Umbryx is a legendary Onyx Dragon, bonded to King Cyrus Valarion of the Valar and revered across The Immortal Isle as both guardian and omen. Among the dwindling remnants of the Onyx Brood—reclusive draconic descendants of the Terran Drake—Umbryx is the most known to the outside world, though seen only by a rare few.
Though still young by draconic standards, Umbryx has grown massive under Cyrus’s care and is marked by a primal intelligence and quiet grief that mirrors the melancholic soul of the Valar he serves. He is not a beast of thunder or flame, but a warden of shadows—his presence signifying more than strength: it signals a reckoning.
Origins & Bonding
Umbryx hatched within the deep crystalline caverns beneath the Onyx Mountains (where the Spire of Valarion now stands), weak and malformed from centuries of degeneration within the reclusive brood. Like others of his kind, he was shaped by subterranean silence and extreme pressure—his scales forming into black obsidian-like plates, glossy as volcanic glass and hard as adamantine.
It was Cyrus Valarion, then a prince of House Valarion, who discovered him while undertaking a pilgrimage to the Isle's tallest peak with his father -- King Athelstan Valarion. Rather than asserting dominance as tradition demanded, Cyrus knelt before the dragonling and spoke not as a ruler, but as a mourner. In that moment of kinship, Umbryx touched his snout to Cyrus’s hand, and an unbreakable bond was formed.
Since then, the two have been inseparable—the blade and the fang, the king and the wyrm, bound by sorrow and silence.
Appearance
Umbryx is a creature of imposing majesty and solemn dread. His wings are vast, webbed with threads of black starlight, while his body is covered in overlapping scales of deep onyx, each carved by time into jagged geometry. Beneath his throat and joints, veins of glowing silver pulse faintly when he channels his breath.
His eyes are pale gray, almost lifeless—like moonlight reflected off wet stone—yet behind them dwells a sapience honed by centuries of observation. His breath weapon, a stream of acidic black ichor, can dissolve stone, melt armor, and corrode magic barriers with terrifying ease.
Abilities
- Umbryx’s breath unleashes a flood of dark acid that eats through mineral and magic alike. It is particularly effective against burrowers and constructs, designed by nature to hunt subterranean beasts like the Xorn.
- His scales are hardened by millennia of subterranean pressure, rendering him nearly impervious to mundane weapons and highly resistant to magic.
- When threatened underground, Umbryx’s roar causes localized tremors and collapses unstable rock formations, a trait believed inherited from his Terran Drake ancestors.
- Despite his size, Umbryx moves in near silence—his wings gliding through fog like black sails, his claws placing no weight when stalking prey or protecting his kin.
Behavior & Temperament
Umbryx is fiercely loyal to House Valarion, and especially to King Cyrus, but displays little interest in others. He is not feral or bloodthirsty, yet those who have crossed his path describe an unnerving stillness—as though he exists slightly out of step with the world.
He prefers solitude in the mountainous caverns near the Spire’s summit, where he roosts amid obsidian spires and rocky outcroppings. When roused, he acts with surgical precision, wasting no movement or breath.
To the Valar, he is seen as a living relic, a link to an age of mythic power. To others, he is a harbinger of doom, his black wings casting long shadows before the storm.
Role in Valar Society
Umbryx’s bond with Cyrus has transformed the perception of Dragons among the Valar. What was once a dreaded beast has become a sacred symbol. Valarion nobles whom are coming-of-age embark on treacherous pilgrimages in hopes of forging a similar bond, though none have succeeded in taming a second dragon of the brood.
The surviving Onyx Brood remains hidden in the mountains, protected under Cyrus’s edict. Those dragons who choose to emerge only do so at moments of great importance—war, coronation, or catastrophe.
Legacy
Umbryx is not merely a mount or protector. He is a myth in motion, a symbol of shared exile, and a creature who, like the Valar themselves, lives in a world that fears what it cannot understand.
Some whisper that Umbryx will be the last of his kind. Others believe that he waits—not to die, but to outlive the curse, to rise again with the Valar freed from shadow, and to take to the skies not as a relic, but as a herald of renewal.
“When I spoke to him, he did not answer in words. He simply watched me—stone-hearted, sorrowful. And I knew then… we were the same. Both born of darkness. Both yearning for a sky we might never touch.”
– King Cyrus Valarion, upon first meeting Umbryx