Mostly Info on Gilzen herself:

* Gilzen is just beginning her first metamorphosis

* Gilzen is called 'Wart', used affectionately, formally, and as an insult.

* She has a strange relationship with members of her own kind; they neither like or dislike her. Typically they are a very opinionated, lively society, with close ties, strong bonds, and passionate rivalries and hatreds. Gilzen is the one aspect of their lives that they can't categorize, though it is universally agreed upon that she is odd. When she is acting fairly normal they are glad to be around her, the other hatchlings delight in her company, and the instant she does something unexpected or strange they withdraw and watch from a distance, like she's a dangerous animal that they can safely observe if they just get far enough away. Gilzen isn't terribly thrilled whenever this happens, and that's usually when she ghosts away for awhile by herself to practice whatever new trick she unconsciously produced.

* Gilzen, having these powers, this appearance, and this regard from her peers, has attracted the notice of Ikanbula, a spectral Draik who exists as little more than a ghost story to the Riverfolk. Ikanbula is a keeler like Gilzen, though centuries older, and when she appears, if she appears, reveals herself only to Gilzen in the forested confines of the mangroves where Gilzen ventures to practice. Ikanbula (which is a spinoff of the Indonesian words for "moon" and "fish") is a pure white keeler with great skill at tribal medicine and bush magic. It has been rumored that she also has contact with the souls of the Passed, though she herself has not confirmed or denied this to Gilzen. Upon being asked Ikanbula agreed to take Gilzen in under her (purely metaphorical) wing as her apprentice; the girl shows great promise.

* In summary Gilzen is now a junior witch doctor, which sounds kind of ridiculous, I'll admit. Shaman in training, rather. It's tradition for shamans to have some kind of title and, unfortunately, Gilzen in her youthly absurdity suggested the nickname given to her by her community. Which was Wart. Ikanbula could offer no argument, as the name is left entirely up to the shaman, and so from that point on Ikanbula refers to her solely as Wart. (Ikanbula's own name is Morel, so really Gilzen didn't get off half bad. Ikanbula was also fairly young when she picked it; no room for criticism.)

* Gilzen has very few friends, something that is mostly her own fault as she very seldom wants friends. The other keelers she sees as mundane and boring, as their interests extend typically only to the adult life and the cultural goings-on in the community. Her imagination is boundless, she dreams of the sky, not only the water, she has no interest in growing to be a basket-weaver or a poet or a potter or a parent, which is all that is ever spoken of among them.

* She's traveled perhaps thirty miles tops in any direction of her clan's hub on the river, winding down tributaries and following small tunnels and darting into burrows. She's dying of her curiosity, her yearning to explore, but she can even admit to herself that the thought of what lies beyond is enough to inspire at least a little terror. She made the journey south as a newborn, but barely remembers it as it was pure animal instinct that drove her to where she is now. She's trapped herself there, and can't wait to find a way out of it.

Mostly Info on her Species:

* Gilzen's diet consists exclusively of fish, insects, fruit, and nectar. She has never come into contact with meat, red or white, bread, any kind of dairy product, sweets, noodles, potatoes, carrots, nothing like that. It is unknown thus far if her digestive system will even be able to handle foodstuffs of that type. For most food gathering Gilzen, along with most of the youngsters of her race, relies on her extendable tongue. Sticking another Draik with your tongue is regarded as an insult among her people, as you're insinuating they are no more important than a mayfly. Her tongue is powerful enough to lug an entire mango, and sometimes melons if they're small enough, up to her mouth from a distance of ten feet. Fish are typically faster and harder to catch than mosquitos and the entirely unmoving fruit; they are the only food after which Gilzen and her people actively hunt. Amphibians are a forbidden food, as Gilzen's race is primarily amphibian in structure and habit.

* Predators of them (which I've named 'keelers') only threaten their lives when they are young, from eggs to a little older than Gilzen. Nothing is done against them; they are revered as important members of life's cycle and are not harmed. Predators include herons, alligator gar, raccoons, fishing cats, and otters. Typically these creatures stay away from the areas of the river where the larger keelers culminate, so younglings that make it down stream from their spawning grounds are usually fairly safe.

* A bit like salmon, gravid mothers migrate upstream to lay their eggs, in the higher, mountainous regions, where the water is crisp, clean, and very very cold. Most of their usual predators can't stand the cold and so the first spawning has a greater chance of survival (only ones to watch out for are bears, and they typically prefer real fish to the bony, slimy keelers.) As the hatchlings move downstream, though, the perils double, then triple, increasing as they move home to the point where only about ten percent of the original clutch make it to their parents alive. Even then, parents have very little to do with their babies, sometimes they're not even there to greet the survivors when they return. Gilzen's mother was one of the few who kept to the common tributaries where the hatchlings usually returned, and met her three surviving sons and daughter briefly for the first time. Gilzen only sees her family sparingly, about once every four months on a random run-in with them while gathering food. This doesn't bother any of them; it's the way of their society.

* Because her breed is modeled after amphibians they go through multiple metamorphoses throughout their lives. As keelers mature they become more and more reptilian, making it easier for them to leave the water for longer periods of time (which comes in handy, as on occasion mothers have to trek over blockages in the tributaries (some that can last for miles) while making their way to the spawning grounds.) Currently Gilzen resembles the more larval stage of her species, but is growing quickly out of it. The metamorphosis causes joint aches (essentially growing pains) that can sometimes worsen to the point where they are rendered immobile until the pain subsides. I'll draw Gilzen between these two stages; she herself is modeled particularly after an axolotl, a Mexican salamander, but mind that this is not the universal larval stage for all keelers, there are many variations.

* Keelers are normally a great variety of colors, ranging from dingiest browns to the most vibrant oranges and blues, and normally they remain these colors all their life. Gilzen is unique in that, though it's a very slight change, she can change her spots to stripes and vice versa nearly at will, colors altering with mood or necessity. Further alienating Gilzen from her society is the fact that, in addition to the slight coloring along her dorsal sail and tail fins she is pure, shining white. There have only been two others in recorded history to display albinism, the first having perished nearly a millennium previously and the second still living and rarely seen. Both exhibited extraordinary powers, accelerated mental development, and an odd in-tuneness with nature that could not be matched by any other living being. Being a highly superstitious people, the keelers regard Gilzen in the same way as those past two, and as a result she is seldom associated with. Nobody has anything against her, nobody outwardly tells their neighbors and friends to avoid her, but it happens naturally.

* Keelers ARE able to survive in both salt and freshwater; however bodies of water with high salinity are distasteful to them. It's kind of like smelling a permanent stench, like enduring the most awful reek you can imagine, all the time. Needless to say keelers are rare sights near the ocean.

* The gift of music is valued extremely by the keelers, especially if one is vocally gifted. Gilzen, while terrifying in all her other abnormalities, has the most hauntingly beautiful singing voice in recorded history. This, coupled with her easygoing personality, are perhaps the only reasons why Gilzen hasn't been ostracized entirely from her community, as Ikanbula was.

* The keelers hold festivals at each solstice and equinox, celebrating the turn of the seasons and performing ceremonial dances and songs hoping for a safe and prosperous year. Each is strikingly different in decoration and practice and all are revered favorites of their race. Body paint and jewelry are all used as personal decor, taking weeks to make and apply before the actual event. After their fifth metamorphosis all keelers are expected to make their own jewelry and body decorations, though the paint is collectively applied by various village artists. Choirs of keelers are the main part of the event, there is very little instrumentation during their songs as the beauty of the species' voices are usually more than enough to make up for a lack of music. Gilzen always takes place in this event, usually as the leading soloist of her age group. She doesn't particularly care for the heightened amount of attention she receives, but singing is one of her favorite activities so she goes along with it.

* Shelters aren't common in their society; they usually only take the time to raise adobe huts along the riverbanks, as incubators to trap in heat and moisture during colder/drier months and to help hatchlings adapt to changing climates.

* When sleeping in rougher currents keelers will tie themselves to the banks with any available weed, like sea otters, and will bob unconscious at the surface until morning breaks.

* Though the build of their forelimbs doesn't always allow for many upper-body activities the keelers have become remarkably adept at crafting clay dishes, pots, vases etc, weaving baskets/mats/satchels, and devoting time into other decorative objects such as jewelry. There is a certain species of spider that keelers have learned to cultivate to produce a thick, thread-like silk that makes for very fine, very beautiful jewelry and, when heated and woven heavy, can even act as a sort of crystalline glass, also very valued and used in the seasonal festivals.

* Sometimes when the Riverfolk decide to pack up and leave for another area of the river the keelers will move into their homes and set up new ones for themselves. This usually involves the Draiks breaking the stilts the houses are built on to bring the floorboards to the water, but beyond that the destruction is limited.

* Keelers are fussy by nature and take especial delight in sprucing up their homesteads with as much fine art and story-murals as they can.

* Note on the aforementioned festivals- in addition to jewelry and body paint masks are sometimes worn.

Mostly on Abilites/Miscellaneous:

* Gilzen's ability is a curious mirror to what Ikanbula is blessed with (rumored to be, as she will neither confirm or deny it.) Ikanbula can converse with the dead, can breach the barrier between this life and theirs and make contact with the souls of the past. She can rekindle their spirits.

Gilzen can reanimate their corpses. They will have no souls, no spirits, no minds, no thoughts. They are puppets and shells and computers, repeating whatever memories lay buried in their decaying muscles, reenacting the functions performed while in life.

* For example; Gilzen most often finds fish dead, if they become estranged from the main river and die out of water (as is especially frequent in the summer.) On some of her adventures into the mangroves she'll play around with this reanimation and finds that the fish's skin regenerates, enclosing fast growing muscle and bone, veins begin to fill and gills begin to flap. She sits watching, almost orchestrating, while the fish swims off and back in circles, nipping at algae and mayflies, etc. But as soon as Gilzen decides to leave and let it swim entirely free it dies again, all tissues degenerating, the broken skeleton falling down into the blackness of the water and never seen again.

* Gilzen is the puppeteer, corpses her fleshy marionettes. They are incapable of acting independently of her, she has to be present and focused on their animation otherwise they will rot back into whatever it was they were before.

* Another tidbit about this- you can definitely pick the reanimated ones out of a school of living fish, let's say. Their eyes are distended, huge, and milky-white, like a cobweb has been drawn over them.

* Of all her powers this is the one that frightens her the most, and the one that burns inside her, dominates her thoughts. She has to know whether their soullessness is a result of her failure to master her powers or whether they were never meant for a resurrection. Ikanbula doesn't know either, though if she does she hasn't told Gilzen a thing. Still, against her fears and sadness, she still fiddles around with it, when the curiosity gets to be too much.

* Age and time to the keelers is relative, as Gilzen, being an older hatchling, is still just over fifty years old and is still considered a very young baby. She won't reach adolescence for another century and a half.

* To tie back in with the above, as keelers are so estranged from society, the passing of time means nothing to them, they have never seen industry or civilization as it was in the heathen times, they know nothing of development. For them standards and technology stagnate in paradise, all they know is the change of seasons, tides, and life cycles. Gilzen knows there has to be something more out there than that, and again this notion is more support for her label of insane mutant.

* Recently Gilzen has had a few rather disturbing incidents with her magic, ones that left her panicked and entirely drained of all energies; physical, emotional, and mental. Ikanbula cannot understand it and doesn't have a clue how to stop it, though, from what Talort's described, she has been able to label them.

* The first is a strange ability to freeze time, a thing that comes in spurts and leaves Gilzen able to move while all else around her remains perfectly in place. She can't alter anything while time is frozen, move it around or redirect it, but she herself can dodge oncoming dangers and/or make it to a place or thing before anybody she might be racing or trying to outrun.

* The second is something Ikanbula herself rather romanticizes about, as it has very much to do with what she, the strange Draik before her, and Talort all have in common: connections to the Aether, the world between life and death. Ikanbula, as before stated, was able to converse with the souls of the dead. Her predecessor (named Makando), it was rumored, could summon and retrieve lost souls from the Aether and return them to their bodies if the cause of death was not natural (i.e. murder, premature sickness, etc.) Gilzen's was the odd ability only to play *with* the dead flesh as if it were a marionette, not breathe life into it or contact the soul that had fled the body. Gilzen, it seemed, had been rather on the outskirts of the range of gifts regarding the Aether, having been restrained toward the "life" side. Until this strange new power came over her- the ability to wink in and out of oblivion, to transcend between life into the Aether, if only for a few moments. A minute in the Aether equates directly into an hour in Life, and the first time this happened to Gilzen she was entirely alone. She winked out around mid-afternoon, was trapped in the swirling black confusion of the Aether for all of five minutes, and awoke to find it after dusk back at her village. She was horrified, and immediately called for Ikanbula and described the experience. Since then it has only happened twice, each time leaving her so tired she couldn't lift a finger, and each time seeming twice as unpleasant as the last.

*All of this new magic happens by itself, Gilzen has not learned to have any degree of control of it and each episode lasts only a few seconds to a few minutes.

Gilzen's river, which, to the keelers, has no name other than 'River', is an impressive seven-thousand miles in length, if unraveled, nearly as large as both our Nile and Amazon combined. The distance it covers between two lateral points however would only be about five thousand miles, as it has many bends and meandering loops. In terms we could understand, their river would extend well over half of Russia, even with all its turns. It spans six biomes and is subject to all the seasonal changes of these different regions, which does affect its flow farther downstream. The River finds its mouth in the snowmelt and trapped lakes high in the mountains of its first biome, flooding down through timber and deciduous forests, through open meadows and plains, through swamps, jungles, and rainforests, and finally through a vast desert that empties into a delta and sea. The keelers make their home primarily in the rainforest regions, where food is ample and drought very unlikely (though that's not always a guarantee.)

Being such a large vein of life for so many geographical regions means it's a center of activity for a very wide range of species, not excluding predators, predators that will haunt Gilzen and her peers until their third and sometimes fourth metamorphosis, when their skeletons and skin will harden enough to keep out most of their enemies' teeth. For now they remain a very real threat to her young life.

Alligator Gar: Perhaps the most horrifying of these predators is the gar, a three-hundred-pound behemoth of muscle, scale, and teeth. Eight to ten feet in length, keelers of Gilzen's age often measure longer but are lacking their brawn and speed; combat between them never usually ends in a young keeler's favor. Gar are responsible for the most keeler casualties in their territory.

Herons: Another spook, their legs look like reeds and roots under the water, with their talons buried in the mud. Keelers are a little more wary of these than the gar, who hunt by ambush in the depths and thickets, but regardless of that many babies have fallen prey to its beak.

Otters, Raccoons, Fishing Cats, etc: The least dangerous of the predators are the mammals, who are often nosier, clumsier, and the most awkward in the water. Their bodies also give off an unfamiliar scent that, if sensed by a keeler with any kind of brain, should scare off their prey. Despite this there is the occasional youth lost, though as said this is a much less frequent occurrence.

Many of the keeler's local folktales center around these animals, mostly to serve as a kind of effect to the cause of bad behavior or ill will, like the Big Bad Wolf to us.

Oh, yeah. This is Crazyface. My gar. Actually… he's not *really* mine… nor is he really a gar… I am actually not completely sure what he is… In truth he is the first thing I've ever…. seemingly successfully resurrected… Ikanbula considers it a milestone but I'm not actually all the way certain he was all the way dead when I semi-tried to bring him back to life…. all the way… I haven't mentioned this to Ikanbula but… I rather thought his heart already pulsing when I found him and attempted my spells so… I'm not sure what to call this, a triumph or an abomination. I intended to send him on his way after that but… he kind of… stuck around… He comes and goes as he pleases but he's never abandoned me completely… and if he only would. … He doesn't seem to have much in the way of a brain functioning up there so I wonder if my acts could be considered charity at all…

Ikanbula found me one day; we'd always heard rumors about her, folk tales, local legends, ghost stories (all of which were told with a kind of embarrassment whenever I was around, as the color white is referenced an awful lot and not always in a kind way.) I was playing around in a glade, making the dew drops off the leaves dance and spin around my head, when her enormous head just kind of *emerged* from the water beside me. I wasn't frightened, my concentration wasn't broken from the dew drops, which impressed her greatly. She told me who she was, though I already had a pretty good idea already as she was more gleamingly albino than even me, and why she had come to me. To teach me. To hone my skills. I wasn't sure about her ideas and her as a person- there were both good and bad rumors about her- but over time and repeated visits I got to relax around her, and trust her. She doesn't talk an awful lot, prefers to lead by example, but that's alright, I don't have much to say anyway. It's an unspoken kind of thing, our magic.

Makando is... cool I guess, I mean we hang out... whenever. (Psst! If you ever *really* want to aggravate him, call him 'Kandy.' He hates it!) He's loads older than me and huger too; he usually cruises around and lets me sit on his head or back when we go exploring, especially down some of the faster rapids, I usually can't manage them on my own without doing "my evil magic tricks," which Kandy typically likes to avoid whenever he can. He's strange though, he seems more tolerant of my powers than anybody else in the village. He shrugs and changes the subject whenever I bring it up, but I think it's all on account of his name. Y'see Kandy's named after the last... whatever it is me and Ikanbula are; he always rolls his eyes and says his mother had a sick sense of humor for naming him "Makando" after this guy. In her defense she thought it would bring him good fortune, but so far it's kind of only let him have some of my oh-so-desirable reflected glory. It goes both ways sometimes; usually only dumping him in the same boat as me, but occasionally it gives him some kind of... leverage, I've heard it called. Whenever the Elders of our clan want to make a decision, and Makando has an opinion, it's usually considered and listened to, even though Makando is so many centuries younger than them. Entirely untrue to his namesake, Kandy has as little to do with magic as is possible, so he can get a little boring sometimes, he doesn't understand the.... the... *passion*. And that's right about when he leaves....

Natom: It is incredible to me how somebody can have this much irritability crammed in to one heart, especially one as shriveled up and disused as his probably is (like a week-old fig. Ew.) If he has one skill it has to be his infinite capacity to bore the scales off of everybody he comes into contact with, it's really kind of remarkable. He's a little older than Ikanbula, which means about as old as the mud on the riverbottom. And in these many years of his life he's managed to accumulate so much information that it seems impossible for him to keep it all to his grumpy old-man self. Apparently he hates Ikanbula- and I can't even begin to imagine why, Ikanbula is the most amazing person I've ever met, she's so wise and talented and clever… I'm just rambling now but really, how can you not adore her?- and has taken it upon himself to, as he so awesomely puts it, "educate all this sorcery nonsense clean out of my skull." He considers himself, somehow, my spiritual and intellectual mentor, and it seems impossible for him to rest knowing that I in all my abnormality am out and about learning devilish witchcraft and harassing the public. Which isn't true anyway, I'm very careful with my magic…

Paigle: Paigle is another oldie, but I like her a lot more- she's the one who teaches me pottery! Normally keelers would have… their peers and other elder keelers assist them in this, but it seems I am a class of one. Which is perfectly alright with me, Paigle seems to be one of the few people on the entire River who actually glean some kind of delight from my work, which I'm happy to say I never influence with magic (because that would be cheating!) However she, like everybody else always inevitably will, does get edgy whenever I lose it and, in my excitement, cause every flower for a multi-meter radius to burst into unseasonal bloom. But at least she's kind about the event… unlike Natom who takes it as grounds to go off raging and ranting about how undisciplined I am before high-tailing it for the more placid pools where the Elders go to soak… I'm also proud to say that Paigle abhors Natom, it's really kind of entertaining to watch them go at it.

The Riverfolk are the bush natives of the jungle. They revere the keelers as messengers from their heaven in the after life, and believe that their people are descended from the keelers through a process similar to reincarnation. It is forbidden to hunt or harm or even disrespect one. Keelers themselves don't have much to do with them unless they wander down through their villages.

Cappu: She's a strange animal, apparently called a Lupe? Yes, I think it was Lupe. She has funny ears and... fur? It's like she's covered in cattail fluff. Soft though, even though she looks kind of like a freak. She's not a very good swimmer, either, which is weird because she said she lived in a bog most of her life. Augh and that coffee stuff she drinks! Awful! Who wants to drink *hot* water, especially water that's brown! It smells like peat moss and tastes like fish bile! Thank you but no! Aside from her strange infatuation with that poo-water she's a friendly enough person, a little empty-headed but fun to play... board games? Yeah, those, with. I mostly lose but that's alright, I don't have any idea what's going on anyway, usually.

Jalahi: I've never met her, and according to Kylie and Cappu I should be very thankful for that. Apparently she's some kind of nighttime beast, she can get into your head while you sleep. I asked if she was a botfly larvae but apparently they are two very different things...

Mischero: Oh Ero! I have never met a bigger grouch- well actually no, that's a complete lie, Natom has to be the hugest grouch in existence, if there were anybody crabbier than him the world would probably implode with crankiness. I'd say it's like Ero is... deprived of five hundred year's decent rest, though he says he's only like forty or something (younger than me, can you believe that?! And he's about four times my size!) So he's what's called... a Draik? Which is what he keeps telling me I am, but I say 'No I'm a keeler you wretched mud-mugger' but still he insists. And he can't possibly be right- he has those things.... those delightful flying things... on his back. Wings, I think they're called... like the birds have. But the stupid idiot is either so lazy or so fat he'll never fly, all he does is jump around on his... pirate ship? It's like a huge canoe, with big white things that he says make it move, because they'd need an awful lot of paddles to make it go otherwise. I keep begging him to take me out, up into the sky... but he always says he's too tired for it, and that it's boring anyway. I think he lies an awful lot.

Itzie: Itzie's my age- or... thereabouts. From what I'm finding I'm supposed to be a *lot* bigger for how old I am, which doesn't make sense- I'm small for my age! Itzie's bigger than me too, but she says she's just nearing her twentieth birthday, can you believe that? And they call me a mutant! At twenty my people are still supposed to have their gills- well... the normal ones are... I think I get to keep mine *forever* but y'know... who's paying attention. Anyway Itzie has those fabulous wing things too, but that little furry menace that's always hanging around her always barks her head off whenever I try to suggest that she take me for a ride, some kind of nonsense about how Itzie's fragile and will hurt herself if she works too hard. What kind of tripe is that?

Love? Do you mean that nasty thing people do with their lips during the winter festivals? Yeck, no thank you!

Roleplay is: OPEN/Closed

RP Info: It's not so much that Gilzen will be hard to get along with as it is the environment she lives in and her restrictions to it. Know going into the roleplay that the setting will have to be somewhere along her river, and won't be allowed to veer far from it unless you reach the ocean. At best Gilzen can travel, on foot, about five miles in high humidity before her life is threatened. However if you want to spice up the roleplay feel free to put her in a position where she'd need that kind of help, it could be mighty interesting.

	Here Gilzen can write about the friends/enemies or otherwise she meets on her future adventures!

RULES FOR ADOPTABLES.

1. I have only one main rule. DECENCY. Have the decency to leave in good grace if I decline a trade, to only take your own customs and only use it for page decoration, giving proper credit of course, y'know, common sense stuff.

**SPECIAL NOTICE there are TWO sets of adoptables, please specify which it is you want :) Would make for much less confusion and happiness overall. Thanks!

Status

Requests: CLOSED

Trades: OPEN if you're polite

YET ANOTHER NOTE! (agonizing, I know) Both of these templates work for Draiks AND Krawks and Techos and anything else remotely lizardlike so please, don't feel sheepish to request a trade.

TO DO

Cylif? (please contact me again, I lost your reference)

Evoi

Ebolah

SECOND SET

THIRD SET

FOURTH SET

This set isn't customizable, feel free to snag for your respective random pages :)

Count: 21 (Gratzi!)

Art by Snuffluff

Art by Others

(thanks to everybody!)

My Half of Trades: Pick-Up

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For Vladimeyre!

Future site of an application! Yeah.....

GIFT FOR DRYKEY. Because he's just dang gorgeous.