Aileen Stonebreak Dunspark

While part-dragons and shapeshifters alike had been categorizing Paragon abilities since the colonization, the publication of Aileen Dunspark's The Building Blocks of Paragon Abilities in 925 marked a major shift in how the Paragon nobility thought about their abilities.

Personal History

Aileen Stonebreak Dunspark was born somewhere in northern North Lautney to merchant Paragon parents in the early 880s. Some of her Stonebreak relatives were nobility and even royalty; note that Edric Stonebreak married the Crown Princess in 843 and was Chosen King by Aileen's birth, though by her childhood he was the Dowager Prince. Still, even after his death in 900, his daughter Queen Edith Stonebreak Alderley remained open to relationship with her father's commoner relatives.
This clan connection to the queen helped Dunspark gain patronage from Queen Edith as a census-taker of sorts, and she recorded the specific abilities of Paragons all across the Kingdom of Crathlia, having them both describe and demonstrate their abilities. After two decades of chronicling over a thousand Paragon abilities, she published her most famous work, The Building Blocks of Paragon Abilities, the year after Queen Edith's death and the discontinuation of her patronage.
It is not known whether Dunspark ever married or bore children. What we do know is that even after the discontinuation of her patronage, Dunspark continued to travel Crathlia for her research, mainly in pursuit of looking for unusual abilities, until her death.

Written by Cordelia Colbreak Evenbrook

Species

Humans

Ethnicity

Paragons

Life

882 DA 957 DA 75 years old

Circumstances of Birth

A commoner merchant Paragon, though also a relative of the current king of Crathlia.

Circumstances of Death

The Dunspark Clan holds that she stubbornly continued to travel after her health failed and this eventually caught up to her.

Gender

Female.

Analysis of Dunspark's Building Blocks of Paragon Abilities

Dunspark's original list of building blocks can be found in her book. Here I compare and contrast her original concepts with the modern-day interpretations and modifications. The order of the below building blocks is hers, with the first (ground) being argued as closest to Amalgams and the last (originally sound/light/energy, now rendered as waves) being argued as closest to shapeshifters.

Building Block	Description	Associated Clans	Examples
Ground	The manipulation of rocks, stone, dirt, etc. Paragons with this building block often require physical connection with the ground, either by bending over or going barefoot, and may be unable to use their ability indoors if the floor is not stone.	Ironwood, Lightrock	King Edric Stonebreak, ground. King Leonard Whitewave, earthquake, ground + waves.
Metal	The manipulation of metals. May be considered a subdivision of Ground. However, Paragons with this building block tend to rely more on their hands than those with Ground, which led Dunspark to split the two.	Ironwood, Stelworth	Adrian Ironwood, metal.
Water	The telekinesis-like manipulation of liquids, especially water. Requires water to draw from, whether the small amount of vapor in the air or an actual body of water.	Waterguard	Dairine Waterguard, water. Duncan Colbreak, mist, water + air.
Air	Originally described as the manipulation of wind, but today we usually describe the pure building block as air pressure manipulation. Wind is then usually considered to be air + waves, such as in the case of Prince Felix, supported by his father's classification as ground + waves.	Greengale, Windweaver	Queen Helene Alderley, air. Queen Alexandra Alderley, blizzard, air + cold.
Fire	Originally described as the manipulation of fire, but today we typically describe this as the inverse of Cold: increasing heat energy. Fire-manipulators such as Duke Kyle Blackburn are generally still considered to only have one building block though.	Blackburn	Kyle Blackburn, fire. Wesley Blackburn, forge, fire + metal.
Cold	Originally described as the sapping of warmth, which is pretty close to how we describe it now: decreasing heat energy.	Colbreak, Whitewave	Cathleen Colbreak, cold. Marcus Colbreak, snow, water + air + cold.
Biology	By far the most common subsets of this building block are Healers and Drainers, supplemented by a small population of face-changers. These abilities tend to be highly genetic (ie overriding other building blocks) and almost always involve the manipulation of the human body. Animal or plant-based abilities have been rumored, but have not manifested in the modern era other than in Lyndon Stelcraft. Until his surge, most scholars, including Aileen Dunspark, believed such abilities were legendary.	Blackfade, Bloodbourne, Eyewright	Katherine Weatherby, Drainer, biology. Declan Eyewright, face-changer, biology. Lyndon Stelcraft, plant-manipulator, biology + ground.
Waves	Dunspark split this building block into sound and light (in that order), but with the increased scientific knowledge of how both of these natural phenomena work, and the seeming genetic connection of the two abilities (such as in my own family), they've been consolidated by many researchers into one building block. Also sound and light abilities are both too rare to really constitute a different category. This building block is now considered to be the manipulation of natural wave-based phenomena. As such, this building block really functions as a catch-all for unusual abilities.	Whitewave, Lightrock	Brenden Evenbrook, sound, waves + air. Cordelia Evenbrook, light, waves.

Motivations and Usefulness

The idea of building blocks originated as a way to explain ability inheritance; in Dunspark's view, a Paragon inherits one or more building blocks from their parents. They are also useful for categorizing Paragons based on ability, though real abilities tend to defy categorization to some degree.

Biases and Limitations

Dunspark viewed ground abilities as the most physical (closest to Amalgams) and light abilities as the least physical and closest to shapeshifters. To some degree, the study of power carrier concentration has debunked her theories on closeness to shapeshifters, though they're still believed by many people. Thus I'll take some time to dig into those limitations and where they might have come from.

Ground, Water, and Amalgams

When interpreting Dunspark, it's important to keep in mind that many Paragons of great military power, such as her relative King Edric Stonebreak who had won the hand of the queen in his dueling might, had ground building blocks with wide and powerful applications. Meanwhile in these days, Dunspark's own light-manipulation ability was considered weaker. This resulted in her immediate family not holding land and ultimately not being nobility. So she certainly had an ulterior motive to her association of ground with Amalgams.
As for the low association of water, Dunspark herself writes that water building blocks are like telekinesis, but with liquids, which is straightforwardly similar to Amalgams' only ability and was often mistaken for a mere extension of telekinesis. Amalgams were loosely-defined in this period; indeed, this was the first time in writing that liquid-manipulating Paragons were outright distinguished from Amalgams. Both words had been in use for decades, but they'd been applied to part-dragons in a positive or negative sense, respectively. Dunspark probably wasn't the first to use Paragon in its present meaning of a person with telekinesis and another ability and Amalgam in its present meaning of a person with only telekinesis, but she did have to define her terms at the beginning. It can be argued that her research paved the way for the normalization of those particular definitions.

Light, Telepathy, and Shapeshifters

Dunspark and her contemporaries interpreted human telepathy as a kind of curse originating from shapeshifter blood, manifesting itself in certain clans as a sign either of the Creator's displeasure or a remembrance of all that they'd suffered during the colonization. They recognized that it could happen in any Paragon with any ability or set of building blocks. At that time, telepathy was fairly common among the nobility and even seen among commoners.
From Edgar Waveworth Clearwater's studies of power carriers, we know that telepaths have power carrier concentrations of 200.00 or greater, which is to say that they potentially have more shapeshifter blood than a less powerful part-dragon. This essentially debunks Dunspark's idea that any particular building block is closer to dragons, though I honestly see a lot of articles saying things like that about my probably naer-influenced light-bending and citing Dunspark. So clearly it's an idea that's still in the popular consciousness.
Still, if her contemporaries viewed telepathy as a curse, why would Dunspark argue that those with light building blocks such as herself were closer to dragons? There are a couple of reasons. Dragons are clearly powerful, and power was very much something to be desired in this period. Stemming from that, Dunspark's research did a lot to normalize the word Paragon, indicating that part-dragons with multiple abilities were better than regular people. This was very much something the nobility stood to benefit from. Indeed, we continue to do so.