Approved by Tawny

Name: Anthon
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Rank: Mastersmith

Appearance: Anthon is a little guy who moves and acts like a much bigger guy. He’s honestly only somewhere around five foot eight in height, on the smaller end for a Pernese man, though he struts in such a way that his personality seems to fill a room. He’s reasonably broad in the shoulder, however, with the kind of arm muscles you get when you swing a hammer on a regular basis as part of your job. It wouldn’t be right to call him handsome – he’s a little too scuffed up around the edges for that, with the slightly haggard look of someone who in his youth was intent on living fast and dying in a blaze of glory. Still, when he chooses to put on a smile, that smile is brilliant and infectious, and it’s carried him a long way towards his current position.

The former Bendenite is fair-skinned, with dark eyes, and equally dark hair which he keeps short and slightly rumpled in what he obviously thinks is an attractively roguish manner. (Jury’s out on whether he’s successful.) He maintains a neatly trimmed beard, because at least in Anthon’s eyes if a guy can grow a beard that’s neither patchy nor scary mountain man, then he has an obligation to do it as an example to the world. When he opts to dress up for an occasion, he strongly favors flawlessly tailored and form-flattering pieces in black and crimson, with occasional accents in gold embroidery. The rest of the time, however, he maintains an overall baseline of ‘barely presentable’. Anthon seems to be physically incapable of being near a workshop for more than ten minutes at a time without getting his hands (and sometimes face) smeared with ash, oil, metal polish, and other general grunge. It’s old habit: he just can’t resist touching literally everything.

Personality: Anthon is a builder. He doesn’t adapt to suit his environment. He adapts his environment to suit him.

Intelligence and curiosity have always been his strongest assets. He naturally possesses a remarkably astute spatial intelligence, with the capacity to visualize and mentally construct complex projects in his head. His longstanding knowledge of metallurgy means he can almost always choose the right alloy for the job. But the Smithcraft is more than just metalworking. It is ingenuity – it is the tools that every other craft requires to function, and if Anthon doesn’t have the right tool for the job at hand, then he’ll build a new one. In a system that encourages tight specialization and isolation between the various Crafthalls, Anthon is a stubborn polymath who’s pursued the necessary resources and connections to make it work. On top of being a swift learner with an excellent memory, he actively seeks out (some would say “collects”) experts in aspects other than his own specialty to consult with as needed.

Professionally speaking, Anthon is comfortable – confident, even – dealing with others. A consummate showman (someone would say borderline narcissist) he draws the spotlight onto himself, and he moves in it as if it’s the most natural thing in the world for every eye in the room to be on him. The mastersmith is at his most charming when he’s speaking in front of a crowd, whether that crowd is a gaggle of students or a table of Lord Holders and their consorts. The flipside of the equation is that he can turn on someone with equal ease: if Anthon’s ire is earned, he’s as petty as a spurned Harper, and he’s not above retaliating in kind if someone attempts to challenge his professional prowess. Call him an a**, call him a spoiled Holder’s son, but don’t call him stupid.

He’s earned a certain infamy for irresponsible conduct, but in a purely social sense, a boys-will-be-boys kind of cheerful obnoxiousness that doesn’t carry over into the quality of his work. Still, there’s a very fine line of what will and will not be tolerated, even out of a rich eccentric genius, and he tends to dance back and forth across it more often than is strictly advisable. The truth is that Anthon enjoys advertising some of his more obvious and garish character flaws – his arrogance, for instance, his occasional womanizing, his inadvisably sharp tongue – because they ultimately don’t have the power to hurt him, and they distract from the weaknesses that he’s genuinely ashamed of. Secretly, he’s terrified of letting himself have a real emotional connection with someone else. Hence why he surrounds himself with acquaintances, students, subordinates, and the like: he can get his fill of social interaction without ever needing to drop his guard and let anyone get close enough to hurt him. Where there’s no vulnerability, there can be no betrayal.

Still, he’s a surprisingly generous friend, and he’s working on being thoughtful as well. He’s the kind of person who grew up in financial security, always having enough of everything he needed, and now that he’s securely landed as a mastercrafter he enjoys sharing some of that security with those who haven’t always had it. It might occasionally come across as trying to bribe companionship out of people, but that’s not how he sees it; Anthon enjoys giving small gifts, especially surprises, because he enjoys watching the reactions of the recipients. Most important is that he tries. There is a surprisingly sweet and earnest, almost childlike streak running beneath his layers of swagger and bravado. It’s rarely seen, but it emerges sometimes when he’s interacting with close companions or with his firelizard.

History: Anthon was born the second son of a Holder, Hawthon, in charge of a minor Hold in Benden’s territory. It wasn’t a tremendously populous place, housing perhaps several hundred souls, but a reasonably prosperous mining industry kept them supplied with precious ore and kept the marks flowing in. His mother Anmira was chronically frail of health but every inch a proper Benden lady, soft-spoken and polite, and the eldest son Amaran was a vibrant and confident child, every inch a Holder’s heir. It was the kind of life that, to an outsider, would look idyllic.

When Anthon was four, he was playing with his elder brother when he collapsed suddenly and took a bad tumble. He broke his arm in the fall, which the healers set promptly, but more important was the reason for his abrupt collapse: a heart defect, undetected until it showed its first symptoms. Structural defects were not unknown to the healers, and they were quick to reassure the worried family; the longer Anthon lived, the better his prognosis, and should he survive childhood (never a thing a parent wants to hear) then he would likely go on to live a normal and healthy life. There was little the healers could do to correct it, save to recommend a healthy diet, exercise in moderation to keep his heart as strong as it could be, and minimal stress. In short, he would make a fine crafter, but he would never pass muster as a dragon Candidate.

This revelation… well, it rocked the foundations of the family in unpleasant ways, or perhaps it just prematurely surfaced problems that would have been there to begin with. See, Hawthon in his youth had desperately wanted to be a dragonrider, had dreamed of the honor and prestige, and yet had been passed over time and time again by Searchdragons. He’d dreamed that one of his sons would be Searched to the Weyr; having a rider in the family would lend him the connection to Benden Weyr that he desired so strongly, and it would give him an opportunity to live the old dream vicariously. And Amaran… he wanted to ride, too. Naturally bold and selfless where his brother was clever and wayward, Amaran would have made a fine rider. But as the eldest, he was bound to become the heir, and no one would pin their hopes on the sickly younger child as anything other than a crafter. Perhaps if there had been a third son, some kind of balance could be reached, but Anmira was growing older, and with every passing turn it would be riskier for her to conceive again.

So in the end Anthon was left for his mother to coddle, while his elder brother and his father both drew away from him. It was not a conscious malice, nothing done with cruelty aforethought. But Hawthon and Amaran had a natural bond between them, one of shared dreams and expectations… and as much as the Holder tried to be a good father, he truly had no idea how to relate to his younger son. So Anthon was alternately stifled by his mother and held at arm’s length by his father, with the ever-present knowledge that he wasn’t what he was supposed to be by no fault of his own. Little wonder that he grew up quiet and awkward and more than a little resentful.

Still, his mechanical aptitude showed itself early and strongly, and by the time he was ten he was needling insistently for an apprenticeship with a smith. It didn't help that as his mother's health continued to decline turn by turn, she drifted more and more often into a haze of wine and fellis, leaving the work of raising Anthon to a succession of nurses and tutors - none of whom had the authority to instill anything remotely like discipline in him. Hawthon was busy with the work of running the Hold and grooming Amaran (then seventeen turns old) for the duties of an heir. In the end, it took only the word of a healer assuring them that the conditions of the forge would not exacerbate Anthon's condition to get them to agree. Then he was packed up and shipped off to the Smithcraft Hall, not to see home again for many long turns.

Life at the Hall was Anthon’s first taste of freedom, and it was a heady taste indeed. He was held in check, of course, by his teachers – nothing too wild could occur under their watchful eye. But no one could make him act like a Holder’s son, or write home once a sevenday as his mother instructed, or to be a credit to his family as his father admonished. He was simply one of the boys – or at least he tried to be. Such a sheltered upbringing could not help but shine through in his behavior; Anthon had never had much opportunity to learn how to simply make friends. So he was quiet and withdrawn, and when he was not withdrawn he acted out, and when he was neither he was busy in the workshops. Anthon found it so much easier to relate to his teachers. They were adults, he knew how to speak to adults, and furthermore they were there for a clear and obvious purpose. When he didn’t know what else to say to them, he could simply ask them questions about the lessons. Needless to say, he wasn’t terribly popular.

The apprenticeship accomplished its intended purpose: his health grew stronger every day, as did his newfound sense of independence. He had found something he was good at, and who cared what anyone else thought? After a particularly disastrous home visit ended in a screaming row with his father, his mother - perhaps despairing of her baby boy’s ability to make friends - sent him a golden firelizard egg. Half apology, half futile attempt to give him something other than himself to care for, the little queen (defiantly named Dimglow) became one of the most constant friends in Anthon’s life. And slowly, Anthon adapted to life with his fellow apprentices. He learned how to put on his trademark show of cockiness to cover for the insecurities, and how to deflect with a joke or a challenge instead of withdrawing. Especially as he and his peers grew older, talent at the craft was more and more important, and he could gain a friend (or at least a temporary alliance) simply by offering to help a classmate with a difficult project. It was… possibly not the healthiest kind of social interaction… but it helped.

When he walked the tables at the age of eighteen, it was deep in midwinter and he hadn’t been home for nearly three turns. He sent a letter proclaiming his accomplishments, waited impatiently and eagerly for a response… only to hear back that his mother had passed away after a bad bout of fever. That news opened a rift in Anthon’s heart that was never entirely healed; decades later, Amaran runs the Hold of his birth, and Anthon has not been back. Neither did he return before Hawthon passed away, much later, of natural causes. He claims he regrets nothing.

As a journeyman, Anthon was theoretically free to take a post anywhere on Pern that he pleased. In practice, he opted for Benden, where his family’s name would have a little clout and where the politics were not too alien to him. Truthfully he would have been a better fit elsewhere, with more liberal views and practical attitudes, but a young Journeyman on his first posting can be forgiven for not straying too far afield. It was at Benden that Anthon entered into a partnership with an older smith, by the name of Obiren, who offered to coach him on the finer points of life as a crafter out in the big wide world.

It was, at least initially, a perfect partnership. For all Anthon’s newfound bravado, he was young, and not especially business-savvy. His talent could carry him far, but he had a far weaker grasp on how to do things like pricing his own work, negotiating business deals, and navigating the complex politics of his fellow crafters. Obiren had connections, and a good head for numbers, but as a smith he was simply no great shakes: the kind of fellow who walked the tables because there was no good reason to deny him, rather than because of remarkable achievement. Between the two of them, they were a fine team for many turns, and it was thanks to Obiren’s business acumen that Anthon earned a name for himself. Slowly, Anthon began to see Obiren as a kind of surrogate father figure, someone who truly appreciated and respected his talents as they ought to be respected. Anthon had never really experienced a fully unstructured life: he’d been under his parents’ and Harper’s tutelage, then at the Hall, and now Obiren provided the authority figure in his life that he didn’t fully know how to live without.

It wasn’t until Anthon was twenty-two that the truth came out: Obiren was angling for a mastery. When his own work didn’t live up to the standards, Obiren began stealing Anthon’s work – his designs, his blueprints, his new techniques and ideas – and presenting them to the Smithcraft Hall as his own. The fallout from that little revelation, on a scale of magnitude, was probably felt somewhere in Telgar. Everyone in Benden knew, because Anthon was not quiet about the ensuing falling-out. It was the social equivalent of nuking their former business partnership from orbit. And while it might have been entirely justified, given the nature of Obiren’s betrayal, it was… not conducive to other smiths stepping forward to work with Anthon as his new partner.

He stuck around anyway, for nearly five turns past that. He made a lot of less than advisable decisions in those five turns. Most of the decisions involved charming young Benden ladies and all the fine Benden wine he could afford, because Anthon plus a lack of any control on his behavior equals reckless excess. Granted, he also made quite a few leaps and bounds in terms of his professional accomplishments in those turns… It turns out that “to between with it, let’s try it and see if it works” will end in either disaster or wild success, and it ended in wild success often enough in Anthon’s case to be a viable strategy. He was willing to take on literally any job that was offered to him (with appropriately high fees) even under demanding customers and absurdly tight deadlines. And when he wasn’t out carousing or mollifying patrons, he was continuing his studies of metallurgy, experimenting with more precise and fiddly alloys intended for specific purposes.

At twenty-seven he’d more or less worn out his welcome at Benden. He returned to the Hall, claiming it was for the sake of his research and the better quality and range of equipment to be found there, though in reality it was to get away from a few irate husbands. Upon arrival at the Hall, he was called up before the Master Crafter… and that was a much-needed wake up call. Frankly, Anthon needed a smack in the face long before he actually got one, but better late than never. The ensuing row laid out for him exactly what was expected of him as a representative of his craft, and laid out for him explicitly that if he didn’t shape up, he could never expect to be granted a Mastery, regardless of raw talent. It was quite possibly the first time that he was stunned into complete silence. And it worked.

He took a few apprentices, lingered around the Hall that had become home to him more than his place of birth, and generally just… settled down. There’s plenty of whershit you can get away with in your twenties, Anthon would explain, that you can’t get away with in your thirties. He didn’t stop being Anthon – he was still arrogant and occasionally obnoxious and prone to flirting with a pretty face – but he at least stopped spiraling out of control. He gradually learned to synthesize what Obiren had taught him that was still valuable, mostly the lessons on business acumen and how to work a crowd, with the showmanship he’d learned at the Hall to keep up a mask of confidence in front of his peers. One might have expected Anthon to apply for Mastery the instant he turned 30… but he didn’t. It took him six turns of working to create, re-create, refine, and finally perfect a better alloy for healers’ tools, one that resisted rust and held an edge slightly better than the old one. Only once he felt that his work was mastercraft to his standards did he present it before the Hall and receive his Mastery.

That was, of course, the same turn that the dragonplague and the war both struck. It was a dangerous, rocky situation for all of Pern. When asked about it, Anthon tends to brush off his decision with false nonchalance… but in reality, he saw something of himself in beleaguered High Reaches. For all the bitter feelings with his family, he’d never borne any resentment against dragonriders, and to see Pern’s protectors in such a state, so close to a Pass… it was concerning. As for why High Reaches – well, it was mostly to spite Benden, whom he still saw as a bunch of arrogant whersons with sticks up their –

Never mind. Anthon, still Anthon. Continuing onwards.

High Reaches was a far better fit for him than Benden ever was. And honestly, despite everything, Anthon’s relative lack of romanticism about dragonkin was more of an advantage than a disadvantage. He owes his primarily allegiance to the Master Smith, not to the Weyrleader - the position changes hands less often, for one thing - and Anthon makes sure that everyone knows whose side he's on. Namely, whatever side is currently paying him the marks.

Other: Anthon has one firelizard, gold Dimglow, named for her impressive lack of brainpower.