Curious and accommodating to friends. Distrustful of strangers.

Man-sized bipedal lizard with black scales with irregular green bands. Bright red and green feathers cascade down his neck, turning into green spines that shrink as they continue down his tail, terminating an a cluster of red feathers.

Born a savage in the jungles of the southeast, a mindless lizard fell into a ruined catacomb. After weeks, once everything eatable had been consumed, the lizard could see the exit, but could not reach it, flinging himself at it in starving frustration. Exhausted, a glimmer of his heritage intruded into his lizard brain, and he started seeing the stone and plants around him as tools instead of obstacles. Ideas came ponderously at first, but as more entered his head, they came more rapidly.

Ranesk, a self-aware dragon king, emerged from the hole changed from when he fell. He tried to show his brothers the way, but most fought or ignored him and did not change like he had. He tried the young ones, but they did not change either. He even threw two of his kind into the catacomb, but one killed and ate the other, then starved to death without changing.

He had a vague notion that he was part of something larger, and set out to find it, leaving his brothers behind. As he wandered, he found he could harness a force of nature and channel it to work wood and shape himself. As he used it, he learned.

One day, he startled a creature in the jungle. She as a large floating sphere of thousands of feathered wings and wispy, translucent tendrils that glowed with an inner light. The creature was frightened that the large lizard-man would attack her, but when Ranesk started asking questions instead, it introduced itself as Soldranai, a spirit of the wood.

Ranesk spent many years in Soldranai's company, and she taught him much, like how to see spirits and flows of essence. She also told him that he came from an old race that had fallen far. She also told him of the Unconquered Sun, to whom he felt a passionate connection. He began to pray to his new god and, sometimes, it seemed like his prayers got answered. He would often dream of air and fire and plants, and his knowledge of each increased.

Once he became able to see them, Ranesk was asked by Soldranai to let her know if he found a demesne, so she could claim it as a sanctuary. He searched every day. He found a number of places, but they were always already claimed by other spirits.

Once every so often, he would run across one of his own kind. He could never get through to them, though, and sometimes had to fight them off, even kill them. One day, as he was exploring a strange demesne that was claimed but somehow by something other than a spirit, he heard sounds of combat and rushed to find one of his kind, an anklok, fighting something like a hairless ape, but one who used tools and glowed. The anklok had obviously surprised this stranger and wounded him severely. Ranesk intervened, wounding the anklok and forcing it to run away.

The stranger introduced itself as Adrios. He didn't reveal much to Ranesk at first, but suggested that he needed to get back to his home to heal, but needed Ranesk's help to do so. Ranesk agreed. Along the way, Ranesk prayed to the Unconquered Sun as he always did, and found that Adrios to the same. Even more, Adrios seemed to have been chosen by the Unconquered Sun for some kind of task.

Once Ranesk got Adrios to his home, a solar manse, as it turned out, they had become friends. Ranesk stayed with Adrios, learning more about the Unconquered Sun, Creation and, especially, archery from Adrios. For his part, Ranesk took Adrios to meet Soldranai, and they made some kind of a deal that allowed her to inhabit the demesne Ranesk had been exploring when he first met Adrios. Ranesk also helped in the manse, talking with its gardener about plants and growing a number of exotic species.

While Ranesk is civilized, he initial reaction is usually distrust and aggression.

Ranesk wants to know more of his race, and find a way to elevate them like he has been.