Trekana, what can we say? Ista loves you just as much as you love Ista! We were thrilled to build you the blue you've been wanting for so long, and hope that your observant, thoughtful stargazing, surf-loving Kanyith meshes with Trekana as well as you could hope! We did our best to give you what you wanted, while adding a few of our own spins, all to give you a dragon you'll love: play him how you want, whether it's in strict accordance with the insp, or whether it varies. (Hey, Kanyith wouldn't want you to be constrained by some presumptive textual document anyway, especially if your reason and instinct leads you elsewhere.) -D'baji, D'rani, and Sienna
Messages
The Rumbling Darkness Egg
The ashen gray exterior of this egg seems plain at first glance, almost ugly. Upon closer inspection, however, intermittent bursts of color break the resounding silence of the monotone with yellows, reds and oranges, almost like splashes from a careless artist. Each splash around the egg's circumference starts with a deep thrum, a clear vibrato of hues; a small dot expanding with tendrils of passionate enthusiasm until finally ending in a starbust formation. Eventually, all color lessens, fades into nothingness once again at the bottom of the egg.
Hatching Message
Rumbling Darkness Egg is shaken by mad mystic hammering from within. It shivers a slow, circular vibrato, striking changing shadows across the sands, until finally it rolls forward, leaving its hollow abandoned. Finally the starbust formation is cracked open by wild, ripping tail, and out from the cover of his forsaken shell shoots a star-streaked blue dragonet.
Sky's Naked Wonder Blue Dragonet
Aerodynamic and sleek, he is a dragon built for speed, a perfect blend of function and form. Star-field dapples of gunmetal grey accent the planes and angles of his face, while navy hide is lacquered smooth over lean shoulders and broad wings, down narrow, trim hips and the untruncated punctuation-point of his tail. A bright flare of yellow streaks a comet-tail's path down the sharp row of 'ridges, narrow between his brows and over head and neck; it broadens to echo the inverted V of his wings, and is echoed itself in falling-star streaks that blaze at the edges of his wingsails and the point of his tail.
Impression Message
Sky's Naked Wonder Blue Dragonet gives his wings a careful stretch, and folds them in a triangle a long his back. Gaze roves from candidate to candidate, but soon, his steps quicken. He steps around the remaining patch of candidates, slipping past a boy, around a girl, and stepping up to Trekana, extending his neck to nudge her arm with his snout.
Personal Impression Message
The edges of the hatching sands become spangled with stars, and a gentle, deep baritone captures your attention, speaking in soft, intense tones, expressive intonations flared with nebulous pink on the periphery of your mind. « Turn from the turbid tessitura of this tremulous, tight-packed terrain to attend the terrific telos to which this interminable train through time… terminates? » The voice becomes higher, speaking faster, « Untrue! Transfigured, transformed, transfused, a tryst; two take up to travel together, trespassers from the tired, trodden trail, trembling not in terror but in tense anticipation as they take the twisting, tantalising track of truth! » The nebulae subside, replaced by the smell of ocean's spray over hints of gin. « Trekana. Of course. I am called Kanyith, and together you and I will share this unending… Trek. »
Trek, meet your blue Kanyith: a poet, a philosopher, and a performer, Kanyith is a dragon very much in the world. Of the inspirations you gave us, we chose especially to base him on Rilke, Nietzsche, Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin, with perhaps a bit of emphasis on the latter two. The theme of your clutch was 'World Music' after all, and American Folk Rock seemed to fit Kanyith beautifully, both for his love of beauty, his quest for truth, and his desire to put it out into the world. We hope he's everything you'd want in a dragon, and we can't wait to see how you develop him!
Name Inspiration
Kanyith comes from a Dakota word for Stargazer, 'Wicanhpi wanyaka'. We sort of spliced the 'can' from the first part to the 'anya' from the second (which, incidentally, picks up rather nicely on the 'Enya' inspiration from the egg). We borrowed the 'k' from the end in place of the 'c', in part 'cause we liked 'kanyith' better than 'canyith', but also because it picks up nicely on the ending of Trekana's name, which in turn relates nicely to V's reaction to Evey's name. We've been pronouncing the first syllable heavy, KANyith.
Egg Inspiration
This egg is based on the silence in the Enya tune "Bodicea". Basically there is a constant rumbling backbeat and she is humming here and there, breaking the line with bursts of sounds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIKzo_6CHhA
Description Inspiration
Kanyith's physical inspiration comes from two very distinct sources: the Blue Angels' F-18s and the night sky. Distinct, and yet utterly complimentary. He is built all kinds of lean and manouverable, with wide wings that tend to mimic the narrow at the front, wide at the back shape of the fixed-wing fighter when he's at rest. His color palette is also drawn from both: the smooth, clean navy of the jet, the bright yellow accents that make it distinctly a /Blue Angel/. You asked for gunmetal grey as well, which to me brought to mind — maybe not the clearest night sky, with its crystal-perfect, easy to find constellations, but one through the con-trail of a jet, or through a city's smog: scattered pinpricks of slightly-dirty grey that give his face just a little bit of an edge. (There are, unincluded in the desc but just for you, occasional scattered stars of actual brightness that, rather than standing out, only serve to make his color pop, shine just a little brighter.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wdwd8dpXUI&feature=youtu.be
Kanyith's vocal tones are based on Hugo Weaving's voice in 'V for Vendetta'. He speaks in a deep, soft baritone, almost never speaking loudly; his emphasis lies in the details, and those can be much better expressed in quiet tones, where every inflection, every change of intonation or pitch or speed, is the more obvious.
Kanyith's mental setting is the night sky; his most basic thoughts will occur over a backdrop of a starry night, sometimes touched by the glow of some grounded light source in answer to subtle emotional responces to whatever is on his mind at the time, but never showing the source itself. Deeper thoughts will swirl through nebulous colours, tending more toward yellows and greens when he is in his calmer, more reflective moments, and bright with reds, pinks and oranges when his passions are roused, be it in mating flights, threadfall drills, games competitions, and sometimes even the thrill of the hunt. When at his most brooding, even the most regular starpoints of light can be swallowed up by by a black hole, dark and inescapable. You, Trek, are more likely to be familiar with his starscape than anyone else, and half the time it will probably just be glimmers that he didn't intend. His external communications will be mostly based on vocal tones, with some scents thrown in, but his stars are more an unconscious aspect. He can pull them up when required, but prefers to communicate by his voice, and to some extent, through memory-triggering smells. It works, though; after all, the stars are always out, but that doesn't mean you see them all the time.
Although he'll rely mostly on his own intonations, what Kanyith will include from you in the mind link are the scents that he'll pluck from your memory. Kanyith will say something, that will remind you of something else, and he'll instinctively pair the scent that comes to your mind with whatever it was he was talking of. You can expect to find a lot of the better alcohol from the Sandbar represented in these emphatic touches, as well as the smells of sand and surf. When you're first impressed, all these smells will be reactionary, because he's just getting to know you, and he gets them from you. As you and Kanyith grow together, though, he'll build up a basic palette of smells, probably without even thinking about it, and will include them alongside his vocalisations. He'll waft them your way in a fashion similar to the way in which he uses intonation his vocal intonations; the scent can grow stronger, weaker, or be replaced by another depending on the point he's trying to make.
When speaking normally, his voice will be in a comfortable range, with lifts of pitch to accent certain important parts of his sentence. Kanyith will be very aware of the stress accents in his language, even when discussing the most mundane of things. There may be the glimmer of night around the edges, and if you're thinking of something on your end, he might reflect the scent back to you, but overall his most basic communication rests in carefully-formed vocalisations.
When he is troubled by a philosophical question, his musings will send his voice into a deeper register, and he will speak more slowly and rhythmically. He will lose some of his inflection when laying out the definition of the problem he has encountered, and as he begins to fill it in with observations that might bring about his solution, may often repeat the same sentence with different intonation and at different speeds, trying to find the different meanings that might be carried by the same words. It's in these moments that he's most likely to share his starscape with you, so much in his own head that he can't help but take you with him; it's also in these times that you'll see some of the more impressive displays of his blues, greens and yellows.
When Kanyith feels he has discovered something, his tones will jump into higher ranges, and he's likely to alliterate the description of his discovery at a faster rate. You'll get flares of pinks, reds and yellows against a starscape, but they'll appear and vanish, rather than stick around. What will be constant will be a build of scents, and he might mesh several scents (with varying degrees of success) when he's really into something, and juggling different trains of thought.
A final note: allthough the content of what Kanyith says will change as he grows, and the non-vocal layers of his mindvoice will become more intricate, he'll have a way with words from day one. (Impression probably proves that more than anything.)
Sleek, narrow, finely tuned. These are the words and thoughts that will consistently come to mind with your Kanyith. From weyrlinghood to later years as an adult, Kanyith will always have the appearance of being lean and mean (though perhaps not a fighting machine.)
Kanyith is not built for great feats of strength like a brown or bronze. That isn't to say he's not strong, but he won't be lifting heavy loads for long periods of time. Your Kanyith is built for sheer speed and manoeuvrability. He can duck, dodge, weave, and turn with the best of them. He won't put his skills toward competition (with the exception of mating flights), of course, but rather will use them for his own enjoyment, for the sake of performance (don't be surprised if he shows off a little), and as physical communication of his perceptions and ideas. He will, however, be curious as to the flight styles of other dragons, and may mimic them for a time, as a means of coming to understand the other dragons. Once he's comfortable with them, he'll more often than not return to his own flight style - though perhaps with a few variations, if he's found something valuable (one might say 'true') in the patterns of another. Once you're allowed to travel to other places, he'll be anxious to visit other Weyrs and learn from other, more foreign dragons. He'll also be innately curious about the differences of climate, training and perception on flight patterns.
Not all flight will be a matter of philosophy, however. Kanyith will love the air; it will lighten his heart and ease his mind, and the two of you will probably spend a lot of time in practice, as much to fine-tune his own skills as to simply feel and enjoy the wind, and his connection with the sky. (You'll also do a lot of flying at night; an airborne Kanyith among the stars is one of the most contented forms of Kanyith.)
Kanyith's body isn't quite made for slinking around on the ground. Sometimes his playfulness will overcome this, and he'll focus on a game with one of his clutchmates. More often than not, though, when moving on the ground he'll often have an eye on the sky. He might also try to do some gliding without -actually- trying: running with his wings out just to see if he can't get a little bit of lift.
In the water, Kanyith's aerodynamic shape will hold well for him. He'll also know swimming to be closer to flying even before you're allowed to be airborne, and will want to spend an awful lot of time around the basin. This will be nothing compared to the ocean, though (once you're allowed out that far). Kanyith will drink in your love of the ocean (sometimes literally). He'll be all for dragon-surfing (what better thing than to have you with him in something you both love?), he'll be happy to swim with the dolphins, he'll probably even like to play with the weyrbrats for a time.
Although he does understand calm and rest, Kanyith will prefer to be on the move when possible. It helps him think as much as it helps him to stop thinking, and he'll feel most satisfied when in motion of some kind.
"Sitting still is precisely the sin against the holy ghost. Only thoughts which come from walking have any value." - Friedrich Nietzsche, "Maxims and Barbs" 34 (in part), in Twilight of Idols.
Kanyith will grow fairly steadily, and will never be too much out of proportion, although you're likely to see his wings getting just a bit longer, compared to the rest of his body, than they've been in the half turn or so of his growing period.
Finally, those yellowed 'ridges of his? Those will need to be oiled daily, or they'll itch. You might even think he's still growing even, when it's tapered off. Expect to keep oil with you and perhaps to teach a firelizard how to scratch while they're perched up there. It'll save a lot of time and effort on your part.
Nacht. O du in Tiefe gelöstes
Nacht. O du in Tiefe gelöstes
Gesicht an meinem Gesicht.
Du, meines staunenden Anschauns größtes
Übergewicht.Nacht, in meinem Blicke erschauernd,
Aber in sich so fest;
Unerschöpfliche Schöpfung, dauernd
Über dem Erdenrest;Voll von jungen Gestirnen, die Feuer
Aus der Flucht ihres Saums
Schleudern ins lautlose Abenteuer
Des Zwischenraums:Wie, durch dein bloßes Dasein, erschein ich,
Übertrefferin, klein —;
Doch, mit der dunkelen Erde einig,
Wag ich es, in dir zu sein.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Nacht-Gedichts, 1924
Night (oh you in unfixed depth)
Night. Oh you in unfixed depth,
look upon my face.
You, the greatest preponderance
of my astonished perceptions.Night, that trembles in my sight,
but in itself so firm;
inexhaustible creation, enduring
beyond all the earth;Full of young stars, the fire
streams from the seams of their flight
as they soar in silent adventure
through space:How, through your your mere existence, I appear
transcended, small —;
Yet, united with the ever more darkening earth,
I dare to be in you.
- Rainer Maria Rilke (Trans: Trek-player), Night Stories, 1924
Kanyith, above all, is a dragon who experiences. He is highly observant and highly reflective, and very much in touch with his senses. He is also highly responsive. Kanyith is the sort of dragon who can fly over the bowl on his way to the corral, and pick up on all the things that anyone else would miss: one of the weyrbrats who left tracks in the dust was wearing the shoes on the wrong feet; the firelizard flight zipping through the bowl for one moment perfectly framed the Weyrwoman as she walked toward the caverns; the way the greenrider who'd just greeted the headman is holding her shoulders suggests she's in mourning; the leaves falling from that dying tree in the forest are hesitating on the grass along the path before tumbling to the ground. His observations can be comical, aesthetic, empathic… no type of detail is ignored.
But Kanyith isn't just in it for the sightseeing. He will interpret everything he sees, replay it in his mind, shift it, twist it, tweak it. Sometimes this is as easy as a simple assessment: the weyrbrat with the shoes on the wrong feet suggests that the nannies are overworked. Other times, it's much deeper than that. The falling of the leaves on the trees is a metaphor for human mortality; the grass, the brief support of family that can't stave off inevitable death.
Kanyith is something of a realist and won't try to sugarcoat the truth he finds for you when it tends toward the more depressing. He won't go out of his way to make things depressing when they aren't, either. When his findings do tend toward the darker emotions, he won't shy from them. Sometimes it may seem that he is very much in his own mind when he analyses everything he sees, toys with it, comes back to it, until finally he's drawn truth out of it. However, he's very much a dragon of the world (we might even say of the universe); he will never recoil into his head (or yours) to avoid being confronted by the truth, however beautiful or gritty it may be. It's all part of a whole to Kanyith, and he wouldn't miss it for anything - not least of which because to pretend something that he's come to realise isn't true would be to ignore reality, and that would be an affront to everything Kanyith is.
"Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain." -Bob Dylan, "Not Dark Yet" from Time Out of Mind, 1997
"The psychologist has to look away from himself to see anything at all." -Friedrich Nietzsche, "Maxims and Barbs" 35 (in part), in Twilight of Idols.
Kanyith will, when he is younger, tend to focus his observations more on physical elements of the world. He will remark on the patterns that the moons trace over the night sky, the sounds of dragon wings flying over the Northeastern bowl, the sensation of warm hide against cold stone after a day of drills in the sun. At first, he won't go much beyond this. He might contrast some physical things to other physical things, but his philosophy will be a sort of poetic, aesthetic appreciation of how things are.
However, the more he matures, the more interactions he experiences, the more he bonds with you and learns from his own observations as well as your bartender empathies, the more Kanyith will begin to notice behaviours and reactions among other dragons and other people. Never losing his love of nature, he will tend to interpret the things he begins to notice about people and dragons as metaphors of nature. The older he gets, the more it will go both ways; nature will also be a metaphor for dragons and people. The more he learns, the more he'll see everything to be a part of a whole - but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll understand it all.
"Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers." -Janis Joplin (attr.)
Once he's fully mature, is really functioning as a full member of the Weyr, and has a pretty good basis for what constitutes human- and dragon-nature, or natural order itself, Kanyith will begin to question the more intangible, and yet influential, elements of life: social structures, norms, laws. (Like come on, who chooses leadership based on sex? And why does the Weyr need to have the leadership structure it does anyway? And what in human- and dragon-nature brings this about? And what elements of this are in his nature, and yours?) He'll also question apparent 'truths' elaborated by others.
"'Wicked people have no songs.' - How come the Russians have songs?" - Friedrich Nietzsche, "Maxims and Barbs" 22, in Twilight of Idols.
In his darker moments, he'll be highly critical of those who just go along with things (i.e., most of the Weyr), and frustrated at his own inability to enact any sort of change with what might best be described as this perceived intellectual injustice. You might find him going around in circles from time to time, and it will be your job to pull him out of it before he spirals too far.
"I'm a victim of my own insides." -Janis Joplin, interview with Rolling Stone writer David Dalton, 1991
"I mistrust all systematists and avoid them. The will to system is a lack of integrity." -Friedrich Nietzsche, "Maxims and Barbs" 26, in Twilight of Idols.
Other times, he'll be more easy-going about it. He'll state things as they are, but with more humour.
"'German spirit': for the last eighteen years a contradiction in terms." -Friedrich Nietzsche, "Maxims and Barbs" 23, in Twilight of Idols.
"Life is more or less a lie, but then again that's exactly the way we want it to be." -Bob Dylan
But don't think that a mature Kanyith will be an old and crotchety Kanyith. He'll always be able to find calm and contentedness, in part by having an easy-going lifemate like you, and by part through his connection to nature. This will be most expressed with relation to the sky and to water. He'll inherit your love for the sea without even thinking on it (well, at first anyway), and he'll have a natural connection to the night sky.
"FALLENDE STERNE"
Weißt Du noch: fallende Sterne, die
quer wie Pferde durch die Himmel sprangen
über plötzlich hingehaltne Stange
unsrer Wünsche — hatten wir so viele? —
denn es sprangen Sterne, ungezählt;
fast ein jeder Aufblick war vermählt
mit dem raschen Wagnis ihrer Spiele,
und das Herz empfand sich als ein Ganzes
unter diesen Trümmern ihres Glanzes
und war heil, als überstünd es sie!
- Rilke
Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes —- do you recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate
knowing somehow we had survived the fall.
- (Trans. Flemming)
You can look forward to peaceful, truly connected moments of watching sunsets while lounging on the beach with a good drink, followed by flying through the warm Istan night air, up among the stars, with Kanyith waxing poetical on the beauty all around you.
"Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow."
-Bob Dylan, "Mr. Tambourine Man"
Kanyith will instinctively share his musings (and, of course, his pink-toned, liquor-scented discoveries!) with you from the start. You're his Trek mate, after all. But there's an element of the performer in him that will be quick to develop. It will begin as playfulness from early on, but will develop into a desire to share his understanding (and, once he's mature, his critiques as well) with the world. Romping around the bowl with Ghwerigeth for no reason other than the joy of falling over will turn using his speech and his physical presence as a means of sharing these findings with others. It will start with his clutchmates: his play will become a means of making them rethink how they do things. When flying with Dzakath, he'll try to turn their flight patterns into a mimicry of the tumble of leaves in the air, or the traffic patterns in the bowl - only to see if they can be changed once established. Instead of simply sharing observations on nature with Rakshamanith, he may start working out a series of very specific lines, designed to make her consider the deeper aspects that he knows to lie beneath the surface of things. (He may sometimes push toward the more playful and mischievous even in his words, and put forth riddles and ambiguities just to see what happens - though his tones should give away his playfulness.)
"Don't mind me, man, I'm just fuckin' with ya…" -Janis Joplin
In the end, Kanyith's connection to nature, his highly observant mind, and his performer's soul will push you to be more involved with the world, people and dragons around you. Through him, you'll see things in a more detailed, and as Kanyith would have it, certainly a more real way. You'll in turn balance him by enabling him to to relax and take full advantage of the beauty that he sees so clearly for its own sake. Sometimes it will be a bit of a balancing act, but Kanyith knew from the start that you'd be the perfect other half for his journey through the world, and he knew full well what the two of you could bring to each other. He's sure that you know it, too.
"It's hard to be free but when it works, it's worth it!" -Janis Joplin
Ahh, flights. What would life be without them? Dull and boring, no doubt. Your Kanyith isn't particularly lusty, but he is attracted by the concept of flights. The thrill and the challenge of them lures him more than the flick of a green's tail or the underlying lust. He is a performer, and flights give him the perfect opportunity to show off his skills, and maybe (hopefully!) be appreciated for them.
Flights begin slow and steady, with a trip to the pens and blooding, before the real show begins. This stage is before the main performance, and Kanyith takes the chance to size up his competition and peer through the curtains at the audience. If he doesn't know his quarry he will try to get to know her with his fast questions and even faster wit. Is she the sort to be swayed by poetry? Strength? Style? These things he will try to surmise before the show actually begins. When she lifts off, he will be one of the first to follow. What information he gathered from before will be brought to bear, and while his personality doesn't change during flights, it can shift from one end of the spectrum to the other. He is, first and foremost, a showman, wanting to put on an excellent performance and win the leading lady in the end.
As he soars into the air after his quarry his entire body shifts into his most focused aerobatic mode, wings cutting through the air like hot steel through soft flesh. It is during flights that he will show off his very best aerobatic stunts, though sometimes there will be mishaps without you there to guide him through his paces. He can get a little too enthusiastic at times, and it will be up to you to keep him focused on the task at hand so he doesn't get distracted.
"Every pleasure's got an edge of pain, pay your ticket and don't complain." - Bob Dylan
He will push himself in flights, and push himself hard. Not just to show off to the green, or to you, but to himself, and you will have to be with him every step of the way to make sure he doesn't overdo it and cause himself injury. « Just a bit further, » he will protest, straining towards the prize and the glory that comes with a win.
"On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone." - Janis Joplin
When he loses it will hit him hard, and he will drop to the ground and the only one who can console him - you. His pride will be bruised and more than likely he'll be sore for a few days afterwards, if he pushed himself too far yet again.
"It frightens me, the awful truth, of how sweet life can be…" - Bob Dylan
When he wins it will be with a tremendous euphoria. Not only because of the mating, but because someone (other than you, of course) finally appreciates him for who he is, and sees everything that he can be and is worthy of. There will be an afterglow that will last a long time, and it might even startle him a little bit as his philosopher's nature takes a deep look into his own soul as he curls tighter to his mate, breathes in her scent, and hears her heart beating in time with his. Life's triumphs can sometimes be disconcerting, and he might reach out to you for something familiar in those moments.
His flights are very much like the Mason Williams song Classical Gas. It's an instrumental piece, which makes it hard to write down the lyrics (da da dum dum dummmm *ahem*) but the tone of it fits Kanyith's flights very well. The slow beginning and then the sudden spring into a lively rhythm. The complicated chords and guitar picking. The showmanship and the difficulty of it. It is an incredible challenge to play, but when played well it is its own reward. Much like Kanyith's flights - even a loss can be appreciated if he put on a good show.
Dragon: Kanyith
Colour: Blue
Name: D'baji, D'rani tweak
Egg: The Rumbling Darkness Egg
Egg Desc: Kangarru
Dragonet: Sky's Naked Wonder Blue Dragonet
Dragonet Desc: Sin; D'baji-tweak
Messages: D'baji, Bob Dylan (inadvertently)
Inspiration: D'baji, D'rani, Sienna
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Trek's blue Kanyith
Harper's Tale: 59th PC Clutch
Ista Weyr
Sadaiya's gold Jivayath and T'sei's bronze Xhiyanth
April 15th, 2011
Clutchmates
Alys' Green Rakshamanith,
Zari's Green Ghwerigeth,
N'ayl's Brown Gudrotgoth,
Kanga's Brown Ruenalth,
Charli's Green Dzakath
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
