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 Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 11:59 pm
1. Introductory post
2. About M'ska
3. About Descanth
4. History
5. Relationships
6. Pets
7. RP Logs
8. Reserved
9. Reserved
10. Reserved
11. Memories
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 12:00 am
M'SKA
Name: M'ska
Age: 53
Gender: Male
Craft/Rank: Master Glasscrafter
Appearance: M'ska may be an older guy, but he is tall as hell. Nearly six feet, he's certainly not the tallest in the weyr, but he shows no sign of age slowing him down or bending his back. Still, he's not burly in the slightest. He's a beanpole, miles of legs and not much in the way of breadth. He's not completely without muscle: his limbs are strong, tough and wiry from decades of hard fighting and riding. He's just naturally not inclined to be bulky. And for those who are into older men, there's no denying that M'ska is dapper, even handsome in the right light. His features are more-or-less androgynous, although touched faintly by time and care, and his lean build lends well to his fondness for neatly tailored waistcoats. He's got a bit of the ladyhips going on, for those who know what to look for - although it's really not obvious, and even among those rare few who do know, it's not spoken of. It's better to leave M'ska alone.
M'ska is black, with silver-touched hair, twisted into locks with just enough length that they tend to floof up a bit around his head. Sometimes he'll throw a bandana over the whole mess, but more often he'll just wear a set of flight goggles that he made himself. His voice is a pleasant, lightly husky high tenor, and rarely does he feel the need to raise it. His eyes are dark, with the kind of intense focus to them that can be downright unnerving. But he has an absolutely adorable smile on the uncommon occasion that he uses it, the kind that lights up the whole face and crinkles the corners of the eyes.
Like most longtime members of the Watch, M'ska bears some scars. Some are old and faint: small burns on his forearms from droplets of molten glass, back when he pursued his craft with ardent passion. Others are more recent, like the heavy limp in his step as he favors his right leg, courtesy of the same incident that left his dragon minus a wing. Descanth is grounded, but M'ska never stopped fighting.
Personality: Get it done.
These are the words that M'ska seems to live by. It doesn't matter what you choose to do with your life. But whatever it is, do it right. Do it well. Apply yourself with passion and for Faranth's sake use your brain, don't just sit there and wait for others to tell you what to do. M'ska isn't a particularly intimidating individual - if anything, he tends to strike people as too softhearted for his own good, not a good quality in a guard - but there is a certain intensity about him that can be occasionally disconcerting.
As might be expected from this, he tends to devote himself to things wholeheartedly. And not just one thing. M'ska's got room in his life for a lot of passions. Glasscraft is the primary one, but he's also something of an amateur naturalist, and utterly fascinated by dragons and dragonkin: it was no surprise to anyone at all when he ran off and Impressed one. And when he shifted his focus over to the Dragon Watch, he devoted his attentions to learning how to fight dirty. Don't mistake him: M'ska is a kind man, and he considers himself a 'practical pacifist' in that he uses violence as a last resort, not a first resort. But he also accepts the necessity of self-defense, and if it becomes a necessity, it is a bit of a surprise how quietly ruthless he can be. In short, if you're a Gen Pop prisoner, and one of the Dangerous or Unstable guys is harassing you? Go to M'ska. He will protect you.
While not someone who enjoys grabbing the spotlight, M'ska is very social, and enjoys being in the company of others. He's a listener rather than a big chatter, but he's quick with a kind word of advice or encouragement. While he's soft-spoken, he does have a sort of quiet infectious joie de vivre about him... as well as a strong streak of social justice activism. He's got weirdly progressive ideas for a Pernese man, ones that have been further radicalized the older he gets. He does know when to keep his opinions to himself, and he tries not to force lectures on people... but yes, careless words from others can occasionally draw an impassioned speech out of him. A surprisingly level and grounded-in-logic impassioned speech, but a speech nonetheless. In terms of actual leadership, however... He shies away from the kind of prestige that would come with Wardenship, or really anything short of his nice little niche. The surest way to make the usually-composed greenrider fall to pieces is to shove him into the spotlight.
The other way to make him fall to pieces is to get up in his personal space. M'ska has Issues with personal space. He doesn't mind physical contact - with certain people, in controlled situations, as initiated by him. But control is a big issue. Rather like approaching a spooked runner, it's better to let him come to you. Someone who approaches him and gets up in his face with aggressive intent, or even just too loudly or roughly, may well set off his self-defense instincts.
He has a fascination with the exotic and the unknown, but tempered by a healthy dose of pragmatism and genre savvy. Horror movies don't really exist on Pern, but nonetheless M'ska seems to have an instinctive understanding of the tropes that ought to be avoided. You would never catch him, for instance, going down into the dark basement by himself. Or suggesting that the little team of survivors should split up to cover more ground. Or poking the dead alien with a stick to make sure it's really dead. And he's very, very willing to adapt to new ideas. In fact, he's probably got a bit of a reputation around Warden's as being "that guy with the conspiracy theories about things living in the jungle."
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 12:00 am
DESCANTH
Name: Descanth
Color: Green
Age: 38
Appearance: Descanth is a petite twenty feet from nose to tail, lithe and trim and surprisingly well-muscled despite her handicap. True, her flight muscles have begun to atrophy, but she does regular stretching exercises to keep them from stiffening up, and her running muscles are surprisingly strong for a dragon's. She is a sleek creature, acid green marked with splashes of lighter celadon in an unpredictable piebald pattern. The very tip of her nose, tail, wing-fingers, and toes are dipped in dark forest green, a striking and pretty contrast.
Her entire left wing has been amputated, leaving nothing more than a non-usable stump with a small triangle of wingsail. Her right wing is still quite healthy, but it leaves her lopsided and a little bit unbalanced. Nonetheless, a grounded dragon is still a dragon, and Descanth can run down prisoners as fast as any of the wher guards... even if she can't bite anyone at the end of it.
Personality: Descanth flies in the face of the stereotype of the green as flighty, flirty, airheaded, and unreliable. Straightforward and utterly driven, she is every inch a Weyrleader's dragon... who happens to be attached to someone who never wants to be a leader. That doesn't seem to matter to her, though. There are limitations to draconic intelligence - there's only so much you can learn when your memory only lasts two weeks - but the green will be the first to tell you, she's quicker on the uptake than her rider sometimes. M'ska often insists, with great fondness, that Descanth is never wrong. This isn't quite true, but it tells you all you really need to know about their relationship.
M'ska and Descanth are partners. In many ways, they are two halves of a whole, even moreso than most dragons and riders. Oh sure, all dragonpairs are soulmates. But there's soulmates, and then there's inseparable. M'ska relies on his dragon, and Descanth rarely disappoints. She is another pair of eyes and ears, another set of limbs, as much a part of him as the ones he was born with. And in personality, she is a steady rock, clear-minded even in the midst of emergency.
Still, Descanth is professional because she has to be rather than because she wants to be. Her demeanor is more big-sisterly than motherly, and her guardian instinct is a powerful one. The younger and less violent prisoners will find her a far more agreeable creature than some of the guard dragons. She likes having her eyeridges scratched, and if any of the potential "Candidates" (inasmuch as Warden's has them) want to get used to dragons in a nonthreatening way, Descanth is as good a place as any to start. The problem is that between her demeanor and her rider's stature, neither of them are particularly intimidating to the more violent of the Warden's population. Dragons don't harm humans, obviously, but some of them can put up a good show of being frightening, and Descanth... really can't. Confident, yes. Vicious, no.
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 12:01 am
History: Miskael wasn't born Miskael. In fact, he wasn't even born physically male, but that's not something he really tells people. He was born at Ista Hold, the first child of a crafter couple who had been trying for turns to conceive successfully, and they loved their first child dearly. Apprenticed very young to a glasscrafter, he had one unlucky incident with molten glass when he was a bit too eager to experiment with his own projects, but if anything that just taught him the value of a bit of caution. The only real frustration in his life was the issue of his identity. He knew who he was, right from the start, and while puzzled by it, his family did not precisely discourage it. They just... weren't sure what to do about it. Pernese society hadn't exactly invented the right words to describe his identity yet. So he spent most of his formative years presenting more-or-less androgynous, and luckily puberty was decently polite to him in terms of not royally screwing that up.
At age fourteen he was Searched to Ista Weyr on the encouragement of a friendly, sympathetic bluerider. And he was very, very lucky indeed - because while the Searchrider didn't exactly understand, he was also perceptive enough not to ask questions when 'Miskael' quietly requested to be introduced to the Weyr as a male Candidate. With the rise of Dust and resurgence in conservative traditions (including the belief, in some quarters, that female Candidates were only good for golds) there were plenty of perfectly good reasons why a girl might want to hide herself. It just so happened that Miskael was not a girl, and his reason was not any of the common ones.
He Impressed Descanth at fifteen, and fell completely in love with the green. Weyrlinghood, however, was... a little rocky. The rough, casual attitudes some of the other boys had towards Flights distressed him, and when Descanth finally Rose for the first time, it ended in an... altercation with the weyrling who caught her. The rider got pushy and decided to open a closed door. M'ska responded by breaking the guy's arm and concussing him soundly with a lamp. The Ista brass decided this was unnecessary force. M'ska was transferred to Igen soon after, as he could no longer attend weyrling lessons or be in the same room as his fellow weyrlings without somebody going for the throat.
He quietly graduated weyrlinghood at Igen, then continued on with his glasscraft, in every respect a model citizen who drew no attention to himself. M'ska was in his twenties when the Dragon Watch was founded, and he joined up very early on; he did so partly in the naive hope that perhaps an organization dedicated to justice would care a little less about the color of his dragon's hide. But more importantly, it gave him the opportunity to travel Pern while simultaneously helping out the cause of justice.
Twenty turns ago, a science and exploration team was dispatched to the jungles of Pern, near where Warden's would someday be. M'ska was not part of this initial team, but he was part of the search party sent in by the Dragon Watch when the science team disappeared without a trace. M'ska found no answers on that mission. What he did find: a camp, raided of food by wild animals, but with no signs of blood or struggle. Some distance away, the bodies of the guards sent to protect the scientists. Or... parts of the guards, at any rate. As for the scientists, there was nothing left of them at all.
To this day, M'ska does not speak of what he found in the jungle. But he became utterly convinced that there was something awful, something ancient and nameless and hungry, lurking in the old mines. He could not convince any members of the Watch to act on it and send more dragonriders; where one team had been killed mysteriously, they were hardly eager to send more. The official report was something about wild felines or whers or some equally mundane explanation, and a closed case.
M'ska still dabbled in his craft, when the Watch permitted him time to do so, working his way slowly towards becoming a mastercraftsman. And therefore M'ska was the first to notice when his wingleader began making requests of him for... unusual equipment. Glassware, of the kind that healers used for extracting essences of herbs and distilling their medicinal draughts. M'ska made a few polite inquiries as to why his wingleader needed this equipment, and was dismissed. He took nearly a turn discreetly acquiring evidence, piece by piece: their wing was hitting only certain targets, getting leads from the same informants over and over. It was a sweet deal: the wingleader got paid by the leaders of one of the local gangs, got underground information, and took out the rival gangs one by one. M'ska went over his wingleader's head to present what he'd found... and again, he was dismissed. Wingleaders of the Watch did not collaborate with Dust gangs. It was simply not a thing that happened.
So M'ska took matters into his own hands. He needed undeniable proof. What he got was the bronze's teeth in Descanth, worrying at her wing, threatening to kill her if the nosy greenrider didn't shut up and learn his place.
Luckily Descanth was a clever girl, and sharp enough to transmit a distress call and betweening coordinates to every single other member of the wing.
Still, things did not end happily ever after. The ligaments of Descanth's wing were permanently ruined, and ultimately the healers opted for amputation, as the damaged wing could no longer even be folded properly and tended to drag on the ground as she moved about. M'ska was thanked for his service, then it was quietly suggested that he should retire to serve as a mastercrafter at some Weyrhold in the pleasant, sunny South. M'ska politely declined and had himself sent to Warden's Weyr instead. He hasn't forgotten that science team that vanished, twenty turns ago. Now that he no longer has more pressing concerns... well, somebody needs to keep an eye on that jungle.
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 12:02 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 12:04 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 12:05 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 12:07 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 12:08 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 12:09 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2013 12:10 am
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