Darker the Dragon

Darker the Dragon is an anthropomorphic dragon that is 6ft tall. He has light green scales, antler-like horns and a light brown/ginger mane of long head fur. He first appeared in the furry community around 2000 after reading the webcomic Altermeta. Darker's name comes from an accident in 1998 where a Nintendo magazine called N64 (now NGamer) printed his surname wrong, and he kept it because he liked how it sounds.

Writing
Since 2005, Darker has been running a website called Storyline Saga, on which is a collection of his short stories, artwork and two much longer stories; Paradigm Shift and Primals.

Paradigm Shift
The first novel length story Darker started is currently on hiatus due to his fixation on Primals and an inability to give it a name he's happy with (It started out as Epic, then went to be called Working Title). It has a steam-punk sort of setting and features varies species of anthropomorphic animals, the most common being felines, equines, dragons and fish, though there are inanimate things like fire and ice beings and even giant, anthropomorphic aemoeba. Some of these beings have magical powers. The main plot involves Dimitri; a purple, four limbed lizard, who is the only known such being, and his adoptive siblings Marco and Lucrecia (both felines) and their battle against an army of steam-driven robots.

Primals
Primals is the much more mature of Darker's two novel length stories, as it has more violence, swearing and adult situations than Paradigm Shift (though it rarely goes above NC-17). It is set on Earth, and focuses on a race of humans called primals who can, at will, transform into anthropomorphic animals to fight creatures from another reality, called Nightmares and their masters, the Incarnations.

Primals the Webcomic
In February 2008 Darker started a wbecomic version of Primals on DrunkDuck, a webcomics hosting site. Primals the webcomic will feature roughly the same story as Primals, but with some changes to characters, storyline and the nature of the primals themselves

The Primals
The Primals were created in England around the time of the 16th Century by a sect of powerful mages to counterract the Nightmare insurrections. This enchantment gave the mages the power to physically transform into a hybrid of human and animal at will, gaining the animals specific skills and a general boost in strength and agility. These supposedly gave rise to the lycanthrope myth by accident. One could say the spell worked too well and affected humanity's development and forever since certain individuals have the ability to transform as the mages did. The species of animal seems to be vaguely dependant on the primal's birthplace, though this is not always the case. The primal can be found by both other primals and Nightmares by scrying or empathic sense. A young primal usually has no idea of their true nature, unless their parents are also primals. They have a set date of "emergence" which is when they first transform. This varies between primals but usually occurs during puberty. Primals are accompainied by a spirit guide as well as one or more older primal mentors, which help them through the rather traumatic emergence period. If a primal isn't found or rejects their true nature by trying to hold back the change, the resultant shapeshifting chaos is generally...unpleasent. Nightmares pick up on this extreme trauma and home in on the primal, which is either eaten there and then or captured for one of the more powerful Nightmares to brainwash into serving them.

The Nightmares
Nightmares are beings from another, much darker realm of reality. In places saturated with fear or hate, such as prisons and battlefields, they can break through and gain physical form. For reasons known only to themselves they have on several occasions tried to tear open holes big enough for all of them to come pouring through into Earth and make a new home. This was the reason primals were created, to stop them from achieving this goal. Nightmares range wildly in size, shape and powers, from tiny immaterial parasites to ferocious behemoths of muscle and bone. The forms they take are dependant on the place they tore through reality and their way of hurting other creatures. Their main strength is that they get stronger the more someone or thing fears them, this is also a weakness if they fight strong-willed primals or humans, though more powerful Nightmares have overcome this. Strangely they have a strong bond of kinship with other Nightmares; they are all working for the same goal, have the same ideals, and thus there is no need or point to infighting or backstabbing in their ranks. Similarly, they have little conscience for other living creatures. The ideal that any possible concern should be taken for the feelings of non-Nightmares does not exist for them. Then there are the Incarnations. These Nightmares have 'evolved' to the point of actual sentience, where as other Nightmares operate by pure instinct. This only makes them more dangerous. They, like other Nightmares, come from a single idea, emotion or thing.