Overview
The Ancestry-Sense Dragon Kin is the tall mortal line with the draconic weight in it — narrow-waisted, the shoulders a little broader than the mortal ideal, the neck a little thicker, the hands a little too long for the body, and the whole of it reading as one line that is waiting to be spoken in a tongue the mouth was not built for. It is the first of the Dragon Kin a stranger meets on The Drakemoor, and the one the moor keeps for the line no one else is old enough to remember.
Habitat
The Ancestry-Sense Dragon Kin keeps the old ground of The Drakemoor, a moor of black scale-stone and ash where the long, slow grudge is the only law. It needs three things: a ground old enough to hold a grudge, a view of the sky wide enough for the instinct, and a distance from the true dragons that is respectful but not hiding. The kin-shares of the moor are small and scattered, four to a dozen to a share, and the share is the point, because the Ancestry-Sense line is the line that knows every share, and the knowing is the ancestry, and the ancestry is the sense.
Appearance
Males stand 1.78 m to 1.93 m tall, 73 kg to 95 kg, lean and long, with the shoulders broader and the jaw heavier than the mortal ideal; the Ancestry-Sense males are the top of the range, 1.93 m, 95 kg. Females stand 1.73 m to 1.88 m, 66 kg to 86 kg, quicker, with the longer memory of the line. The skin is warm ivory to pale golden-cream, the cream of the moor's old light, and the distinguishing mark is the fine scale-patch, a wash of burnished gold at the shoulder, the throat, or the spine, the patch being the ancestry made skin, and the size of the patch is the age of the blood.
Behaviour
The Ancestry-Sense Dragon Kin moves long-strided and certain, 9 m/s across the scale-stone, and it does not hurry, because the grudge is the only thing on the moor that is worth the hurry, and the grudge is never in a hurry. It reads the line before it moves on the moor: the shape of a share by the ash it stirs, the heat of a stranger by the air that goes wrong around them, the fall of a scale that has hit the ground and not been picked up, all of it arriving before the step is made.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The weapon is the word, and the word is the promise: the Ancestry-Sense dragon-kin speaks one word, and the word is the grudge, and the grudge does not come back until the season is done. The second weapon is the hand, because the word is not always the grudge, and the hand that is a little too long for the body is the word the grudge is too patient for. The defense is the scale-patch, because the burnished gold takes a blow the way the scale-stone takes a word, and the patch is the one part of the body that has been hit the most, and the patch is the part that has never given.
Magic Alignment
The Ancestry-Sense Dragon Kin stands in the service of the line's own dragon, the dragon the blood remembers, and its magic is the reading of the line — the power to make every share on the moor into a word and the word into a keeping. Draconic Ancestry is the primary gift: the blood reads the line, every kin-share on the moor, known and kept, and the keeping is the ancestry, and the ancestry is the sense. The secondary gift is the pride, because the Ancestry-Sense line speaks with the blood, and the blood is the grudge made proud, and the proud is the thing the moor keeps as its own.
Society
A Ancestry-Sense Dragon Kin lives in a kin-share of four to a dozen in the scale-stone chambers of the moor, and the share is run by the Line-Keeper, the one who has read the longest line, because the share is the only room in the world where the reading is the law. The hierarchy is by the depth of the reading: the one whose line goes deepest eats the share's best, and the one whose grudge is longest keeps the grudge-ward. The young of the share share the chamber and share the reading, and the reading is the only school the share has, and the school is the moor, and the moor does not grade, the moor only keeps.
Culture & Lore
The Ancestry-Sense Dragon Kin keeps its lore in the line, and the line keeps it better than the grudge does, because the line is the only book in the world that gets longer when someone dies. The old say the first Ancestry-Sense dragon-kin was a grudge that learned to look up, and the sky gave it a body because the sky had no other way to keep the reading. They call the strangers who mistake the pride for madness "the ones who were worth the grudge," and they keep the best of the grudge-wards — the braid of the ones who were loud enough to be a grudge — on the share ledge, which is the finest teaching in the line.
Home
Its home is The Drakemoor, a moor of black scale-stone and ash, its surface a constant grey shimmer, its silence broken only by the kinship and the grudge. The Ancestry-Sense Dragon Kin is the moor's first voice, and the moor is the dragon-kin's first grudge, and the two of them keep each other the way a line keeps a word. The share is kept by the Line-Keeper, the scale-stone is kept grey by the ash, and the grudge is kept long by the line, which is the one law the moor does not break.
Relations
The Ancestry-Sense Dragon Kin keeps a long, line-kept peace with the rest of the Dragon Kin of The Drakemoor, a peace of the read line and the kept grudge that has held as long as the moor has been reading. To the line's own dragon, the Ancestry-Sense line is the first blood made mortal, and the line keeps a single burnished gold scale at the grudge-ward for the dragon, which is the one offering the dragon has asked for and never taken, and the asking is the keeping.
In the Story
In the story of the six who arrived, the Ancestry-Sense Dragon Kin is the first quiet test the moor offers, the reading that asks which of them the line will keep and which of them the line will spend. It is the figure that reads the line while the oaths are made on the ground, and the figure whose reading is the map the war is kept by, because the blood has read every approach the warrens have taken, and the blood has kept them, and the blood is the one page in the world the war cannot close.