Today's entry is about a new ally who has blessed the lives of my friends in the Telornan Royal Family, though I honestly am not entire sure what to make of him yet, given how unique and strange his nature is.

The story of the meeting apparently goes that while out one day, and in fact while doing nothing unusual nor unsafe, my friend Linara, the princess, was abducted by cultists of the new Archdemon of Envy Delzul, with the intent to sacrifice her in his name since Linara's family replaced Delzul's reign when her grandfather slew him.

Before they could bring the blade down on Linara however, this gentleman I acquired an artist's rendition of smashed into their hideout in response to the sense of darkness the cultists were giving off. Using a head hard enough to crack steel, claws sharp enough to cut tree trunks and teeth sharp enough to bite chunks in stone he managed to incapacitate and disable the villains of this tale, truly coming to Linara's aid like the knights in shining armor she always idolized.

Going by Doruan Excalibur, being named after a legendary weapon from the mythologies of his world and one it was connected to, he considered rescuing the distressed princess as his duty.

(As an ironic aside, Delzul has a vested interest in the new Royal Family continuing to reign for reasons I don't want to get into. If they succeeded, Linara would have been resurrected and those 'cultists' that he hates with a passion likely would have been subjected to a horrifying death... a few of them have already vanished from prison so I'm willing to bet he's dragging them away when he's bored.)

Anyway... this... dragon? Raptor? In similar ways to a few Called I have a really hard time classifying this guy in ways I know, but he calls himself a “Dorugamon” and proved to be the perfect idea of knightly, even though he has a fierce face, he was a total gentleman, if not a little bit reserved. When I chanced to meet him myself I managed to get a little bit more context about him, since he was pretty easy to talk to.

Supposedly in his home world (and maybe even home universe? Universal transplants among called isn't unheard of, but are extremely rare), from the long and short of it, his realm's god made his species carry an extremely lethal virus as a form of population control for all of the other species of that world, and because of that, his kind were feared and distrusted for a very long time, even though they eventually found a way to derive an antibody from them as well.

So to try to turn that reputation around, he aspired after tales of medieval knightly chivalry and after a group in his world known as the “Holy Knights” who served benevolent causes in their own ways, though he only got as far as being apprenticed before being Called to Sedd, where he bounced back from any depression quite quickly by continuing his chivalrous quest to become a champion of the people.

Safe to say that saving Linara immediately gained him an incredible amount of goodwill and favor from the royal family, enough so that upon hearing of his desires and his quest, former-king Recarn and king Arceda asked if the draconid wished to become a knight of their kingdom instead, an offer that Doruan accepted with joy.

I suspect that wily as he is, Recarn's offer to knight Doruan was probably three-fold; give this heroic dragonkin the chance to achieve the purpose he's appointed himself to become a true hero, mess with his granddaughter because Linara does a very poor job of hiding how much she likes dragons, and probably as a bit of unintentional(?) spite towards Delzul by letting a dragon back into the sphere of influence of the royal family less than two generations after he was slain and the throne wrested from him.

Unsurprisingly Linara has formed a very fast friendship with him, and he's on his way to becoming her personal guard, so I expect I'll be seeing a lot more of him in my life going forward from here.

That name though with that “-mon” at the end... it was enough to form something of a connection between Kenta, Kei-Nu, and this newcomer to Sedd because they've used the same suffix, I'm almost certain the three come from the same world, perhaps different species or some kind of ridiculously divergent subtypes of the same? The energies they give off feel like magic but clearly isn't, so maybe they're something else entirely? Maybe now that I have a better idea I can probe them more in-depth the next time I run into any of them.

- Veluren Thanazel, the Sights and People of Vakkert Sedd

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One more to finish off the year.

I got Kenta a while back because as I mentioned Guilmon was my "for lack of having a better answer" favorite Digimon, and then like a week later Digimon Story: Time Stranger (extremely good btw) and Digimon Beatbreak (also really good) came out, and in the former I found out about the Dorumon line and... yeah, I have a new favorite now. I just like raptors and fluffy things! So a fluffy dragon-raptor!

From my understanding of the line, I feel like this sort of "I want to be the hero too!" logic would track really well with a Dorugamon who wants to be loved instead of treated with caution, and that mixed up with the idea of having one be more knightly that resulted in this take on one! He has an intense face, but he's a very, very gentle and polite sweetheart.

I -adore- this guy, so I already have plenty planned for him to come soon! More than Kenta, he's going to be my face when it comes to Digimon-related content.

Excalibur belongs to me!

Artwork was done by  Cori!