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 Posted: Thu May 29, 2014 6:20 am
Name: Keralder (sometimes called "Kidder", due to his frequent use of the phrase "Just kidding! Can't you take a joke?)
Age: 19
Gender: Male
Rank: Candidate
Appearance: A rather c**k of the walk young man with skin the color of Klah with a hair too much milk, which turns darker in the sun.
His hair and eyes are both a deep rich brown, with thick eyelashes, a thin bridged nose with a pinch point exactly perfect for a disgusted pinch of the bridge, and an attractively shaped set of lips frequently marred by the ghost of a smirk.
If not for the short trim of candidacy, his thick, dark hair would grow out into lazy waves, and may do someday, and he flirts frequently with the idea of growing out a bit of a beard.
Personality:
Sharp as a knife, and quick to take an opportunity to cut people with his wit, Keralder is not an easy young man to get along with. Honestly he's yet to meet someone with whom he can't find some fault to pick at and joke about, much as he bristles and seethes if someone dares makes such a joke about him
Worse he's a bit of a vengeful soul, with pushy, jokes that can be downright mean, with his jokes frequently pointed at people who've earned his wrath in some way, including just by existing, and if actually caught at it, scoffs, snorts, and demands to know why people 'can't take a joke'. This trait has yet to be particularly appealing in any form, save perhaps to victims taking amusement at his pain, or maybe to a small selection of people who are like minded... for... whatever terrible twisted reason makes people think acting like Keralder is ok. Basically the only reason Keralder is even standing is that he so far has managed to skirt doing something bad enough to be kicked out, and his sense of self preservation means he's generally capable of lying low just long enough to lull people into a sense of security and hope that maybe THIS time he's given up being an a**.
When he's not focused on punishing certain people for being granted privileges or traits he thinks were unfairly granted by circumstance, he's not.... entirely.... a horrible person... he attempts to champion the downtrodden anyway in his own strange way, though it wouldn't hurt if he relied a little less on snark and manipulation and more on action, something his long suffering squire (NPC), an green rider who's own lowborn history gives her a certain degree of sympathy for the boy. She herself serves in the fifth wing, and refuses to comment if she agrees at all with Keralder's opinion that she rose no higher because of her birth and her gender. If she does agree, she has long ago concluded that it is better to remain in her niche than to fight for change.
If fit one of, or several of the traits of people who are frequently treated poorly, or with disgust or cruelty by the majority of Pern, Keralder is your Obnoxious, Snarky Zorro, swooping in to defend you from scorn by shorting sheets, salting Klah, and possibly trying to arrange to starch someones undergarments.
Though Faranth help anyone who thinks they're immune to any of this themselves should they prove to be an 'insufferable wherry'. He'll defend your right to exist as a fellow human, but not to be an annoyance. Or not to be an annoyance to him anyway.
He's not easy to be friends with, not by a long shot, and there will be few souls who get close enough to him that he will actually consider them 'friends' and not just acquaintances, and he does draw a very clear, wide, line between those things. Most people fall under 'Acquaintance' 'Tolerable and or Useful' or 'Irredeemable useless Wherry'. Even romantic entanglements may discover that they fall under "Acquaintance', and those going into a relationship with him will find they're less likely to be hurt if they go into things knowing not only this, but that he's largely casual, reasoning that he has room in his life for a limited number of deep bonds, and he's saving one of those places for a partner with wings. Do you have wings? (Gliders don't count, sorry...) No? Fine, take a number, he'll take interviews later.
As a side note: It is in fact, entirely possible to cause him no small degree of frustration if you don't quite match up to the image he has built for you. This is something Keralder himself decides if you do or don't do, obviously, but, say, a rich holder's child going out of their way to be kind and generous and supportive, and constantly doing so in ways that demonstrate that they are actually being selfless and thoughtful instead of just 'showing off'? Yeah, that throws him, frustrates him, and leaves him trying to figure out how to handle you for breaking his carefully constructed world view. STOP BENDING HIS REALITY YOU WEIRDO!
History:
Born slightly before the Civil War, Keralder is a child of the war, with his father lost to the battles before he was two. His mother was a silent, strong force of will, which did not sit well to begin with in the climate of her home Hold. Widowed by the battle, and with things heating up sharply and bloodily, she became one of the refugees of the war, deciding it would be worth more to take a chance at a new life someplace more stable than to bring up her young son in the chaos that she didn't see improving soon.
Without resources to work with, and a difficult path from one hold to another, her growing son had a close and clear view of the way many people treated a lone woman and child, and an more clear view of life in desperate poverty.
When they arrived at High Reaches, they were desperately hungry and weary, and his mother gave the one resource she had, her services, signing on as a Drudge to the Weyr to give her son a better chance.
In spite of his youth, the experience stuck with Keralder, and slowly began to reveal that he'd internalized a lot of resentment for those who had been more settled, more... privileged. More wealthy.
They were the ones who deserved to suffer, the ones who needed protection, and money, and food... not burnt bread and leftovers while the wealthy sat at the High Table and cheerfully stuffed their faces with fine cuts of meat and delicate deserts.
He wanted a life for his mother where she didn't wear her joints down until they burned life fire, and split her skin washing laundry. He wanted a place for them, someplace comfortable and safe, and to find a path to allow other people the same chance that suffered the way she did an way out. Struggle should never be a life sentence. Not even in a pleasant prison, since High Reaches, he knew, was better than some places.
He took on candidacy as soon as he was able to stand, partially for the opportunity to possibly impress, partially to get a little closer to those people who might someday fly for the protection of Pern, and the lessons didn't hurt either, padding his chances of someday being able to help support his mother in the future. He debated possibly moving to learn Wher handling if dragon-riding doesn't work out, but he's not sure about handling one of the large dangerous animals. He's sort of taking a big enough risk trying to not get maimed by an angry hatchling dragon, something he's avoided so far.
He would personally enjoy it if he had more time to see his mother, since the two are close, closer than Keralder is to most people, but between Candidacy and being a drudge, they frequently have mismatched schedules, passing long enough for a hug, a few words, and maybe a little sleep if they're lucky.
He resents this as much as he does the amount of work she grinds through, and has a certain lingering resentment for the creche system as well. Not that it ever did anything wrong by him, but for him it represents the same system of drudgery that might as well have swallowed his mother whole as far as he's concerned. Their mutual exhaustion frustrates him.
As a candidate, he's bright, and picks up concepts relatively smoothly. Not much faster than average, but with a certain dogged determination fed by the need to consume as much as he can from a given opportunity, the better to use it against what he hates in the future. Likewise, he has his sights set on the higher wings, the way a rock aims at an pane of glass. His ideas of how to accomplish this are... hazy at best, since he has no idea if he'll even impress at all, but it doesn't stop him from imagining it as an possible. That failing... well his education will serve him well, and he'll just make... other... plans. Something has to change... every thing has a weak point.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2014 6:21 am
Quote: What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.
The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature detective Philip Marlowe. The work has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles, California.
The story is noted for its complexity, with many characters double-crossing one another and many secrets being exposed throughout the narrative. The title is a euphemism for death; it refers to a rumination in the book about "sleeping the big sleep".
The Big Sleep, like most of Chandler's novels, was written by what he called cannibalizing previously written short stories. Chandler would take stories he had already published in the pulp magazine Black Mask and rework them so that they fit together in one coherent story. In the case of The Big Sleep, the two main stories that formed the core of the novel were "Killer in the Rain" (published in 1935) and "The Curtain" (published in 1936). Although the stories were completely independent and shared no common characters, they had some similarities that made it logical to combine them. In both stories there is a powerful father who is distressed by his wild daughter. Chandler merged the two fathers into a new character and did the same for the two daughters, resulting in General Sternwood and his wild daughter Carmen. Chandler also borrowed small parts of two other stories: "Finger Man" and "Mandarin's Jade".
As might be expected, all this cannibalizing—especially in a time when cutting and pasting was done by literally cutting and pasting paper—sometimes resulted in a plot that had a few loose ends; in the case of "The Big Sleep", there is the famous question of who killed the chauffeur. When Howard Hawks made his film of the novel, the writing team were perplexed as to the answer. Hawks contacted Chandler to inquire and Chandler replied he had no idea. This exemplifies a difference between Chandler's style of crime fiction and previous authors. For Chandler the plot was almost secondary; what really mattered was the atmosphere and the characters. An ending that answered all the questions and neatly wrapped every plot thread up was less important to Chandler than having interesting characters who behave in believable ways.
Sound of voice: The weight of a sword in your hand, pride at an oath fulfilled, a feeling that you've forgotten something...
Personality:
Marloth is an eminently capable creature, one who will never be at a loss as to what she should be doing or how she should be doing it. In the worst of circumstances, she will be there doing her best to pull the fat out of the fire - no panicking, no struggle, just action. It will take a good deal to unsettle her or unbalance her - and you will know that the situation has become truly unbearable when her usual deadpan snark fades away. She’s an intelligent dragon, with a good memory (as far as that goes), who will likely use her rider as a kind of back-up - forever interrogating them to facts and dates that are on the tip of her tongue but she can't quite recall.
She is also extremely honourable, and absolutely incorruptible: no rider of hers will ever be allowed to take a bribe, or to back out of doing the Right Thing. The oath they take - the oath they both take - will be something she will live her life by. She will struggle, sometimes, with balancing what is Right with what the law demands, and may never come to an easy solution... but she will always take the best option. However much it costs her - a friend, a treasured possession, her life - she will do the right thing, and she will never give up. It's easier to shake a hunting wher then it is Marloth on the trail of injustice and corruption, and even when confronted with a direct order she will find it difficult to give up. Where she finds corruption, she will root it out - and Marloth is likely to see corruption everywhere.
However, Marloth is also pessimistic and cynical - quick to see the worst in people, quick to judge, and not terribly excited about the way the world seems to have been tarnished. As much as she may love the people and dragons around her, she'll find their flaws more apparent then their strengths, and this may sometimes become overwhelming. It will be easy for her to put friends aside forever for these flaws, and perhaps her rider will need to remind her that not everyone can live up to her ideals about the way things should be.
She’s also a rather paranoid and reactionary dragon: as far as Marloth is concerned, there are no coincidences, and she’ll cheerfully come up with quite bizarre conspiracy theories that Need To Have A Stop Put To Them Now. Her rider will definitely have their hands full dealing with this aspect of their personality, because not only will she put these together but she will act on them. That said, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and Marloth is not in any way a stupid dragon... It wouldn't be unusual for people to come to her when they've got something that needs to be done, or someone who needs to be found, even outside of her 'real' job.
Positive: Capable, incorruptible, honourable, smart
Negative: Cynical, pessimistic, reactionary, paranoid
Appearance:
Marloth suffers from meromelia, and her left forelimb is shrunken and deformed. This disability may stymie her initially - and put her at a disadvantage when playing with her clutchsiblings - but she definitely won’t let it hold she and her rider back. Though she’ll always be clumsy on the ground, in the air Marloth is a thing of grace and speed, quickly outpacing the other dragons her age.
She is a dark green with a jagged paler mark across one side that looks somewhat like a lightning bolt.
Why Me?: Marloth and Keralder are wherries of a feather - cynical and a little bitter that the world doesn’t live up to their expectations of what it should be…
Marloth can deal with Keralder’s tendency to build up images of people in his head with a hard blast of the truth - and Keralder in return can give Marloth a little hope about the corruption that’s allegedly endemic in the world. Together, they’ll definitely be a team to be reckoned with, and absolutely ready to upset the order of things.
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Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 4:29 pm
Private Eye EggQuote: The rain is also there for Kidder, though it’s a warmer summer rain - the sort that comes in tropical regions, bringing with it floods. Keralder may get the hint of a keen intelligence watching him from behind the sheets of rain, and though it’s not one that completely approves of him (does he really think he’s going to change the world?), it isn’t actively hostile either. There is a strong impression of concern for their sibling... and do they want a hug? Private Eye kind of wants a hug. Quote: Private Eye sat back on her haunches and looked around again, apparently deeply dissatisfied with what she saw. The green stretched, then moved to intercept Listening - at least until she misjudged a dip in the sand, which sent her spilling over with an indignant squawk. It took her a moment to struggle back onto all three legs - something which she apparently found a little difficult. she complained, giving up on going after the blue to trudge back towards him irritably.
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