Introducing: Auryn of Waterdeep

Storyteller, Scholar and Scribe

Biography:

Auryn of Waterdeep (he/him, xe/xem) is a twenty-two year old transmasculine, genderqueer dragon working as a freelance writer and as a student within the humanities field. Although having many childhood signs of both otherkinity and therianthropy, the keeper of this vault did not awaken as alterhuman until much later in life. In the autumn of 2022, Auryn made peace with his identity and awakened as Otherkin. As of January 2024, Auryn awakened as Therian. While xyr journey to self-discovery had plenty of rough spots, he is proud of how far he's come and is more than pleased to share his vault with all adventurers!

A spiritual descendant of Aurinax, I am originally a gold dragon from the realm of Faerûn. While I am primarily draconic, I am a polymorph at my core. There are a multitude of species that I am a part of and take the form of, so do keep this in mind whenever I speak on my species outside of draconity.

I am very passionate about the preservation of history. Archival science is an extremely important practice to me as an academic, so much so that I created this website as a means of archiving and preserving my own work. Additionally, I made this website to house ample resources for humans and nonhumans alike on the history and subculture(s) of alterhumanity. Since proper information on the alterhuman community is heavily underrepresented, I decided to make my neocities both a fun and educational experience for those who interact with it. While I don't necessarily consider them resources, I hope that my personal works also inspire you to explore the creative and academic sides of the alterhuman community!

The following werecard is structured after classic werecards from early were, therianthrope and otherkin communities online. You can access the original template here. I recommend giving the archived werecards a look too!

Please note that I did omit some sections from the original template for internet safety purposes. Be sure to do the same if you intend on making a werecard of your own with the original template.

Werecard:

  • Human Name: Solomon. It is the name I chose upon transitioning. I consider it equal to my draconic name, so please respect it as you would with my draconic name.
  • Were Name: Auryn. I chose this as my draconic name to honor my ancestor, Aurinax.
  • Phenotype(s): Polymorph, Gold Dragon (Waterdhavian descent), Draquus (draconic horse beast), Manticore, Gryphon, Beastren (lion beastman), Were-creature (a werelion), Wickerbeast (Kingbeast), Hyenafolk (Striped hyena), Red bearded vulture, Giant teratorn, Kulve Taroth, Smilodon cladotherian, Northern lion, Striped hyena and Dutch Draft horse.
  • Shifting Ability: Mostly psychological, occasionally spiritual. My neurodivergence influences my alterhumanity a lot, although it is not the cause of my alterhumanity. There are circumstances in which I embody the traits and mentality of my phenotypes. For example: I am always psychologically a dragon, so I often take part in the practices of this specific phenotype. I manage a dragon's hoard in real life because of it. My treasures of choice are books, scrolls and DND dice. I also have distinctly feline traits in terms of my mentality, which can vary across my feline species within my otherkinity and therianthropy respectively. As for my occasional spiritual shifts, I tend to journey between this world and the world of Faerûn through dreams. On these rare occasions, I meet with Aurinax and catch up with him. The reason behind this spiritual circumstance is because of my soul's separation from my original body. I can still spiritually manifest into my original body and venture across Faerûn as long as my earthen body is not active (i.e. sleeping). That being said, my soul is still tethered to the earthen world. Aside from that, I do experience lingering spiritual sensations from my phenotypes' features. Tails, scales, horns, claws, fangs, wings— you name it. My tails and wings are the most expressive of the bunch. I often feel them emoting with me throughout my day-to-day life. It's just a part of the norm for me!
  • Dream Territory: I would love to live within an abandoned castle. To have ancient ruins and architecture embellishing my roost would be perfect. I would also prefer it to be somewhere along the Sword Coast. That way, I'm never too far from Waterdeep!
  • Physical Description (Were): I look like your average gold dragon, but with a stocky build and a much warmer scale pattern. Take the header image of my website as reference. As a manticore, my fur is mostly black with orangish-gold highlights. This also applies to my forms as a beastren, a werelion, a wickerbeast, a hyenafolk, a giant teratorn and a paleolithic feline. As a gryphon, instead of visually favoring an eagle, I visually favor red bearded vultures; naturally, this ties into my bearded vulture theriotype. As a draquus, my species is conceptually similar to mythological qilins and dragon horses from D&D 1E; I am flightless in this form, as it is a hybrid between drakes and horses, but I am still capable of utilizing my elemental breath weapon (fire). I visually favor a dutch draft horse with black and gold plated scales, a wispy mane and beard, a long, thick tail and a crown of horns that part my mane at my temple. This form ties into my dutch draft horse theriotype as well. My forms as a dragon, a draquus and a manticore are capable of changing between anthropomorphic and feral forms, whereas the rest of my species are either exclusively anthro (ex: Beastren, Hyenafolk, Wickerbeast) or exclusively feral (ex: Gryphon, Kulve Taroth, earthen theriotypes). Any phenotypes that weren't mentioned simply means that I look like how the species is typically portrayed.
  • Hobbies/Interests: Creative writing, reading, storytelling, book-collecting, dice-collecting, playing video games, playing Dungeons and Dragons, listening to educational podcasts (especially on anthropology, archaeology, mythology and folklore), watching nature documentaries, practicing vexillography (flag-making), and researching in archives and libraries.
  • Favorite Media Genre(s): Southern Gothic, Magical Realism and Fantasy (especially high fantasy and dark fantasy)
  • Favorite Movies: Castle in the Sky (1986), The Dark Crystal (1982), Daughters of the Dust (1991), Ganja and Hess (1973), The Prince of Egypt (1998), Spirit: The Stallion of Cimarron (2002), How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), The Green Knight (2021), and Candyman (1992 and 2021).
  • Favorite Were-movie: Silver Bullet (1985), Van Helsing (2004), Wolfwalkers (2020), An American Werewolf in London (1981), Jurassic Park (1993), Reign of Fire (2002), and Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023).
  • Favorite Literature: A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan, Mama Day by Gloria Gaynor, Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, The Power of the Porch by Trudier Harris, The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo and The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.
  • Favorite Were Literature: Dragonology by Dugald Steer, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons (DND), The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons (DND), Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Wings of of Fire series, The original Warriors series, the Jughead: The Hunger comic book series and A Werewolf in Riverdale by Caleb Roehrig.
  • Favorite Song(s)/Music Artist(s): Fantastic Negrito, Buffalo Nichols, Gary Clark Jr., Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Blood Orange, Dreamer Isioma, Frank Ocean, Yves Tumor, Survive Said the Prophet, Malice Mizer, Mystery Skulls, Glass Animals, Tame Impala, Pond, Nujabes, Blaque, pinkpantheress, 2NE1, LE SSERAFIM, 2 Mello, Billie Calvinn, Odetari and Tobi Perriáe.
  • Preferred Prey: Poultry. I assume it's because of my phenotypes consisting of raptor birds and felines, but either way, I love me a good bird for lunch.
  • Hunting Tips: When you're as big as me, stealth isn't much of an option. I suggest cutting off all possible routes for your prey to escape; that way, all that running they do will be for naught. They're tired and have nowhere to go, meanwhile you get some food for the day! That being said, if you can change form like me, you won't need to worry about that. I recommend taking the form of something that your prey is familiar with and doesn't fear in any way, then go in for the attack once they get close enough. Shoutout to venus flytraps for this level of genius.
  • Preferred Method of Attack: WOE, FIRE BLAST BE UPON YE!
  • Favorite Non-Were Mythological Beast: Minotaurs. I admire their strength and bravado. I am quite fond of fauns, satyrs, and dryads as well.
  • Personal Therianthropy: I have many points in my life in which both my otherkinity and therianthropy were clear. The downside was that these signs were quickly brushed off as phases. The first instance began with my first special interest, which was lycantropy. I had a deep admiration for werewolves as a child. That admiration became so strong that I longed to be one. Of course, I would soon realize in my adult years that I am not specifically a werewolf but two species of were-creature: a werelion and a werehyena. I change into either one or the other on full moons, not both. Furthermore, I would soon realize that neither of these were-species were my primary species. That would be a journey of self-discovery that would take quite a lot of time and research into the numerous facets of nonhumanity as I got older.

    • Entering middle school became a huge turn in life for my identity. For example, I became more familiar with what it meant to be a queer person through various media that I liked and soon realized that I am bisexual. My discovery of nonhumanity was not as ideal, unfortunately. I became familiar with nonhumanity when I opened Vine one day. On my feed, an account posted a clip of Naia ōkami out of context. If that name doesn't ring a bell for you, Naia is the woman who's famously known for her line: "On all levels except physical, I am a wolf." That being said, you can imagine how disrespectful people were to Naia's identity within the replies. For me, I was curious if anything. I dug through the replies for context on what made Naia feel this way, and eventually noticed that the word "Otherkin" kept being mentioned in context to the video. I decided to look into this identity myself. I have never been much of a spiritual person, but learning that there were individuals out there who, in spirit, were another species other than human made me feel something I had never felt before. It would linger in the back of my mind for a while. I would think of my fixation on lycanthropes. I thought of my respect and admiration for them. I thought I desire to look like one, act like one and ultimately, be a lycanthrope. Could I have been a lycanthrope all along?

    I tossed and turned with the thought for so long. It wasn't uncertainty that perturbed me, but the visibility of it. I felt like this experience was something that deeply resonated with me, but I feared how I would be perceived because of it. I distinctly remember how on one night, I had made a coming post of sorts on my multifandom tumblr blog. I made it to announce that I was Otherkin and steadily piecing together my identity. After an hour of posting, I deleted it. I had never spoken on otherkinity, or any kind of nonhumanity for that matter, again because my fears steadily consumed me. I was a child when cringe compilations, harassment campaigns and other avenues of online ridicule were at an all-time high. The last thing I wanted was to share this part of myself, only to be excessively bullied for it. It was already a deeply sensitive time in my life for personal reasons; I decided to leave these thoughts alone, to lock them away and never acknowledge them again.

    ... That is, until, I entered my college years. Around the years of 2021 and 2022, I met a lot of new people in my life. One of which had been my good friend, Lysander. I met Lysander through a mutual of mine on Twitter. We became fast friends through our connection to xenogender identities, gender hoarding and unique expressions of transmasculinity. At the time, I had identified as genderfluid and not genderqueer, which is something that we connected with as well. One key thing about Lysander is that it is otherkin. Otherkinity is a huge part of Lysander's identity as an individual, so much so that it is a major part of its queerness as well. In the midst of making flags on Twitter, I made a flag in connection to angels. It was around this time that through a lot of information shared by Lysander on otherkinity, and its own pride in being otherkin, that I had a heart-to-heart with myself.

    Lysander's only a couple years younger than you, yet nothing is stopping it from embracing itself. Not even the worst anti-kin, "cringe"-claiming assholes online stop it from being open about its identity. Why can't you do the same?

    I wound up DM'ing Lysander about it, specifically about questioning if I was otherkin again. I had expressed that I was likely an angel based on my connection to the gender I made... this was a half truth. I was indeed otherkin, but I was no angel. You can probably ask Lysander yourself, and it will tell you that I have had a rollercoaster of identity questionings and explorations until reaching where I am now. Telling Lysander, my human partner and my human friends about my otherkinity was the first step of the journey. It was in 2022 when I fully awakened to my nonhumanity. I was ridiculously happy with myself. I went on to meet even more awesome nonhumans along the way like Coyotl, who is by far the coolest coyote shifter I have ever met.

    Recently, I awakened to my therianthropy as well. Early into my time in the nonhuman community, I had been under the belief that therians were exclusively earthen animals in mind, in spirit and in practice, but I clearly had much to learn about my community at that point. I soon learned of fiction therians through fictionkin and fictional IRLs. I learned of theriomythic individuals, paleotherians and cladotherians too. It didn't matter where you fell in terms of labels, if you even welcomed labels at all; all that mattered was the community was far more diverse than I first assumed. It was, and still is, amazing to see and learn from.

    It wasn't until the beginning of this year when I awakened as theriomythic. This is largely because I noticed there was a dichotomy in my alterhumanity. I realized that some of my species aligned more with therianthropy than they did with otherkinity. My place as a gryphon is more in line with therianthropy because I am exclusively feral in nature and in form as a gryphon, unlike my draconic identity which can fluctuate between being anthropomorphic and being feral individually. While there are a few earthen species that I realized I am, I find the distinctively therian qualities of my mythical and fictional species in comparison to the distinctively otherkin qualities of their counterparts to be a beautiful, unique experience that I have.

    Not every beast will have the same experience with their identity, and I know mine is only one out of thousands. After all, nothing makes me happier than to dig through archives and read about the awakening experiences of weres, therians, elves, dragons and more back in the 1980s and 1990s. But one thing I do know is that as someone who is both polykin and polytherian, I would not trade this experience for anything else in the world. I have met some truly wonderful creatures in such little time. My friends Lysander and Coyotl are always an inspiration to me as I further explore my place within this community, and I truly could not be where I am now as an alterhuman without them.

    Even now, just sharing my story with you is enough to bring me peace. Who knows... maybe sharing it here will give someone that same push I needed way back when I was a scared little hatchling. Don't be afraid to find yourself. All you need to do is unclip those wings and soar.