A commonly expressed sentiment in the Nexus is a lack of reason to continue work on past characters once they have bonded or sponsored a dragon. With new clutches always becoming available and many of them requesting new characters that do not already have a dragon attached to them, motivation to work on older characters can be hard to find when there is little reward available for the expenditure of time and effort it would take to do so.

This is the Bower's contribution to helping alleviate some of this sentiment.

You have a shiny new Burrow giveaway dragon. Congrats! Now you seek reason to do more with that individual dragon in particular. Currently available options are as follows:

Also known as 'tapping untapped genetics'. Every generation of the Burrow has a pool of abilities every child of that generation can pull from, but due to chance and chaos, every individual manifests a different skill set. The potential remains, however.

This merit encourages you to write your Burrow dragon into a story. They can be the star or a side character, but they must be present. Reference the Ability Glossary for the generation your Burrow dragon was born in and write something in which they:

• Wish they had one of the abilities they do not.
OR
• Are in a situation where the desired new ability would help.
OR
• Reflect on a past situation where the desired ability would have helped.
OR
• Unexpectedly discover they have the desired new ability after all.

This can be repeated/combined to unlock multiple abilities from their generation's pool, all the way up to 100% of the possible ability pulls.

There are no wordcount minimums or maximums, but remember: this isn't about spamming single sentences onto an otherwise empty page just to get a super overpowered dragon -- this is to encourage and reward continued work on older characters that might otherwise just gather dust!

These merits and rewards operate on an honor system. You do not have to turn them in or have them checked to confirm your work -- but feel free to share your progress in the #writing-talk channel on the Nexus discord if you want that bit of validation too! Aki is always happy to have updates on her Burrow babies.

In contrast to the Burrow-specific rewards above, these are rewards you can collect from the Burrow as thanks for participating elsewhere in the Nexus.

This merit encourages you to submit a candidate to any active clutch in the Nexus in need of them. The submission must:

• Be a fully filled-out stat sheet at minimum. (So no agency-provided filler candidates or empty placeholder pages.)
AND
• Be complete (not in-progress).
AND
• Fulfil any other requirements set by the clutch-runner. (Theme, prompt, etc.)

In exchange, you made trade in proof of the submitted candidate to receive a randomly-rolled new dragon from any Burrow generation of your choice. Just contact thexenoqueen on the Nexus Discord (DM or in #The Burrow (BRW)) with the following:

• A link to your candidate.
• A link to the clutch they're being submitted to.
• The generation you would like an additional dragon rolled from.
• One generation trait you would like guaranteed. (A color, pattern, or ability.)

Merit-redeemed dragons will be listed separately from the original generation but will share the same family tree and draw from the same generator pool of colors and abilities.

Any previously received merit dragon must be paged before another can be claimed. Merit dragons are limited to one per person per generation unless you did not receive a dragon from the original generation release. In such a case, up to two merit dragons can be redeemed (with two separate candidate submission/redemptions).