Character Name: Sileny
Age: 19
Gender: female
Sexual Orientation: heterosexual, but unlikely to receive any offers
Craft/Rank: vintner/apprentice
History: Sileny isn't exactly what anyone would call a good girl, and never has been. When she was old enough to be fostered out, her parents were thrilled and sent her to Benden, where she was taken in by a family of vintners. She wasn't much less trouble for her foster family than she had been for her own, but her foster parents decided that the cure for this was hard work, and so they put Sileny to hard work at the Hall, at first just physically demanding tasks which left her too tired to grouch and snap at people, but later on more mentally challenging tasks. Sileny eventually came to enjoy the work, and when she was fourteen she asked to be officially apprenticed. She worked at her apprenticeship for several turns, receiving a thorough grounding in all of the areas of vintnercraft, but taking a special interest in brewing and distilling. She liked the chemical aspects of that, and enjoyed experimenting with variations, though her experiments frequently got her into trouble, as did her never-lost habit of talking back or criticising others. She came with her foster father to Benden Weyr to bring wine for the most recent hatching, a reward for an unusually long period of good behavior, and there she was Searched, much to everyone's surprise. Sileny decided that she was close enough to the maximum age for a candidate that she could afford to spend some time as a candidate before going back to her craft, should she fail to Impress. Her foster father might have been relieved to see the back of her, and the Weyr certainly didn't know what it was in for.
Description: Before anything else, Sileny is clean. Everything else about her physical appearance seems to stem from that. Her face is always scrubbed clean, as are her hands and any other bit of skin that is revealed. Her hair is always washed and pulled back into a bun. These are habits from her time distilling and brewing, when it was imperative that contamination be kept to a minimum, or else things could go very wrong, sometimes explosively so. She has a scar on her left elbow from when that happened. Her hair is dark brown and her eyes are light brown. Her skin is middling fair and is subjected to both burning and tanning under the sun, depending on previous exposures. She is about 5' 6" tall and more or less proportionate, weight-wise. Her smile isn't at all convincing, but her scowl is very much so. When she isn't scowling, Sileny is fairly attractive.
Personality: Some people spread joy whenever they enter a room, and others whenever they leave it. Sileny falls into the second category. She is foul-tempered to the point of being downright mean. If someone makes a mistake in her presence and she happens to notice it, that person can be sure to receive a thorough chewing out which will not only insult them but their mothers, sisters, and pets. One could probably say that she has a foul mouth without being too far wrong, for her tongue is sharp, and she is endlessly inventive when it comes to making up derogatery phrases or insults. Even when she's not being actively unkind or critical, Sileny is blunt and loud, with a tendency either to screech or hiss. In addition to critical and mean-spirited, Sileny is impulsive. She simply has no filter between thought and action, which is probably part of why she comes across as such an unpleasant individual. Her impulsive tendencies extend to other areas of her life, too, however. Many of her mistakes are the direct result of not enough thought before action. On the other hand, she is supremely self-confident. She marches boldly and unapologetically into everything she does, sure that whatever action she takes will be the right one. It isn't always, but pointing that out to her earns people a thorough tongue thrashing. It will also earn them her enmity, which can manifest in nasty ways. Because she will go there. Remember the lack of impulse control? Fortunately, she lacks the requisite subtlety to be very effective at this. As far as redeeming traits go, Sileny doesn't have too many, except that she's fairly attractive. It's probably best to appreciate her from a distance. She does like chemistry and music, but those aren't exactly redeeming qualities, particularly after you've heard her sing (remember the screeching and hissing).
Other: Sileny has no real opinions one way or the other about politics and the wider world of Pern, but she tends to agree with Benden's view on Atypical dragons.
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