Rider: Kadran [still living]
I am a little more provocative
Than you might be,
And it's your shock and then your horror
On which I feed
So can you tell me, what exactly does "freedom" mean,
If I'm not free to be as twisted as I wanna be?
Dragon Name: Dharth
Dragon Color: black
Age: 16
Personality:Like many blacks, Dharth is sadistic to the core. However, he goes more for the subtler tortures, the ones that leave no mark. He saves most of the physical abuse for his rider, and inflicts the more insidious damage on unwitting victims. His favorite game is manipulating a dull-wit, raising their hopes for something before dashing those hopes mercilessly. He's done this with several females in the past; flirted shamelessly with them, flattered them with flowery praise, even competed in their mating Flights. He almost always wins those, whether by fair play or foul. Once the Flight is won, he discards the female like a lump of offal, leaving her heartbroken.
The black behemoth is cunning and sly, manipulating human and dragon alike like so many mannequins, gaining intense satisfaction from this heady power. Dharth is controlling -- not power-hungry, necessarily, for he doesn't go about trying to run the Weyr of his own though he'd be more than capable of bullying the other Wingleaders into giving him leadership. Subtlety is the name of Dharth's game, and he plays it very well indeed. He is always in control of every detail, no matter how minute, of the lives of anyone he sees fit to hold under his claw. Any time he can emphasize that absolute control, especially over K'dran, he rubs it in unmercifully. It is seeing the helpless victims balk as they realize how little power they have that is so attractive to the sadistic black.
A reflection of this is that, although he is uncannily good at predicting and planning how his little intrigues will progress, on the rare occasions that they deviate from his expectations, it is a harsh slap in the face. Dharth is not a fan of surprises, when he is the one being surprised. He utterly despises feeling helpless, though it is a rare moment when he is subjected to that sensation. This is why he bullies and cows K'dran so much, for he knows full well that because of the vital telepathic bond between himself and his rider, K'dran is the only one who could ever truly control
him.
For his color, Dharth is amazingly even-tempered. He can rein in his wrath for far longer than most blacks, and even takes a bit of pride in his restraint. That doesn't make him immune to flares of temper, not at all. His moods can be unpredictable and mercurial: he could be in a fairly reasonable mood one moment, and about to chomp someone to bits the next. In fact, typical of blacks, his good moods are infrequent. Less so than that of most of his color, but they still are quite easy to shatter.
Dharth's temper is unlike many. Instead of a towering, fiery thing, his wrath is icy. A chilling tone pervades his mind-voice; polite and seemingly completely calm. The more serene Dharth is, the closer he is to snapping and taking someone's head off.
Of the rainbow of colors his eyes take on, a few are distinctive. His color for amusement is a light seafoam blue-green, a jolly color. When he's angry and controlling his temper, his eyes almost mimic his overall demeanor: a pale, watery-looking blue, like clear ice, and the amount of red goes along with the tone of his voice (the less red, the worse trouble you're in).
Dharth is hard to read sometimes, and is peculiar in many ways. His mind-speech is odd, to say the least: He has a slightly antiquated mode of speech, a broad and fluent vocabulary, and he dislikes using contractions. He has no qualms about projecting his mind-speech into the minds of humans other than K'dran; he does so surprisingly often, much to the dismay of the human hearing him for the first time. Part of why he does it is to enjoy the surprise (and, often enough, fear) that he elicits.
Of the pair, Dharth is definitely the more dominant one. Despite his black temper and his sadistic streak, he is actually a good leader. It is Dharth who does most of the work in their post as Wingleader: K'dran is just the mouthpiece. Granted he can be an unforgivingly hard taskmaster and a bit of a tyrant, but thus far the Black Sun wing is one of the top wings in the Weyr. His sadism is very rarely used on dragons or riders in his wing, unless they've done something to make them deserve it.
Dharth is highly possessive, and fiercely protective of something he considers his. This includes his rider. Dharth is the only one who can lay a claw on K'dran, for the most part. He almost never calls K'dran Mine or Own or any other pet name most dragons use for their riders -- only when he considers K'dran threatened or in a particularly possessive mood.
This big black is, for the most part, misanthropic and downright cold. When he's in a good mood he can be quite jovial and light-hearted, but since those are relatively infrequent, mostly he's just cold. His notoriously unpredictable temper is indiscriminate, making most people avoid him if they can, which suits Dharth perfectly. He has little tolerance for people in general, and doesn't suffer fools at all. Just because he has unusual restraint and he prefers not to abuse his own wingmembers doesn't mean he won't draw a bit of blood to get a point across.
There isn't much in Dharth's world that he has any cause to fear. No one in Eden has the inclination or the ability to harm him, besides maybe the magma Honuth or cyan Seth, but against either one of them Dharth knows he would easily be able to hold his own. The only thing he fears is that, one day, K'dran will snap and commit suicide, thus killing him as well. Dharth has tried frequently to extinguish that notion from his rider's mind, but the big black just can't admit to himself that his efforts become more and more counterproductive as K'dran emerges more and more from his apathetic shell.
Don't wanna be another player
Losing in this game
I'm trying to impress upon you,
We're not the same
My psychotic mentality is so unique,
I'm one aggressive motherfucker, now wouldn't you say?
Appearance:Dharth, in a word, is intimidating. He is one of the biggest dragons on Pern, rivaled in size only by New Cove's amber Xyurith and Skrull's wraithqueen Zenith. In length, this behemoth exceeds all blacks before him and even most of the raven queens in Eden's history, at sixty-three meters. In wingspan as well, Dharth is equal to none in the East: ninety-five meters, pinion to pinion, with the supple membrane spreading far more broadly in proportion to his already monstrous size than any other black. His build, too, deviates from the norm for his color; for instead of the stocky, gladiatorial bulk, Dharth more resembles one of the athletic jades in his wing. Tall at the withers without being lanky, with rock-hard muscle on his bones -- lean and wiry, with a sinuous and predatory grace. Seeing Dharth in motion is akin to watching a feline stalk its prey, or a serpent cruise leisurely after its envenomated victim. No energy is wasted for unnecessary movement: when still, Dharth almost becomes a pool of deep shadow. When in action, he moves over ground or through air as a dolphin's fluid strokes underwater.
Adding to the fearsome air he cultivates and the overwhelming manner in which his impressive stature tends to loom over all others is his coloration. Trademark of his color, Dharth's hide is unmistakably black. He looks as if his body was painted with the utter darkness only found
between -- a shade of black so rich and pure that it seems to absorb all light that strikes him. Dharth appears as a gargantuan, sourceless shadow -- a massive silhouette, until the barest hint of a highlight revels that he is, indeed, a thing of three dimensions. Even the thin sail of his wings lets precious little light bleed through the delicate membrane.
The only places on his enormous body that deviate from that velvety matte black are flecks on the trailing edge of his wingsail and scattered across his haunches; these are a dull, rusty burgundy -- as if blood had been spattered over his hide and dried there.
One might expect, knowing Dharth's temperament, that his body would be traced with battle-scars, but that is not true. The only noteworthy mark on his whole huge frame is a single, rather horrific scar on his forequarters. It stretches from the hollow between the base of his neck and his right shoulder, diagonally across his deep chest in a jagged, uneven tear, to the inside of his left elbow. This scar almost shines against his dark hide, ghostly pale and menacing in its own way, for what could possibly be fierce enough to deal such a blow to a monster such as Dharth?
His mind-voice, consistent with his appearance and overall demeanor, is deep and rough -- a smoky baritone, rumbling like thunder in distant hills. It can be silky, even sensuous, when he so chooses; or it can be a harsh grate, when he is angered. At his most dangerous, Dharth's voice is a deceptively cordial purr that can be compared to an oil slick over a block of clear ice: smooth, oh yes, and cold like the penetrating chill of
between.
As some blacks have been known to do, though he is thankfully the first in several generations, Dharth has the rare ability to produce hot, viable flame from his second stomach without first ingesting firestone. It is much to his rider's dismay that he can do this, though Dharth is actually quite judicious about the use of this skill: it wouldn't do at all if one ill-judged flame crippled or killed K'dran, thus impairing Dharth's ability to function. He mostly uses his flame as a threat, though not always an empty one: using a thin wisp of emission to goad one of his wingriders into better performance, for instance. He has flamed others besides K'dran, though it is a weapon he prefers to keep in reserve.
