Linfon
Name: Linfon
Age: 51
Gender: Female
Craft/Rank: Master Smithcrafter / Guard / Greenhandler
Appearance: Linfon's the sort of woman who refuses to let age slow her down in the slightest. She hit fifty a turn ago, but with the exception of her hair and face, she doesn't look a day over forty. She stands five foot nine and weighs in heavy for her build. She's always been curvy - wide hips, narrow waist, a layer of fat over corded steel muscles - but any natural tendency to weight she might have had has been run into the ground by constant training. Linfon's body is a temple, and not the sort that eventually falls to ruin and ends up grown-over with vines and full of rhesus monkeys. As far as she's concerned, her metabolism slowing down is a personal offense, and she's done everything she can to thwart it. She just eats less, exercises more, and doesn't stop.
Her hair is thick, iron-grey, and loosely wavy. She wears it roughly cut just past chin-length, too long to wear up, but long enough to brush out of her face. It shapes itself into something presentable naturally - fortuitous, since Linfon doesn't give a wherry's a** about taking care of it. Her eyes are sharp, light grey-green, and often narrowed skeptically. She scowls more than any other expression, and the lines around her eyes and mouth are testament to just that fact. Her face has been shaped by her life: strong cheekbones and jawline serving to accent her dominant personality, with thin lips pressed into a constant, unimpressed line. She's scarred on the right side of her face, a pair of lines running from cheek down to collarbone where a wher caught her good when she was younger.
Personality: Linfon takes herself and her job seriously. Really seriously. Probably too seriously, in all honesty. But she took her position as a guard at Warden's Weyr in a good faith effort to become precisely the thing her mother had always wanted her to be: a lawkeeper. Keeping the peace and upholding the law has become her life. Consider Linfon lawful good: she does what she does because she believes it's right, and she wants to do right. Her commitment to justice and the law goes far beyond just doing things "by the book." Linfon's read "the book." She's also read the sequel and done a ton of research into the author who wrote "the book." She has made it her business to understand it. She gave up on personal relationships to pursue lawkeeping, because it's her responsibility to. Keeping the peace is most important. Everything else comes second.
Perhaps surprisingly, she is quite sympathetic to those prisoners who have repented and show an earnest desire to become productive members of society. This doesn't extend to everyone - serial killers, as far as Linfon is concerned, are irredeemable, and Dusters cannot be trusted not to relapse once they've been down into the darkness. But she does believe in the ability to change and become a better person. Even some murderers - people who committed crimes of passion, rather than those who premeditated their actions - might someday be productive members of society, or at least productive members of Warden's, which is almost the same thing. She's more open to the idea of prisoner rehabilitation than many of her fellow guards.
This doesn't mean she's easier on them, though. Linfon drives everyone she works with and for into the ground. She firmly believes that working people until they drop is the only way to improve them. When given leadership, she is hard but fair. She doesn't ask people to do anything she wouldn't do herself, and believes in "first in, last out." Needless to say, when she's under the command of another, she tends to butt heads. Linfon likes being in charge. It's easier to monitor quality when you have actual direct say in what happens. But she will cede control to people who prove they are capable. Sometimes that can take a while, and she will generally fight with someone and push their buttons before she finally decides they're "worthy."
Once she's taken to someone, though, Linfon tends to be completely, unshakingly loyal. She will do everything in her power to protect the people she considers 'hers' and is not afraid to lay down her life for what she knows is right - or for the people she loves. And admittedly, there are few enough of those; Linfon is more or less the exact opposite of a loving person, and has had only one meaningful romantic relationship in her life. But for him, even decades after the breakup, she would drop anything if he needed it. The same goes for her family, the few people she counts as friends, and the other wherhandlers in her squad. She would do anything for them, if they needed it. Possibly the only thing that could get her to betray the law she adheres to is a threat to 'her' people - and even then, she would never do evil to help them.
She would, however, accept chaos and vigilante justice. But only if she absolutely needed to.
History: Linfon's family life wasn't exactly typical. Her mother B'fon was a greenrider from Fort, a woman whose prowess on dragonback was almost as renowned as her abilities as a smith. Whoever fathered her child wasn't a part of her life - because B'fon didn't want him to be. As far as she was concerned, her daughter was hers and hers alone. Linfon was raised under high expectations. B'fon didn't accept failure, and she didn't accept second-best. Her daughter would be the best stonesmith alive. And she would be the best dragonrider as well. Linfon wasn't a weyrbrat. She was raised exclusively by B'fon, and taught about dragons and smithing from her earliest days.
Since the age of Apprenticeship eligibility came before Candidacy, Linfon was sent to Smithcraft Hall when she was twelve. She excelled there, working quickly and proving herself an apt student and able apprentice. She walked the tables at eighteen, and at her mother's behest, returned to Fort to Stand as a Candidate for a few years.
Candidacy didn't treat Linfon well. She had too much spare time, too little to do - and dragons never seemed to want her. She found work (and B'fon, of course, kept her busy) and didn't let herself get lazy or out of practice, but the fact remained that the longer she stayed at Fort and spent her time as a Candidate, the less happy she was there. Hatchings became painful chores, and Linfon found excuses to avoid them when she could. She watched from the Stands, sometimes, at her mother's urging. And dragons didn't seem to like Linfon any more than Linfon liked dragons. She was twenty-three and still unImpressed when the Dragon Watch was founded, and so B'fon joined alone. Linfon didn't take it well. Smarting at what she felt was a slight from her mother, she returned to Telgar and threw herself into smithing again.
She didn't look back. Once, on her thirtieth birthday, she attended a Hatching at Telgar Weyr for kicks, and watched it from the Stands. When nothing happened, she swore off dragons forever. A few turns later, she went through a catastrophically messy breakup with a Harper she had known since they were both children. With B'fon disappointed in her and Fort an unfortunate reminder of a relationship gone sour, Linfon decided never to go back. Smithcraft Hall was more of a home to her than the Weyr had ever been, and Linfon lived and breathed her craft. She excelled as a metalsmith - and as a stonesmith.
Mastery came to her when she was forty-five - young for a master, but with a title she considered to be well-deserved. She didn't stop her studies, though, instead continuing her work and branching primarily into stone. It was her work with stonesmithing that took her to Warden's, initially - she was part of a team sent over to build the prison. And it was her time at Warden's that introduced her to whers. Linfon had requested a pair of 'handlers to help her haul stone blocks, and ultimately got to know the guards and their whers well. She ended up fond of their beasts and dedicated to their cause (like the Dragon Watch, except it wasn't an exclusive club that only The Chosen could join - since nearly anyone could Impress a wher). And she decided that she wanted one. So when the chance arose - shortly after Warden's was opened - to take an egg, she did so gladly.
It hatched a green who promptly dubbed herself Linfonsk and became inseparable from her handler. Linfon set immediately to guarding, and Linfonsk became combination beast of burden and tool for justice. She excelled as a guard wher, and the pair have been proving themselves worthy of respect (and in some cases, fear) ever since.
Other stuff: (anything you wish to add)
Linfonsk
Name: Linfonsk
Color: Green
Age: 3
Appearance: As far as whers go, Linfonsk is actually a fairly pretty one. She's tall rather than low, with a slightly-longer neck and tail than usual. It doesn't make her look waifish or ethereal, though: she might have long legs, but they're thick and solid and she has a stance like a heavyweight boxer. Her head is narrow and triangular, a little like a barracuda, dominated by an enormous mouth with protruding teeth that turns up just slightly at the corners. She always looks like she's smiling smugly.
Her color is a medium dusky green, with dark markings similar to those found on a dun runnerbeast. Her legs, tail, muzzle, and headknobs are pointed in forest green, and she has a dark dorsal stripe and faint striping on her legs and shoulders.
Personality: In a sentence, smug as ******** is self-absorbed. It's not narcissism, as she's not really sentient enough to put something as complex as narcissism together, but Linfonsk is a cocky, swaggering pile of green hide, and she expects everyone to deal with it. She's confident to the point of cockiness, possessive of things (physical objects like her collar, people like Linfon and Linfon's Friends, and other whers - mostly male ones), and surprisingly reticent when she doesn't get her way. She's not really the hissy-fit sort, more the "sulk in a corner and make sarcastic comments about everyone else" one. She gets along better with male whers than females, and has a tendency to get extremely uppity with other young females. Older females she mostly disregards. She flirts aggressively, and doesn't take rejection well.
She's not particularly smart, even for a wher, and complex problem-solving is not her job - it's Linfon's. Linfonsk isn't around to think her way into and out of situations, she's around to be a blunt instrument. She wants to do good because her handler wants her to do good, and courtesy of Linfon, she has a pretty good idea of who are "good people" and who are "bad people." But Linfonsk isn't all that good at dealing with "bad people" - at least not on human terms. Unsupervised, she creates massive destruction in her wake as she chases off after lawbreakers. She bites. And beats up, and sits on, and is quite willing to put herself in danger because she is a good guy and that's what good guys do. Tackling people to the ground, biting miscreants, being intimidating, and generally providing extra muscle for her handler - this is what she's good at. Linfon provides the structure, direction, and brains to the operation. Or at least, she's the person who points the gun and pulls the trigger, if you will.
She and her handler don't always get along - their personalities aren't really complementary and Linfon doesn't have much tolerance for Linfonsk's crap - but they do love each other. Linfonsk would do anything for Linfon, and her handler makes sure she's well-cared-for and satisfied.
