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Handler
Name: Lexiel
Age: 29
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Asexual heteroromantic. In practice, utterly bewildered by humans in general.
Rank: Journeyman wherhandler

History: Lex's early life was... a difficult one. He was born at Bitra Hold, that charming hive of scum and villainy. His mother was not well; Lex was dimly aware from far too young an age that she had a serious problem with both fellis and alcohol, and the times when she was coherent enough to actually look after her son were few and far between. He never knew his father - there's a couple possible candidates, and none of them ever came back to see if they'd produced unintended offspring, so Lex never made any particular effort to seek him out. (Lex also learned quite a few words that other men used towards his mother, words that no child of that age should know.)

When he was nine, his little sister Dalena was born. Technically the two of them are half-siblings, as they were both the children of random men that their mother never saw again. But Lex has never made much of a distinction about that. Dalena was his sister, and he cared for her as best as a young boy could. For the first seven turns of her life, he was her constant shadow and protector, keeping her as safe as he could.

By the time he was fifteen, however, Lex was running with a less than savory crowd. Whenever he wasn't with Dalena, he was out in the streets, learning how to fight, how to steal, and how to survive in a world that seemed to hate him. His mother was barely able to do even the small amounts of weaving that had once sustained them. He had never been able to successfully take up a craft, and the meager marks he could bring in with odd jobs and menial labor simply weren't enough anymore. He needed to do more - much more. And Bitra, it turned out, was just ripe with opportunities like low-hanging fruit for a young and desperate man.

It started off small. Loaded dice, shell games, marked cards. Only a few fraction-marks at a time, and little risk of reprisal; anyone who played a game of chance on the meaner side of Bitra and didn't expect it to be rigged would likely have the guards laughing in their face, even if they reported it. And Lex began to understand that there were two types of laws. There were the ones laid down by the Lord Holder, and then there were the unspoken ones that everyone actually followed. The former could be safely ignored. The latter needed to be learned: don't kill anyone, that attracts too much attention, don't intrude on another con's territory or they'll come break your knees, and above all don't rock the boat. He earned enough that at least Dalena could eat, even on the days when Lex couldn't. And there were other urchins and scatterlings whom he occasionally slipped a quarter-mark, when he could. Not that he could afford to very often.

And it wasn't enough. Dalena began classes with the local Hold-Harper, but she needed to get out of Bitra altogether, away to the Harper Hall or some other place where she'd have a chance at better. And in the days before Lessa, when dragons were rare and hitching a ride between was not an option, a safe trip overland all the way to Harper Hall was a seemingly insurmountable expense. The Harper agreed to sponsor Dalena at the Hall, if they could come up with a modest sum to help pay for her safe travel and lodging with one of the trader caravans. So Lex and Dalena sat down, put their heads together, and came up with a plan.

They would rob one of the wealthier merchants who had holdings at Bitra. Dalena would distract him - she had the beginnings of Harper training, she knew how to deal with people. Meanwhile Lex would break into his home and steal just enough to get them what they needed. It almost went off perfectly. They might have even gotten away with it if it hadn't been for a combination of two factors: Dalena's inexperience and Lex's desperation. The boy got greedy. In that house, surrounded by an acute, sudden understanding of what it was like to have when his life to that point had been defined by not having... Well. He stuffed the most expensive trinkets he could find into his pockets. More than just what they needed to send Dalena to the Hall. Enough so that Lex could have something left over for himself, too. But it took too long, and the merchant got wise to the girl trying to delay him on his way home. The man arrived just in time to see the back of Lex's head slipping out the back door, and futilely called for the guards - but too late.

Dalena went away. She was ten, Lex was nineteen. Ten was too young for her to be wrapped up in a crime scene. And without anyone other than himself to care for (his mother had vanished some time ago, Lex neither knew nor cared where, as in his mind she'd given up on being family to them a long time ago) Lex went underground. He sold the spoils from the theft, gaining just enough marks that he had a few options in life that weren’t starving, and began running with a similarly unsavory crowd. One of them mentioned idly that wherhandlers were rising in station in Pern: get a little wher and you’re set with bodyguard duties, get a big one and you can start breeding. Neither option required formal Crafthall education the way that becoming a healer or a harper or even a tanner would. Lex began investigating some of the local wher quarters, learning the lingo and hoping to ingratiate himself.

Four turns ago, Dalena returned after a long absence, now a senior apprentice and anxious to see how her brother was getting on without her. Lex eagerly explained to her that he was going straight, no more life as a scoundrel. He would become a wher candidate and find himself a steady job. While the two of them were at the wherhandler’s barracks talking, the merchant they’d hit turns ago stopped by seeking a handler to hire for protection… and he put two and two together. He'd figured out some time ago that the girl who'd delayed him was in on the crime. And now here she was with her brother, a rough man surrounded by other rough men. The merchant and his guards confronted the pair of them, threatening imprisonment - or worse. Thread had returned. That meant that thieves could be staked out in it...

The merchant realized he'd made a terrible error too late. As soon as the threat was out of his mouth, Lex's knife was in his chest. It was a short, bloody, brutal struggle; Lex was outnumbered and outclassed. The young man bolted while the sleepy whers were still waking in confusion, made sluggish by daylight... and ran straight into a passing patrol.

Lex wasn't quite a murderer; the merchant survived his injuries. But nonetheless he was branded as a thief and an attempted killer, the marks literally burned into his skin, and then he was thrown out of Bitra to die. He spent a few horrible, terrifying weeks in the wilderness outside the Hold, wondering if this would be the day that Thread fell and his life ended in agony, before a passing merchant caravan took pity on him and took him in. They were odd folk, the traders, but Lex was desperately eager to make himself useful. (It's amazing how the threat of imminent death rearranges your priorities, putting pride well towards the bottom.) But they didn't keep him around for long. For two turns he skipped from trader group to trader group, lingering as long as they were willing to tolerate his strange behavior. The rest of the time he worked on his survival skills. Still, it wasn't good for him. He lost weight - drastically. He tried to go north, only to be turned back by the inhospitable environment. He made sure to stay close to shelter whenever possible, but a close call with Thread forced him into a lake in late autumn until he nearly froze to death or drowned, an event that left him with a chronic fear of deep water.

If it hadn't been for the Revolution, then ultimately Lex would have died. That's what it comes down to: he survived for two turns on luck and wits and bloody-minded determination, but eventually his luck would have run out and he would have been killed. By Thread, by wild beasts, by exposure, by starvation... But the Revolution offered him a chance. The Holdless brands on him mattered less to the Revolution than his skills, and Lex had a lot of useful skills: fighting, sneaking, stealing, surviving. When he heard of the fighting from rumors off a passing caravan, he approached the new Wherhold order readily and was happily recruited.

It took him a turn of hard work to ingratiate himself with Benden's wherhandlers – a bit easier this time, as he already knew a little about whers, and he was willing to do whatever hard or unsavory work they set him to. In particular he grew close to one Jessan, a charming woman whose green was an excellent pit fighter. She helped guide Lex, teaching him how to more or less function in the new Revolution society where some of his - quirks - might not be tolerated. Finally he was offered the chance to stand for a clutch. It was an experimental sort of clutch: they’d selected a small but vicious brown who’d dominated the local wher pit fighting circuits for nearly a turn, and paired him with a truly enormous gold with a history of producing large, healthy clutches. The idea was that they would combine to produce whers with both abnormal size and naturally high aggression… either that or a bunch of scrawny vicious uncontrollable animals, in which case the clutch would simply be culled and they’d try again. Most of the candidates were somewhat skeptical of the pairing, seeing as it was coming from a brown and a gold. But Lex put himself forward – and for reasons known only to the gold, she offered him the largest of her eggs.

Things happened seemingly all in a rush after that. Lesk hatched, a vicious little bundle of reptilian cunning and contrariness. For the first time, Lex had a sense of stability in his life: he’d shown up at Benden bedraggled and hungry and without a mark to his name. And now he had a bronze, and life was… no longer unkind. Except that Lesk was a terrifying and borderline-uncontrollable beast, of course. He’d been bred specifically for pit fighting, and it seemed that the fact that he’d been hatched bronze was immaterial. Lesk wasn’t stable or obedient enough to be suitable for guard duty, and he wouldn’t be old enough to be useful in breeding for some time. As soon as the bronze was old enough and large enough to be trained and put in the ring, that’s exactly where Lex put him. The constant violence seemed to be enough to sate Lesk’s aggressive streak, making him almost docile the rest of the time. It’s been a rough ride for the two of them, but at least for the moment Lesk shows promise in his training.

Description: Lex is, to all superficial appearances, a perfectly normal human. Note the use of the word superficial. Past the basics (correct number of arms, legs, heads, eyes, etc.) Lex is… not really like most people. He can fool a casual observer easily enough, because if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then you generally assume it’s a duck. But any extended contact with him can and will give most folks the screaming willies. Maybe it’s the strange lack of normal social behavior. Maybe it’s the empty-eyed stare that seems just a little too quick to focus too intently, and he just doesn’t quite blink enough.

He's five foot ten, with the vaguely pallid, skinny, hollow-eyed look of a man who's either pathologically nocturnal, quite sick or possibly addicted to meth. His eyes are a flat, pale icy blue, the color almost distressingly light especially against the already unusual fairness of his complexion. As for his hair - short, dark brown, and unreasonably curly - you probably won't get to see it, because it spends most of its time hidden. His wardrobe is incredibly shabby: Lex owns exactly one sturdy leather greatcoat, which he tends to wear all the time, and pairs it with hats, hoods, or other things that will at least assist in concealing his face. (He’s spent long enough on the run that he knows the value of being nondescript.) The rest of his wardrobe is comprised primarily of whatever is still holding together long enough for him to patch the holes. In particular he makes a point to cover his right arm, with the ugly brands identifying him as a former Holdless criminal. Overall he looks more scruffy than genuinely threatening – most of the time. At least until you meet Lesk.

He tends to slouch pretty hard; Lex keeps his head down and moves with a crowd very efficiently when he has to. On the other hand, when he’s on the hunt he tends to move with a singular, frighteningly predatory focus and celerity. One of the unfortunate side effects of his bond with Lesk is that a few wherlike mannerisms and threat displays have begun to bleed over; Lex will occasionally bare his teeth in anger or snarl out a cuss instead of shouting, or stare a bit too intently at someone's throat if he wants to intimidate them. And he’s unusually aware of other people’s body language in the lexicon of dominance and aggression, at the same time that he doesn’t seem to quite understand all the other little social niceties.

Personality: Lex is a sweet guy. For a given value of "sweet", anyway. He knows that he's done an awful lot of bad, and he's trying to make up for the damage he's done by being better. And he tries. That’s possibly the most important thing you can say about him: whatever he does, he tries incredibly hard to make it work. Arguably, he tries harder than most people do. Being a decent person does not come naturally to him. That doesn’t make it better.

The trouble is that most people don’t approach the world quite like Lex does. He has… certain rules, and those rules are never broken. Respect those who have helped you in the past. Pay evil unto evil. Try to help those less fortunate than you, if you get the chance. Protect family and loved ones at any cost... and that last one’s a killer. But if someone gets in his way, he seems to be lacking the little voice that most people have in the back of their head telling him this is a bad idea, you should stop and let the proper authorities handle this, it's not your job to make them pay.

If Lex has a redeeming quality, it is his unwavering sincerity. When he speaks, it’s brusque and honest, often bluntly so. He knows how to lie when he has to (no, sir, I didn’t see anyone run this way) but he’s not very creative at it… and most of the time, it just doesn’t occur to him to obfuscate his true motives. Really, everything is quite simple with Lex. His moral compass is badly skewed, he has a downright alarming lack of concern about violence, and pretty much zero regard for personal property. But for all that, his motives are unselfish: he wants to figure himself out and learn from his mistakes (sometimes by making worse mistakes). His straightforward earnestness can even be endearing – if you’re not the subject of his ire, that is. The downside of this is that Lex has almost no capacity for determining when someone is manipulating him. He tends to assume that everyone around him is as sincere as he is, and thus they are either sorted into 'friend' or 'foe' without much in the way of critical thinking. This is a Very Dangerous Thing for a young metallichandler who will likely be surrounded by more experienced and politically savvy handlers. On the other hand, it could be helpful if he's steered in the right direction.

Granted, Lex is nowhere near cuddly or harmless. He’s still an unrepentant criminal with anger management issues that are only barely within his control. He tends to respond to threats with outright aggression, and his instincts – frequently distorted by Lesk’s – are still purely predatory. But that is restrained (more or less) by his own solid belief that he isn’t bad. He’s not abusing the power that comes with being a bronzehandler. He leaves the politics to the dragonriders and sticks to what he knows: fighting. He keeps Lesk leashed, because Lesk is not the kind of animal that can ever be trusted to come to good decisions on his own, no matter if he’s shiny or not. All Lex really wants is an equal shot at the things that seemed out of reach for him – and Lesk is a convenient metallic stepladder.

The bronzehandler’s general emotional state tends to waver on a spectrum between “coldly distant” and “vicious anger,” albeit intermingled with moments of almost childlike curiosity. He has a surprisingly curious mind, one that was never properly tapped in his childhood, and he is simultaneously wary and incorrigibly inquisitive about everything new he comes across. He likes puzzles and mysteries, but only ones that he can solve. There is one thing that seems to bring him genuine joy, and that is pushing himself and Lesk to their own physical limits. The heat of an adrenaline rush is the only time he feels right.

In regards to personal relationships, the man is somewhat lacking. Lex is capable of extremely strong emotional attachment to people, but it tends to be more along the lines of protecting those he values rather than flowery words. Don’t expect to magically fix his numerous personality dysfunctions, or inspire an inexplicable penchant for poetry. That’s just not how he rolls. On the other hand, if you happen to threaten one of Lex’s close friends… Run. Don’t hide. Don’t fight. Run. Take the first dragon off the continent – in fact, go South and don’t stop. Nothing will stop him until you’re beyond his reach.

Other:

Wher
Name: Lesk
Age: 1 year
Colour: Bronze
Description: Were you made in a bioterrorism lab? Because I’m terrorized by your biology.

Lesk is an outright awful killing machine, dragged straight out of the primordial depths of Terrorville and hand-delivered to the doorstep of your hindbrain. His father was a pit fighter, a vicious creature chosen by survival of the fittest for strength, viciousness, tenacity, and will to survive. The pits don’t favor attractiveness, however, and everything other than fighting skill tends to get lost by the wayside. The other half of the genetic equation belonged to a domesticated gold carefully bred and tended for strength, size, and health. So ultimately Lesk got all the unpleasant genetics of the pits, combined with the sheer size and muscle you get from attentive handling and good nutrition during wherlinghood.

His head is broad, with small deep-set eyes under heavy brow-ridges, but his muzzle is unusually elongated for a wher's. Make no mistake, this doesn't make him look more dragonlike: it's more crocodilian than anything, with a snaggletoothed grin and jaws that can literally rip a man in half. And while he's flat-out enormous at fourteen feet in length, he's disproportionately short, with squat, splayed legs: terrifyingly fast over short sprints, not so great at marathons. All this ends in a thick, ridged back, torn-up ragged wings too stumpy to be anything more than ornamentation, and an equally thick tail that could break a human leg with a solid impact. He's made for killing and he looks it.

As for color and markings? Well. He’s shiny. That’s kind of the nicest thing you can say about it. His primary hide color is a dark, mottled bronze, with an almost corroded quality to the color. From his eyes down to the tip of his muzzle there is a paler, yellow-greyish mask, leading to a streak of lighter color fading down his throat and chest. This gives him a distinctive, curiously hooded appearance.

Lesk wears a thick, sturdy muzzle at all times. This is a necessity. Lex only takes it off when he's hunting or feeding, and puts it back on when he's done.

Personality: The important thing to remember when dealing with Lesk is that he is less like a person, and more like an inexplicably intelligent crocodile. He can be reasoned with, if the reasons are right and if he's in the mood to listen. And for the most part, if left to his own devices, he's perfectly content to do his own thing: sleeping, eating, looking after his nocturnal domain. But the difference between the person and the crocodile is that the crocodile has no compelling reason - either ethical or biological - not to bite you in half.

In short, personality-wise the bronze got virtually everything from the pit fighter father, and from the generations of selective breeding behind his mother he got only size and fanatical devotion to his handler. In every other sense he is a bundle of animal instincts and cunning overlaid with the ability to plan. His desires are simple ones: he is the perfect hunter. He wants more of everything: more prey, more victories in battle, more territory. More is always better. And maybe it's just the fact that he's only nine months old and still growing, but it seems like Lesk is always hungry. It takes an active effort from Lex to keep him from wandering off and raiding the local herds whenever he gets the chance - or if there aren't local herds nearby, he'll settle for anything else that's alive and edible. Hence the muzzle. The muzzle is very necessary. Lesk hasn't yet learned the concept of moderation, and given his druthers he'll hunt until there's nothing left to be hunted. He might grow out of this, but Lex privately worries that he won't.

The upside of this is that Lesk is neither needlessly vindictive nor particularly emotional. Lesk is a wher of few words, and unlike the traditional bronze dragon, he demands neither respect nor admiration. Lesk simply is, and he never gives idle threats. Where his handler's anger always burns hot and close to boiling over, Lesk is cold and... well, reptilian. Humans who aren't Lex pretty much blur together into a mass of loud pink things, all of whom are more or less interchangeable. Other whers are given greater regard, but don't expect him to ever be able to distinguish one handler from another without Lex's help. The only time he'll bother to hold a grudge is if one of them harms Lex - and even then, he will remember their scent as enemy and threat, and hunt them down with the same methodical cruelty that he would use on any other prey.

One might suspect, from the single-syllable name, that Lesk's bond with Lexiel is on the weak side. This is partially true. Lesk has a lot more influence on Lex's behavior than vice versa: the human has primal instincts creeping into his psyche, but Lesk shows little sign of being softened by humanity. He will protect his handler obsessively from any perceived danger, but Lesk obeys commands based on whether or not he feels like being commanded. Fortunately the two are reasonably closely matched in force of personality, but it is still a constant battle of wits and will. Lesk is just clever enough to be unpredictable, a fact he takes advantage of fully, and he's very capable of both patience and persistence.

Other: om nom nom