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Name: Dusiph
Age: 57
Sex: Male
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Craft: Master Courtesan Diplomat
Rank: Minor Lord Holder (of nothing, technically)
Location: Healer Hall, as a long-term patient
Physical Description: A man of respectable height, Dusiph gives the impression of one much smaller. Unless actively controlling his posture, he stoops as if carrying a heavy burden on his shoulders, though the burden he bears is not physical. His arms and legs are long and slender, the latter trait perhaps a bit more so than is attractive due to poor health. He drapes his thin body in fine tunics and robes befitting a lord holder, mostly in a particular shade of dark red.

Dusiph’s face, lined with sadness, bears traces of his noble ancestry through delicate features that were once lovely. He isn't an ugly man, but stress, more than age, has denatured his visage into something rather plain. His deep brown eyes, however, still retain their feline beauty, and if he happens to smile a certain way, he transforms into that magnificent young man that he used to be, just for an instant.

Personality: Dusiph has always been a shrewd sort of person, appropriate both for a diplomat and for his station as a minor lord holder. He enjoys the puzzle of creating profitable alliances and playing the market with wit and delicacy, building assets slowly but surely. His entire life has been centered around expanding upon the holdings his father left to him, hoping to grow it enough that his own sons could inherit a generous share and splinter off into their own well-to-do holds.

When he lost it all to Thread, Dusiph became rather fatalistic in his thinking, even if he doesn’t always say so out loud. He doubts that the dragonriders will be able to protect everyone well enough and is pretty much convinced that Thread is going to destroy everything eventually. He is both angry at and terrified for the only son he has left. Dusiph is certain that Karone, whom he perceives to have abandoned him to join a weyr full of kamikaze dragonriders, will die in battle if he should Impress a dragon. He’s rather obsessive about Karone’s status, and is constantly looking for ways to get updates.

Dusiph generally has a victim’s mindset, getting easily upset over perceived offenses. The direct approach does not work with him, he must be coaxed to cooperate by means of flattery and tact if anything is needed from him.

He’s taken to collecting an absurd number of small, colorful objects such as buttons or polished stones as a coping mechanism, filling storage chests with his treasures in a vain attempt to make up for losing his home, holdings and sons. Anyone who gets too close to these items is subject to instantaneous violence. As a result, the drudges at Healer Hall no longer clean his room. Dusiph has learned to take care of his own housekeeping, but it’s still a bit dusty and cluttered in there.

Positive Trait List Intelligent, shrewd, dedicated
Negative Trait List Grim, childish, possessive

History: Dusiph has been Lord over a minor hold along the Telgar River for most of his adult life. He inherited the hold from his father, and he from his, down through a fairly long family line. The location was excellent, everything built along the river for easy transport of goods and materials to and from the neighboring smithies. It was probably his mother that Dusiph inherited his business sense from, for he was the first in his line to significantly increase his holdings.

He sired five sons, and his wife, Kareszia, passed mere days after the fifth was born. He loved his wife and saw no reason to diminish her memory by remarrying, so he depended heavily on other women in the hold to assist in raising the boys. All of his sons were apprenticed in swordsmanship and other classical pursuits. They were his pride and joy, and he spent the majority of his time building up a financial legacy to leave behind for them, enough to set them all up as wealthy holders with their own land and trade opportunities.

The small empire he’d built up over his lifetime was obliterated in a few short hours by the supposedly extinct Thread when it fell in 3572.04.22 AL. Like most of the settlements in the Telgar area, his was nothing more than gutted stone shells of buildings and scattered remains of man and beast once the deadly rain had passed. His sons, save one, were among the dead.

Faced with such a traumatic loss, something snapped within Dusiph’s mind. He fell to a desperate compulsion to rebuild. While the hold’s survivors were slowly starving and dying of exposure, illness and injuries, the broken man could only apply himself to trying to build instant alliances by virtue of marrying off his remaining son, Karone, and his ward Lenix, who was revealed to be a secret blood nephew. He still had control of the hold’s watchrider, whom he sent from settlement to settlement, looking for holders who still had property and single daughters with dowries attached.

It was his son Karone who got the evacuation underway behind Dusiph’s back, commanding the watchrider to go to High Reaches Weyr for help. In what Dusiph perceived as an act of betrayal, the boy then abandoned his father to go to the weyr as a potential dragonrider, taking Lenix with him. This effectively left Dusiph with absolutely nothing to show for his life’s efforts. Karone had also arranged for his father to go to Healer Hall for care, but again, that was perceived as an offense – conveniently removing Dusiph from the picture so that the boy could do whatever he pleased.

He is currently undergoing intense mindhealing treatments to help him cope with the extreme losses he suffered with the returning Thread. He’s also taken to dabbling in general Healer arts as a healthy diversion from his torment, but is not an official apprentice.

Other: Just wanted to upgrade him from NPC status so that I can play him on his own as needed for plots. Hopefully there’s enough info here to pass inspection!