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 Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 8:26 pm
[ edgar ashworth ]
"Ah, well if they refuse your help, then you cannot blame a fool for dying." (The Pursuit of Knowledge)
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Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 6:26 am
---- chosen
name edgar ashworth.
age 19 [born 1779].
chosen age 15.
gender male.
occupation heir.
hometown rosehill manor, palisade.
height 5'10".
weight 150 lb.
physical attributes
thick, dark blonde hair, almost brown; well-trimmed, short | clean-shaven | flat gray eyes, dark; rounded almond
thin, oval face; sharp jaw and pointed chin | thin, flat eyebrows | high, straight nose
rower's physique; broad shoulders | wide, toothy grin | naturally darker, tanned skin | common-looking, albeit handsome, face; does not look highborn
parents edwin ashworth x leana sandrino.
(real) sam tiller x meredith ward.
siblings rob tiller (unknown), oliver tiller (unknown; half-brother).
spouse n/a.
Since he was young, Edgar Ashworth had been groomed as the only son and heir of Edwin Ashworth. The elder Ashworth was a minor lord, an up-jumped trader of odd trinkets who won his lordship by chance when, in his early 30s, he happened to detain Palisade's most notorious thief. The Robber King, the thief was called, for his utter dominion over the shadowy characters of the city's underground world of crime. When Edwin realized who he held, he brought the thief before the Queen to earn his reward, whereupon he traded his birth name of Edwin Tash for the more regal Ashworth.
In his early 40s, Edwin Ashworth fell in love. He had his sights set on the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant, who first spurned Ashworth's requests for the daughter's hand but quickly changed his mind when he calculated the advantages of having a son-in-law with ties to the city's nobility. They married, after which Edwin remained devoted to his young bride, whose dark hair and sweet hazel eyes bespoke (to Edwin, at least) beauty unequaled in all of Sunderland.
She, however, was not as faithful. Leana Sandrino's first love was Sam Tiller, a low-born but dashingly blond and wonderfully tanned sailor who crewed her father's ships and with whom she had wasted away most of her summers from the age of twelve. Leana's husband was a pale, mousy man with wispy, thinning hair and droopy eyes and a diminutive frame; it surprised nobody that Sam Tiller remained her only love.
Not a year after her wedding, Leana found herself pregnant. The child was not her husband's, but Edwin was beginning to pressure her for an heir to his title and small fortune, and she could not bring herself to abort Sam's baby. She carried the child for nine months, hoping against hope that it would take after her and not its father.
But life was not prepared to deal her such a fair hand. The child was born while Edwin was away on some minor business. When the baby came squalling into the world, its head was covered with the finest mop of golden blonde hair Leana had ever seen. She grew desperate; in days, her husband would return. He was a jealous man and she did not doubt that, upon seeing the child's golden hair, he would fly into a rage and seek out the man he would inevitable know was the father.
She turned to Sam for help. As luck would have it, Sam's own wife, whom he had married reluctantly when she found herself pregnant, had given birth the night prior and had yet to wake from the sleep induced by the midwife's draught. Her babe, he decided, had darker hair and more resembled Edwin Ashworth than Leana's fair-haired child.
They swapped the two babies, and their lives went on with everyone else none the wiser.
Their facade lasted two or three years. Edwin was incredibly detailed in his observations of his wife and the people in her life, and while he always wondered about his son's lighter hair and darker skin, it wasn't until he heard the boy's laughter pealing through the house that he became convinced the child was not his. Edgar Ashworth had his natural father's laugh and the same wide, toothy grin. But without substantial proof, Edwin feared falsely accusing his wife.
Instead, he suffered the child's existence and claim to his name in silence. The boy grew up with a mother who learned to love him as her own and a father who preferred not to acknowledge his existence. Edwin's demeanor toward his son was cold at best, and even when he looked at Edgar, his gaze seemed to drive right through him as if the child were a ghost. He refused to praise the child, teach the child, even touch the child, and when Leana contracted the flux and passed away sometime around Edgar's sixth birthday, Edwin all but abandoned the boy to his tutors.
Edgar grew up to hold a deep devotion to his mother and an entirely loveless impression of his father. He suffered Edwin's cold unavailability as a duty to his mother and to the household name, reconciling himself to the fact that it was the price to be paid for family. After Leana's death, it was a home that lacked warmth entirely.
At 15, Edgar came to the horrifying conclusion that Edwin was not his father. Everything he had known about himself was shattered in that moment. In a fit of blind rage, Edgar took to the stables and rode away from Palisade as hard and fast as he could, determined to leave behind the man who had never shown him anything but distance and made his childhood insufferable.
And yet, he was confronted with one question: what would he do? There was nowhere for him to go, nothing for him to become. He had come to a crossroads and he stood at a corner shivering, searching desperately for a hint of the person he was really meant to be. But there were no answers.
Then he came upon the Wardwood on his wayward flight toward Oldcastle. The dark called to him and drew him into its depths, and from it he reemerged with a totem in his hand.
Since then, his tempers have calmed, though he his no closer to finding himself. He returned to Palisade and to Ashworth's manor, continuing to fulfill his duty as heir to Edwin's name and fortune, though he is known every now and then to put on plain clothes to wander the city unnoticed, ever in search of the answer to his quest for his identity.
Since discovering his lack of any real connection to Lord Ashworth, Edgar's attitude has taken a turn, deciding that he doesn't quite give a s**t and society be damned. There's little sense in putting on a mask, so he has dispensed with customary politeness and does little to hide his opinions (which, when he forms them, are very strong indeed). He does things very much on his own terms and in his own way, preferring his own course to any previously laid out by others. Experimenting is becoming a favorite pastime and he will gladly try anything out, if for no other reason than to say he did. In the pursuit of knowledge, there are few boundaries he fears crossing.
Books are Edgar's reality apart from reality. The worlds, philosophies, characters imparted to him by the books he has read stay with him, furnishing his mind with tools with which to escape or deal with reality as he sees fit. It is a coping mechanism of sorts, a way to make sense of the world into which he was born, and he uses them as well as he can, often drawing on personas learned from books to mask his lack of a sense of self. His acute memory makes him uniquely suited to such measures; he never forgets what he has read, and often remembers to the page where certain memorable quotes can be found.
For all his studiousness, however, there is a streak of impatience that runs deep inside him, one that makes him mildly claustrophobic and drives him stir-crazy should he find himself trapped too long in the confines of a house. He is imbued with a frenetic energy, something that makes it seem as though something inside him is always spinning, always churning even if he is sitting down. He never sits completely still, always shifting with his eyes or a finger on a foot bouncing up and down. There is an anti-calmness about him that he remedies by spending much of his time outdoors. He likes to do things for himself, fashion things out of whatever materials are available, and fix things. Imperfection fascinates him, and the home-made has a habit of intriguing him.
Perhaps it is the fact that he has to deal with his own frantic energy; perhaps it is his inability to figure out who he really is in the world; whatever the reason, he feels a distinct and irreconcilable difference between himself and the rest of high society, as if he and it are worlds apart despite his not knowing any other world. He wonders always how they manage to do it, how the men and women of the upper class can smile, laugh, dance their lives away with such unaffected calm. Have they not their own problems? He cannot seem to assimilate himself fully into the upper class, doing poorly in its social setting and preferring to avoid gatherings altogether.
(Does not like to be told to do things; sometimes does unpleasant things on purpose to better appreciate the moments when he's not doing something unpleasant; oldschool and likes old things)
*Clothing ref from azaleasdolls.com(note to self: basically he's mike)
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Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 6:28 am
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Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 6:31 am
---- guardian
 [ totem uc ] [ adult uc ]
[ basics ]
name dardanos (dar-DAH-nos).
gender buck.
[ appearance ]
height 15.1 hh.
physical attributes strong, sturdy
[ family ]
parents n/a.
siblings n/a.
[ history ]
Dardanos came to Edgar at a time of great need in the boy's life; or rather, Edgar came to Dardanos at a desperate time. The boy was lost, adrift and hapless in his loss of identity. He needed the guardian as few ever needed anything in their lives, though even he was unaware of the depths of his desperation. Dardanos became at once an anchor and a liberator, keeping the boy sane by freeing him from the confines of reality.
[ personality ]
He was like gravity, drawing the world to him and holding its attention, holding the deep despair of reality at bay like a flame in the dark. With him, there was no night, no emptiness, only the moment and the warmth that burned in his very being despite his inherent hardness. He was the father, the son, the brother, the sentinel in the dark, the one whose very existence seemed to put to rest all the wrongs of the world. With him, there was no reality, only the unending discussion that sustained them through the long night, whispering and talking without words as if they were suspended above time; a deep and introspective conversation that seemed to end always in a question: “But who are you really, wanderer?” And the only answer he would have you give is, “Maybe I’m a king.”
[ dreaming ]
The unofficial head of an assortment of Guardians and other creatures that were drawn to him in the Dreaming for any number of reasons. Quite naturally, he stepped into the role of protector and leader, watching over the others as if they were family and taking it upon himself to ensure their emotional and physical well-being. He is generally referred to and addressed as "Don," as much a title as it is a nickname.
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Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 6:32 am
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