Hiemal
Name: Hiemal ‘Frost’
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Prisoner: Yes
Crime: Forgery.
Candidate: Yes
Former Craft/Rank: Technician / Journeyman
Appearance: Prisoner name - Hiemal 'Frost'. Apparent age - Late twenties. Height - 5'5". Weight - ~150lbs. Hair - Pale blond, straight. Complexion - Fair. Eyes - Pale blue.
He is a harmless seeming man at first glance but we know all about that here; small and soft looking he might be but there's a razor of a mind in there. He has a very collected bearing, always upright and neat whether standing, sitting or lying down. He's one of those inmates you just can't read, a real master of the poker-face and the poker-voice... is that a word? Well anyway there it is; each word sounds like he's considered it completely and is executed with military precision. The guy has consonants that could cut teak... yeah okay, I stole that, not my line but it's true!
He's kind of a weird one, at least by the standards of the outside world. He stands with his hands folded behind his back and speaks to you very polity but usually flatly, coolly. I think the only expressions I've seen from him are 'controlled interest' 'polite bemusement' and 'my patience is as infinite as between but I wish you to know you are trying some of it'. Don't look at me, he told me what the expression meant. Unsolicited. Weird guy like I say... while he's polite his eye-contact tends to be a bit intense; he stares too much sometimes. Pretty sure he's not meaning to be rude he's just not very well adjusted socially.
Personality: Cold. As. Ice. Hiemal is control, logic, and detachment. It's rare to see more than the slightest twitch of a smile from him, and rarer to see him lose his temper. If he ever possessed 'hot' emotions such as rage (and indeed he did) he's buried them well. He does get angry but it is very cold anger; he'd never be the one to run riot with an axe, he'd be the one carefully plotting for months or even years before exacting his revenge in the best, most precise way possible. It takes quite a lot to get him to that stage, however; most of the time contempt and or disdain are as far as he goes.
He is not completely joyless; if you see one of those tiny brief smiles of his, it will usually be when he'd reading a good book, discovering something new, or teaching something he knows to a genuinely interested (and reasonably intelligent please) party. There's another thing; Hiemal is smart. Really smart. Mathematics, science, and pretty well anything to do with logic comes as naturally to him as breathing. What does not come naturally is social interaction; a lot of the time when he comes off as unpleasant, he wasn't actually trying to be rude; he's just too blunt, and too blind to non-verbal cues to realize when people are getting angry with him. When he does finally catch on, he usually decides that the offended party is an idiot for taking offence at a mistake, and therefore that their opinion doesn't matter anyway.
His repeated failure over the years to form a solid relationship of any kind other than enmity has driven him to convince himself that he does not require human interaction in any case. It would be nice to get along with people, but he can't and so it is foolish to worry about it. He has his work, why would he need anything more? He would like friends really, secretly; he's an odd man certainly and he likes to hide his feelings but that doesn't mean he doesn't have them. Who doesn't want at least one or two friends?
Other weaknesses he has suppressed are reactions to pain, fear, and unhappiness. A broken leg will stop him running, but only because the limb won't hold him up; so long as it is physically possible to keep going, he will. Luckily, however, as a logical man Hiemal will seek help when he needs it; he's not going to bleed to death out of foolish pride or try to keep going when injured if there is a reasonable alternative. He does feel unhappiness, but it won't ever show on his face; he won't even cry when he's completely alone. As for fear, it must exist within him on some level, but this emotion has been pushed so far down that even he is hardly aware of it anymore. It should be noted that this doesn't make him a brave man. Brave men face danger despite fear. Men who decide to do something dangerous because it serves their purposes and the risk of death or dismemberment are 'within acceptable limits' are just a bit creepy. This is more or less Hiemal to a tee.
History: He was not born Frost, or even Hiemal. Hopeful parents Ria and Hrin, drudges at Telgar Hold, named him Fealty. They were not a rich couple, nor an educated couple, nor in fact a good match for one another; the eighteen year olds had mistaken lust and infatuation for true love and rushed into commitments they were not ready for.
Fealty was born early and as well as the difficulty of him being a small baby he was a difficult one. He cried. Constantly, or so it seemed to his parents. Rocking and cuddling could not soothe him and struggling with their own relationship his parents eventually gave up on trying. He was fed and looked after, but they became emotionally distant from the growing baby. When other babies started says ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ Fealty did not. His parents, uneducated, had no idea what the problem was or what to do about it. Both worn by hard work they did nothing; maybe the boy was just slow. Fealty was not in fact slow at all, but Ria and Hrin didn’t and couldn’t have been expected to notice the signs of a bright infant; he didn’t talk so he was probably dim, and he didn’t seem to love them that much so they had a hard time caring anyway.
When he was two Fealty finally started to speak but it was not, a his parents had hoped, the beginning of normality. He didn't start connecting with them better, and he didn't connect with the other children they started to introduce him to either. As a small strange boy he found himself the victim of bullying as he grew older; when others took things from him he shirked and cried, and then went to hide. The only person he seemed to get along with was the Harper who gave the local children lessons. It was this man, Yorit - elderly but knife sharp - who noticed Fealty's intelligence. He dealt with the odd boy softly, offering knowledge and not demanding friendliness. In return he was rewarded with... friendliness, of an odd sort. Fealty didn't seem to understand social niceties very well at all, but his mind naturally latched onto how to manipulate numbers and words. So while other children learned their multiplication by rote and easily picked up the rules of social interaction Fealty picked up multiplication and learned social rules by rote.
Fealty was nine when Yorit started to grow ill. Having become very fond of the odd, oddly brilliant boy he hid it from him and sought an apprenticeship for him at Technician Hall, hoping both to do something good for him before he died and for the boy not to see his death. Fealty's parents, barely on speaking terms with one another and still no closer to their son were quite happy for him to go; they could be satisfied in thinking that he would have a good life, and maybe one day he would be a success and could provide for them. Fealty was reluctant to leave the one person he felt comfortable around but the desire to learn more was strong, and he accepted the position Yorit had managed to get for him with only a moment of hesitation.
The boy that arrived at Landing on the back of a courier dragon was... polite, in a stilted sort of a way. He kept apart from his peers as much as he could and trailed around after the journeymen and masters whenever he could. This, along with his exemplary performance in classes, got him a name as a suck up. Once again Fealty found himself bullied. He dealt with this by informing the masters which got him a reputation as a snitch and made things worse. There were little ways that the others found to get to him; moving his things and soiling his clothes really upset the little blond and was easily enough passed off as accidental most of the time. Fealty looked to his Masters, men and women he was coming to idolize, for protection and did not find it forthcoming. They weren't pushing him around or calling him names anymore, why was he complaining? He was just a little too sensitive; they were happy to deal with real bullying (real in their eyes) but this was the real world and he could not be protected from every little thing, it was just boys being boys and playing with him.
Fealty was a quick learner, and quickly learned not to bother with them anymore. When he received word that his friend and mentor Yorit had passed away he told no one, sought no comfort. They were fools anyway, lesser beings. He was better than they were. So far as he was concerned he proved this when he walked the tables at seventeen. Full of quiet superiority and a growing icy shell Fealty moved to Monaco Bay Hold and set up shop as technician and inventor Hiemal; with harper Yorit gone and no love for the parents that had ignored him all his life he had no use or love for the name anymore. Fealty had been weak, but Hiemal was strong; he took pleasure in using the archaic Earth word that spoke of wintery chill and in knowing that few if any would ever know it.
He did well at his craft, very well indeed; he could fix near any gadget brought to him (with time to do the proper research) and began to put out his own creations, many reverse engineered from information gleaned from AIVAS. It was nothing world shaking, just clever useful things that pleased the ever colder, ever more detached man. He liked his machine that made super-concentrated klah; it had clever little parts some made by himself and some by other artisans. He knew what made it tick. It didn't confuse him and mistreat him. The clock with the firelizard that popped out on the hour was peculiar but he was proud of the little mechanisms whirling inside it. These projects however cost money: they required research, experimentation, and materials were not cheap....
When Hiemal was twenty five he created a machine to forge marks, and very well too in his less than humble opinion. He had no intention of doing anything so foolish as destabilizing the economy, he just needed enough for his work. He was not greedy, for he knew if he was greedy he would be caught. Little bits, here and there, quietly funding his work. He made a plan: when he was twenty eight he would take he best works back to Landing, to make them accept him as a Master. What was his masterpiece to be?... Scaling down printing press technology sounded like a fine idea to him; if the machines were smaller and less finicky they would be within the reach of more people... hardly the masses of course but creating a free open press/other lofty goal wasn't why Hiemal wanted to do it. He wanted to do it because it was difficult, and it would please him to solve the puzzle. It would also please him to have his work acknowledged, of course.
Hiemal's work was progressing well, but aged twenty seven life got a little complicated. A thief, part of a local gang, broke into his workshop looking for valuables. That was bad. They found the secret basement. That was worse. That was where the forging machine was kept. Hiemal was working down there, and looked up to see a crossbow pointed at him. Seeing the potential in the creator as much as the machine the enterprising young thief brought Hirmal in to her boss, known only as The Madame. Hiemal was informed that he was now working for Madame. He didn’t get a choice but he got pay, protection, and access to materials for his assorted projects there were somewhat less than legal and or that had been acquired in a less than legal fashion. Hiemal was not entirely thrilled with extra illegal activity - it was a risk - but materials acquired for him, and pay, and not being shot were altogether quite a good package of benefits. With a large number of weapons pointed at him he accepted politely as though accepting an offer of a slice of cake with his tea. Under her hood The Madame almost smiled.
Hiemal kept his old business under his old name, and took up new operations for The Madame under the name Frost. Sometimes things needed fixing without questions asked and that marks machine... no fear, they wouldn't be spent nearby; Madame had a rider in her pocket who could spread the money all over Pern. Everything was going swimmingly... and then the Watch found them; a tip off from anonymous sources who wanted to stay that way. Most of the major players in Madame's gang got a tip off about the tip off that meant their base of operations was going to be raided. Madame and her inner circle managed to escape, but Frost - who tended as ever to be out of touch with people - did not get the message in time.
When the Watch burst in on Frost working at his forging machine he looked up, took in the uniforms and said; “Bother.” He did not resist arrest and when taken into custody calmly admitted to all of his crimes. Information on the others members of the gang was less forthcoming, mainly because he didn't know much. They all used false names and he had never seen the faces of the inner circle thanks to their hoods. If it was any help, he could tell them that the Madame favoured red lipstick.
Apparently not.
Hiemal was taken to Warden's. He tolerated the head shave, but was not at all impressed by the baggy jumpsuit; he was a man of class and taste. Men of class and taste did not wear itchy sacks the approximate hue of a redfruit. Apparently the jumpsuit was non negotiable, and in order to remain on a 'good behaviour' list and thus permitted to work after an adjustment period Hiemal restricted himself to monthly polite notes to the Warden.
Other than the terrible clothing he finds himself... oddly content. He has as much time to read as he pleases. He his allowed to work in his field, though not quite on the projects he had going before. His days have a schedule; Hiemal loves schedules. Everything laid out. Everything in perfect order. Perhaps Pern will never acknowledge him as a Master now, but having matured (in his own mind) he came to the conclusion that the opinions of fools and the ranks they gave out did not matter.
The chance to stand as a candidate piqued Hiemal's interest as a scientist more than anything else; seeing dragons eggs and hatchlings up close would be quite an experience. If he did not Impress he would not mind but if he did... well, a chance to actually be free at wonderful structured Warden's was an excellent one. He understood that the schedule of a rider was gruelling but it seemed a fair price to pay for freedom... and yes, companionship. For all that he had by this time completely perfected his icy veneer didn't mean he had lost the basic human desire for acceptance. He did not expect it from many. He did not want it from many. It would however be good to have a few peers he could count as more than mere acquaintances... and it would be quite lovely to meet a creature that knew and accepted him entirely.
Hiemal therefore expressed his interest in Standing, and quietly awaited an answer.
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