Keralder
Name: Keralder, nicknamed "Kidder"
Age: 30
Gender: Male
Candidate: Yes
Craft/Rank: Guard
Appearance: Somewhat straggly and unimpressive, Keralder doesn't stand out particularly as a prime physical specimen. Although he's unlikely to win an arm wrestling contest with some of the larger inhabitants of Warden's he's still lean and strong, stripped down to muscle and very little body fat, especially now that Thread has returned. He tends to withdraw behind slightly wavy, longish brown hair, and a roughly trimmed beard, watching the world from behind the visual barrier with intense, dark brown eyes. While he can manage an impressive poker face, his eyes are the give away that he's not as disconnected as he'd prefer to appear, watching the people around him with a burning intensity that's almost impossible to miss, save for the truly oblivious. His 'resting' expression tends toward a sort of bland, vaguely superior smugness, which partners with his intense eyes to make him look like he dismisses the intelligence of pretty much everyone in his line of sight, though this isn't necessarily accurate.
His face is sharp boned with a long nose with a very defined bridge narrowing just below the bone ridge of the nose that looks as though it were shaped over the years by his tendency to pinch the top edge of his nose just there and sigh with exasperation, and sometimes amusement.
Personality: The Nickname Kidder comes from Keralder's dry and occasionally inappropriate sense of humor... or... what's sometimes supposed to pass as humor, as he will off and on pad statements that are damn hard to laugh at with "Just Kidding", as though it makes it better. Without batting an eye he can describe a horrific scenario which he might theoretically enact, and then flash a brilliant, earnest smile and add "Just kidding" and laugh.
He's equally likely to make belittling comments about himself and others, couched in humor, though Faranth help you if you think he actually expects you to agree, rather than contradict him when he jokes about himself. In his own mind, Keralder is a dark and nigh on flawless gem of a human being, and he dislikes having it forgotten by others, even if they didn't know they were supposed to think that to begin with.
Just to make things more complicated, it's not even as though he'll readily let on to being angry...most of the time. Instead his usual modus operandi is to smile, laugh, and file it in the mental library of personal grudges to act on later.
The one group of people who, regardless of circumstance, are listed permanently in his grudge file are makers and sellers of Crackdust. LIke anyone else he'll smile and play nice...mostly... though he's definitely not above 'accidentally' stepping on someone's foot or giving a slightly too rough joking elbow... he'll even nod and look sympathetic as someone explains the terrible circumstances that led them to creating or peddling a substance that might have saved their life, but destroyed tens to hundreds of others... but however he acts, there's no truth, no sympathy, and no forgiveness in Keralder. If you've made or peddled Crackdust, he hates you with every fiber of his being, and while he smiles, he smiles because he pictures spitting on your corpse.
He has an appreciative eye for physical beauty, and his sense of humor extends to lewd humor, but like his grudges, many are surprised when they uncover an dismissive attitude toward sex or physical intimacy, the jokes made largely to til others off balance for his own amusement. While he enjoys the act, he sees it as not having relevance to a 'real' relationship, more interested in his intellectual compatibility with others than his physical comparability, and he has a particular weakness for good poetry, since his own skills end at 'Roses are red...'
His soft spot for children and drudges, who he sees as overlooked, and his occasionally self depreciating humor can make it seem as though "Kidder" might actually be a secretly nice, cuddly guy, but you'd overall wrong. Keralder is all about business, about achieving his ends, and if you're not him, you're expendable, and people who aren't part of, or supporting his agenda are more so. Ultimately he is a brutal thug, but an intelligent and practical one, perhaps more dangerous because he's not a sociopath, and is perfectly capable of empathizing with others, he just does so very selectively.
He's particularly facinated by the unusual new, 'mutant' colors that have come out of the new clutch, and is as interested as a total layman can be in finding out what secrets they'll reveal as they grow toward maturity. Plus he kind of has a thing for the underdog, and these strange, nigh on freakish dragons are definitely underdogs. Yellows not golds... tiny Opals that do have a metalic shimmer... pink... he hates to use the analogy but honestly it's like they were born from a crackdust dream.
History:
Keralder, was born to a drudge turned sex worker, a very minor step up that barely allowed her to take care of her illegitimate child. Keralder certainly was never in any doubt of his mothers affections, learning to see early on the difference between the smiles she saved for him and the smiles she gave to others. He observed her using sex as meaningless coin to the desperate and the lonely, and took that to heart too. Watching the same people return no more fulfilled from one time to the next drilled into him over time that Sex was a pointless and throw away pleasure, like buying desert for a starving man, when the same coin could have bought a full meal, and found a much more satisfying social feast engaging peoples minds. It also gave him a deep respect for people doing the tasks society frequently demands, but refuses to acknowledge, like his mother, or drudges.
It also taught him to hate Crackdust. Crackdust destroyed lives all around him, and not just the lives of the people taking it. Crime and murder made difficult lives more difficult, and potentially violent people could become much worse with just a taste of addictive dust, giving him extra concerns for his mother and her friends.
Looking to find a way to try and burn it out at the root, he trained hard to become a Guard, but the problem just seemed to get worse, and sending the perpetrates to Wardens did not, in his mind, seem to be actually stopping the problem. After all, making and selling Crackdust was, infuriatingly, listed as a non violent offense.
Fed up with sending them to prison that they might return from in five turns to start again, Keralder instead made the choice to deliberately look to go to a place that most wouldn't consider a career goal. Warden's Weyr.
So far he's been very careful not to let it slip, but honestly, if Keralder could put an end to every crackdust creator or merchant in Wardens, he would gladly exchange his guard uniform for a obnoxiously red jumpsuit in a heartbeat, just for a chance to dance on their graves.
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