Character
Dear Sir or Madam,
You may find the nature of this correspondence quaint possibly even anachronistic given the modern age. Parchment and ink is rather uncommon in the time of the holonet and other such conveniences. I must state however that I feel those in our line of work must come to embrace a certain degree of theatricality in our day to day dealings. Embracing the way of the mummer lest the unwashed masses realize that we are not the infallible deities we present ourselves as, but rather mere flesh and blood. If you will forgive my presumption I wish to request an apprenticeship with one of the esteemed lords and ladies of the Sith whom dedicate themselves towards the most ancient craft of necromancy. As I have little to hide from a potential instructor I shall henceforth lay out my name , history and credentials such as they may be.
My name is Ulrich Wagner , though this is an entirely self given moniker that you will not find on any galactic census.
I humbly request to align myself with the Sith faction working towards their goals so long as they intersect with my own.
Being a neophyte as I am I would request nothing more than the rank of acolyte under a learned magus.
Some may know my species under the name Largotz War dragon. It would be more accurate to refer to myself however as a Basiliskan as through some freak aberration in my genetics I have been blessed with the capacity for reason possessed by my distant ancestors.
I am to my best estimate roughly 40years of age. With regards to my species natural lifecycle I suspect that I am very young indeed. Much information has been lost regarding the basiliskans thanks to the ravages of Mandalorian occupation. For all they are capable warriors the martial cult devote little attention to those things that fall outside their 'way' and thus records have been lost. Should I ever return to my ancestral homeworld I will endeavor to call up some ancestral spirits to answer some of the more pressing questions I have on this and other matters. Judging from the extreme longevity possessed other draconic species such as the Duinuogwuin and Kadri'ra I am probably still in my early adolescence as most hominids would recognize it.
My homeworld is the godforsaken rock known as Mandalore.
I am of the male sex. To my immense relief the Mandalorians are not in the habit of gelding their warbeasts.
I am 12 feet in height while standing in a quadrupedal stance.
I am 55 feet in length (tail included) whilst again adopting a quadrupedal stance.
My weight is somewhere in the vicinity of 9 tonnes.
My eyes in their natural state are a uniform crimson. I lack the iris found in the smaller races.
While I have seen depictions of dragons with hair in the mythology of other races I have not grown any myself , yet.
My scales are of an obsidian hue. Presumably this particular coloration assisted my forebears in nocturnal hunting.
As the discerning reader has already gleaned I am indeed force sensitive , possibly even potently so.
For a more complete picture of my physical appearance I am as I have stated, a basiliskan, one of the races that human cultures have termed a dragon. I possess six limbs , two hindlegs, two forelegs/arms that can be use for either walking or manipulating objects in a manner similar to hominids as well as two wings used for flight. I am not a wyvern like the Arkanian dragons nor am I a drake like the Krayt dragons of Tatooine. Much like many species who have achieved sentience my kind are apex predators but unlike many who have had to rely on improvised weapons the powers that be have thought to grant my kind sharp teeth , long claws and a set of horns for intimidation purposes and the occasional goring. My wingspan is 75 feet entirely stretched out.
As I understand the Sith way encourages those who follow it to dispense with false modesty. That being the case I shall detail what I view as my strengths offering potential incentives for a future master to take me under their wing.
Dragon Physiology : The old paleologism "size doesn't matter" is patently absurd. Even more so in the ancient times in which this archaic phrase was first coined. If stripped naked and weaponless and placed into an enclosed space with most opponents I would be able to defeat the vast majority of them by simply rolling over once or twice. That isn't to say that I'm invincible, were that the case my species would not be reduced to feral beasts under the yoke of the Mandalorian warmachine. Rocket launchers and railguns are a great equalizer. However I would be a liar if I were to suggest that being capable of unassisted flight is not incredibly handy. To the best of my knowledge dragons being able to breath fire through an anatomical process is a myth. Perhaps these tales have their basis in the arcane art of pyromancy or as it has more recently come to be known pyrokinesis.
Necromantic Adept : I have a measure of natural talent when it comes to dealing with the dead. During my early childhood I witnessed many apparitions of what I now understand to be the spirits of my ancestors. Many were quite insane but those who could hold onto some degree of sanity taught me certain things that the Mandalorians would certainly not. Twice without training I have commanded the dead to do my bidding. During the first of these incidents calling forth a cloud of spirits to create heavy poltergeist activity and second raising corpses as zombies in order to attack my captors.
False bluster is nearly as great a sin as false modesty. I won't patronize my elders in attempting to hide my weaknesses.
Dragon Physiology : There are many in the galaxy who idly dream about their existence as a dragon. Soaring across the skies, devouring their enemies. It's quite another thing to actually live such an existence. The vast majority of sentient life forms in the galaxy are either hominid in nature through some anthropic principle at work in the universe or roughly the same size. The vast majority of buildings and technology are built for these people and can prove prodigiously difficult for one such as I to navigate. To make matters worse there is little I can do in order to go unnoticed in almost any scenario. Most people who witness my appearance in society mistake me for a Duinuogwuin - something that has been utterly indispensable as the star dragons good reputation and high standing with the Jedi order has served to make my visits to society far easier than they could otherwise have been.
Avarice : One thing the folklore surrounding my people does seem to have gotten correct is our poor impulse control when it comes to shiny baubles and in my case repositories of knowledge that interests me. Credits in their ephemeral data form hold very little fascination for me even though on an intellectual level I understand that they are far more useful on a practical level than say a pile of rubies. While I normally consider myself quite a measured individual those who attempt to steal from my personal 'hoard' tend to put me in a very irate state of mind. When presented with the chance to gain either gold or a new tome of secrets I find it very difficult to draw myself away despite my better judgement.
Lacking the ability to survive in the vacuum of space found in the Duinuogwuin and Kadri'ra I have been forced to use a ship the vessel in particular is modified Kiltirin class dungeon ship that had previously been used to transport my kind. What the previous pilots hadn't counted on was one of the cargo being fluent in Mando'a and being able to issue commands to its autopilot systems.
What follows is an account of my personal history :
I was born as is written above on the planet Mandalore. As with most infants I remember next to nothing of my earliest days. I was one of six siblings though I would later find that one of clutchmates was born deformed and thus terminated by our handlers. My first memories are of my surviving four siblings and my mother. I shan't bore you with too many details save that I have no love for my siblings and the little horrors would fight with me constantly over the posited meat that my mother would regurgitate up for us.
I suppose that my mother was caring enough in her own way. She made sure that none of us ever went hungry and even tried to hide us from the keepers. Being little more than a beast of course she failed every time. Mandalorians for all their thick-headedness do possess the ability to count. After one of these failures I was taken by my captors and 'trained' . This was the usual Pavlovian methods coupled with carrot and stick methodology that comes with training any animal. As this happened though I realized that I was beginning to understand the speech of the captors.
Slowly but surely I had begun to master the Mandalorian tongue. I tried to converse with both my siblings and mother to no avail. I had also begun to vastly outperform the others when it came to lessons with the others needing far more 'reinforcement' than myself. It was becoming obvious to me that I was different. I came very close to speaking to my captors. If I had I suspect that I wouldn't be in any position to write this letter at the moment. On the morning that I was going to approach one of my jailors with my newfound power of speech I had my first experience with what I would later come to realize was a spirit. It was a dragon such as myself old and battle-scarred. However it was faint translucent in a way that would suggest it was barely hanging onto the material world. It spoke to me in Mando'a the only tongue I knew saying that I couldn't let the guards know that I was more than my siblings and parents.
Some part of me instinctively knew that it was speaking the truth. So I shut my mouth and vowed to keep quiet. This particular spirit only appeared to me once more but there were others that haunted the pens on Mandalore. Something about the place was poor at anchoring souls though and it seemed that those who did stay became malnourished from the energies that sustained them. Eventually they would be drawn down to pits of Chaos wherein the spirits of the dead found their eternal abode. From these ghosts I learned something of my peoples history and enslavement piecing the details together in my mind.
You will probably not be interested to hear of the number of indignities that I suffered during my captivity nor do I particularly with to recount them in any case. Suffice to say that during one particularly brutal 'breaking' session something did indeed snap inside of me. My handler was the first to go her ribs shattered from a blow with my tail. The unusual part is that even after her heart had stilled she rose again this time under my command. It was a simple matter to instruct her to go to the control panel and release the locks on all the pens. Along the way she encountered her partner. As it turns out even great warriors of Mandalore can be surprised when the icy cold hands of their loved ones crush their windpipe.
Thanks to the entire menagerie of warbeasts being set free my escape was relatively unhindered. I found a ship and made off. The rest is as they say history.
Last edited:
