Originally something I created for this week’s character design challenge, but while drawing I came up with some backstory for this guy:

He is known as Calico Jack (ha!) and is a character from a highland-elven folktale. That’s right, he’s a fictional character’s fictional character.

The story is well known to most highlander elves, and is one of the most popular elven folktales in general, because it at the same time empowers elves and mocks humans.

It’s pretty obvious that the origin of the story is the human’s folktale ‘The Dragon Hunter’ which was, oddly enough, a story about a knight who killed dragons.

Highlander elves, even though they don’t really have any special relations with the dragons, added an extra character to the human story, and made it all about him - Calico Jack, a calico-coloured highlander elf who fights to protect the dragons of Highlands because he had once witnessed a mother dragon being slain and her nest with one egg being left for dead.

The dragon who hatched from the egg that Jack had saved became his companion and gained a nickname Shadow. They live in the forest and watch over the dragons who live there.

The story has several unrealistic features, such as Jack being able to understand the arcane language of the dragons, even though elves are not capable to do that.

He is most commonly described to have black spots on the (our) left side of his body, and half of his left ear missing.

He’s also known to have a curved redwood dagger, but it’s not explained where he got it or the armour. Realistically, being a highlander elf, he most probably stole them, but the elves would often argue with that.

Humans, on the other side, would often argue that Jack as a character has a sense of honour that no highlander elf could posses (which is sadly not far from the truth).

Shadow’s only mentioned physical features are that he’s black and that he’s a small-type dragon, as he is often said to sit on Jack’s shoulders. The type of dragon he’s supposed to be changes from one version to another, and is most commonly not mentioned at all, as most highlander elves have never really seen a dragon in real life.

The basic plotline of the story differs in various versions, but all of them certainly include Jack killing often more than one human dragon hunter, sometimes even a knight for extra thrill and empowerment.

There are some versions with a sad ending, but they are by far not as popular as the happy ones.

Fun Fact: Calico Jack is Clark’s childhood hero, but mostly for his ability to survive in the wilds and win fights rather than for his sense of honour.