Approved by Con

Name: Ayadar
Age: 14
Gender: Male
Rank: Weyrfolk
Appearance: Despite his age and his lifestyle Ayadar is still a childish looking lad in the face. It clashes with the rest of his body. Ayadar is average height for his age, but holds significantly more muscle than is usual. The boy is visibly strong and yet his face is strangely young. A round face with an unruly mop of dark brown curls and large, deep, blue eyes. Freckles cover the lad’s nose and cheeks in the summertime, fading out during winter. Scars are scattered across the boy’s body, the one usually noticeable are those on his arms however that largest and most intimidating of them are on Ayadar’s back.

Personality: If you asked some people what Ayadar is like they would tell you an optimistic and happy child, ask others and they would say he was a quiet and well-mannered boy. This is as Ayadar’s personality seems to change dramatically depending on who he is with. Around children his own age and people he trusts or doesn’t seem as threatening the young lad is a talkative and relatively open individual. He often plays the optimist and attempts to comfort people as best he can manage. However, around adults that he is unfamiliar with or he finds threatening the youth will clam up faster than you can blink. He tends to remain silent, eyes averted, in these situations; speaking only when spoken to.

Ayadar is a protective soul, the lad seeks to protect and look after those that he feels can’t look after themselves. His protection however is more emotional than anything else. Violence is very distressing to him and the boy would be useless in a fight despite his physical strength. He doesn’t run from aggression, simply stands there and takes it. He’ll never be one to stand up in front of a bully and tell them to back off, more likely to appear from nowhere afterwards and offer help picking you back up again. If you need someone to tell you everything’ll be okay, that’d be Ayadar. Even when he doesn’t believe it himself he’ll say it to you. Ayadar is used to having to fix his own injuries and take his own lumps, becoming very independent when things get difficult. He doesn’t tend to automatically look for help and can even be a little reluctant in taking it. After all, this could just be another trick.

Perhaps common for his age, Ayadar doesn’t think everything through all the time. Although he is careful around people who intimidate him, the lad isn’t the brightest tool in the shed. Perhaps hurting a feeling here or there without realising what he’s doing. He doesn’t mean to be mean, he’s just a little blunt at times and maybe not as sensitive to other’s feelings as he should be. Ayadar does not assert himself and as such can often be forced into doing what other people want him to, especially if the force is physical. Ayadar would rather a tongue-lashing than being actually hurt. His resilience to insult is much higher.

Virtues: Protective, Optimistic, Thick skinned
Faults: Weak-willed, curt, cowardly

History: Born the son of a baker, Ayadar never knew his mother. His father disliked speaking of it, but over the years Ayadar was able to glean that his mother had left of her own choice. The reason he does not know, his father was always kind to him, but that does not mean he was a good husband. In truth it is a simple matter that his mother’s heart never belonged to her marriage and she left, when Ayadar was a little over a turn, with someone she did love.

There was little excitement in Ayadar’s younger turns. The bakery in which he grew was not that of a journeyman and was a simple place, but there was always enough to eat and it was warm. His father didn’t put much stock in writing or many other aspects of learning, he did however see a great importance in an understanding of numbers. Ayadar was expected to understand the exchange of marks and worked the front of the bakery from the age of eight, when his father felt he understood the matter enough to be trusted with marks passing hands.

When Ayadar was ten a terrible accident stole his father from him. A fire began in the bakery, quickly working through the building. Trapped upstairs where they lived there was little that the father and son pair could do. Ayadar’s father acted quickly, getting his son from his room, he led him to the front of their home, were an overhang lay beneath the window. Lifted by his father Ayadar was able to scramble out the window and onto the roof. His father was not so lucky. As Ayadar was working himself toward the edge of the rooftop the floor of the upper story began to collapse.

Ayadar was left standing in the street as the fire in his home was put out. With no family to go to the street was where he stayed. The boy had never had to fend for himself before and soon became desperate. He didn’t even last a month before someone found the ten turn old huddled in an alley, dirty and starving. The stranger offered Ayadar somewhere to go. Naíve and hopeless he accepted and went with them. Sadly the person did not deliver the salvation they promised. Instead Ayadar found himself sold. Becoming nothing more than another possession.

For the next four turns Ayadar found himself passed from one person to another, learning to speak when spoken to and never look people in the eye. He was never really alone, he was always one of several children. Ayadar is aware that he did not have the worst lot in the situation he was in. The children often would stay together and, when they wouldn’t be punished, spoke to each other. There were children that had been sold at a far younger age than he had been picked up at and ended up in far worse locations. For the most part Ayadar was set to physical work. At eleven he was sold to the owner of a large area of farmland, who used the children to tend animals, work the fields and maintain the property. Ayadar heard them state on many occasions how children were easier than adults. That they were easier to control.

At thirteen, presumably because he was getting too old Ayadar was passed on again. This time to less pleasant individuals in a sort of half-way stop. Up until now Ayadar had been relatively fortunate, relatively, being sold to places that at least kept him fed and really only bothered with him when he did something wrong. The new people however, seemed to take pleasure in being cruel to them. Finding miniscule reasons punish them, simply looking at one ‘the wrong way’ was enough to ensure you didn’t eat. They were clever though. They were never underfed enough to look sickly and any marks they left were sure to be kept out of sight. After all, nobody was going to buy them if they looked bad.

Ayadar’s life changed yet again when he and two girls were trotted in front of two prospective buyers. The lad listened carefully to what could be the people he’d soon be under the control of. For the most part, they didn’t address him. An older girl, one who he guessed hadn’t been part of the trade long, seemed to gain their attention. The girl’d been brash enough to get herself a strike to the face, Ayadar guessed they were paying attention to the potential trouble-maker.

What he had not been expecting was for the woman to announce she and her partner were from the Weyr. He was confused more than hopeful. After all what if it was just some ridiculously elaborate trap to find a reason to punish them really badly? That idea was swiftly thrown out the door, he and the girls quickly after it, when the men selling them outright confirmed the situation. The situation from then on was frankly terrifying. There were dragons and knives and one of the riders got shot. They were put on a dragon’s back and it seems almost unreal to Ayadar now.

No matter how it happened though he was out of those people’s grasp. Of course, then came the question of what to do with him. He couldn’t go home, he had nowhere to go. He was as good as holdless, not that he’d been much better before. There were many conversations he was not privy to before Ayadar was informed of a decision. He was to live at the Weyr. He would have to work to earn his keep, but they would feed him, clothe him and house him to a far better standard than he was used to. As Ayadar could see it, there was no downside. So go to the Weyr he did.