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 Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 7:00 am
The main feature of the office is bookshelves. They line three of the walls, and each one is full to bursting with books and files. The next most notable item is a large solid dark wooden desk set towards the back of the room and neatly centred. It's rather handsome and looks to be an old piece of furniture but well cared for in general; there are a few scratches and a notable dent on one corner but it's clean and tidy... and completely covered in stacks of papers and books, save for a small space where the desk's owner clearly works. The chair set behind the desk faces the door; it has a high straight back and a padded leather seat. Currently hanging on the back of the chair is a riding jacket made of leather; it is thickly padded and bears the colours of a greenrider of the Dragonwatch. Amongst the stacks of papers, set where the chair's occupant will always be able to see them, are a pair of portraits. The first of these depicts a couple who look to be in their late twenties. The taller of the pair is a woman with fluffy blonde hair, hazel eyes framed by round glasses and a lithe build; she is wearing a light blue gown with Journeyman Starsmith knots on her shoulder and smiling brightly. The smaller figure is a stockily muscled man with short neat auburn hair and blue eyes; he wears smart britches and a smart jacket sporting Journeyman Healer knots, and though not smiling widely like his partner the artist has captured a subtle upturn of his lips and a warm happiness in his eyes. The second picture shows that second figure again, ten turns older and showing it in the distinguished lines that the artist has neatly picked out on his face. Somehow his hair has got brighter over the decade or so that separates the two paintings; he has also acquired a set of Master knots. The second figure in the picture this time is a boy with a happy smile, fluffy blond hair and big round glasses over his bright blue eyes; he looks somewhere around the age of nine or ten. Just in front of the portraits is a hand-painted mug bearing the slogan 'I can please one person a day. This is not your day.'; presumably this is a gift from somebody who knows the owner of the office well enough to tease him and who he's fond enough of not to have thrown the jolly item away. Currently set in the clear working space of the desk is a nearly clean sheet of paper; clearly somebody had just begun penning a formal letter when they were called away. Most of the desk's draws, if tested, pull open with ease and contain contain either stationary or yet more papers. One draw however is locked. Were somebody to pick or force the lock to get into it they would find a small locked box and a leather bound diary, which as it was locked away was clearly supposed to be private. Besides all of this the office contains two comfortable chairs set beside a little round table by one of the bookshelf covered walls, for visitors presumably. Set against the one wall that is not lined by shelves is a sideboard with a rather monstrous contraption of brass and glass sitting on top of it. The only major clue to the machine's function is a jug sitting underneath a small tube. The cupboards of the sideboard are locked but if forced open will be found to contain mostly more files but also a bottle of nice whiskey with two glasses, another locked box, and what appears to be a hammock with a fold out frame. All in all the room is rather telling about its occupant. Most of what it tells is that they spend an awful lot of time in here.
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Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 2:45 pm
The Desk - Bereck  Name: Bereck
Age: 49
Gender: Male
Craft/Rank: Healer / Master
Appearance
Height: ~5'7"
Build: Stocky
Hair: Short, neat, straight, vivid henna red
Eyes: Bright blue
Skin: Lightly tanned
Face: Strong jaw, quite heavily lined
Distinguishing features: Beauty spot just above the right-hand corner of the mouth. Rectangular glasses or small round reading glasses. Near ever present mug of klah.
Detailed appearance: Standing just between 5'7" and 5'8" Bereck isn't exactly tiny but he's certainly notably smaller than most of the men around him, not that it bothers him much besides the annoyance of neck strain. He's a fairly stocky man with broad shoulders that are still powerful despite his age. Fitness is of course demanded of him as a rider at Warden’s; he does have a little body fat, but nothing that stops him keeping up with what is required for his rather demanding duties.
The most striking thing about Bereck is his colouring; his skin is a fairly average pale tan but he has startlingly intense bright blue eyes, and though his hair is naturally white these days (it was ruddy auburn once upon a time) he dyes it to a lovely bright red with henna. Yes he does dye his eyebrows too; meticulously. He has a widow's peak hairline, slightly receded now but still mostly present. His hair is kept quite short and very neat without fail, in fact he's a very fastidious man all over; people don't trust a scruffy healer! High fancy fashion is certainly not his thing though; he goes in for simple, smart, and practical wherever possible, and generally avoids very bright colours. Trademark accessories that he is seldom seen without are rectangular glasses (that he generally only takes off to sleep, or to put on reading glasses or flight goggles) and a golden timepiece. A trademark item he is never without but almost never seen with is a plain golden ring, which he wears on a chain around his neck underneath his shirt.
A long life very full of deep thought and stress has left Bereck with a quite heavily lined countenance, but facially he's pleasant enough to look at all the same. He possesses a good strong jaw without it being insanely square, good cheekbones and no unfortunate features, though a beauty spot just above the right-hand corner of his mouth could be considered either a plus, minus, or neutral aspect depending on personal taste.  Personality
Likes: Klah, work, discovery, intelligent conversation, work, klah, cheesecake
Dislikes: Stupid people, lazy people, suck ups, bullies, nepotism, weak klah, condescending bronze riders
Five words: Workaholic, perfectionist, cranky, intelligent, practical
Detailed personality: Bereck is an essentially decent though not always friendly man whose main interests in life seem to be his work, discovering new things and drinking klah. A lot of klah. The amount of klah he drinks can mainly be attributed to his obsession with the first item on the list; he doesn't seem to know how to 'have a holiday' or 'take it easy', or anything else of that nature. His work as a healer means just about everything to him; he demands the best from himself at all times and can never forgive himself for a mistake or failure. Even if there was nothing he could have done to save somebody's life or limb he feels personally to blame if he can't make somebody - dragon or human - well again. Losing patients sends him deep into a melancholy gloom during which he questions his ability as a healer, and works even harder to compensate for his perceived failings. No matter how many people he saves it's the ones he loses that he remembers, and no matter how much he does he always despairs that he couldn't do more.
As he has been healing a long time and thus lost a lot of people there is a certain worn air to him a lot of the time; he has brushed shoulders with Death on countless occasions, and he knows far too well that there is no justice in who He takes. Bereck doesn’t believe there’s much justice anywhere in the world come to that; he’s rather cynical about human nature, and how the world is ordered, and about who gets ahead and why. In his slightly cranky and sometimes snarky way he struggles to make his corner of the world slightly better through his healing and through standing up for things and for people when it matters, but he fears that he makes little difference in the end. It’s not just in healing that he’s a perfectionist; in all aspects of life he feels he could always have done a better job.
Bereck is a calm pragmatic man in a crisis, raising his voice only in order to be heard over a hubbub and offering a steady strong presence to panicked patients and or friends, dragons, riders, and significant others. Outside of a crisis he's certainly not volatile but he is short on patience with idiots, people he thinks are idiots, arrogant people, loud people and bullies. Not given to physical violence or cussing streams he tends to deal with such people either with short barks or snarks to get out of his hair, or with long lectures about why they're idiots (and why they should then get out of his hair). Yes, he is a bit of a stick in the mud, and no an amusing string of practical jokes will not get him to change, it will just lead to a longer lecture. Once something has annoyed him he tends to stay in a grouchy mood either for the rest of the day, or until somebody cheers him up. The cheering up isn't actually hard to people that know him, a cup of klah made how he likes it or a similar small gesture will usually do the trick; he appreciates being thought of, and people paying enough attention to know the things he likes.
Egotism and rank grubbing are very annoying to Bereck. As goes with his cynicism about the world he tends to be suspicious of those who have gained a rank before one would expect them to be able to, and of anyone who makes a big deal of their rank. Do you care more about the knots, he wants to know, or the work? He respects the chain of command in a crisis and expects others to do so too, simply because it's not practical to have everyone trying to make the decisions when time is critical. When time is not critical however he will question his superiors bluntly, but doesn't tend to take it well when other people - save a very select few - question him or make suggestions contrary to what he had in mind. His immediate response to this is to snark or scoff at whoever has contradicted him, but if they persist and their point turns out to be a good one he'll champion it (with a good dose of embarrassment if it goes against something he thought/said beforehand). If on the other hand it's bollocks he will explain exactly why it is bollocks, or why he thinks it is in any case.
As can probably be deuced for his general outlook Bereck doesn’t exactly do well with the whole colour hierarchy system. He had no interest in doing something as banal as lead a wing but being respected less than a shiny rider, and having Berath respected less than a shiny dragon, really gets on his nerves. He makes his opinions on the matter well known to those who ask, and is rather scornful of those who believe bigger is better when it comes to dragon colours. Generally he believes anyone who hold such beliefs must be really rather stupid, and he will probably treat them as such with little regard for the trouble he might get into.
Tending towards the reserved, Bereck prefers to keep strong emotions to himself. He's hardly a flawless actor so observant people around him will probably be able to tell if something is bothering him, but good luck getting him to talk about it; he likes to keep private things private thank you so much, and trying to persuade him to discuss something he doesn't want to will earn you only Grump. Even with those he's close to he avoids discussing problems; he'll usually brush enquiries off or dismiss issues as unimportant, and once again prodding him only results in grouchiness. If he ever does want to talk about something he will do so in his own damn time, though that time is usually 'never' due to a combination of quiet pride, habitual self-reliance, and just not wanting to burden the people he cares about. While in general he tries to avoid getting overly enthused around people he's unfamiliar with too, he's not especially good at it if something awesome is present/being discussed. Try though he might he tends to geek out and ramble excitedly over things that fascinate him, only to realize he's doing so and trail off looking faintly embarrassed. People he's close to however can expect him to keep going on about whatever it is for a very long time, whether they're actually interested or not.
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Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 2:46 pm
The Riding Jacket - Berath Name: Berath
Color: Green
Age: 31
Appearance
Length: 27'
Build: Hugely muscular, short limbs, huge wings
Hide: Moss green, unmarked
Eyes: Most commonly friendly sky blue
Face: Blocky
Distinguishing features: Hugeness
Detailed appearance: ...That has to be a green, right? It's very very green, so it must be. Umm.... Well she's certainly an impressive lady. She's big, huge for a green at 27 feet, and her build is massively powerful. She has a thick barrel chest and her neck, legs and tail are all short and thick-boned and thick-muscled. Wingspan however is something she doesn't lack; her pinions are long and broad giving her excellent lift and endurance in the air. In all honesty she flies more like a brown than a green, a fact she is a little embarrassed about, but she tries not to let her lack of grace bother her too much.
As well as not being a dainty lady this dragon is clearly not a young lady. She remains fit and powerful (very powerful), but her once rich mossy green hide has started to fade somewhat on her face, legs, and wings. Her eyes are bright and clear though, her teeth are still strong and white, and she is still more than capable of keeping up with the younger dragons.
Personality
Likes: Children, hatchlings, people in general, looking after people
Dislikes: Bullies, people who hurt other people in general, people who hurt her people!
Five words: Maternal, warm, protective, interfering, determined
Detailed personality: Berath will look after you, Berath will look after everyone! As is perhaps fitting for her massive build Berath is a mother bear; woe betide anyone who harms one of hers, or one too weak to defend themselves! There is nothing she would not do to make sure those she loves are as safe and happy as can be, discounting of course her physical inability to willfully harm a human. She will fight a bronze dragon for you, she will take Thread for you, she will give her own life and even endanger her rider’s life to keep another safe, because she knows he shares her desire to keep people from harm.
Though roused easily to anger by attacks on those she loves and those she thinks need protection, in other circumstances she is a calm and steady sort. Stress is something that happens to other people, mostly her rider apparently; a great portion of her life has been spent trying to keep him from getting so stressed he explodes. She also spends a lot of time making sure that he does occasionally sleep and eat, and does the same for anyone else who she thinks takes too much upon themselves. She generally has a solid, straightforward and even blunt approach to this though so despite her best intentions it doesn’t always work and she can come off as being rather rude or bossy. If she is accused of this she will be mildly hurt, and say she was merely trying to be helpful!
If there is something one of hers or somebody who fits her ‘needs looking after’ category wants or needs, she will go to great lengths to get it or to see that is it got. No matter how much it puts her out, no matter if they could have got it or done it for themselves, she will do it for them. In this instance she is rather like a mother again, the one who will drop three children off at three different things of an evening having just been at work all day. She doesn’t see it as being taken advantage of even when somebody blatantly is just using her good nature to get away with being lazy; she is happy to help, and just wants to see people happy. Whether you want her kill that she was about to eat, or just to hug her silently without being pestered by questions she is more than happy to oblige.
It should be noted that Berath is slightly resentful towards golds. She tries very hard not to be, and feels guilty for feeling as she does, but she cannot help her jealousy. They can have hatchlings of their own, and she cannot. If a gold needs her help she will still be there for them, but she has never yet formed a true friendship with a dragon who is capable of having eggs.
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Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 2:46 pm
The Portraits - History  Play start -49 Bereck is born to young rider V’eck of bronze Ukith and healer apprentice Berinya at Telgar Weyr; both are sixteen turns old, V’eck had Impressed at fourteen. They decided they would raise Bereck themselves, though Berinya took on most of the parenting duties as V’eck was dead set on becoming a wingleader as soon as possible; he was rather stuck in the past, and loved the romantic notion of Wingleaders as the generals who protected the world. As Bereck grew he didn't really get on with most the other children. Where most of the weybrats were interested in playing loud games he preferred to sit in a corner with a book. He was also always the one with his hand up in lessons with the Harpers, and wondered why this seemed to make some of the other kids hate him. On the plus side it made some of the other kids like him a lot, and he happily helped them with their homework when they came to him stuck with something. Often they were stuck right at the start of it, but because they were nice he didn't really mind working through with them even if he'd already finished the work himself. As might be guessed, many of the children who sought his help had no interest in being his friend and just wanted him to basically do their work for them. Bereck worked this out eventually and stopped helping them, which didn't help his popularity much.
Play start -41 When Bereck turned eight, he became a healer apprentice. His parents had spent the last half turn or so discussing what he ought to do with his life; Berinya wanted him to be a healer, like her. V'eck wanted his son to start intensively studying dragon lore so that when he inevitably Impressed a bronze or perhaps brown he would be prepared for his destiny as a wingleader at the very least. If he Impressed bronze of course V'eck expected he would one day be Weyrleader, and he was pretty sure that even with a brown his son might be in with a shot. V'eck won and started drawing up lesson plans. Unfortunately for said plans, V'eck had not quite counted on his small son being as stubborn as he was. Bereck did not want to be a wingleader or a weyrleader, he wanted to be a Healer. Bereck did not turn up for his first lesson with his father, instead he went and reported to the Weyrhealer. V'eck was furious and went on a long eloquent rant about respect for elders, obedience, duty and so on before taking away the apprentice knots Bereck had been granted. This resulted in one of the few serious arguments between V'eck and Berinya, during which Bereck hid under Uktith's wing with his fingers in his ears. For all his stubbornness however V'eck couldn't stand to have his weyrmate so angry with him, and after a turbulent hour or so he gave in and returned the knots along with a vague mumbled apology. Clever Bereck took well to his craft, but failed to get much enthusiasm out of V'eck for it and although Berinya was very proud Bereck felt the sting of parental disinterest and worked even harder in search of approval. Unsurprisingly it didn't work and father and son became somewhat cool with one another, though Bereck remained close to Uktith.
Also in this turn Berinya Impressed a lovely green dragon named Sereth from the stands. With Bereck settling into his apprenticeship there wasn’t as much disruption to his routine as there might have been and Uktith, sensitive soul that he was, took on extra babysitting duties where needed. Once Berinya finished her weyrling training family life more or less got back to normal except with an extra parent-type in Sereth, who incidentally thought Uktith was wonderful and was thought really very wonderful in return. This would seem to work perfectly... except Uktith chased queens, and Sereth did not like it when he chased queens.
Play start -39 Bereck was ten when his mother died. A queen was rising, a cause for celebration, and as ever Uktith gave chase. This time Sereth did not merely seethe and watch; ready to rise herself the green blooded her own kill and took the sky amongst the browns and bronzes. She called to Uktith, her mate, but he did not heed her. Furious and hurt Sereth hopped between, reappearing ahead of him to try to catch his eye. In the chaos of the chase for the queen however she got in the way of another bronze, and with a roar of rage he cuffed her aside just as he would a rival male. Delicate little Sereth screamed, and with a broken wing plunged to earth with a sickening crunch. She called to her mate one last time, and then for her rider, and then she died. A week later Berinya mixed herself a mercy draught, went to the spot where her dragon had fallen, lay down on the cold earth and quietly followed her bondmate into death. The general reaction to the death of the pair was dismissal; it was a sad case, but a green ought to have known better than to interfere with a Queen’s flight. Had Sereth known her place both she and her rider would be alive and well.
With the his beloved weyrmate gone all the fire went out of V'eck, and he couldn't stand to even look at his son whose eyes were exactly like his beloved’s. Bereck was therefore moved into creche where he hadn't been at all since he became an apprentice and he hated it there. He tried to convince himself that this was just temporary, that V'eck would come around and want him back soon, but months passed and that didn't happen. The bronze rider turned in the opposite direction whenever he happened to see him around the Weyr, and Uktith remembered to speak to him less and less. Left to his own devices Bereck set out to prove to the whole sharding world that V’eck was a fool for not wanting him anymore. He would work harder than the other apprentices, he would do better than the other apprentices and he would become the youngest Masterhealer that Pern had ever seen! The issue of Dust and the problems the substance was beginning to cause was mostly lost on him; he learned about the substance in his lessons but he was young and didn’t make too much of it.
Play start -31 Bereck became a journyman shortly after he turned eighteen; deciding one was going to be a journeyman at fifteen when one is ten is all very well but when one is ten one does not appreciate that as well as being very clever, when you’re a healer you need experience and maturity in order to be promoted. Still, eighteen was good enough and he was on the road to become a Master before he was thirty!... Except he went the way of his mother, and Impressed a green dragon from where he stood with the other healers waiting to deal with injuries. She came out of a large strong gold clutch, and when she burst out of her shell the first thing that massive green did was charge at a bronze that was bullying a meek little blue. Her opponent was bigger than she was but the green was just as muscular and at least twice as pissed off; the bronze was sent rushing over to his rider with his tail between his legs. The big chunky green hatchling then made her way over to the slightly scuffed up blue, licked his wounds, and nudged him off towards the male candidates. When he refused to go she honked at him loudly and gave him another nudge, which earned a creel. After a few moments of apparent conversation they set off together towards the girls, where the blue joyously met with his rider. The green huffed in a satisfied manner and plodded back to the unhatched eggs. Every time a shell cracked she went to meet her sibling, and chivvied of guided them if she thought they needed it. Eventually she was the last unbonded dragon on the sands, and after looking about to ensure that this really was the case she made her way slowly over to the boys and flopped down at Bereck's feet.
That put a bit of a crimp in his plans to work intensively on healing for a while, but she was Berath and she was His so he didn’t care all that much. She was also a dragon and... well maybe that would please V’eck. Resenting the man didn’t mean he had stopped secretly yearning for his approval. By most standards Berath was probably the least lovely dragon in the clutch; she didn't fit the ideal conformation of her colour, or any dragon really with her short thick legs neck and tail, and though she was a pretty enough moss green colour unlike her siblings she had no intricate markings. Bereck didn't care in the least though: as one would expect from a rider he thought she was the very best of the bunch; no silly frippery for them thank you, and a solid healthy build could only be a good thing! Proud as could be he made his way up to V'eck's weyr with the two day old green plodding solidly by his side and knocked at the door. He was allowed in. He and his new bondmate were inspected for a few moments, and then dismissed. V'eck had work to do, he did not have time for a child, and any rider who thought they did was a fool. Besides, a green could never amount to anything important, and was no dragon for a real man anyway. Bereck departed furious, stung and incensed by the words, and just as much by the fact that his father hadn't met his eyes even for a moment. Understanding V'eck's wish to avoid pain at a reminder of his lost weyrmate didn't make Bereck able to forgive it.
After a few more days the weyrlingmaster wanted to know how Bereck was going to elide his name, for the records. If he hadn't decided of course he could have more time, there was no rush but it was something to think about. Bereck informed the man that he had decided; he was going to stay Bereck. It wasn't an overly long name, and his mother had chosen it, and if he cut it short he would sound more like V'eck and less like Berinya. He preferred to be like Berinya thanks. Although this was unorthodox the Weyrlingmaster accepted it; women didn't have to if they didn't want to after all, and so he saw no point in forcing the young greenrider to comply with tradition. Some of the other weyrlings took issue with it of course, boys and girls who had never got on with Bereck, but he ignored the jibes as best he could and got on with caring for his dragon.
Everything he felt about the still painful loss of his mother and the hurt of his father still ignoring his existence Bereck locked deep inside himself and refused to confront; he had work to do, shardit, and no time to wallow in self pity. The times when it all overwhelmed him and he cried into his dragon's neck are a deadly secret; aplomb and self control in front of the world became all important to him. He would be strong, capable, dependable in all circumstances no matter what V'eck and some other idiots might have to say about men with greens. He was a Healer first and a rider second in any case, and didn't healers need to be calm no matter what?
Play start -27 Dust was the talk of the Weyr, the talk of Pern come to that. Bereck observed the formation of the Dragonwatch with cynical interest. Fancy that, what a lot of shiny dragons running the show. He promptly lost interest and got on with his work again, still determined to be a master before he was thirty even if it was by a sharding week! Trauma and surgery were his primary interests and he avidly devoured all of the new advances that a Pern without Thread and with rapidly improving technology brought. He also developed an interest in other fields, primarily tech related ones. He never considered cross-crafting - he was far too fixated on his healing - but he read extensively in his free time (what’s socializing?) and was always one of those people to pounce on a new gadget that became available.
For some turns Bereck had gone along with the Flights because he felt it was The Done Thing, and while not enthused by the idea it didn't really bother him; going with the flow seemed like far less effort than going against it. When he was twenty two however he decided that he was done with Flights. The decision was made very abruptly and very decisively when he woke up with a large handsome young bronze rider (hold born, it had been his dragon's first flight) who made the assumption that as he had gone along with the Flight he must like men and therefore must want him again before they parted ways; he was sure that 'go away' was just the sweet little green rider being coy! The bronze rider was mid self-congratulatory observations about the impressive bite mark on Bereck's shoulder, the scratches on his own back, and suggestions of what he was going to do next when Bereck picked up a broom and swept him out of his weyr. Bereck then threw the blue rider's clothes off his ledge into and went to have a long hot bath and a grumble. From then on he just locked his door when flights came around, and found himself much happier with the situation; dealing with idiots the morning after had always annoyed him.
Play start -23 Being the workaholic that he was Bereck had a couple of rather fleeting lovers over the turns, but ladies never stayed long. Until he met Alina. She was a Starsmith and blue rider, his own age, who he had managed to avoid running into by dint of being constantly buried in his work while she was constantly buried in hers. They only crossed paths at all because she had run into the corner of a table at high speed and bruised her thigh badly enough to want a healer to look at it. They chatted a bit while he worked on her, and for once Bereck found himself getting along easily with somebody. It also rather swiftly came out that they did know one another a bit in fact they had Impressed in the same clutch. Both had been far too preoccupied with various other concerns to really notice one another, and it had been a big clutch, but Alina remembered Bereck refusing to shorten his name and from there they recalled various other bits about one another too. Soon enough Alina’s thigh was dealt with however and she turned to walk away, presumably out of his life forever. At that point Bereck asked her if she might like to come to dinner and a study swap. She agreed and things progressed from there... rather quickly in fact.
Play start -22-20 A turn later Bereck proposed because Alina was Holdborn and that sort of thing still mattered to her, and he rather liked the romantic notion himself. She accepted and... they got on with frantically working towards their masteries. They held things together, but they didn’t have quite as much time for one another as they might have... and they might not have been as observant as they might have either. Not noticing that Alina might be maybe slightly a bit pregnant until it was too late to resolve matters with a jump between is something Bereck was ribbed mercilessly about by his colleagues. He didn’t notice too much however because he had bigger problems, namely Alina being severely tokophobic. There were of course other methods of abortion and Bereck... encouraged Alina to do what she thought best; it was her body, her choice he hastened to stress... but his distress was pretty plain to see. While he'd been happy to avoid having children he wasn't happy at all with the idea of terminating a child (his child) reasonably late on. Alina considered matter and reached a decision; she would have the baby, for Bereck, because she loved him more than she was horrified by the changes in her body and the thing inside her but she couldn't look after it once it was born. There was an interesting study program starting in Starcraft Hall that required several years of dedication... they could write every day by firelizard and they both had dragons so they could visit easily. They'd make it work. Bereck agreed, hesitantly, but continued to worry that she felt forced into her choice and would resent him for it in the end. After all she went through Bereck decided that Alina should name their son when he was born (the months between her decision and then are best not recalled for her sake), and she settled on Aleck. Once she had rested and recovered from the ordeal Alina set out for Pern’s foremost Starsmith hall; she hadn’t laid eyes on Aleck and didn’t want to either. Anyone who made nasty comments about her because of this found themselves on the receiving end of Bereck’s considerable ire.
Raising a child however was... difficult. Bereck was definitely not willing to leave Aleck in the crèche for long given how he had hated it, but neither was he prepared to compromise his work. This was how he began experiments on the human sleep pattern, re: how much can one warp it in order to get more hours out of the day, and ended up with an even deeper love of klah and polyphasic sleep schedule, generally sleeping in a block of three hours and taking three twenty minute naps throughout the rest of the day and night. (This, the Everyman, is not the most insane sleep schedule anyone has ever kept). Despite his best efforts, Bereck did not actually like babies. Oh he loved Aleck yes... well of course he did. He did wonder however if he wasn't connecting to him right, if maybe he wasn't bonding with the crying thing that he sometimes found himself uncharitably thinking of as The Creature.
Not so very long after Aleck’s birth, Alina joined up with a group of scientists and guards from the ‘Watch heading south to investigate strange reports from a small cothold in the south. She wrote to Bereck at first... and then stopped. And weeks passed. And then the bodies were found... or what was left of them anyway. Bereck was devastated by the lost of his Weyrmate, his wife, and only having Berath to support him, work to do and Aleck to take care of kept him sane. Bereck demanded investigations into the loss of the study group but none were forthcoming. He even made a trip to the site himself but was too rattled and overwhelmed by grief to linger. Anyway, he had work back at the Weyr and Aleck needed him. He returned to Telgar and plunged into his work harder than ever, threw himself even more fervently into trying to raise Aleck well. As Aleck got older, learned to speak and more to the point to ask questions, intelligent ones he did actually start to enjoy parenting rather than just feeling obligated. He still second guessed himself and worried incessantly that he was going to somehow horribly psychologically scar his son, but Bereck not obsessing about doing a good job would not be Bereck.
Perhaps he should have moved on and put Alina behind him but he couldn’t, and didn’t react well to being told he ought to try. Every so often he tried to raise the matter of the lost search party again, but to no avail. He was just a greenrider after all; the Dragonwatch had much more important things to do than listen to him prattle.
In the end Bereck became a Master when he was thirty. Life, as he was discovering time and again, very seldom goes the way you plan it.
 Play start -21-10 Life however went on, and Bereck got on with raising a very smart boy who got into a lot of things he ought not to. Aleck had to spend some time in the creche of course but Bereck came to pick him up as soon as possible without fail (except when Berath was proddy, when he had to stay there or with a friend for a couple of days), and he was always dropped off with a lunch etc packed for him. Bereck devoted a lot of time to teaching Aleck things that weren't covered by standard classes, and generally keeping his bright mind engaged so that he didn't wander off and start doing Experiments. A lot of the time when Bereck was busy with practising his craft Berath looked after Aleck, a task she absolutely adored; it always had and has saddened her that she can't clutch, so having Aleck to mother and fuss over was was wonderful for her. Whatever Aleck needed they did their very best to provide, and each took it hard when they felt they had failed in some way.
Aleck was about ten and starting an apprenticeship in Smithing and new tech development when discussion about what would become Warden’s Weyr began. Bereck rather supported the idea, after all it was obvious that what they were doing at the moment wasn’t working.
Play start -6-1 When the idea was agreed and they actually started building the place Bereck... balked. They were building it around the area where the remains of the scientific party had been found. Still posted at Telgar he reignited his demands for an investigation into the group’s fate with new fervor. He was not heeded. He snarled, and fought, and generally made a lot of people annoyed with him. Eventually he gave up on the whole pack of them and requested a transfer to Warden’s Weyr; Aleck was a Journyman now living at a Hall and didn’t need him in the same way anymore. If nobody else was going to look into it then he would do so himself. Perhaps if he could find something - anything - he might also find some closure. It was not for nothing that he still wore Alina’s ring around his neck.
Play start -0 Bereck arrived at Warden’s, and was not immune to culture shock. At least his mad sleep schedule meant that he slotted into flying sweeps better than most others but the pace of it was still unspeakably wearing on a man who had lived a mainly sedentary life for the last thirty or so turns; making time to exercise a few times a week was not at all the same thing as keeping up with what Warden’s demanded. He adjusted however, as humans are wont to do, and has shed some weight and put on some muscle over the last few months. His first visit with Berath to the place where Alina and the rest of the team were lost brought his lingering grief sharply back into focus, but he refused to avoid it. When he had time from then on he returned and looked around... and still found nothing.
Bereck soon found himself working more or less two full time jobs; healing and guarding (records detail, but still). In what free time he has (not a lot) he generally either visits Aleck or tries to find other people to join in his search for answers. He doesn’t take any better now to being told he ought to move on than he did twenty turns ago.
Play begins
Play start +0 Bereck observed the laying of Brakiheth's clutch with interest and, as a dissatisfied chromatic rider, a fair deal of smugness. He wasn't entirely thrilled with the idea of criminals being candidates but on hearing it was non-violent only he accepted the decision with only minor grumbling, many such prisoners were more victims of circumstance rather than anything else anyway. Berath of course was excited to see a clutch on the sands, but regarded the crippled gold mother with her usual resentment too. She felt rather bad about that when Brakiheth died. When M'onk paraded Kaelyandra's grief in front of the candidates Berath and Bereck were called in to help the dragonless woman. It was not a form of help that Bereck enjoyed giving.
Along with Descanth Berath took over care of the eggs and started to think of them as 'their' clutch. When the hatching came around the green was thrilled, but her joy soon turned to rage when C'ross shot a mutant coloured hatchling on M'onk's orders. She spent most of the rest of the hatching trying to keep herself between C'ross and the hatchlings, hardly even noticing the attempt on M'onk's life in her bid to protect the lives of her children. After the Hatching ended Berath took an offering of meat provided by the hatchlings for their lost brother between. To her this did not feel like enough.
Just outside the walls of Warden's a cairn in grey stones is taking shape facing the sea, grey stones of the shades seen so briefly on that hatchling's hide.
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Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 2:47 pm
The Mug - Relationships Aleck - Journeyman Smith/Inventor
Bereck: I couldn't be more proud of him, or love him more than I do. I don't see nearly enough of him these days. I miss him.
Berath: MyHatchling! I miss him too. Maybe he'll come to live with us again one day... though I'm not sure I would like him to live here.
Alina - Master Starsmith, bluerider (deceased)
Bereck: I would give almost anything to have her back. I've been told I should move on but I can't, and I won't. Nobody could ever hope to replace her.
Berath: I can't remember her at all save through Ber. I wish I could.
Nementh
Bereck: I miss him too, loved him too. He was a good dragon, a good person.
Berath: ...He was my mate, and I can't remember him without Ber. That hurts.
C'ross - Squadsecond, brownrider
Bereck: The man's a squadsecond and he can't even think for himself well enough to realise that murder is a bad idea. Obviously because he rides a brown however his mind and leadership capabilities are far superior to my own!
Berath: I hate him. I will never stop hating him. I despise him! He disgusts me.
Merceth
Bereck: A very difficult patient.
Berath: I have little opinion on him.
M'onk - Warden, bronzerider
Bereck: The man is a despicable, condescending, patronizing, murderous swine.
Berath: He had one of my children killed. I will never forget.
Mikhaith
Bereck: Not as bad as his rider.
Berath: I can't say I know him well, but yes, not as bad as his rider.
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Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 2:49 pm
The Letter - Writings and RP Log
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Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 2:52 pm
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