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Name: [ Rainier ]
Stage: [ Prentice ]
Race: [ Pure Blooded Yaeli]
Gender: [ Male ]
3 Base Traits: [ Patient, Protective, Gullible ]

Personality:

Patient: Rain tends to be composed, easy going, and even tempered. He remains calm, coordinated, and focused in the face of stress and chaos. He tends to be very forgiving and tolerant, sometimes people try to take advantage of this to push him around. The exception to the rule is when Rain is around his sister, Raisa, she knows exactly how to push all his buttons and finds it hilarious to drive her brother to pulling his hair out and screaming in frustration. Little sisters are like that.

Protective: When danger presents itself, he tends to be much more preoccupied with the safety of those around him than attacking or 'winning.' Its not that he has an aversion to killing, its simply not his first priority and he thinks battling for fun is somewhat silly. He stands between danger and those who need his protection. When it comes to his sister, Rain is especially on guard. He knows she can defend herself, but she is his only acknowledged family and he is in some ways guarding his own heart.

Gullible: Its not that Rain is unintelligent, he is still capable of making moral and rational decisions, but he is trusting. The problem is, he is easily misled and vulnerable to manipulation because he tends to accept new (within the realm of possibility) information at face value.

Superstitious: Rain rejects the idea that a person by nature can be a 'bad luck charm' for another person (As his parent's believed of his sister Raisa). He does believe that its possible for another person's individual bad luck to be passed to him if he's not diligent in protecting himself, or for him to accidentally bring bad luck upon himself. Outsiders would still find him quite superstitious with his good luck charms and little rituals, but in Yaeli, his superstitions would be considered tame. He is quite skittish when it comes to meeting mainlanders, but he also finds them eerily fascinating in the same way that some people enjoy scary stories for the adrenaline rush. He would seek them out to look at them and enjoy a little shudder of fear. He does look down on them with pity and fear rather than hate. Rain views them as unintelligent at worst and reckless at best for not recognizing the importance of carrying good luck charms and learning basic cleansing and counter jinxes, and he wishes it was safe to help them learn how to protect themselves. While he wouldn't casually engage one without good reason,he is curious and sympathetic enough to potentially avoid bolting away long enough to talk to them, as long as there was a good bit of distance between them, and preferably a barrier of some sort... With his arms full of good luck charms, and a nice cleansing ceremony afterwards juuuust in case.

Rituals to ward off bad luck: Toss luck over your left shoulder, burning sage and incense, carry protective charms, warding hand gestures, dream catchers, things of that nature. ]

Description:

[ Color theme ref: 4th row

Skin: light dusky olive
Crystals: For face crystals I'm thinking something like This (Multiple sizes). Body crystals, CC.
Eyes: large, Silvery grey, glowing
Ears: long, droopy.

Hair: Long hair (To his butt), Dark purple fading to light purple at the very ends. Two long braids coming down his chest from behind his ears Ref, with loose pieces still framing his face and a braid across his forehead.


Clothing:
Outfit
lolol ovenmitt hands.
Pants end just below the knee. Bare feet, spiral anklets. Cuffs on arms. Tied belt and tabard.
Colors CC

Accessories: [
Multiple small hoop earrings Earring ref

History: [ Rain was born to a middle class merchant family. He had a relatively normal childhood up until his mother passed away during the birth of his younger sister. It was unsurprising to the rest of the village, his mother was not a robust woman, she had had much difficulty during Rainier's birth and the village healer had advised against having any more children. His parents did not listen, rather than blaming his own actions, Rainier's father turned the blame on his youngest child. Rainier's father was not a strong man, his mental health deteriorated after his wife's death. The combination of guilt, the stress of raising two children on his own, and his own paranoia, led him to develop an almost phobic aversion to his own child. He began drinking, then gambling, he lost his business, he lost much of what he owned. The rest of the village began to turn from him. He saw the misfortune brought on by his own actions as more evidence of Raisa's bad luck. As a young child, Rainier was fooled into believing his father that Raisa had somehow been hexed or haunted, although he did not turn from Raisa as his father chose to. Rather he felt that his baby sister needed protection, she was too little to perform the small rituals and charms to protect herself, so he would do them for her. He'd place good luck charms around her as she slept and he stayed with her to try to protect her from any misfortune that may seek her out. Their relationship has been incredibly close. As time went by and his father's paranoid behavior became more obvious, Rainier began to see his father for what he really was, he put two and two together and finally came to understand that the only danger to Raisa was from his own father, a broken man.

Rainier began his apprenticeship at 14, but with his father to deflect and Raisa to look after, he was at best a distracted student. He was so caught up in his home life it seemed selfish to try to focus on his training and leave Raisa to deal with their father alone. On top of that he had no idea what direction he wanted to take his studies, his future was placed on the back burner.

By the time Rainier had turned 18, he had had more than enough of his father, who had finally become cruel in his guilt and despair. Rainier fully understood that his mother's death had broken something fundamental in his father and that he was now a twisted shadow of his formal self. In a drunken rage one night, when Rainier was out of town on a small job, his father cast Raisa from the house and demanded that she never blacken his doorstep again. Rainier returned to find his father passed out and his sister gone, stricken, he immediately began to look for her. Finding her at an orphanage, he ended up technically adopting her and they left for Ilidan to start a new life away from the painful memories of their childhood.

Now, Rainier finally has the time and energy to focus on his studies and has picked up where he left of, albeit much older than your average prentice. He secretly harbors the fear that it is already too late for him and he has wasted his potential, he feels self conscious that others his age are much more advanced in their training, but he is driven to make up for lost time and set a good example for Raisa. ]

Updated 5/30/17

Yay! Thank you! As soon as I saw the Yaeli I thought they were friggen adorable! Thanks for the feedback, you raise a lot of points I definitely want to address.

So, first of all...

Rain is exceedingly gullible, he is easily deceived and taken advantage of because he tends to assume that other people are as truthful as he is and will accept any information at face value. While he does not act rashly and carefully weighs each decision, he is vulnerable to acting based on false information.
He is also pretty vain, he gets reeeeaaalllly testy if he gets dirty, he likes to look his best. He knows he is good looking and is not afraid of trying to use his appearance to his own benefit, he is not above seduction as a method of persuasion. He also has a rather 'loose' interpretation of ownership, he tends to borrow things without asking, and return them whenever he feels like it. If he intends to keep it, he'll leave something in exchange but he often won't wait for approval of his trade or permission to take something. He doesn't really get why people get upset because he's never felt particularly attached to material items. Things can be replaced, so why waste time getting upset?

For his history. He was born in Pajore, his parents were working class citizens. They had a comfortable lifestyle with more than enough funds to get by. Rain's father was a jeweler with his own business that he had inherited from his father in law. His mother kept house and worked as a laundress on the side. There was nothing particularly awful about them, they were just normal people, but they were not very brave and they were not very intelligent. Shortly after Rain's sister, Raisa was born, it was discovered that a worker had embezzled money from his father's company and fled. His parents were quite pious and superstitious, the timing was just too suspicious. They brought their children into be cleansed, sold their home, and moved into a smaller more affordable place. Rain's father had liquidated his business and was now working for another jeweler, they had less, but it was enough. Most of the rest of the incidents that led Rain's parents to concluding that Raisa was the source of their trouble were small, most were actually as a result of his father's poor business acumen, or simply random freak accidents (things breaking, small injuries, bad weather, losing things) but since things had been going so well for so long they truly believed that the gods had turned on them for some reason after Raisa's birth. It all culminated when a freak fire started in their small home on Raisa's sixth birthday (because her mother had left a cleaning rag too close to the fire). This convinced them that the gods were so displeased that their lives were now in danger. His parents weren't cruel to Raisa, they loved her, but they were more afraid of her. It wasn't so much that they loved Rain so much more than Raisa as they had come to think that Raisa would eventually be the death of them all, in which case Raisa would have been alone anyways, so they decided to make this sacrifice to save Rain. They weren't actually hurting Raisa, they reasoned, they were just getting her out of the house. Their neighbors were ostracizing them, fearing the spree of bad luck was contagious. While Rain was sleeping, his parents took Raisa to an orphanage and left her there. They didn't try to hide what had been done from Rain, because they believed he would see that it was the only way, as they did. Instead, Rain disowned them and went to the orphanage himself the next morning, prepared with a story about how Raisa had gotten lost and wandered off while he was watching her.

He took her and made his way to Ilidan where they lived on the streets for a month or so. Although he made his disgust at their actions quite clear in a letter he left before sneaking off, his birth parents certainly looked for him around their home village, but they never expected him to actually be able to leave the city on his own. They never returned to the orphanage because they didn't want to admit they had been the ones to abandon Raisa, and they couldn't afford to leave work and search for Rain all over Yael, especially when he didn't want to be found. They told their neighbors that their children had wandered off and must have gotten lost and while a desperate search was carried out back then, the other villagers eventually assumed it was just more bad luck sent by the gods. Its been so many years now that Rain and Raisa are assumed dead by everyone in their home village and his parents have resigned themselves to the fact that their son is either gone or does not want to be found.

By 'work hard' I mean he mostly stole food and did his best to keep Raisa safe, clean, and happy. He didn't want anyone to know they had no parents with them or 'look' like they were homeless because he was afraid if someone learned what had happened to them and they would send Raisa away again. He was quite young to undertake completely caring for a little kid and it was quite overwhelming for him. Eventually a family with enough money to do something about it discovered them, Rain had grown desperate and taken to begging on the street while he kept Raisa safely hidden away so no one would ask about her. They were merchants and quite well off, enough to not feel a financial strain by taking both of them in and they did so because the man's wife was unable to carry a child to term and they both really wanted children. They found Rainier shortly after the woman had had another miscarriage, and they took it as a sign from the gods that this was the way they were meant to build their family. While Rain hated his own parents he looks for the best in people otherwise and its not in his nature to think that people are lying to him, so he brought Raisa to them as well. This all happened when Rain was about ten and Raisa was six, as far as he is concerned, the couple who took him in are his real parents. Rain made up an alternative story to explain how they had ended up in Ilidan, he told them their real parents had died and he had traveled to Ilidan to be cleansed at the Sanctum for protection, and they took him at his word. He feels guilty, but to him the lie was worth it and revealing the truth now that its been too long would be pointless. Their adoptive parents were too happy about adopting that they didn't question him much about his dead parents, they had no reason to think he would lie and they were afraid that talking about them too much might attract their dead spirits. They did have the children cleansed before bringing them home to be safe, but they have no real reason to disbelieve his story. Rainier has nothing but hate and disdain for the pair who birthed him and if he saw them again he would not acknowledge their presence whatsoever.

Because of what happened with his birth family, Rain is less superstitious than most Yaeli. He rejects the idea that a person themselves can be a source of bad luck for another person, but he is still quite superstitious compared to outsiders. And he does believe that its possible for another person's individual bad luck to be passed to him if he's not diligent in protecting himself. He is quite skittish when it comes to meeting mainlanders, but he also finds them eerily fascinating in the same way that some people enjoy scary stories for the adrenaline rush. He does view them as unintelligent at worst and reckless at best for not recognizing the importance of carrying good luck charms and learning basic cleansing and counter jinxes.

As far as more details on Raisa, she's four years younger than Rain so right now she's around 14. Their relationship is extremely close, she knows what Rainier gave up to save her when they were little and she still feels quite a bit of guilt over that. She struggles with the fact that her parents didn't love her enough to keep her and secretly dreams of making something of herself and returning home to confront them with their horrible mistake in abandoning her. Eventually I'd like to quest her as well.

I think I hit it all?

You know what doing some restructuring I think you raise a lot of issues with Rain and Raisa being quite young when this happens so I think I'm going to take a sharp turn here and just adjust his backstory to make all of this simpler:

Rain is 18 and Raisa is 14 when their parents cast her out. Rain has a pretty bad relationship with his parents at this point because of their horrible paranoia and repetitive cleansings they've subjected Raisa to, but this really just sets him over the edge. He's done with them. Raisa still goes to the orphanage because she's underage. This infuriates Ranier, as soon as he figures out why his sister didn't come home one night. He leaves in a rage and goes to claim her, he takes her out of the city entirely and brings her to Ilidan where he basically finishes raising her himself, there's no adoption. They are poor, but they have enough.

Sounds better to me, what do you think?

As far as the rest:

I'm tossing out overly honest, I'd still like him to be very blunt and non evasive in his language, but I think it creates too much dissonance to say he never lies when I think its more in character that while he dislikes it, he would lie his butt of for Raisa.

I would say that I want to retract that the reason he is gullible because he assumes people are as truthful as he is, because that was poorly stated. He doesn't assume people are fundamentally good, I meant it more that he doesn't automatically assume that everyone is lying if that makes more sense. He assumes they are telling the truth until its proven otherwise, which makes him vulnerable to manipulation. Its like... If someone presents him with something he knows little to nothing about, and he think it’s within the realm of possibility, he's likely to believe it and take it at face value. So if someone were to come to him with a sob story about their family, he's likely to take them at their word, if someone tells him trees are made of candy he would probably tell them to f* off in more or less words.

Rain's gullibility wouldn't interfere with how he interprets the morality of his parent's decision. His parents never lied about what they feared about Raisa or that they had given her up to try to protect him. They didn't feel that they were dong anything wrong and they thought Rainier would agree with them that this was the only way. Rainier believes them that they love him and are trying to do what is best, but he fundamentally disagrees with their choice. I also think that since Rainier was there for a lot of the accidents that happened he didn't have to rely on someone else's version of events. He saw the bad luck, but he never really thought that Raisa was the source of the problem. it wouldn't really matter that he can be easily taken in because he was there to come up with his own interpretation of what was going on. I mean really it was a messed up situation, and his parents may have been convinced they loved both their kids and they were doing what is right but they clearly had other priorities you know? They were a relatively normal couple that landed in hard times, that combined with debilitating superstition led them to make some really bad choices when they came to some crossroads in their lives. It wasn't an easy happy relationship between either kid and their parents.

I think most of the rest of the big issues are solved by making Rain a legal adult when all of this happens?

Woot! Perfect <3 Yes, then there can be all the drama and fun plots >D Thanks for the great critiquing!

Sure! Sorry, I missed this earlier xD

Ooh thats an interesting question too! So for Rain, his age isn't indicative of his competency, but rather a lack of focus combined with indecision. He had been trying to be there for Raisa but there was a lot of strain between him and his parents and having to be around them for Raisa's sake was draining. Rainier has suffered mentally from stress and has dealt with a lot of anxiety growing up on behalf of Raisa and he ended up putting his own needs on the backburner. He hasn't put much of any effort into figuring out what he wanted to do with his life up to this point, he's just kind of stagnated. Raisa moving in with him has been a huge turning point for him. Rain is aware of the fact that he should be getting ready to advance and it has had an affect on his confidence. If allowed, I would like to say that he did become an apprentice when he was 14, but he has been at best a distracted student and hasn't been able to focus and figure out where to focus his studies. He feels self conscious as he sees people his age progressing onto the next stage in their craft while he is still a prentice. He feels like he is behind where he is 'supposed' to be in life and wonders if he will ever be able to catch up to others his age or if he will always be lagging behind because he's already 'wasted' his potential.

With Raisa now safe in his eyes and his parents out of the picture, suddenly becoming somewhat of a single parent and seeing his sister starting to get her act together with her prenticeship, it would light a fire under his butt. He would begin studying harder than he ever has in his life because he wants to be able to set a good example for Raisa and 'catch up.' He wouldn't admit it consciously but his confidence would take a huge blow if Raisa advanced before him and that does drive him to put his nose to the grindstone.

For his future class, I knew from the moment he started taking shape in my head that Rain is destined to be a defensive character. Protective is one of his base traits and his instinct is to stand between a threat and those who need protection. He feels a need to learn how to do something when others are injured or in danger. I see him becoming a Scholar (But I'd rather have him work that out for himself in development than make it a starting part of him n_n)

(Updated his profile)