And here we have the probable end of the Quest for Gold series ... our warrior is home again, with the treasure ... and it turned out the treasure wasn't a chunk of gold the size of your head, it only looked like that. In fact, it was a dragon egg, and it hatched in his backpack as he was getting out of the barbarian temple via the backdoor, with the pygmies shooting blowgun darts at his retreating butt. And five miles into the jungle, where he'd hidden the SUV, he heard sounds coming out of the backpack, and wondered which chicken had gotten in there ... unpacked it and --!! Omigod, there's a baby dragon in there, and a bunch of busted-up eggshells. (And some baby dragon doo, but we won't go there.) And you know the way baby birds and reptiles "imprint" on the first face they see. Way to go ... you just got yourself a baby dragon. Whatchya gonna call him?Seriously ... the Millennium Dragon is packed on the disk that comes with the book, FIGURES, CHARACTERS AND AVATARS, from DAZ. I couldn't resist installing it yesterday. It's a great little model -- the texture map they supply as part of the original kit is already great. That's what you're seeing here. You can also pay ten bucks and get an extra-detailed map, but I'm actually quite happy with this one. Also, the model is incredibly posable -- you have about 10 places where his tail kinks, and you can do fantastic things with his wings, his tongue ... every joint of every finger and toe can be posed.
So instead of having this one menace a creepy old castle, I made him hatchling sized, and sat him in the palm of the Michael 4, then used Irfanview to get a really RED version of the old standby background I've been using ... rendered it, and -- there you go. My pet dragon. End of the Quest for Gold saga.
Incidentally, as great as this dragon is ($20, and $10 extra for the texture), DAZ have also done the Millennium Dragon 2, which is out of this world, beyond description ... also fifty bucks. He's on my list of "gotta get goodies," but he's going to have to wait till I'm more, uh, financial. He's like this little guy's big brother, and he's awesome.
Jade, November 15
