Name: Jayde Tolliver

Gender: Female, Straight

Age/DOB: 20ish, unknown date very shortly before the Combine invasion

Origin: Repurposed Earth, Oklahoma

Family: Deceased, but only recently; when Jamie was working with the peeper puppies at the ranch, they hit it off very well, and their daughter is JJ

Other: Jayde takes to the animals as though they're her own family now, and while some people might think that's a bit weird, she is also very good with the job

Height: 5'6"

Weight: 110, muscular and toned from living in the wilderness almost all her life, good legs and torso strength

Hair: Blond, straight, somewhat stiff from being sun-baked most of the time. Usually in braids or a tail, and also usually under a hat as shown. Kept to shoulder or mid-back.

Eyes: light blue-green, large and pretty

Appearance: Fair skinned, though how she doesn't get sunburnt is anyone's guess. Plenty of scars and bruises from life outside, and calloused hands from constant work. Almost always smiling and happy looking, but can serious-up when things go bad, or when there are Combine around. She has a loud voice, used to shouting across distances.

Genetic Abilities: Overtly none, but with Vortal coaxing she is clearly an animal-tamer or empathic with creatures other than Human. She would be a good match genetically with Jaime, as their powers are remarkably similar.

Icarus Processing: would greatly benefit from having Icarus done, she has not yet decided to do so.

Image Credits: DollDivine - Inkscribble Dragon Rider

Skills or Profession: though she's never had a formal education, Jayde is confident in her ability to deal with animals of any kind. Native wildlife or imported fauna, doesn't matter to her - she understands how a creature lives, its diet, locomotion, and personality or needs just by looking at it. That said, she's also a demon in the kitchen, being able to capture and tame animals is one thing, but they're here for food primarily, and she is exceptional at bringing together haphazard items and making it delicious. She is a great scout, athletic and sure footed, even before the dragons came. She can track virtually any animal by their spoor, tracks, or habits and sounds, and to an extent also emulate those noises. While she's best with creatures, she does also have a good demeanor and most of the animal handlers or ranchers look to her for advice about how to train or handle their own companions.
Personality: Jayde is typically smiling and eager to work, but she does have a darker side, since losing her parents. She does tend toward being alone for the greater part of the day, making sure that the Antlions are either at bay or under wraps in the Ranch, and keeps herself occupied. Her sister is doing well back at the Mesa, being given a better education. But at some point Jayde's going to need therapy to really deal with the loss of her family, but until then she does a great job and people respect her for it.
Events or History: She was born outside of one of the Cities in Oklahoma, and was thankfully outside the influence of the Suppression Field when it went up - she and her sister (still in Black Mesa Refugee City) are both still fertile. Her family had wandered a bit before being discovered by a Combine patrol and sent into a nearby work camp. They remained there, working on whatever weird machinery or gear that needed human hands, as Jayde grew up, caring for her little sister since she wasn't really strong enough to work on those same production lines. The family was lucky for the most part, keeping under the Combine's radar and doing what they could to help those who tried to escape, without getting caught, themselves. However when her father decided to attempt to leave, he was caught - and both he and his wife were executed as an example to the rest. This broke Jayde and her sister's confidence, and they, as young as they were (at 11 and 7 years) had little hope of ever being free. They did wander around a little, getting out of the facility when a machine exploded, and several other groups scattered under that chaos as well. One of Paxton's patrol groups liberated that area before his departure and brought them to Black Mesa. She opted to head over to the Ranch when she learned of it, remembering how her parents spoke of their own time tending cattle and doing similar duties back home, 'before'.

Dragon

Name: Bugbait
Gender: Female
Size/Shoulder/Length: Medium 9' s / 44' l / 90' and 44' ws
Colors:* mostly darkish and medium forest green mottled in clumps of darker greens; belly and backs of legs a brighter pale cream, with a yellow strip between belly and sides; wingsails are almost glowing green through pale creamy yellow, with faint star-like blobby dots of white or pale green, lower wings are gradient but no markings; dots along entire body and limbs are usually bright yellow; horns and all claws are charcoal grey, eyes are bright yellow
Features: Rainwing / Hivewing Hybrid; four muscular, slender legs, hind crouched, with 5 and 4 extremely long curved claws including prominent thumb and heel claw; two sets of wings, upper large with leathery sails, 4 visible fingers, elbow strut, and very strong wrist thumb all having long curved claws, lower small and insect-like with two fingers and elbow strut, wrist nub also with short nubby claws; body is covered in tiny scales along most surfaces, belly from chin to tail tip and behind legs broad soft armor plates, and even armor over fronts of limbs and face, dorsal ridge of short flattened scales, most scales color shift*; long and sinuous body with very long tail that has strongly prehensil end, capable of picking up and manipulating objects; head is angular with sharp beak and short nose horn, jaw nubs, external ears, central forehead spike, neck frill with webbing and spikes, and two upcurving backswept horns
Powers: Winged Flight, with her large upper wings, Bait's able to attain quite strong speeds and powerful dives, and her smaller wings provide extremely good balance and maneuverability. She is at least as quick in the air as any full blooded Hivewing, and can match many much larger dragons for outright speed. She isn't remarkably durable for long stretches of that speed, but can maintain a more leisurely pace for hours on end, sometimes just opening her main wings and soaring, while occasionally flickering her lower wings for propulsion or direction changes. She enjoys having Jayde with her on her back or behind her horns, and can carry several other Humans or Vorts, or some amount of weight without issue. She often can be found carrying errant Antlions back to the path, delicately lifting them and leaving them in the pens.
Verbal, Scent, and *Visual Communication, though she doesn't have any Vortal component to her communication save for a strong Empathic connection with Jayde, Bait is a quick learner and has a decent English vocabulary as well as being able to speak to her breed-mates in their own Draconic. She understands a rough amount of Vortigese, about as much as any Human might learn without 'Vortal inputs', but doesn't try to speak it. She does have the ability to communicate with her coloration, though it mainly responds to her moods and as such can only be relied upon for emergency conveyance (if she's brilliantly red, something is wrong). Bait also can detect and understand the smells that animals and insects leave around, easily able to see where Antlions have left their own markers, though anything much smaller than them are only tiny or faint trails (she can't see or smell individual ants trails, but entire ant mounds or nests show up, as do skunk scents, or regularly marked other animal territorial scent marks).
*Color Shifting, her Rainwing side gives her scales the ability to change with mood, mostly her wingsails and the bright dots on her body and limbs change vibrantly in virtually any color of the spectrum. To a smaller extent, the scales on her body but not belly also change, to darker versions of those shades. Overall she tends toward a calm demeanor, curious and even 'sweet', but if panicked or angry her markings go vibrant red, orange, or even white. When she's sad, they turn a bluish-grey, and if she's in pain they are strongly violet.
Pheromone Emulation, Bugbait is remarkably able to produce smells and chemicals that she can spit or scratch out with glands behind her foreclaws, and emulate virtually any smell. Her primary use for this is to help control the Antlions on the ranch, and mark 'their' territory so that the soldier and drone ants don't wander too far or become combative. The compounds she can create can range from aromatic 'smoke', tasty 'sweet' smells, to pungent skunk-like odors, and well into smells that Humans can't even detect, like those of the Antlions or indeed other insects and animals. The smells don't last all that long, and aren't of much use in the rain or a strong wind, so she must reapply any particular scent at least once every few days to keep it 'fresh'. Thus, she and Jayde do regular patrols of the territory and mark the paths they wish their Antlions to march, or keep away from. A side effect of this, however, is that some animals are attracted to those smells too - there are almost always moths and gnats fluttering around where those markings have been put. Which is fine, actually, since Humans can't smell it themselves, they can use flashlights to shine and detect those swarms of bugs, and get an idea of where the trail is visually.
Parentage: Rainwing mother Sunrise , Hivewing Firefly sire
Origin: Adopted from Moonshimmer981 on Deviantart
Other Info: Bugbait is a cheerful, eager to please type of dragon. Young, she was hatched here on the Rookery but only barely, as her egg was almost ready to hatch just as it was coming through the portal here. She is younger than Sunrise but they seem to be right around the same maturity at times.