Name: Ra’fe
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Rank: 1st wing rider - honor guard
Appearance: There is military form to Ra’fe’s stance. Not quite at attention, well dressed if plainly, and clear alert eyes, he is ready for something to happen. Ra’fe is slender, built much more along the lines of a feline and short, reaching 5’6’’ in height. He certainly isn’t an intimidating appearing man.
He is rather striking, with an angular jawline, sidewise cheekbones, warm golden brown eyes, and a strong aquiline hawk noise. His hair is black, thick, reaching down to his mid back and has a trace of white at the temples. He keeps his hair pulled back in an ornamental hair clasp.
Ra’fe detests jewelry with an exception of his ornamental hair clasps. Necklaces can be pulled to choke a person. Rings can get snagged. Earrings torn out. The clasps tend to be heavy allowing him to toss his head and use it as an improve weapon in an emergency.
Personality: Ra’fe is a solider at heart, and a follower of rationality and calm, collected, clear-headed thoughts. You can’t eat honor and it certainly isn’t going to allow you to live. Duels land what should be allies onto a med bed in the infirmary or in death. Revenge and vengeance are on another level. The level of cold, and rightful anger and things that needed to be calculated for best results. As much as Ra’fe has daydreamed a bit about revenge and vengeance against some rather irritating bronze rider, but at the heart of it, they are pompous idiots. He shouldn’t let them get to him. Even if he is tempted to bribe someone in laundry to misplace that ridiculous pompous hat.
At the cusp of that matter is that no one has done anything fiendish enough for Ra'fe to put himself above the group's welfare. At least in taking it any farther then particularly bad smack down during a training spar. He's more mature then he was when he was a brat and jealous of his uncle's apprentice.
Despite the fact he finds most of the riders he works with to be pompous children, he does care for them. They are his unit and while he can’t shape them up to his level, he can certainly keep an eye on them. Even if that is telling someone to shut their mouth, with a less then polite elbow into the ribs. He would like to be wing leader, but he knows that they find him to be overly intense. His background is not as pretty as over a quarter of the group. So he makes sure he looks good, and escorts VIP from place to place, and trains with the 1st wing and the occasional weryling.
He has a rather stern nature, it seeps into his posture, with a straight back and vigilant gaze. He comes across as gruff, tending to be straightforward in his criticism. Relaxation is a slid from vigilant to merely observant. Ra’fe is in general just a serious person. He equates work with pride and good work only happens with concentration and control.
His skills are something Ra’fe takes pride in and he finds it irritating that random circumstance instead of hard work is what separates wings. He wouldn't trade Ban for the world, but he wants to be noticed for his skills, not what color his dragon's hide is.
History: Born Razelafe, Ra’fe family line has been entrenched in the makings of war. His father was a solider, his closest uncle made weapons and he would spend his time between watching his father practice and his uncle forge great weapons on the anvil when young. His mother hadn’t stuck around after he was born. Instead he was raised by a pair men, one more closely married to battle and the other married to his forged.
His father was often gone, but when he returned, he would tell his son tales of his service, reenacting battles and skirmishes with pebbles and twigs. Presents appear the older he got, a solid gorgeous wooden training shield, a training sword and spear. A soft plush dragon, a finely carved horse and soldier.
Razelafe was rather doted on and certainly didn’t have any competition for his father or uncle’s attention till he was eight and his uncle decided if he could handle raising one kid, maybe he should take an apprentice. The thirteen year old boy encroaching on his uncle’s gruff affections wasn’t tolerated.
Jonis was at a disadvantage. Razelafe knew every crevice of the forge and home and knew where each and every tool was supposed to go to appease his perfectionist uncle. When Jonis went to grab a tool, it suddenly wasn’t there. Tools and supplies got switched, they got put away in places they shouldn’t be. Jonis found himself at the mercy of a slip of a boy and the bemusement of his master.
Razelafe’s uncle allowed it, interested in seeing how Jonis would handle his nephew. If Jonis couldn’t handle a jealous slip of a bratling, then how was he going to handle anything in life? After the breakdown of frustrated tears, it wasn’t as if Jonis could hit the object of his distress, the kid was eight, Razelafe’s father returned and handled it.
Razelafe wasn’t really pleased to be told to stop picking on the older kid. His father was adamant and he stopped hiding and switching thing on Jonis instead giving him the cold shoulder. They never ended up as friends though they ended up tolerating each other’s presence.
As the turns passed, they started discussing what Razelafe should apprentice as. Razelafe didn’t have the built for being a swordsmith. He was a surprisingly small thing and his grudge against Jonis wasn’t helpful. His father didn’t want Razelafe following his steps as a solider. It was dangerous and he certainly wasn’t going to have a second child anytime soon. Probably never.
A few turns later it was decided that Razelafe might have a good career as an armed courier. He was rather well trained in self-defense, the sword, the staff, and knives. Dragons did a lot of courier work but perhaps for the smaller coltholds and holds.
Instead of seeking a master, it became a sort of side business. Razelafe would deliver wares and messages to the surrounding area for a small fee.
He was delivering a commission blade to Lord holder to be presented to his son on his impression when he received an offer to come and watch the hatching, the Lord impressed with his uncle’s work. Razelafe accepted, at twenty one turns of age and half way to his twenty second, he had never seen a hatching and he was certainly too old to accidently impress.
Somehow, Banneth didn’t get the message. The bronze hatched from a rather unassuming egg and instead of paying any attention to the candidates on the sand, took off to examine the stands.
Razelafe was shocked. He certainly was much too old, what could the bronze see in him? But Banneth was insistent and on a threat of actually climbing up there after him, got Razelafe moving, dazedly down and onto the sands to meet his bond partner. He also started to go by the name Raze for simplicity. His name had always been a mouthful.
He asked to send a note to his father and uncle about his… Sudden good luck. His family was proud but also concerned. In a family that has put much stock in personal achievements and hard work, getting that way for something as simple as a bit of serendipity was not something to be proud of. Raze found himself surrounded by people treating him different, important, simply because his darling and gorgeous Banneth was a bronze and he himself was male. He promised not to allow Banneth hide to go to his head, to keep up with is forms and early morning practice, and to just be the best solider, not a rider, he could be.
Weyrlinghood was mostly breezily, he never had been a great intellectual, but he was slightly literate, enough to read maps and mathematics was something he learned at his uncle’s knee when in the forge. He was also willing to learn to better himself. Physical work has been something he had been doing since young. So was handling snobblish lord and ladies.
While he never got far in the 1st wing, he was still a 1st wing rider and such more privilege then his fellow riders. As the honor guard of the queen and other important people, and well his family, going armed was something he just did.
He went arm to breakfast that day, his sword at his hip and more than one knife hidden on his person. Ra’fe expected problems, all those all-important leaders in one spot was just asking for trouble. His assassin to be received a facefull of hot pork fat followed by a serving tray to the face.
Ra’fe fought fiercely to protect those he could, pushing to cut a way through the mercenaries to get them outside and to their dragons. He remembers tossing a young boy on his bronze, and getting in Banneth saddle and Ban blinking between.
Now he is in the future and perhaps, things will finally be different and he’ll have an actual purpose in life besides escorting holders.
Name: Banneth
Age: 10/11 ish
Colour: Bronze
Feel of voice: The crackle of frost and crisp chilled mountain peaks, the undertone of pine branches, and the watchful feeling of night shining eyes skittering in the night snow.
Appearance: Small in size, and mainly dull in color, Banneth is not an impressive bronze. At twenty five feet in length from horn nubs to tail tip, Banneth was at the tail end of the bronze scale during his own time line. In the current time, he is about the size of a larger green. Banneth is built for speed and agile twists.
His shade of bronze is mainly dark, aged metal that is occasionally broken up with spattering and flecks of new minted color that makes him appear older than his years. His flash, a tapering flare of bright bronze that starts from his right nostril and up his head and down his neck, where it spays off into three separate strikes.
Ref pictures - http://stedmundsburychronicle.com/weststowgallery/bronzeswords.jpg
Sword number ten
http://erstarnews.com/2012/06/17/lightning-strike-damages-elk-river-tree/
Lighting damage – flash
Personality: If Ra’fe is a solider, then Banneth is a knight. He is honorable, obeying a strict code of rules, do not lie, and always attack head one being the major two. There was always announce yourself in battle, but Ra’fe wasn’t going to have it and Banneth edited to announce yourself in a duel. Ra’fe is letting that one lie, though he finds dueling to be idiotic. And his rider is very much is lord, and Banneth is loyal. In the hierarchy of authority, Ban listens foremost to his rider.
There is a lot of social grace in this small bronze. He makes a very firm effort into remembering everyone’s names. He loves gossip in all forms, one has to network, yes, and general needs to know what is going on now. ‘I’m sorry, to overhear, but what was that?’ It will not due for him to be blindsided, not at all. He is polite and courteousness to all, disregarding if he enjoys their company or not.
Meddling, Banneth has long grieved over his riders, his lords, lack of courtesy and socialization in general. His rider is smart, and clever, and certainly has skills with his hand and body, but he could use a little polish when it comes to being polite. And what could be better than setting his rider up with someone?
Though humans are rather funny things, aren’t they? Fragile, and needy, and just so, so tiny. Most of them can’t even communicate correctly. Banneth is a tad elitist, not about colorist, but species. He’ll tolerate humans, finds them adorable in their weird bipedal ways, but ultimately, it would be better for them if they were all bonded to something that talked properly. Even flits manage to communicate in images, it just so much more convenient. Poor, things, they are so very deaf.
While Banneth will apologize to a dragon for overhearing their conversation, humans are freegame because they certainly need someone to watch out for them.
Other: Thalassinuth is Banneth’s clutch sib
Ra'fe owns a sword named Wind's Breath that was crafted by his Uncle when he graduated into the first wing.
