|
|
 Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2014 1:56 am
Approved by Tawny
[x] Approved Profile
RPs:
[x] Peeling Tubers
[x] Weyr Having Such a Good Time
[x] LOTR touching
Name: L'ris
Age: 52
Gender: Female
Rank: Wingrider
Appearance:
L’ris is a tall and muscular woman, a true amazon, though beginning to slow up as she heads towards retirement - even though she swears that she won’t ‘disappear’ into the retirees wing.
She has shoulder-length mid-brown hair which is rarely well-trimmed - her weyrmate used to cut it for her, but since he died she’s cut it herself, usually by the fairly simple expedient of gathering it up into a ponytail and hacking it off. She doesn’t hold with bothering with long, elaborately groomed hair: if someone has time for that, shouldn’t they be doing something more useful? It has more then a few grey hairs now, and she has been heard inquiring into dyes, something she denies strenuously. She’s not that vain, shaffit!
L’ris is not a pretty woman: she has a square face with a hard chin, large and expressive brown eyes, and a large beaky nose. Two dueling scars cross on one of her cheeks, the record of fights past, and the rest of her is not at all unmarked. Her face is also lined from the weather and time - crows feet sit at the edges of her eyes, and laughter lines at the edge of her mouth.
Personality:
L’ris is a woman of sharp contradictions - at once kind and brutal, simultaneously vicious and sweet. There is a core of affectionate warmth within her that especially comes out towards the young and the vulnerable, though her expression of it may be pretty rough around the edges: she particularly loves good food, and anyone who she loves will find that she expresses her affection with gifts of it. Towards the core of people she truly loves, she is overwhelmingly affectionate and loyal, even to the point of neediness and over-protectiveness. The big rider adores romances, and even has two or three books of them stashed away in her weyr.
She found young that being soft and vulnerable did not suit her chosen profession, and as a result has consciously sought to make herself hard - perhaps overcompensating as a result. To people L’ris does not care about, she is brusque and occasionally simply brutal and cruel. She has a bit of a reputation as a bully, and can be particularly vindictive to people who’ve crossed her: she did not get those dueling scars for no reason.
She does her best to repress this when dealing with people in the course of her work - victims are likely to get her better and more professional side - but she is very much happy to bully or push around other riders or those who she thinks are in the way of doing her job: she is used to playing the bad guard in any given scenario, which is frequently not all play. This has not made her always popular, but she can live with it. As a rider, she is probably well respected: she works hard and gets the job done, no matter the cost, and has a particular talent for ferreting out people's darker hidden motives.
Her political views are also something that makes her occasionally unpopular: the rider leans towards the rider supremacist end of the spectrum, and firmly believes that a lot of Pern’s problems could be fixed by putting riders in charge. They’re better educated, more empathic, aren’t brought to power through some birthright - who else can co-ordinate solutions to Pern’s problems? Travel across the world in moments? They spend their whole lives serving Pern - what’s one more burden?
She and her dragon have a somewhat fractious bond - for two creatures joined at the mind, they certainly seem to spend a good ninety percent of their time arguing, which can even lead to full-on temper tantrums from Pennath. Though they clearly love each other as much as any pair, their temperaments do not always make for peaceful relations.
History:
Born: 151
Searched: 164 (aged thirteen)
Impressed: 169 (Sereveth’s clutch, aged eighteen)
Graduates: 171 (aged 20)
Famine: 176-8 (aged 25-7)
Weyrmated: 179 (aged 28 ) settles down with K’lel of bronze Kerooth.
Skirmishes: 184-5 (aged 33/4) Loses one brother who was drafted into HR’s army, and mother and a sister - cothold burned and raided by scavenging soldiers.
Dragonplague: 193. L’ris loses her weyrmate K’lel.
Lirien born: 193 (Liris aged 41)
L’ris was born in 151 in a farming cothold in one of High Reach’s river valleys. The youngest of five surviving children, she was expected - like most children on a farm - to begin pulling her weight the moment she could, even if it was as small as gathering eggs. Her family was not a wealthy one, but they rarely went hungry.
She was thirteen when she was searched, the only child from the tiny community chosen. Though the somewhat shy girl had doubts at first, they were quickly assuaged by her family - who both liked having the idea of a rider in the family and of not paying out another dowry. Boot camp was tough on her - though the physical labour was relatively easy, she found it harder to make new friends and to really fit in, coming to such a large place from somewhere she’d never met anyone who wasn’t some sort of relative.
Liris was squired to an old rider named S'ren, who was largely responsible for shaking this out of her. The rider made a point of ‘socialising’ her squire - even if that socialisation frequently came in the form of a bar-room brawl. Still, it taught the big farm girl to hold her own and if she was still shy, it was shy with a sort of quiet confidence. She and S’ren got on famously, and the teenager impressed in 169 at the age of 18: they had been together as squire and rider for about four turns, forming a close bond.
The green who took a shine to her first knocked her down and gave her the deep scars across her legs, but Pennath was never one for subtlety in making a claim on something. She proved a competent but unimaginative weyrling, and would undoubtably make the same sort of rider - except that what S’ren had started, Pennath determined to finish. L’ris graduated in 171 at the age of twenty into one of the mid-ranking wings, and began to slowly build a reputation for herself as a good solid wingrider who kept her head in a crisis.
The incident in which she lost her mentor S'ren was one of the more painful of her life: in 178, they had been flying routine sweeps over an area in Tillek that was reportedly hostile to riders. The two of them responded to a flag that had been put up in a minor cothold to call down a rider’s assistance - which turned out to be an ambush.
S’ren was killed outright (during the trial they claimed this was an accident) and her young partner taken hostage in a desperate attempt to force the Weyr into taking action against their oppressive Holder. After a tense two-day stand-off, L’ris was released by the holders.
She took two months off after this as sick-leave, attempting to get her head around what had happened - and her role in it, especially on learning that S’ren had left her her sword, Longtooth, in her will. The sword was never recovered, and was likely stolen by one of the cotholders. This may have been the seed of her rider supremacist views, or they may have already been forming - either way, she points to this as an example of things that wouldn’t happen if they were in charge.
It was a turn or so later that she took a good deal more notice of K’lel of bronze Kerooth, who had been a weyrling in her class. Their ‘courting’ was a long and drawn out process, with at least three false starts and four attempts by K’lel to assign his would-be lover an ‘impossible’ quest. Nonetheless, her persistence seems to have paid off, and the records will show a reasonably content co-existence until the events of 193. She and K’lel were, all told, a happy couple. Her weyrmate was not the smartest cookie in the jar, but good natured and kind, always ready to fly an extra shift or take an extra patrol. The two of them rarely fought, as far as anyone could tell, and generally seemed disgustingly content.
She lost several members of her family during the small border war of 184-5, both directly in the war and as a result of it, and the cothold where she grew up is now in ruins. L’ris doesn’t talk of this often, except when deep in her cups.
Her life was not all gloom and misery, however - the green rider participated fully in weyr life, squiring candidates (something that she seemed to have been all the more enthusiastic about after being informed by one of the weyr’s healers that she would never have children of her own), campaigning for riders who seemed like they supported her views on women’s value, and bouncing her way to wing 3-1. She specialised in interviewing witnesses, especially younger ones who needed delicate handling, often across multiple days. As a result, she is generally respected - even if her abrasive manner isn’t always liked. One of the candidates she was responsible for was a Senkol, who she is still reasonably close to - or possibly simply tolerantly amused by, it’s difficult to tell. She takes a good deal of interest in the progress of ‘her’ candidates, and is always pushing them to do better.
193 was a bad turn for L’ris. The forty-something woman found herself and Pennath untouched by the plague whilst around them dragons dropped - including K’lel’s Kerooth. Kalel retreated within himself, the big man simply wasting away, and died in the infirmary several sevendays later.
It was not so very much longer afterwards that L’ris found that she was indeed pregnant, helped by the compulsory grounding during the plague - and this time it stuck. Her daughter was born in late 193, and was promptly named Kalir by L’ris: no-one expected the child to live particularly long, as she was born with a cleft palate that made feeding her extremely difficult. Nevertheless, thanks to the Weyr’s excellent creche workers and support from the healers, they managed to bring her through the most dangerous part of her young life.
Kalir is now nine turns old, and L’ris is relatively close to her daughter for a rider. She is both protective of her and worries about her - she’ll never be able to stand for candidacy, and the rider worries that she’ll end up doing drudge work. There is more then a little conflict there due to L’ris’ political beliefs - Kalir definitely feels as though she is of less worth to her mother because she will never stand, though L’ris says that this is not true in any way at all. Pennath thinks that they both think too much.
Over the past decade, she has spent her time working hard and preparing for thread - whether that’s taking on more candidates to squire or drilling. She and Pennath have come through the first few turns reasonably well, barring a few scars and scrapes, and they intend to keep on Not Dying because they are Not Cannon Fodder.
Name: Pennath
Age: 34
Colour: Green
Feel of voice: Tart redfruit bursting in your mouth, a sly stolen kiss in the dark, a whisper on the wind.
Appearance:
Pennath’s body is pockmarked with scars where she has been injured: she is not a young dragon, and she and Liris have been on active duty for more then three decades. The dragon has a dappled hide that looks like she had been sleeping in the sun and leaves had fallen on top of her, giving her an odd tan. She was prettier in her youth then she is now, but she is still fast and strong.
Personality:
This green knows what she wants, and is not shy about getting it, be it the plumpest beast in the herd or that bronze to chase after her. She is a tease and a flirt, and is as social as a stereotypical green, with all the flightiness that implies; unlike her rider, she finds it difficult to settle and do one thing for very long (unless that thing is lying in the sun), and demands constant entertainment.
While for the most part she is sweet as pie, if she isn’t getting what she wants she will create havoc until she does or (after a lengthy argument) L'ris persuades her that it’s either impossible or that it’s not really what she wants. Her demand for constant entertainment is what sometimes leads to L'ris and Pennath’s frequent rows; if she has nothing to do, she’ll happily provoke L'ris until something starts happening – sort of like two children in the back seat of a car fighting for no good reason.
She shares L'ris' love for young things, and new weyrlings are always an object of fascination, as are human babies. Some of L'ris' desire for children of her own has seeped into her dragon, and - due to her short memory - her mind frequently returns to the question of why she can't have her own.
Other: Pennath is one of those few greens who prefers to chase - or be chased - by other female dragons. Male dragons get short shrift in chasing her, and she has been known to turn on them rather viciously if they get too close.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Reply
