Bond Creatures

Bond Names

Every type of bond has a name restriction. These make it easier for people reading your posts to determine what type of bond you have.

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What is bonding, exactly?

If you've read the Dragonriders of Pern series, it's roughly the same as Impressing. If you've read the His Dark Materials trilogy, the link between a bond and bonded is very similar to that of a daemon and its human.

Bonding is a strong, strong bond between a magical creature (in this case our bondcreatures) and a humanoid (any of those listed in the Species page). It's a telepathic and empathic bond, but more than that. It is as if they're one being with two separate personalities and bodies. The mentally unstable might even find themselves confused as to which of them is which. Bond links are fairly invasive. Talking gets harder the more distance there is between the bonds, but emotions stay strong. Keeping thoughts private requires active blocking, secrets take skill. Basic emotions get filtered and ignored over time, but strong emotions take an effort and training to block.

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How to bond

Once someone decides to bond, known as a Bond to Be, they come to the palace in Cascadia Falls and recieve a pendant. The bond pendant will alert them to head to the bonding grounds when a bonding is going to occur, and afterward will hold the magic of the bond until they mature. Each pair will undergo four months of training with a trainingmaster, and at the end of that period, will graduate as a class. They will learn about the magic of the bond, about each other, history, battle and warfare, and numerous other things of importance. Each realm follows the same basic pattern of training, but each bond-type must have it tailored to its needs. On the day of graduation, the pendant will release the pair's magic and give them a specific bond ability granted by their realm's deity.

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Benefits/effects of bonding

There are some things that are common to bonds across the board. Bond creatures are given the potential to live as long as their bondeds. While a wolf would die of old age at 10 or 15, a kraenon bonded to a city elf could live up to 1,000 years. A dragon bonded to a Wyrlaen elf has the potential to live forever. All bond creatures have color vision, regardless of their real-life counterparts, unless other reasons complicate this. Bond animals also have some degree of elemental magic based on their realm. It isn't powerful, but it can be used in any number of ways. A dolphin can make a water current work for himself, a gryphon can create a gust of wind, a kyushi can help a plant grow a bit faster, a phoenix can extinguish a hearthfire. The dragons of each realm have an extra natural ability of breath weapons: fire dragons can breathe flame, ryuuki breathe freezing air, water dragons can shoot geysers from their mouths, and kyushi can breathe a dusty cloud. Chaosian creatures also have elemental abilities: gargoyles get a Chaotic blast from the mouth similar to the draconic breath abilities, demonsteeds can call upon a shadowy attack, and locandracs have a chaotic sphere effect they can active which acts as a poison in water.

If there is more than one bond creature from a realm concentrating on the same task, or even if bonds from different realms work together when two or more realms are involved in a task, they are more powerful. Five or six gryphons could make a small tornado, and, lava being melted rock, two fire dragons, an equine, and a kraenon could help control a lava flow. The more the number, the greater power they can all exercize. Bonds can also make passage through their own realms easier. Water creatures can ease the effects of pressure and drag, for instance. Fire bonds might find themselves working well in a fire brigade, able to brave the flames and temperatures that others can't to save those trapped in a burning building.

The bond's humanoid bonded also gets a bit of help from the realm of his or her bond. There's little sense in having a water dragon if you can't go everywhere it can, or so the realm gods have decided. Fire bondeds have a higher resistance to fire and heat than most folk, water bonds have to breathe less often, or can even breathe underwater along with having less trouble with water pressure at depths. Air bondeds seem to be resistant to the cold and low air pressure of altitudes. Land bonds aren't showing as many abilities of this kind since it seems that most folk can deal with moving about on land as easily their bonds, though there are reports that they seem to resist the allergies some plants can cause, or have less trouble forging paths through thick brush.

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Royal Bonds

What's the difference between a royal and a common bond? Well, the bondeds of the senior royals in each realm make up the Council that controls the top-level administration of the island along with the guild councils. All royals have the perogative to live in the palace in Cascadia Falls, though some might decide to live elsewhere in the city. They are always on call to help with anything that might require a bit of royal attention, day or night, and are generally mindful enough of their roots to not mind pitching in to control floods or helping out someone in need just as anyone else would. The current royals really are real people and several make the effort to remind their people that they aren't in the palace just to decorate a throne on festival days.

Traditionally, the "Owns", the rank just below King/Queen, are supposed to hold their offices in Starscape, but thus far this has never occurred, there never having been enough Owns to accomplish this move. Royal bonds are chosen by the gods, selected to support the Unity and keep the government running with equal power to each realm. It is a tremendous honor to be selected by a royal bond and it is open to anyone as the gods do not seem to choose based on family or wealth. The poorest man has as much chance as the richest to achieve a position of power. Royal bonds often tend to have litters, clutches, foals, etc. more often than common bonds, keeping the population of bond pairs up.

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Cross-breeding

There have been cross species breedings between the equine-like bonds of the realms, and while this will produce a legitimate foal most of the time, the foal is always sterile, not unlike mules. An equine-like bond breeding with a normal horse will produce a horse, capable of telepathic speech, but not of bonding. Kraenon can breed with wolves, as proven by the single litter of lupenon. Other bond types do not cross-breed.

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