Name: Merya
Age: 18
Sex: Female
Sexual Orientation: It's really hard to tell - she has courted men in the past and is very affectionate with female friends, but either or both could be put down to manipulation.
Craft: N/A
Rank: Holder/Candidate (future)
Physical Description: Merya looks younger than she is in a way that nobody ever wants to. Her small stature, light build and almost non-existent figure allow her to pass for a girl of somewhere between twelve and fourteen, and having a comparatively high speaking voice and a distinctly girlish giggle doesn't help her case either. (You could imagine her getting soundly scolded if she were ever caught drinking anything stronger than a glass of milk.) Her eyes are hazel brown, her skin is naturally pale - she tends to freckle rather than tanning evenly - and her hair is approximately the same colour as a very milky cup of tea. When not compelled to wear her Candidate's robes, she wears reds, greens, blues and purples depending on her mood: the good quality cloth and bold colours mark her out as having at least some money to spend on luxury.
She is almost always smiling. Whether or not this is a good thing is a matter of opinion.
Personality: Shakespeare's "look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't" might as well have been written for Merya. She is outwardly sweet, kind, open and engaging, and always seems willing to listen to a tale or laugh at a joke, but beneath this façade she is calculating, ambitious, manipulative and deeply vengeful. Woe betide those who stand between her and what she wants. Having said this, though, it is quite possible to persuade her to be as gentle and good as she appears: you just have to convince her that it's in her interests to do so. As a totally selfish beast, she is easy to win over so long as your way of doing things is the best option available to her. She does have a long memory, though, so trying to get too much out of her may result in retribution once she decides you're no longer useful to her. If she takes a genuine shine to you, she'll protect you and look out for your interests along with her own: not out of a sense of decency, but because she enjoys your company and wants you to like her. People she dislikes, on the other hand, she will gladly set up for all kinds of trouble. People she's indifferent to...well, if they look useful she might spare them. If they're just in her way then she doesn't much care about collateral damage - unless, of course, it would spoil her sweet-little-girl image. That image is vital to her. She uses her appearance to her full advantage, and takes great delight in slipping under the radar. After all, who would suspect a lovely little thing like her? This is a good part of what makes her so dangerous: by the time you realise it's her at the bottom of everything, it's already very much too late...
History: Born the fourth child and third daughter of a minor but fairly wealthy Holder, Merya learned very early in life that it was important to be a Good Girl. Good Girls got new toys, pretty dresses and sweet things to eat. As she grew older, though, the task of being Good became more difficult as the rewards lessened. Only her few object lessons in what Bad Girls got served to keep her on the straight and narrow, and she became increasingly unhappy with her lot. This was made worse by the discovery that her siblings stood to get a lot more out of life than she did, for the most part just because they had been born first: they stood to inherit the bulk of their parents' wealth, leaving Merya with no more than enough to get by. That, she decided, was not enough for her.
So she started to cheat.
It started in her eleventh Turn or thereabouts, and it started with thievery. If she wasn't going to be given what she wanted, she reasoned, then she'd just have to take it for herself. At first she only took little things: a morsel of food here, a piece of ribbon there, anything and everything that was unlikely to be missed. There was a certain satisfaction in getting what she wanted through her own wit and cunning, and as she gained experience her escapades grew more daring. A bracelet here, a half-mark there. A knife here, a purse there. The more precious the object of her desire, the more careful she would be about taking it. All would be lost if ever she were caught. With this in mind she made a point of "finding" some of her spoils and returning them to their owners, thus placing herself - or so she hoped - above suspicion. In addition to thus throwing any possible pursuers off the scent, she also got very good at spinning a quick lie to get herself out of trouble. No, she hadn't seen your comb since yesterday afternoon; had you left it behind somewhere? She'd only seen nine cakes on the table; now that you mention it she'd been wondering where the tenth one was. Oh, was this your bracelet? She'd just found it lying in the dirt two days ago; here, have it back, she'd cleaned it and everything. To her continuing relief - and amusement - nobody ever caught on.
By the time she Turned sixteen, she considered herself both a fairly accomplished thief and an excellent liar. What she was not, however, was much better off. It was all very well lifting things here and there, but then she had to find places to hide them, be careful about how and when she spent the stolen money or wore the pilfered necklace, and that was tiresome at best. What good were her spoils if she couldn't enjoy them? She needed a better plan, a way to trick the world into giving her what she wanted without having to filch it herself.
An opportunity eventually presented itself in the middle of her seventeenth Turn, after a Turn and a half of growing discontent. Saren, a kindly Tailorcraft journeyman in his early forties, stopped in her home Hold on his travels, and - upon realising that he was both unaccompanied and fairly wealthy - Merya made a point of taking a noticeable shine to him. Much to her delight, he soon became fond of her. She nurtured his fondness as much as she could, appearing to take an interest in his work and share his passion for travel. As time went on, she found herself becoming more genuine on both counts: the clothes were beautiful, and the idea of getting away from the Hold was becoming more and more appealing. After all, in a place where nobody knew her she could quite easily make the most of her spoils.
Not long before Merya was due to Turn eighteen, Saren announced his intention to leave the Hold. He was planning to head to Ista Weyr to sell his wares there, wishing to enjoy the balmy climate and reasoning that he would get the best price for his work at the traditionally wealthy Weyrs. Merya saw her chance and pounced on it. She approached him not long before his departure and expressed the desire to go with him. At first he was hesitant, but he couldn't stand up to much of her pleading and soon began to crack. When she finally declared that if he didn't take her with him she'd just run away from home and follow him anyway, he relented. The fact that Merya hadn't been above that sort of emotional blackmail didn't seem to bother him - perhaps he put it down to the near hysterics she'd feigned at the thought of him leaving. Merya didn't much care.
After some persuasion her parents gave in, and - once Merya had squirreled the best of her spoils away in her sparse luggage - the pair set off for Ista. Merya allowed Saren to grow closer to her during the journey, but always kept a little something back out of his reach - something more to try for. She wanted him to keep being a little uncertain of her. This, she knew, was the source of his spoiling her. If he no longer felt that he had to win her over, he would stop trying quite so hard to please her. Just before they arrived at Ista, though, he surprised her with a new set of clothes - beautifully tailored and embroidered - and she gave in a little further than she'd been intending to, allowing him to kiss her the night before they reached the Weyr. If anything, though, this seemed to make him more keen to keep her sweet: no sooner had they arrived at Ista, Merya dressed up in her fine new clothes, than he subtly expressed the intention to seek out a firelizard egg for her during their stay. That earned him another kiss or ten. By now, Merya knows how to let him think he's winning.
The pair have been at Ista for a couple of days, Saren negotiating with customers for tailoring work while Merya willingly helps him to sell the wares he has brought with him. Thus far she has kept her nose clean, having picked no pockets and told no egregious whoppers. This is partly due to her increasing desire to stay at Ista: it will pay to have a good reputation, and in the long term this is worth more to her than trinkets.
Pets: None yet. She aspires to own at least one firelizard, mostly as a status symbol, and it seems that Saren is quite willing to oblige her.
Other/Talents: Deceit. Why tell the truth if she would be better served by a well-spun lie? Merya has become very, very good at both making a lie seem plausible and not getting caught out. She takes calculated risks, not stupid ones. Her mind also lends itself well to inventive cruelty, and - on a somewhat related note - to tactics. She's hard to second-guess, partly because she's good at second-guessing, and believes in keeping things as simple as possible to reduce the chance of catastrophe. Though most of her schemes never see the light of day, the ones that do get put into practice very seldom fail.
Will this character be a candidate? Yes indeed - pity the poor sods who are candidates with her! XD
Picture: Tektek'd, because I cannot draw for love nor money. XD
