles in almost any size required, from clouds of tiny shimmering bubblelets all the way up to a bubble big enough to enclose another being her own size. While the small bubbles are useful only for entertainment, it is remarkably hard to fight someone when you have stinging soap in your eyes, or when you are being carried 80 feet up into the air by a soap bubble the size of a car.
Karenji has not had the opportunity for formal training in Magick, and while she potentially has as much ability in this area as many of the other, more practised denizens of Alfandra, she has very little conscious control over her abilities. She has  picked up a few tricks though observation, and is able to summon up small mana balls, gather small clouds of water or other substances in the air, and possibly perform other parlour-trick-level materialisations. When she loses concentration the magick is disrupted, and she loses control of it abruptly, with predictable results.
Psionically, Karenji is a totally unknown quantity, demonstrating no abilities in either 'sending', 'fetching', teleportation, or any other recognised psionic talent or mind magic. However, she has no trouble picking up on her little friend Krystal's empathic broadcasts, which suggests that rather than being an active blocker (a being who renders other people's psionic abilities inoperative, or who is unable to receive psionic input from others), she is currently psionically neutral and may (or may not) discover skills in some area herself at a later date. She is good at picking up on other people's emotional states, especially if they are upset or troubled, so she may have a small latent empathic talent. Only time will tell whether this will develop into anything of any consequence.

Accessories

The only piece of decoration Karenji wears is the small embroidered silk pouch hanging around her neck. This is not just a decoration, but actually a powerful magickal item - it contains a pocket dimension large enough to contain anything Karenji may need to carry, and it has spells laid on it  making it  semi-sentient, and able to respond appropriately to a verbal or mental request for a particular item. Most of the time this works well, but if you were thinking about one thing and asking for another, it might easily get confused and give you the wrong thing.
This magic pouch also serves as sleeping quarters for Karenji's special little friend, Krystal. If you're looking at the right moment, you might see her popping in and out, which can be a little startling to the unwary. As she climbs in, she just disappears, as does anything else you place in the pouch. When Karenji reaches in to get something, sometimes her arm disappears up to the shoulder, which is another startling sight, but not so startling as when it comes out again holding a broom... The pouch seems to have an unlimited capacity, and I suspect that, given enough need, Karenji would be able to climb right inside and close it after herself, but what she'd find inside, and whether she'd be able to get out again, is another matter. Krystal is the only living being who's been into the Pocket Dimension, and she's not talking.


About Krystal

Krystal is of the race known as the Pocket Dragons. The Pocket Dragons were originally from our Earth, but it is believed that they didn't actually evolve there, but rather in Alfandra or another similar world. Millennia ago, there was a terrible magickal accident, and the Pocket Dragons became trapped on the Earth. They made the best of it, and gradually adapted to their new environment, prospering in the forgotten corners of the Earth. Until recently, that was. About 500 years ago, their habitat began to be occupied by humans, and increasingly over the centuries they have become a rare and highly endangered species due to environmental pressures such as pollution, deforestation, and loss of habitat. Alfandra only recently became aware of their plight, when Karenji rescued Krystal from a terrible storm. The Alfandrans immediately invited the Pocket Dragons to come and live in Alfandra's more dragon-friendly climes. Most of the Pocket Dragons have accepted the offer and are in the process of migrating, but there are some who decided to stay behind on Earth, so you may see one some time, if you're very lucky.
Krystal is a Crystalline Pocket Dragon, with glittering white/silver scales, which gleam like sun on snow and help to camouflage her in the Wintry environments of her natural home.
Pocket Dragons live for up to twenty or even more years, and Krystal is still a baby. She is only 15centimetres long, and will grow to about thirty centimetres in length over the next year or two. She is not capable of speaking aloud in a human-fashion (her vocal chords are entirely the wrong shape to manage our language), but communicates with others of her species using trills and chirrups.
Almost all Pocket Dragons are psionically-gifted. The most common gift is Telepathy, but other abilities are far from unknown. Krystal is very strongly empathic. It is uncertain whether there is a tinge of telepathy and other mental gifts in her abilities, but she has no trouble making herself understood, or in understanding the speech and deeper motivations of others.

You can read more about Pocket Dragons if you follow this link.
There's a translation of my DragonCode on this page


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