Post by Archimedes on Aug 23, 2015 6:27:20 GMT
Name: Archimedes
Nickname: Archie
Age: unverifiable, but around 8-10. Physically, he has the development of an older teen dragon.
Species: dragon
Gender: male
Birthplace: Everfree Forest
Occupation: lore hunter, assassin.
Allegiance: Princesses, esp to Luna
Features: he's a teenage looking dragon, about the height of P. Celest. Due to his captivity, he is riddled with scars all along his bod. His wings were torn to shreds by Sombra and haven't healed to where he can fly. He has green eyes. He breathes blue fire. He had horns, but they were removed. His fingertips have been burned off and still sport the scars.
Living relatives: the next generation of a family of rabbits that raised him as a baby.
Skills: fire breath, sharp claws, reinforced scales and dragon vision make him a deadly frontline combatant. Archie was raised in the wilds as prey, so he has innate stealth abilities as well. Apart from that, a freak 'accident' involving Discord landed him with the power of speech and the ability to read and write. He also has a mysterious spirit within him that claims to be the heart of the forest. After the Princesses lost the war, it has gone silent. When active, however, it can be called on once a month to revive a recently deceased individual or give Archimedes enhanced abilities and perception.
Faults: After his prison experience, Archimedes is wounded, shaken, broken. His fragile sense of hope fails to soften his now cynical expression. His learning having fully sunken in on top of years of Sombra's influence, he now makes calm, rational, sometimes even cold decisions. He now leaves ponies behind if they compromise his mission. He doesn't trust easily, and he evaluates and manipulates others towards his ends, all under the guise of the traditional values of Equestria.
In combat, while he is tough, Archimedes doesn't take every hit so well. Massive blows or magic can quickly overwhelm this otherwise perfect killing machine. The breaks he endured in his wingbone structure hamper his movement with them, but when pushed, the muscles that once used to power his flight rebreak the bones and can use the tipped points at the ends of his wings as weapons.
Gear: Archimedes wears a single white scarf around his neck, and hunts for books with a large sack that he carries with straps that go over his shoulders, allowing it to rest comfortably in the small of his wings.
History: Raised by rabbits, Archimedes was an oddity. While he was originally supposed to be given to Trixie as part of the class project that Twilight got her egg in. A series of freak accidents and intentional sabotage had his egg floating down the river into the Everfree where he hatched.
Fast forward a couple years and he becomes quickly involved in That Crazy Warlord's plot to stage a coup. He brought a rabbit to Tavi's house for treatment. It was cured by Doctor Whooves, whom he then tore into for knocking out Tavi. Later on, he sacked Ponyville hall as a full size dragon. Sometime after that, he revived Derpy from being a weeping pegasus. He attacked That Crazy Warlord personally and scarred him at the cost of his temporary exile.
5 yr. Backstory:
Deep in the frozen north, the place of his training and exile, Archimedes found his familiar training site. It was the only part of his scarred memories that was untouched. Celestia dead. Luna dead. Half the bearers dead or missing. Couldn't find Tavi. Couldn't find Trixie. Plush turned out to be... He fell to his knees in the harsDeep in the frozen north, the place of his training and exile, Archimedes found his familiar training site. It was the only part of his scarred memories that was untouched. Celestia dead. Luna dead. Half the bearers dead or missing. Couldn't find Tavi. Couldn't find Trixie. Plush turned out to be... He fell to his knees in the harsh snow and slammed his claws on the ground.
All around him, he saw nothing but snow and ice. The jagged bones of his ancestors moaned in the wind like his fractured aching heart. The land had changed. The beloved land he once knew was gone. It was there he wept. For days, he emptied his eyes over and over.
After a solid week with no food, he began to see strange visions. Luna visited him in his reveries. Told him to search for a magic to free her (totally not actually Luna here). He washed his face in the snow to set his mind aright, doubting the vision, at first. He even revisited the garden, eating the overgrown produce and idly weeding what was still a pristine oasis in a frozen desert.
After he had his fill, he thought long and hard on it, using his own experience, however limited, as a guide. He decided to return to Canterlot by stealth and rob the royal library for information on magical artifacts and rituals. Using that, he could better find a direction to eventually free Luna.
It was a solid plan for now, and it gave him something his heart desperately needed: hope. Summoning his strength, he rose to fly north in pursuit of Canterlot, but stopped short. He saw an army of worn down looking ice statues, roughly pony height staring back at him from the edge of the underground oasis. He let his tears freely fall and closed his eyes in rememberance.
"I'll come back for you," he promised his icy Luna, the real one, and himself, all at the same time. He leapt into the air and flew south, using the clouds for cover.
Soon, flying became counterproductive and he had to land and continue using his fostered survival skills and stealth to approach the palace. More than once, he had to secretly remove enemies from his path. A couple changelings and a guard that had accepted the new regime.
He succeeded on reaching the palace library in the black of night. Filling his bags with books bearing relevant titles, he quickly became far less stealthy. His speed, however, was his strong suit and he made his exit through the air. He was naturally spotted, but there were no pegasi awake at this hour with the speed to catch him. The changelings were naturally slower, and always easier to outrun.
In the space of four hours northbound, Archimedes had all but shaken off his pursuers. A lone Pegasus remained, to whom he offered reconciliation.
"Why not just stop fighting, since we're so far away you can be a good pony and go back to the castle and say you lost me?" He offered.
"Because if I don't catch you or die trying, they'll kill my family!" She replied, teary eyed. "I have a daughter!"
Archimedes sighed and with a quick action of his tail and wings swatted her out of the air and into unconsciousness. He swooped down afterwards to check that she was still alive, and once he made sure the area for a mile in all directions was clear of predators, he flew in a different course northward, back to his lair to read and find something.
After a month of searching the tomes and restoring his statues, he had nothing. But he had other knowledge, knowledge of ancient things, history, politics, the origins of the empires and races and species. He was intrigued to find out more, his hunger for knowledge beginning to creep at the edges of his despair and roll back the mantle of his grief. He planned another trip, this time to Twilight's library in Ponyville. He didn't know if those tomes were still there, but he had to try.
His approach was a success. He quietly entered the tree house without alarm. However, he found it stripped of all but a few books. He took those with a heavy heart, vowing to examine them back at base. When he tried to leave, however, the exits were blocked with green magical barriers. He tried to slice his way through the wall, only to find the field had extended over the entire treehouse.
Above him, he could see the green field descending slwoly. After passing a window, he finally saw the source of it. A changeling, taller and more slender than the stock variant, but not the queen. His soulless eyes slanted along with his cocky grin. There was no escape.
Archimedes didn't panic. Instead he bounded to the ground floor of the treehouse and started to dig up the floor. He tore at the earth quickly, never losing focus or his mind. He dug slantways, away from the side of the treehouse the changeling was on. After a few moments, he found bedrock and had a sizable hole underneath the floor. He looked up and caught the glimmer of the green energy descending as a cieling. He laid down inside the shallow trench he dug and the field came down, pony height, baby dragon height, pet lizard height, and finally parasprite height. Then it stopped, and stayed stopped. Archimedes held his breath for what seemed like an eternity before the field vanished. He sighed, almost weeping in joy.
He got up and dared a peek outside. Creeping at one of the window sills, he assumed he was now alone. Carefully, he crept out of the library and flew away with no further incident.
Upon returning to his lair, he sighed and dropped the bag. "That was too close, Luna!" He jabbed at the fully restored sculpture. It stoically smiled its joy at him being alive and remained a statue. "So, what do I do now? If the library is trapped, you know other places will be, too. I can't exactly sneak Canterlot again, it's become a fortress."
Luna offered no suggestions.
"Eh...well, I guess I can't rely on a statue to tell me what to do." He pondered aloud. He then remembered. "Ah! The crystal empire has a huge castle library! And I bet Sombra doesn't keep it nearly as well as Chrysalis."
He made up his mind. He was going to go straight there. If he read his history right, and he had, then Sombra didn't have guards or minions. Instead, he broke the spirits of his subjects and ruled and policed them personally with the aid of magic. That settled it. He was going to read the last books he got from Twilight's and do it.
A week went by and the time came. He wished his alicorn statue farewell and asked for luck. In just a short few hours, he would be there. He took off, flying high and using cloud cover.
Finally, he did see it. The single spire rose from Equus like a beacon of light. It stood in stark contrast to the nature of the one it held. Slowly, he circled it closer and closer, casing the kingdom. He was indeed correct, there were no guards, and the ponies looked miserable.
He swooped in low and walked the street, but the ponies did not even register him. He remembered what it was like here in its prime, when it was ruled by princess Cadence. His heart grew a little harder.
He started for the palace steps when a shadow caught the corner of his eye. He turned to face it, but it was just a crystal pony. He sighed. He felt jumpy, nervous. He started again, but a whistling sound made him duck forward. When he lifted his head and the sound had passed, there was an arrow in the ground before him.
He looked back to its origin and saw two more arrows. Quickly, he dodged out of the way and counterattacked towards their source with a line of flame. His eyes followed it towards its mark - to the left of a shadow pony the likes of which he had only seen once.
"Sombra?" He asked, and the pony magicked a bow and arrow, alongside another who mirrored the action. No, not sombra. These were new guards, different from the old regime.
Archie spit as he batted the arrows out of the air with a blast from his wings and shared at them. When he was within melee range, they vanished in whisps of smoke and reappeared in more advantageous positions, readying swords.
He flew at them again, but they were ready...Ready for a pony doing something similar, anyway, as Archie cut through them and their defense with his claws. Their bodies hunched over and lay still.
He sighed. He hadn't wished to get into a fight and cursed his own carelessness before doubling back to the castle. When he approached the steps, however, a chain net with four harpoons at the edges fell and pinned him to the ground. Archie struggled, pain biting into his skin where it touched the metal. He noticed three things, the net was barbed wire, another net and the two teams on the balcony of the tower with the net ballistae already reloading.
He focused, managing to calm the beginning of his panic. He manged to find a common thread in the weave of the two nets. In a flash, his claws rent the edges of the nets and forced them off, just barely getting untangled in time to dodge the second volleys. He decided to head further into the castle, hoping to find the library and a back entrance not covered by ballistae.
He focused, remembering the layout from during the war. He followed the steps up, down a hallway. Turn left here. Follow these down. Avoid that patrol by hiding in the ceiling. Dodge that patrol in this barrel. Tiptoe down the steps to here...The entrance to the library.
King Sombra's personal library. There had to be something in here. He stared at the door for a solid minute, captivated by its simplicity,only ornamented by a single dark gem above the archway. He stepped forward and clawed the handle. Nothing. He opened the door.
Luna stood on the other side, laughing quietly. He almost howled with happiness. But this was a place of illusions. What was this one?
"You'll never free me," She said softly.
Archimedes felt his heart catch in his chest. "Wh-what?" He asked her.
"I am no longer your friend!" She screamed and looked at him with Nightmare Moon's eyes. Nightmare Moon's face. Nightmare Moon's terrifying expression. She blasted him into a wall, but he felt his heart torn even before that.
In the real world, Archie sat silently facing fotward, planted in the middle of the room before the door. The door was now open and Sombra was pacing around him, his mind racing over how best to remove him as a threat. The last dragon had...
And with that memory, he was enraged and struck Archimedes' compliant form with a hoof. Two hooves. Five hooves. He knocked him over and used magic, cutting at the limp form, long scrapes and gashes over the closest body part.
Finally, he noticed the wings. YES! He bent them, used his magic, tearing them apart to the bone. But no, he wouldn't separate it completely. He would just leave the tatters as memories of his old freedom. Finally, when his bloody work was finished, he lifted the curse.
Archimedes snapped back and screamed in pain before he knew what was going on. He couldn't believe the pain. It was so...intense. it removed all coherent thought from his mind. He flapped his wings, or tried to once and only once, and remained still. The bones were broken. He could feel the flesh in tatters, he dared not look back.
Behind his screams he could hear a maniacal voice. He could see a dark shape in his blurry vision.
"You will pay for that dragon's insolence," was all he said, but it was enough to know it was Sombra.
He tried to crawl away, up the steps, somewhere. He could feel himself being pulled by magic-by his wings.
"Take him to the dungeon." Sombra said to his unseen subordinates.
The magic pulled and dragged him up the steps. He screamed until he had no voice, trying to breathe fire everywhere, but none of it came.
The months came and went, but time seemed to stop completely for Archimedes. An eternity of torture, caging, torture, caging came and went. He became...disfigured. Sombra gave him a mirror to show him. Sometimes he would wake up to visions of all of his friends dead. The gore was sickening.
Finally, he could tell Sombra was getting bored. He found himself in the open air for the first time...since...he couldn't remember. The cold and hard metal of the chains digging into his skin was washed by the warm light of the sun. Then he saw crystal ponies. A small band were wielding pitchforks and swords. They looked haggard, and bore unchained leg irons. They rushed at him, yelling angry calls of death at him.
He blanched, unsure if he could fight them for even his pathetic life. But he found himself tearing into them, detached from the horrific scene before him. Like he was viewing it all from third person. He saw Archimedes dance through them, a dervish of claws and steel chains and tail whipping around and lopping off heads and legs and severing ponies in two.
When he was finished, he looked up into the stands for the first time, just to take his eyes off the gore. His entire body felt numb, like it was wounded too badly to care or die. A splattering of ponies looked on enthusiastically, some even stamping their hooves in applause. Over it all was King Sombra, looking mildly pleased.
He blanched. He was...happy...Sombra was happy? What was wrong with him? He looked down at the pile of bodies he was standing on. He saw his scales coated in crimson. He wept. He wept, but no tears came. Slowly, even the weeping dragon within died.
As the months droned on, he was subject to more torture, more fights with civies or monsters. Finally, he was set. More arena than torture. In the arena he could feel worthwhile, and he could feel the sun if it wasn't cloudy. He grinned an unsettling grin at his opponent. A few teeth missing on a scarred and battered face that held wild green eyes. He looked more monster now, than dragon.
Across from him, a gray earth pony mare with a treble clef cutie mark and black mane stood in a black dress with white lace frills. She looked...familiar to him. "Tavi?" He asked under his breath as recognition took hold.
She stared back with focused eyes, not once letting him know that she registered him. Then, she charged. She kicked him in the face with unbelievable speed. He leaned back with the hit, but didn't fall. She spiraled midair and threw another kick that sent him sprawling onto his side. When had she gotten this strong? He beamed as he stood.
"You're strong now," he said. He threw a claw out, but she ducked under it and spun back around for another kick to his midsection. He spat blood and landed against a wall. He went to get up, but she blasted into him with this flurry of punches that seemed to hit every inch of him. He smiled through it all.
Until she finished it, and landed a hoof firmly on his head in a part least protected by scales. His vision went dark.
He woke up in his cell, to the sound of it being opened. His eyes were already adjusted to the dimness. He didn't even look up, fully expecting the torturer or even Sombra there to punish him for losing the match. Instead, Tavi's focused eyes came into view.
"Quit wasting time and let's get out of here," She said in a hurry. "We can catch up later."
He looked stunned, didn't believe it. He sunk his head back down. He didn't even respond. He expected something terrible to happen to her or him any time now. He braced himself for whatever it was.
She smacked him with a hoof. "Come on..." She said, hauling him to his knees. He almost believed her. Enough almost to get up and quietly follow her out of the cell. Even if he did get caught, how could it get worse? Silly dragon, it can always get worse, he chided himself.
Still, they made their way out of the unforgiving dungeon and down the hallway to another stairway leading down. After just a few feet, Tavi opened a grate near the floor and they crawled inside of a long small tunnel leading to what looked like stars at the end. As they went along, Tavi said, "There's a trap just up ahead that'll flood this passageway with spikes and fire. I need you to do as I do."
She scurried up the duct a little ways and put her hooves on either side of the tunnel. With strength and agility, she crawled along the top of the tunnel, avoiding a wire along the bottom of the tunnel, almost flush with the floor. It'd take some pony with night vision or a knowledge of the traps here to even see it.
Archimedes followed suit and began to crawl along the cieling of the tunnel. He followed over it and they went along it until they could see the stars clearly. They were almost there. Up ahead, he could see Tavi dare a peek out of the tunnel.
"There's only two guards down there," She whispered back. "I can take one, but I don't think you can shimmy up here quickly enough to take the other one. Hmmm...got any ideas?"
Archie, however, stared at the sky past her. The stars gave him a hunger for something he had only dreamed about, gems. Gems, and freedom, separated only by this maybe apparition, maybe person from his past. Some pony that he...did he anymore? He couldn't tell. He felt numb. All he saw was a boundary, and he removed that boundary with no more thought than that. Fire leaped out of his mouth and Tavi fell from the tunnel.
He bolted out of the tunnel and killed the two guards still reeling from Tavi's fiery form. He looked at her, and in her eyes he saw the reality of what he had done. It hit him like a scream from across a vast distance. And in those dancing flames, he left her. He ran. He hid. The guards were attracted to her, and he fled. Fled that noise that screamed at him and her saddened, heartbroken eyes. He felt himself shaking. His eyes were wet...why? He has to think of that later as he stole out of the city, ducking guards and dark crystals alike. Finally, he made his way south, hiding where he could see the tracks. When he felt he could leave the tracks, he made his way east, to his cave in the frozen wastes.
His reunion with Luna was short. The statues had all but disintegrated, anyway. He reclaimed the books he had left behind and reread a couple he knew he would find useful. He meditated, trying to begin to sort through what just happened.
He took stock, firstly of what he had lost by fashioning an ice mirror. He was gaunt, lithe even. His ribcage showed. His wings were shredded, but healed that way. His body sported so many scars. His fingers were blackened from where Sombra had once tried to burn off his claws. They grew back, but the flesh didn't. His horns had been removed and his ridges filed. He was missing several teeth at odd places from the fights and when Sombra had needed a reagent for a potion. He had half his remaining tail from a really bad fight. His legs and arm muscles were torn apart and healed again repeatedly, finally left alone so he could fight in the arena. But what struck him most were his expressionless eyes. He had endured visions and nightmares, twisted realities. He knew he had to have something to tie his reality down with, but it was a loose idea he had somewhat given up on. Sombra had never allowed him this much freedom before. Even in a vision. He decided to wait to see if it was. While he did so...he would record it all to set the record straight.
It took him a month to record what happened. He scratched it with a piece of charcoal onto some blank pages he tore out of the books from Twilight's library. He harvested the rest of one of the tomes and tucked it neatly under a rock in the garden. He then decided it was time. He traveled south, deciding he needed information.
He devised a plan to test if he was wanted and the state of the residents of the land.
"It's been three years," Archimedes said, staring stoically forward. "Sombra held me the entire time. I'm free now, and I'm looking for a place to lay low and gather information," he asked the pony in front of him. A merchant named Wrangler. The merchant spit on the ground and hurried his cart along in fear.
Archimedes stared at him apathetically. "So it's true..." He stated to nopony in particlar. He would avoid the roads, if nothing else to be avoided being attacked for being a monster. He had to travel in the wilds, foraging for food, and never talking to any pony even close to Ponyville or Canterlot. He traveled into the frontier, stealthily tracking refugees after he eavesdropped news about a camp for those fleeing the Queen. They might help him discover what happened while he had been imprisoned. After a month of searching, he found it quite by accident....
Divisions:
1. Doesn't have one, doesn't care, really but if pushed probably thinks they should all stay in their holes.
2. He is allied to the Princesses and seeks to free them both from their imprisonment by finding lore and info on arcane artifacts that might have the power and tracking those artifacts down.
3. We should stay in the mountains. Loss of life when our numbers are this small is bad.
4. Just follow the rules, submit. It's the only way to not be punished.
Primary occupation: perimeter defense/ exploration.