Name: Lyqa
Age: 18
Sex: Female
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Craft: Feline Handler (Local Patrol/Tracking)
Rank: Apprentice
Location: High Reaches Weyr
Physical Description: Lyqa is a fairly average-looking girl, about five feet high with grey-blue eyes and light skin. Her hair is shoulder-length, bleached with dark brown roots. She tends toward a mix-and-match dress style, an artifact of growing up with mountains of hand-downs from numerous siblings and cousins. An observant person might notice she is missing two-thirds of her left pinkie finger. She has an elaborate piercing on her left ear in memory of said finger, but won’t say anything else about it. The only other notable thing about her is that she's got a bit of an accent and strongly rolls her R’s when speaking.
Personality: With the big cat Caan at her side, and in most situations without, Lyqa is not afraid of anything. Coming from a very large family, she’s pretty confident with other people, treating all with respect and whatever degree of familiarity they’re comfortable with. If a complete stranger is amenable to it, Lyqa will speak like they’re old friends, asking all manner of personal questions as if catching up after a long separation. It was quite common in her family’s caravan to not speak with a particular relative for months, sometimes even forgetting their name by the time she’d run into them again, so this kind of behavior is second nature to her.
Self-identity and independence were not greatly appreciated in her family, so those strengths were put to the test many times growing up. If she did something wrong and got ratted out by another kid in the caravan, she’d return the favor at the very next opportunity… and the second and third. She wasn’t much for tattling, preferring to manipulate circumstances or people to get the offender into trouble, or more trouble.
She HATES any sort of physical altercation but is actually prone to physically lashing out if she is startled or suddenly angered. Thankfully, she doesn’t have many instant-rage triggers. Seeing someone be unjustly punished or otherwise grossly mistreated can do that particular trick. She is glad she doesn’t have to deal with rank at the Weyr as a feline handler, and is perfectly happy to do her duties without being worth the notice of anyone in charge.
Positive Trait List Fearless, shrewd, protective, outgoing
Negative Trait List Manipulative, impatient, vindictive
History: Lyqa grew up in a large, clannish family of nomads. Life was hard, and out of a sense of necessity most of the parents were harsh and beat their children when they erred. It was effective in keeping the caravan safe and supplied, so the tradition carried on. Lyqa was one of those who learned how to avoid punishment, by behaving properly of course, but also by being sneaky and managing not to get caught.
At age fourteen, a juvenile male northern maned cat menaced Lyqa while she was scouting out in the wild. He chased her but seemed too tired to actually catch her. It turned out that he had actually been herding her toward a specific place—he needed her to fetch the carcass of an animal that had fallen into a hunter’s pit trap where he could not reach it without getting trapped himself. Lyqa roped the carcass and hauled it out for him. After that, she was able to interact with the cat regularly as her family happened to be camped near his lair. She often “visited” him by sitting quietly and watching at a distance or leaving gifts of food where she knew he would find it. Often, he would watch back. Lyqa loved this communion with a proud, strong creature who didn’t nag her, hit her or force her to do chores. She dubbed the feline “Caan.”
A few months after their first encounter, Caan had come to trust Lyqa enough to actually speak to her. He told her that a band of rogue males had recently taken over his birth pride, killing or driving away all the other males. He had survived the takeover, but was still too young and inexperienced to thrive on his own. He had been close to starving to death when he found Lyqa and prompted her to help him get meat. Her gifts of meat that followed, honorably given out of friendship rather than pity, had helped him survive since then. Now he was stronger, and felt ready to move on to new hunting grounds, but he was tired of being alone.
When he joined Lyqa and her “pride,” it didn’t cause much of a stir among the humans, as there had always been several feline handlers in Lyqa’s family. Lyqa was the first to bond with a northern maned cat, however, the majority of felines in the caravan being colorful, eye-catching species to help the entertainers. She was lucky in that she was able to get some proper handler training from a relative who had already earned their mastery.
Having Caan at her side made Lyqa even more independent, and she was soon just as eager as her feline friend to find new “hunting grounds.” When the caravan passed through High Reaches territory, Lyqa learned that the Weyr was offering very good pay to join the patrol to help protect its livestock and dragon eggs from raiders. The timing and the marks were just right, so she and Caan left the caravan to become full-time residents of the Weyr.
After Threadfall, as the dragon population at High Reaches skyrocketed, the feline patrol became less critical to the Weyr’s survival. They still patrol the surrounding forests and other places dragons can’t fly through, but have expanded their repertoire to include duties such as hunting and gathering for the stores and escorting unprotected visitors on foot for a distance in and out of the Weyr.
Other:
FELINE
Name: Caan
Type: Northern Maned Cat
Age: 5
Physical Description: Approximately 6’7 tall, 14’ long (assuming these are larger than terran cats?). Caan is deep-chested with heavily-muscled rear quarters and red-brown fur with lighter undersides. He has a white snip on his nose, chin, tips of his toes, and a brush of white fur at the tip of his tail. His eyes are dark orange with brown tear-streak markings.
Personality: Caan is an independent and rather arrogant cat. He is very aware of his large size and uses it to his advantage, particularly when dealing with other felines. He has a personal code of honor, based around the belief that a healthy adult should always be able to take care of himself and those around him who are weaker. For example, when he was unbonded, Lyqa gave him meat. If she’d known he was starving and that was why she offered it, he would have rejected it because he didn’t want to be pitied. But she hadn’t known, and gave the meat as a gesture of friendship, so he accepted. He LOVES blankets or clothes made of wool, and will purr and roll on them like a contented house feline when he thinks no one is watching.
Based on my pretty Shedu boy:
