HOME | DD

SwiftestWater — Sundial, or if you wanna be fancy, Firestarter.

#digitalart #oc #girfugol #gryphon #reference
Published: 2021-09-15 19:55:15 +0000 UTC; Views: 2272; Favourites: 6; Downloads: 2
Redirect to original
Description

Gotta update stuff now cus he's not the lad he used to be

__


NAME ⟹ SUNDIAL

NAME ORIGIN ⟹ Something used to tell time with the sun.

NICKNAMES ⟹ Firestarter, for one of his more well-known tricks of twirling around a flaming torch.

RANK ⟹ Street performer.


SPECIES ⟹  Dromaeus.

SPECIES COMBINATION ⟹ Wulong Bohaienisis x Elomeryx.

KINGDOM ⟹ Mountain kingdom.


AGE ⟹ 6 years.

SEX ⟹ AMAB

GENDER ⟹ Male

PRONOUNS ⟹ He/They.

SEXUALITY ⟹  Pansexual/romantic.

PLOT DEATH ⟹ Yes.

CAUSE OF DEATH IF NO PLOTS AVAILABLE ⟹ He could probably fall down a hill and break his neck after tripping over his tail. The effects of having breathed in smoke for a prolonged time could catch up to him and kill him. 

PURCHASED TRAITS ⟹ Major scarring(x1)

SIZE CLASS ⟹ Large

WEIGHT CLASS ⟹ Standard

APPEARANCE ⟹ His head is an oval-like shape, his forehead, and the tip of his snout having bumps that interrupt it slightly. He has small ears like an Elomeryx’, and the iconic irresponsibly long tail of a Wulong Bohaienisis. It tapers down, though there is a subtle flare of feathers at the base that starts at his lower hip and ends a bit further down the start of his tail. His eyes look as though he’s constantly squinting, and his lips end in a gentle frown. His neck is thick, though isn’t as stout as his mammal half. While Sundial used to appear big and muscular, the loss of fur and feathers on most of the left half of his body has made it clear he’s much thinner. He does look a hell of a ton scarier, though. He has one and a half feathers at the top of his head, and stripes running along his body. He has long elbow feathers on his left side and only three front toes, one of which curls up in the typical raptor way. His back paws don’t exactly look like paws, with thick claws that are more like hoof nails. He does have pawpads, though. His wing fingers are long. His tail has fully healed since his encounter with the fire, as has his crown of feathers, returned to their full glory. The left side of Sundial’s face is just bare skin. There are a few stray hairs near the borders of his scar, but there is nothing else there. His eyelid is also completely burnt, and the scar leads down towards his throat, too. 


The majority of his feathers are black, though they are coated in blue iridescence which makes them look more grayish blue than black. Some of his chest and all of his underbelly are white. Most of his back legs are also white, and the underside of his tail is, too. His crown of feathers is a blend of dark greens, blacks, and gray-blues. The stripes on his pelt are more iridescent than the rest of his body, which makes them appear bluer. His elbow feathers are white, and a portion of his outer wings are dark green. Most of his wings are a deeply saturated blue, though. The second layer of his wings is a regular black, and the wing limb has the same blue iridescence as his body. His eyes are a dark gray, as well as his claws. His scales and snout are a more faded-out gray-red. His inner wing is white.



PERSONALITY ⟹ Sundial often found himself in situations that require quick thinking, like someone trying to haggle for his products or attempting to stuff them under their wings when he wasn’t looking. As such, he has developed a fast, clever mind that gives him the ideas he uses almost every day. Such as installing a three-foot back policy at his stand and many others. Due to this, he is seen as clever. He doesn’t sell much of anything anymore, but being so jittery does keep him aware. Sundial enjoys painting and performing, and while one could argue that it’s useless, it has made him much more aware of his surroundings. To get every little detail in his works, he often looks around for labels and even slight ruffles in feathers. You can’t spin fire on a stick if you aren’t aware of the things around you, lest you burn something to the ground. In other words, he’s pretty observant. His politeness stems from the fact that he knows someone could be very intimidated by him, or even wish to fight him if he came across as hostile due to his gruff-looking features. So he keeps his head low when talking to strangers and his body language calm. 


Sundial is a hard worker, and no matter how bored or frustrated with the job he gets, he’ll make sure to keep a friendly smile and not slack. However, this is one of the reasons he complains about his sore body. He ignores his body’s uncomfort and pains most of the time to move around his cart or perfect his painting and cleaning pelts and doesn’t listen when told to rest. Ever since the incident where Sundial had gotten lost in a flaming forest, the dromaeus hasn’t been the same. He is very scared of bright lights and will only work with fire if he can’t hear it. It brings back memories that would shake a well-off soldier to the core. He’s petrified of fireflies as well, as they remind him of smoldering ashes. The sound of breaking wood makes him pause in fear, and dragons forbid he try to pounce upon a rabbit or something of the sort. Landing near avus or on top of a living creature sends him into a fit. He has to pause and remind himself that he isn’t in the fire anymore. Remind himself that he’s alive, and so is his brother. With the left side of his face crispified, Sundial can tend to be very unnerving. It makes him look as though he had been in a dangerous battle and is to be feared. With the addition of his practically black eyes, it’s menacing to look at in the dark or with the glow of fire warming his face. Sundial has startled passerby on a few occasions, and he can’t help but feel horrible about it.


After running away from home out of fear, Sundial can’t help but feel sad about things in his life. Seeing avus happily chattering with their friends and family makes him long for something he believes he can never have again. Everything that happened he thinks of as his fault. Sundial can’t take it when anyone mentions how disheveled and sad he looks now, and will simply begin bawling when asked. He can tend to be rather mealy-mouthed, trying to tell avus only what they want to hear and not what he thinks. Opinions can be hurtful, and he’d rather not make any enemies. He has quite the hard head, and just like how he ignores his body asking for breaks, he also occasionally ignores his friend’s requests for breaks, too. ‘’It’s just up the mountain, you can make it!’’ or ‘’C’mon, you can do it this time.’’ are often things he says. While he knows most of his buddies aren’t as strong as him, he believes that no matter your size you can do whatever you want if you try hard enough.



POSITIVE/NEUTRAL/NEGATIVE TRAITS ⟹

Positive -

Clever

Observant

Polite


Neutral -

Hardworking

Jittery

Unnerving


Negative -

Easily upset.

Mealy-mouthed

Hard-headed.



BACKSTORY ⟹ 



NESTLING.


He was hatched alongside his brother, Torpor, in his parent’s home in a comfortable mound of expensive fabrics and such. He was the first to crack through the egg, his brother taking a day and a half to follow suit. From the moment they opened their eyes, they were showered with toys and things to gnaw on. That’s just how his parents were, they spoiled those two. While Sundial never figured out his father’s profession, he knew his mother was a fabric merchant because whenever she went out on long trips, she'd end up returning with fabrics from the rainforest kingdom. As a nestling, he usually just sat around and watched his brother play, taking the time to inspect every nook and cranny in their bed. 



FLEDGELING.



As a fledgling Sundial’s life wasn’t much different, only that he started school and began to learn how to read. His mother began teaching him how to price fabrics and how much they should be discounted. His brother, on the other hand, went with his father and was taught whatever his father’s job was and how to do it properly. Sundial never really got to hang out with his brother- it seemed like he was always gone with his dad. 


But aside from that, his mother was quite the fun teacher, and when he got out of school he would sometimes get to take trips to other kingdoms on the back of his mom’s cart and see how things worked there. Once he learned what he needed to he was transferred into being a full-time apprentice, helping his mother out with things and following her to other kingdoms occasionally. He even got to manage the stand once. (And never again, because he knocked everything over due to his tail.) Still, he felt lonely when he would come home after working and sit around, waiting for his brother to get back. Even then, he’d usually just say hi and head right to sleep due to being so exhausted. 


While learning about different fabrics and such, Sundial grew a liking for painting and arts, as he’d spend some time in the Rainforest and often got 'lost' wandering around and being friendly to the harpies(Who were, reasonably, weary of his tail). He often found himself eyeing brushes and paints, occasionally bugging his mother to buy some for him to or use.


It wasn’t long before something strange happened, where his father just stopped coming home. That left him, his brother, and his mother to fend for themselves. She found herself working herself to exhaustion, trying to keep the boys in check and keep them out of trouble. She often found Torpor outside in the garden, and Sundial neglecting his work to paint instead.


To think that she’d worked so hard, only for things to go so south. The dromaeus occasionally pitied his mother, who stopped asking him to come with her to the stand and stopped asking him to clean the paint from his talons. 



SUB-ADULT.



Sundial wasn’t happy. His mother seemed to have given up on him, the once bright dromaeus seeming to not want to ‘bore’ him with lessons anymore. So he came with her to work, just to see her face light up again. To see the happiness come back to her like all those months ago. He may have kept up his painting, but he did still manage the stand with his mother. Though not as her apprentice, as a full merchant. One couldn’t say the same about his brother, though.


Sundial often painted things around the house, but after he began going back to the stand, he’d paint passerby in his downtime. But he found that they didn’t get much business aside from busy days. He felt bad when he returned home with two complete paintings, feeling guilty that they didn’t have enough customers. Feeling guilty that he only got to visit the rianforest once a month. So he started something new. Something daring- something that would surely bring in the coppers.


Street performance. He stood at the stand the next day, a bowl at his feet and a grin on his face. His mother knew not of what he was plotting, but she could tell something was up. Then he began to dance wildly, calling it the dance of flames. It was a story told through movement, about a lizard who became a dragon. He had no assistance but a few brushes and bowls of paint, but he earned coppers through his performances. Slowly, he added more things to the story, like sticks that his mother would thwack against the ground as a beat, and volunteers from the crowd. 


Then, he added fire itself. Starting as a small lick of flame that he would quickly extinguish, he practiced at home, away from crowds. Striking a rock against flint and putting a torch to the sparks, he spun around fire like it was nothing more than a toy. Yes, before he knew what he was doing he almost set himself aflame. But with time, he got better. Then he introduced it to the performances, along with a few other things, like portraits in-between parts of the dance and even play battles with volunteers, using sticks as weapons. This brought him and his mother much more business. So much more. He loved it. He loved making his mother happy. Then his brother joined in, too. A fortune teller.. How strange. The trio made themselves quite the name. While Torpor admitted he was bogus and just did it for fun, he wouldn’t dare admit that to the public.


Nothing of much importance happened in Sundial’s life until the dreaded day he caught Spotted murrain. His brother and mother were bed-ridden and Sundial was only still working because he refused to stop. He put on more shows to help his family, though with the closing of borders, he barely scraped up more than a couple a day. Nobody had coppers to waste on someone who wasn’t providing them something in return. Sundial refused to give up though and kept working. Eventually, his brother was able to join him by selling any of the excess crops their mother had that were still alive during the heat surge. They bonded even more over this time, spending less time inside and more time outside working. It seemed Sundial had had enough pain in his life and was ready to get back on his feet.


Until the fires began, of course. Torpor had already left to go help put them out and Sundial was left alone with his mother, feeling useless. He begged his mother to let him help douse them and when that didn’t work, he simply snuck out. After making it to the fire spots, his brother confronted him about his rule-breaking and ended up getting them lost in a burning forest. Trying to keep his brother from getting even more lost, Sundial pounced on him and was knocked into a tree, causing mass injury to the left side of his face and a bit of his throat. He was flown back to the clearing and awaken, but they still had to make the trek back home. Sundial came up with the excuse that they were only going to help out when a tree fell on him, but his mother could see through that with ease. 


She yelled at Torpor, blaming him for his brother’s injuries and simply refusing to see it any other way. She was getting too hostile for Sundial’s comfort, and out of pure instinct, pushed his mother over on her side to protect him after she had nicked him on the ear. But- oh no, it appeared that he had.. Hurt his mother. She looked shocked that he would do this, and the brothers could only stand and watch as she hobbled back onto her feet. Sundial couldn’t speak. He was stunned. Torpor, sensing that something was going to happen, told Sundial to run before their mother hurt him badly. And so he did. He ran straight out of Preyma and didn’t stop until he almost lost himself in the mountains. Eventually, he had to come back after realizing that he couldn’t hunt for himself, so taking any of the coppers he had left, he settled himself in Upper Preyma. It was cold and he certainly wasn’t used to the snow, but he’d make do with it.


Sundial refuses to talk about what happened, only giving avus who knew him sad looks when they ask where his mother is.




KIN ⟹ 

Father - Elomeryx x Velociraptor.

Flytrap, Mother - Woolly Rhinoceros x Wulong Bohaienisis.

Torpor, Younger Brother - Wooly Rhinoceros x Velociraptor.


RELATIONSHIPS ⟹ 


FAMILY


Sundial doesn’t know his father, he never got to interact with him much when he was younger. He doesn’t care to know who he was, all he needs to know is that he must be afraid of commitment.


Sundial wishes that he could have done something different to stop him from ending up estranged from his brother and mother. He feels nothing but regret and is ashamed to have, in his mind at least, caused everything to go so wrong.

FRIENDS/ENEMIES


None lmfao (Really, it’s sad he has no friends /hj)



TRIVIA ⟹ 


If I were to describe Sundial’s new voice in one way it’d be a minecraft husk


Related content
Comments: 0