Muszaki Kshau - Candidate at The Warren

Next older brother to Shard, younger by two years than Zadeg. Muszaki is taller and broader in the shoulder than his brother, which is saying much, but he is not wound so tightly that he must exersize constantly. He in fact would rather relax with a book or a technical manual, than do much exersize.

His appearance is as changed from its normal blue-shades as his brother's, though he is somewhat fond of fitting in a bit better this way.

At an early age, Muszaki loved to play with tools and parts of machinery. By the age of 7, he'd taken apart and put back together a small model steam engine. It was downhill from there. Virtually all of his skills revolve around technology of some kind. Be it repairing something, or building something else, destroying yet other things... He knows how to do it.

What he has in technical skills, he certainly lacks in tact and social skills. He can interact, certainly, but he is more comfortable with children or close friends than with strangers or authority figures.. His vocabulary is quite large but he rarely gets the chance to use it, for that reason. Zadeg often attempts to push Muszaki's buttons and get him to explode in anger -- with success most of the time.

Muszaki has considered asking Zadeg to teach him to meditate. Then about five minutes later, he remembers that he does his best thinking while he is in a machine shop or a blacksmithy, or a library. When he is given a task, Muszaki comes up with a way to tackle it -- and then makes an attempt to live up to that method. Sometimes he outdoes his own expectations -- he is a Kshau, after all. But sometimes...

Muszaki has a fondness for quiet candle lit dinners, and women who like hearing about discoveries and tools. Anyone less, will simply lose his interest too quickly. Even a beautiful woman (or a handsome young man) would be left in the dust if they had to compete with a new device in Muszaki's lab.

After that annoying little debacle with Zadeg attacking the Lord, Muszaki decided that his brother was completely insufferable. He knew -- he KNEW that Zadeg had gone out with the intent to actually murder the lordling, but then the technician started hearing rumors of the Lord's past... Things that no one liked to admit but were clearly true.

So Muszaki was left only to wonder who had taken care of the others involved in their failed land-grab. But he did not wonder long. He left political thoughts at the door of his lab, and entered with a sharp step against the stone floor. Two apprentice smiths looked up at him, one greeted him with a broad grin.

"Muszi! We've done it!" Cried the young lad. "We've made water! We took the gasses from the other beaker, and we put them together, and they distilled! Look!" He proudly displayed the dripping fruit of their labor. The other apprentice, slightly older, looked less enthused but still proud.

"I just wonder what good this will do if we're without water -- we'd be without our tools as well, wouldn't we?"

"That is possibly true," Muszaki replied, tussling the younger one's hair, "but that's not our concern. We may help someone else who needs this."

He turned and made sure that their smith master knew that they had worked through the evening and succeeded in their task. They would surely both be rewarded. He went on to the deeper part of his lab, where his own sets of tools were laid out.

"What are you going to build today, Muszi?" Asked the boy, startling him out of a staring fit.

"I... hadn't decided. Something clockwork... I have been working on these small wheels and wind-up batteries," he showed them off, gleaming brass parts looking fresh off the lathe press. "And I think I have enough pressed metal otherwise to do something... But nothing big."

"A toy?" Asked the other apprentice, poking his head over his partner's. "Are you going to make a toy?"

"Not today. Something more useful, I think. Now... help me arrange those tools."

Together they worked in the lab, putting a frame together and then the apprentices watched as the master smith began tinkering in earnest. They could not hope to have the fine control that his odd three-fingered hands had, even though they looked bulkier than their own fingers. He managed to get his fingers into places they would usually get stuck.

When the sun was begining to set, and the apprentices had both gone off to dinner, Muszaki was deep in his work. He rarely stopped once he started a project, so he would go through some days until morning, or another eve, until he was finished. This time, since he had had some help early on, he was done by the time the late evening bell rang, time for the candidates to head back to their dorms.

"Muszi?" Queried one apprentice. "What is it?"

The choppy walk of the ... object ... told him the machinery needed tuning, but it was stable enough to walk without being nudged by a boot or on a track. It looked like --

"It's a cat? A mechanical cat?" Cried the other, looking at the machine. It had four short legs, rouned at the tops, a segmented tail which it apparently used to balance, and a catlike head with stiff metal whiskers to sense where a wall was. Obviously, the eyes did not really work -- or did they?

There was always something odd about Muszi's creations. They would never come out the same way twice, and certainly couldn't often be duplicated by someone of lesser skills. He was proudly looking down at the jerkily moving cat, when it fell to its side and its little flywheel motors spun helplessly. The legs still jarred back and forth, but Muszaki picked it up and turned off the switch upon its back.

"Well, yes. A cat. That's probably enough work for tonight, eh?" He said. The pair were ready to sleep, clearly, their day had been very long, and the one before it as well. He bid them good night, and then went to turn in, himself.

Zadeg was of course meditating again. Why he didn't use that time for something more useful, Muszi did not know. It was almost painful, the difference between them. Why Zadeg had been chosen for this odd awful training to kill -- why Muszaki had been left to fend for himself when their father had died... Those things were mysteries that the younger Kshau just didn't want to understand.

He was comfortable with his anger, though he knew it sometimes got the better of him. As he was going to bed, Zadeg said, "why aren't you ever at dinner?"

Nestling down into the bed, pulling his blanket carefully up around his shoulders, Muszaki said, "why aren't you ever asleep at night?"

"I rarely sleep... And besides, you snore too loudly for me to get much rest."

Rather than allowing Zadeg to pull that old line on him, Muszaki simply threw a spare pillow at his brother -- hit him dead on -- and chuckled before closing his eyes.

That he knew his brother was an assassin, and could still sleep comfortably in the same room with him, every night, even after the whole day's events, Muszaki felt was one of his primary assets...

Muszaki fiddled with his sleeves and watched the stands. Among those watching, Shard stood blue and proud, near Mystic. Zadeg seemed to be ready to pace but held himself back. Muszi was pleased that his dear assassin brother could tame most of his instincts. Mostly.

Everyone entered the cavern and at last the eggs came alive. A blue and a green bonded, along with a white and red. Zadeg growled a bit, saying something under his breath about the eggs taking their sweet time.

"Remember we might not even bond, my brother..." Muszaki muttered back.

But ust about then, several eggs hatched. A red, a blue and a silver hatched clumsily out. The blue scrambled over the silver, but then slithered to Zadeg. The red and silver seemed to converse about who should go first, and the silver seemed to be winning. The red dragon also moved to Zadeg -- surprising both brothers, and then at last, apparently proud of his little brother.

I happen to be called Teranost, the dragon thought to Muszaki. He curled up and purred, cradled lovingly in the tall mechanic's arms.

"Teranost," Muszaki said, quietly. "Yes. And we'll get you fed and then, then my little friend, I think you might want to see something I created some days ago..."

Teranost and Muszaki flew over the area with an eye for detail. Their map making venture was going well, and they both enjoyed the attention they got from doing it.

I wish you would let me catch those thieves... Teranost thought angrily at his rider.

"I wish you would stop bringing them up. They're going to get themselves caught just fine without you dive bombing them."

I would not. I would fry them from here. Or freeze them. The dragon gloated. Muszaki rolled his eyes. How in the world did he wind up with such an arrogant dragon?

That arrogant dragon only laughed and laughed...