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Approved by Tawny

Rider
Name: T'arn
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Gay
Rank: Wingrider

History: T'arn is a Benden boy, born and bred. His parents were both Hall-trained, a smith and a glasscrafter, and both happened to be assigned to Benden Hold by their respective Halls in order to teach apprentices and provide necessary services. They met, fell in love, and Tellarn was the inevitable product... followed by about three sisters, because Pern hasn't really invented birth control yet for anyone who doesn't ride a dragon.

He grew up in relative peace and safety. Thread was not yet falling, there were no stirrings yet of political unrest or revolution or violence. Benden Hold wasn't a pleasant place to grow up gay and soft-spoken and a little bit on the delicate side, but he kept his proclivities to himself, and the rest was attributed to him being surrounded by women. His father, the smith, was frequently away at the Weyr on business - mending things, crafting buckles for riding straps or parts for flamethrowers. So it was easy enough to blame Tellarn's tendencies on an abundance of sisters. Granted, he wouldn't have been any different even if he'd been surrounded by big, strapping men - it probably would have been worse if he'd been surrounded by big, strapping men - but no one needed to know that.

He was a smart boy, right from the start. He went into the smithcraft because he liked working with his hands. As soon as he was able to specialize he made it clear that he wanted to make the small, intricate parts that went into machinery, not forging swords and axes and the like. There wasn't much call for Ancientcraft around Benden at the time, so he took up jewelrycrafting on the side, to sell to local wealthy women and make some extra marks for his family.

When Tellarn was twenty, he and his father went to the Weyr together to work on a particularly ambitious project. While he was there, a curious blue dragon sniffed him out and inquired if he would be interested in being a dragonrider. Tellarn had never really considered it before, and the question took him by surprise. He agreed to attend the Hatching to see for himself - not to Stand, but just to observe. He was too old to start on a new career path in life, he thought. Tahmoth thought otherwise, and she made her thoughts explicitly clear when she came up into the Stands after him.

It was - an unpleasant shock, on many levels. Tellarn - T'arn - hadn't really wanted to be a dragonrider. He'd wanted to be a smith, and maybe an Ancientcrafter one day. And now he had a rather demanding green in his head telling him that not only was he a dragonrider, but he was the lowest rank of dragonrider, and that was Unfair and Wrong and that he had to Fix It. This was a distressingly heavy burden to drop on someone who hadn't been at all prepared to pick up the banner and run with it. All he wanted was to live a quiet life somewhere in a quiet little hold where he could maybe have a discreet closeted romance with a handsome man. But no, surprise, apparently according to Tahmoth he was destined for far greater things than that.

Well, let it never be said that T'arn doesn't step up to the plate when great things are demanded from him. He tried. He tried magnificently, served as the best wingrider he could possibly be, balanced craft work with dragonriding and was generally an asset to his weyr. A... largely ignored asset, but T'arn accepted that, even if Tahmoth seethed at the injustice. But T'arn wasn't the kind of man to lead a revolution, and there was nothing he could really do from within the system to change it. He was a greenrider. That meant his life options were limited: even if he wanted to lead, he would be a Candidatemaster or a Weyrlingmaster or nothing at all... and T'arn wasn't fond enough of children to be interested in such things. It wasn't until Archimonde showed up that it was clear what it was that T'arn and Tahmoth were meant to do.

Archimonde. Archimonde changed everything. T'arn joined the Revolution willingly, readily, without so much as a bat of an eye: because the Ancientcrafters were with them, and they promised him and Tahmoth equality. They promised justice. They promised everything that T'arn had wanted, waited for patiently for sixteen turns.

Thus far, they haven't disappointed. The sheer scale of the violence dismays him, at times, but it is violence being executed by people who aren't T'arn. Sometimes a revolution has to be violent, and T'arn is nothing if not patient. He bides his time. Someday the dust will settle, and the war will end, and it will be time for him to help rebuild anew. And when that day comes, he and Tahmoth will be ready.

Description: T'arn is not a large man. He's a delicate slip of a thing; up until he was eighteen or nineteen, he barely broke five foot six, and only a very late growth spurt bumped him up to five foot nine. And even with that, there are plenty of six-foot-plus men (and a few women) around to make him look even smaller. To top it off, he is... well, lacking in muscle. Especially by dragonrider standards. Especially by former-smith-turned-dragonrider standards.

One would expect T'arn to be an enormous wall of muscle, but even before he Impressed Tahmoth, he was the kind of smith who excelled in delicate, intricate detail work. He was the one who spent his time carefully drawing out long spools of wire for Ancientcrafter devices, or setting fragile glass lenses into metal frames, or intricately bending precious metals into jewelry for Lady Holders. His hands are as slim as the rest of him, with clever deft fingers, but also covered in calluses and small burn scars: they are not soft hands, but they have a light and gentle touch to them. And the rest of him is lean and bordering on frail.

His skin is dark, dark brown, the kind of color you get from genetics, not from spending too much time under the hot sun. His hair is fine and jet-black and ramrod-straight, and T'arn tends to keep it pulled back into a multitude of tiny tiny braids, adorned with the occasional small bead of carved wood or colored glass. Lately that jet-black hair is streaked with touches of silver: a combination of time and care, though worry-lines have yet to touch his face. A jeweler's loupe is frequently found perched just in front of his honey-brown eyes, fringed with unusually long lashes and set in a fine-boned face with high cheekbones.

Personality: T'arn is a strict pacifist. He doesn't kill. He hasn't killed. Not a single Benden rider was harmed by his hands or Tahmoth's claws during the Revolution, and that isn't a fact he makes any particular attempts to hide. Why? Because he's not ashamed of it.

The Revolution, to T'arn's eyes, is not about war. War is the unfortunate necessity that is required for them to raze out the old system and bring in the new, like a forest fire clearing out space for new growth. But it is not the purpose of the Revolution: it is a means to an end. And if there is no one at the Wherholds but warriors, then how will they rebuild? T'arn is valuable because he is a builder, a fixer, a solver of problems. His loyalty to Keller and the Wherholders is unquestioned. He believes in the Revolution wholeheartedly. But much like you don't put your field medic on the front lines to be killed with the rest of the infantry, T'arn's talents are better suited to other things than violence.

The Ancientcraft fascinates him, and it's no secret that T'arn wants to join the Guild. It was one of the primary motivating factors behind his decision to join the Revolution, because they were more accepting of new technologies and his work would be more respected there. T'arn's primary (and some would say only) love is science, and he would dearly love to invent something new to benefit all of Pern. Too long have the Pernese people languished in technological stagnation, hindered partly by the ravages of Threadfall and partly by the overtaxing tithes of the Weyrwomen and Weyrleaders. A society comprised primarily of whers and smaller dragons will take less resources from the population, and leave more for innovation by the people.

Notably, T'arn is willing to stand up for himself against the wherhandlers when needed. Yes, they are the leaders of the new revolution now, but he won't allow himself or Tahmoth to be second-class citizens because of what they are and what they can't control. That time is over. He had enough of that at Benden under the claws of the bronzes and golds. If a wherhandler in his presence forgets that Wherhold rank is earned by merit, not given by Impression, he won't hesitate to speak in sharp rebuke. Just because he is a peaceful man does not mean that he is shy or easily frightened. He is merely a layer of softness over steel: his voice is quiet because he doesn't feel it needs to be raised, not because it cannot be raised.

Still, he has no desire for leadership or fame. T'arn wants to help people, not to be praised or looked up to. He would much rather be left in peace in his workshop, doing what he loves out of life. The phrase 'eccentric inventor' certainly applies here: he's likely to quickly gain a reputation for being That Odd Gentleman who shows up every now and then to requisition more materials and then scamper off to fill journals with sketches of improbable machines.

Other:

Dragon
Name: Tahmoth
Age: 22
Colour: Green
Size: Below Average
Build: Average

Description: Image here!

Tahmoth is... well, average. In appearance, at any rate. She's slightly on the lower end of the scale in terms of size, but her build is profoundly average, a neat balance of speed and stamina without anything particularly unusual about her. Even her coloring is relatively plain: she's a medium green, neither unusually light nor unusually dark, with no markings at all except that her legs are a bit darker than the rest of her. Tahmoth likes it that way. It means that she tends to blend into a crowd: she's pleasantly nondescript, "just another green" with very few striking features that someone could point out about her. It serves her well during missions for the Revolution.

Personality: Tahmoth is a progressive little green - not entirely surprising, considering the man she Impressed, but somewhat unusual for a Benden-bred dragon. She has never been quiet or deferential and on the whole, there has never been a time where Tahmoth believed that gold dragons are somehow inherently better. As far as she's concerned, if golds were somehow superior, then they would Impress men, and one of them would have Impressed T'arn before she did. Since that didn't happen, and only greens and blues Impress all people equally, golds are probably inherently flawed. She's not color-driven in the slightest, but she does believe that some dragons - originally greens and blues, but she will quickly expand that definition to include the atypicals - are already ideal, and the 'higher' colors (bronzes, browns, golds) have to work harder to make up for their lack. Dragons are inherently, genetically unbalanced, and she's quite certain it is up to the dragons themselves to work around their inherent caste-privilege beliefs.

She's egalitarian to a fault, believing in complete equality and the right of everyone to have the same thing, no matter what. Sort of like a dragon communist. It's not something she'll necessarily go out and fight for - aside from Threadfall and eating, Tahmoth is just as pacifistic as her rider - but Tahmoth will give up her herdbeast if she finds that others are going hungry, or will work herself to the bone to give those who have not rested enough a chance to recover. She genuinely cares about others and desperately wants to ensure that everyone has the same chances as everyone else. 'Fairness' is her buzzword - what is fair is what is right, and if something is not fair, then it might well not be as 'right' as someone thinks. She does not believe that the end always justifies the means, and is quick to remark when she sees what she perceives as injustices done in the name of justice. Just because the Revolution has noble ideals doesn't mean it isn't corrupt, and Tahmoth is not naive enough to think otherwise.

She likes hatchlings, but is not particularly invested in other dragons. It takes a long time to earn Tahmoth's actual trust; she's easy to talk to but rarely makes close friends. She'll gladly put her back into aiding anyone, and she will chatter away for hours with someone if it looks like they need companionship, but amiability does not automatically equal devotion. Tahmoth is somewhat shallow - not in the sense that she's a fair-weather friend, but in the sense that she doesn't seem all that interested in deep emotional connections. When she flies, she tends to choose very specific, T'arn-approved suitors and not deviate much from her 'staple' choices. She tends to be somewhat suspicious of the motives of others; while she generally won't refuse anything she has been asked unless it is directly harmful, she won't let someone make her a pushover.

When it comes to T'arn, Tahmoth adores him. He is everything she has ever wanted, and she would gladly give up her life to ensure he was safe. She tends to be a bit mothering, perhaps a little overbearing on occasion, but she also knows that T'arn can take care of himself. She rarely interferes with his affairs, and in general prefers to take a back seat while T'arn does a majority of the steering. And while she supports his love of crafting, she's not altogether that interested in it herself. She's never going to become involved in it. Tahmoth is T'arn's whenever he needs a dragon. When he doesn't, Tahmoth is not going to crowd his life by trying to force herself in. She's secure enough that she's not concerned he's going anywhere.

Other: n/a

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