Name: Zerian
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Origin: Blackstone Weyr, Kshau Protectorate
Family: Mother - Arylon E.; Father - Zadeg Kshau of Red Flamar and Blue Noust; Identical Twin Brother Argus going to (BUG)
Other Relations: Erikson Family with Extensive aunts and uncles, and the Kshaus who include Shard...
Height: 6'3"
Build: massive, wide shoulders, all muscle
Hair: crimson top with silvery-white back, this isn't a Blackbottom but might as well be, it's the Kshau style
Eyes: crimson, whether they're contacts or an effect of mom's Blackbottom genes who knows
Appearance: scary, tan skinned, sharp pointy bits, missing finger/toe on each hand/foot but claws out to here, spines on arms, and yes that is a head-jack. Medium Purple Caste.
Brief Personality: whimsical, wily, worldly

Skills: trained with cybernetics and computers, and helps run the hidden records room in the Weyr

Dollmaker: Meiker 'Igor from St Petersburg' (obviously, edited)

Brother is part of the Candidate Exchange 2022

"We gonna have a problem with this?" The Holder was being a bit obstinate, and no one wanted to interrupt. They knew how he would get.

A game of cards, gone wrong? A disagreement about whose cattle were being taken for which feasts? Someone stole his gold chain? Didn't even matter: he would be like this no matter the cause and no matter his opponent. It looked like he was used to being obeyed, being feared, perhaps.

Except this time.

"Yeah I have... a little bit of a problem with this," Zerian sighed, slowly stretching. While they had been sitting across from one another (it was definitely a card game going sideways) Jinuma hadn't noticed the posture of his opponent had been concealing the real stature of his opponent. That opponent had been winning, though not the whole night, definitely not the whole time Jinuma was at the table.

But when Jinuma started winning every hand, that was a cue for some action from the purple-caste wearing man. He'd given a stern and low glare first. And anyone that had known Zerian would have stopped in their tracks right then and there. But this Holder? He wasn't 'from around here' - he was technically, but he spent so much time on the road pretending to be important that he hadn't really paid much attention to the locals.

When you're visiting a dragon community, it would usually be a good idea to know just who is whom. But Jinuma didn't seem to acknowledge the glare of those crimson eyes. He was probably used to it, given his actual position in Dawnlight's trade organizing department. Used to being given the 'death glare' by people whose goods were being short-changed in trades that they couldn't control, and whose lands were potentially being swiped from under them and sold back at premium cost.

Jinuma thought he was just being pretentious, this table had had its share of card sharks and newcomers. It was only this one that remained playing while the others folded and watched.

He might have missed those long, slender, pointed nails - he didn't say anything though. The holder had met people around Alskyr that grew them to ridiculous lengths, showing off how rich they were and how little work they did. So much the better, and perhaps - maybe this time - Jinuma's mistake to think that's all that Zerian was. A rich, lazy man.

Rich? Well, yeah, sure. He had more than enough money to toss at a card game in a brothel. He had more than enough to toss at offworld travel and acquire a much fancier set of implanted cybernetics than they had going in the Kshau labs.

Lazy... lazy, that would be the last word anyone would ascribe to him.

Jinuma's lackeys, a threesome of yes-men that simpered and held on to his hat when he handed it off without looking, who did all his paperwork and brought him his drinks, stood very-slightly-nervously behind their boss. Because they could see what their boss didn't want to. And they also knew better than to tell him about it because they would be the ones he'd explode at and then they'd be out of a job.

To Zerian's eyes, this man was dapper, well dressed surely. With garments cobbled together from the richest parts of any given Alskyran Isle's shops for certain. No rhyme or reason to any of the pieces, but overall not bad. Not a handsome man, no - Jinuma was going to be bald long before his hair turned grey, his nose was already a bit on the lumpy side doubtless due to drinking and also being punched more than a few times by the looks of its angles. His lackeys were just that: fodder, not idiots, they knew their place was precarious at best and they'd be out of a job tonight anyway by the looks of it.

"And why would that be," Jinuma patiently said, touching his cards with one finger as if sprucing its edge up.

Zerian glanced at his own hand, which had been face-down for a while now, and back up at Jinuma's. This hand wasn't going to show itself, until his opponent decided to put them on the table. But he was sure, absolutely, one hundred percent sure, that at least one of those cards was also in his own hand.

He didn't need the cybernetic equipment lacing his skull and brain to calculate which of those cards it was. He'd watched five hands, seen all the others with their folds, and knew that slightly-frayed edge was, in fact, "because that's the Aerielady In Green," Zerian gave the slightest of nods upwards at his opponent's hand, "and," he put down his own - normally winning - set for them to see. "There she is without the additional damage from being tucked into your sleeve."

The entire room was holding its breath, from the bartender and two waitresses, to the guy on the piano, the ladies and gents dancing on the floor had swept to a stop with skirts still swaying, and the other people drinking or reading or waiting their turn at one of those ladies or gents. One had his beer mug halfway lifted, another gently put their shot glass down and swallowed as quietly as she could.

All eyes on this table now. It seemed like Jinuma relished this moment. As if he could pull a triumph out of this?

His finger had stopped moving along the edge of that card, when he put his hand splayed on the table.

"I don't see any such card," he said, very, very carefully and edged with ice.

"That's because you hid it under the Seven Green Dragons."

Zerian finally stood slowly from his wooden chair, which gave a distinctive scrap across the tile floor. Jinuma tried to maintain his air of chilly calm but Zerian kept going up, and up, how tall was this guy? And how broad? What were those things sticking out of the sleeves of his shirt?

"Hid? Hid!? Are you trying to count cards? Who do you think you--"

"I don't need to be counting cards to see which ones you play," Zerian hissed.

Those long fingers and sharp nails wrapped very carefully around first the edge of the round table, and then he lifted his right hand - arm spine bones easily visible in front of Jinuma's now-wide eyes, and pushed the two stuck cards apart. "That Green Aerielady is very, very well worn. Not at all like this deck."

At that point the silence in the club was broken at first in gentle coughs but then in more strong mocking noises, grunts of disgust, muttering. Zerian pulled the card up and compared it to his. "They are of the same printing house, to be sure," he flicked it around, "but you've used her so often you can't even pretend that it's part of a newer deck." The maroon-jacketed menace loomed over the Holder, whose other hand was flopping around near his hip, slightly behind his chair.

As if waiting for one of his lackeys to put something in it.

They were not there, they'd vanished into the crowd behind them at the sight of Zerian's full extremely imposing shape.

"Not that I would suggest you start with a new deck to cheat with," Zerian said, "but I think I'll keep this one as a little reminder." He glanced over the table's rather large pot. "And I'll see to this as well, since I won this round fairly."

He scooted a trio of coins to each other player, nodding toward them with a confident 'this is finished' look.

"This isn't the-"

"The last time you'll see your face here? Oh, it absolutely will be," Zerian growled. Actually growled, not like just descriptively. The spines on his arms had moved into what could only be called 'an attack posture'. They stretched the material a little, in fact. The small slots that they usually went through, almost like button holes but slightly longer, were frayed just a tiny-tiny bit from the sharp bone edges.

Jinuma nearly fell off the chair in his haste to try and grab at least some of his 'winnings', but was tripped by someone else from the table, foot sticking behind that chair knowing he'd want to make an exit. The room's patrons erupted into laughter, which hardly ended until long after he'd vanished down the street.

**

"So that was just a little problem, nothing serious," Zerian recounted it to the Dawnlight Security patrol. "No fight, no bloodshed, not even a broken chair not for lack of trying," he chuckled.

The silver-caste woman and green-wearing man who had been sent to investigate the suddenly raucous brothel gave their nods and jotted their notes, and wandered away satisfied.

"You might not call that a little problem if you knew how many times he'd done it," Wick said, not startling Zerian but not really having made himself known before that moment.

"Oh I can tell it was a lot," Zerian stated, turning that well-worn card around in his long-nailed fingers.

Wick held up another: the Red Caerlord. "He already ran out of this one," the blue-rider chuckled.

Zerian looked around with his red eyes narrowing, and then tapped his left forefinger against a special spot on his head, just behind his ear.

"Soooo, there are an awful lot of riders here just now," he said.

"About to be one more," Wick said, casual, almost in passing. And because they knew each other from years of 'we both use headjacks' and 'also we tap the same computer resources', Zerian emulated that same casual attitude.

"I see. Well, guess I need to pack?" He got another nod, "where to?"

"Place in another era, so dress warm for the distance," Wick said, "Dawn Watch, you'll probably like it, it suits people like us." He flicked his cyberjack so it caught the light, and went with the tall mutant man to give him a ride back to his place to pack.

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