Name: Peresa
Age: 19 Turns (3554.04.22)
Sex: Female
Sexual Orientation: ???
Weyr: High Reaches Weyr
Rider Rank: Wingrider
Previous Rank/Craft: None.
Physical Description: Peresa is one tough lady. At a modest 5'8", she isn't the shortest or the tallest. Robust and broad-shouldered, she's a workhorse wrapped in warm skin. Her head is shaved close, save a strip along the top and down the back, an almost-mohawk ponytail, tied into bunches and long enough to drape over her shoulder, and she sports deep near-black eyes, always intense.
She prefers layers, and has obviously ceased what little worrying she used to do over the colors or styles. Given a choice, she prefers darker hues, and would rather be caught dead than in a dress.
Personality: Peresa never gives up, and never gives in. She'll die trying, and go screaming to that death in a blaze of glory, given the chance. An already more independent upbringing in the creche had the limits broken right off when the place burned down, and aside from the struggle, she found it rather liberating. Rules are a hindrance if you've got guts, but as long as she's doing what she thinks is right or what needs done, she'll never apologize for the steps she takes.
She feels all her emotions very intensely. Love, hate, joy, pain. she wears her emotions on her sleeve, and her collar, and her boot laces. You never need to wonder what she thinks of you, because it's blatantly obvious. most people she's openly wary of, suspicious and expecting nothing. After all, how many people reached out to help her little family when they ended up homeless and scraping by? And if you prove yourself a threat to herself or her friends, she has absolutely NO problem destroying you without a thought.
Life sucks and then you die, right? Aside from Shoggoth and Venin, what has she got to lose?
Positive Trait List: Resilient, brave, passionate, romantic.
Negative Trait List: Vicious, unforgiving, has a dark (ha!) view of the world, suspicious.
History: Peresa isn't sure who her parents were or where she was originally from. Her first memories are of Telgar's hold's creche, of too many kids and not enough attention from the old Auntie in charge. Kids came and went, fostered or adopted or aged out, but never her. Never Peresa. She grew resentful, and then independent. No one else was looking out for her, after all. And then, tragedy.
Fire.
The creche burned, and though she'd never loved the place or most there, it was still hers. Her home. And now it was gone. She was free, but at what cost? Not everyone survived, and suddenly forced to face a future of fending for herself, she realized she had no idea where to go or what to do. Thankfully, in her moment of hesitation, two figures stepped forward. Sahindel and Verinina, two older kids. In her eyes they seemed fully grown, adults. A stand-in mother and father figure, the family she'd never admitted to wanting, even. They took charge, and for the moment she was content to fall in line, and pull her weight. To help build something rather than cutting her own path.
Where Verinina (who became Venin) was clever and smart and creative, and Sahindel was kind and generous and warm, Peresa felt she wasn't really like either of them. What had she to offer? Not too much, at the age of nine or ten. Running messages or errands became her forte, her energy and speed (and lack of care over what she was taking or to whom) made her a choice runner for a time. As she got older, she also rarely dabbled in street brawls for petty cash. Pickpocketing, petty theft, she wasn't above much at all, though she got by more on grit than skill. And she was very hesitant to open up about her shady actions to her family...especially Sahindel. He was so good-hearted and just, and she had begun to look up to him...and a bit more.
What could have become a proper crush was curtailed when he and Venin drew closer. She felt no displeasure with this, as it was more of her perceived mother-father set coming together. And she was really too young to know quite what she was feeling yet. It was terribly easy to let the feelings go. Even after Venin gave birth to her son, and she and Sahindel drifted apart, things stayed the same. At least until Sahindel was searched, and left. His leaving sat worse with Peresa than Venin, but she'd finally come to trust someone. as frightening as it was to apply that trust, she did it. He was her friend, and big brother, and almost her father. They'd been family for turns. He'd come back. He even wrote! It took some time for her to learn to read, but she did it, just to be able to see what he'd sent. It seemed like everything was coming together. Her trust had been rewarded, he impressed! Now he'd come back and whisk them all away...!
Months passed. The letters slowed and stopped. A dark, bitter fury burst to life behind her ribs when she realized that she'd been wrong. Wrong to trust, and wrong to give Sahindel a chance to leave them. Clearly, clearly, people were only good and kind when they had to be. She would have turned on Venin too, but seeing her own rage reflected in the face of the older woman brought them closer. Theirs was a shared pain, a shared loss. Sharing pain was supposed to halve it, she'd been told. Instead it seemed to double. How dare Sahindel abandon her? How DARE Sahindel abandon Venin?! She threw herself into any job she was given for the next weeks, no longer caring to hide when she came home bloody or with bruised knuckles. She might be doing dirty work, but at least she was here. She'd seen what a 'noble heart' could hide, and she'd rather be spitting blood, thank you.
It was Venin's idea to accept the tap to stand for eggs when a wandering gold came to lay them at Telgar. Peresa wanted nothing to do with the big beasts that had stolen her friend and father and made him forget what was really important. What if one took Venin too? If one gets close, I'll kill it before I let it take her away. The hatching passed in a blur, though she remembers through a blood-red haze seeing a blue nearing her friend, and the thought to reach out, to pull the blade she'd hidden inside her tunic...and then something dark, and creeping, and hideously angry had stepped in the way. She'd grabbed the green by the head, intending to shove it aside, she had to stop that blue! It in turn had twisted, wrapping around her with shocking coils of strength and bearing her down to the ground. Mine mine mine mine MINE MINE MINE MINE. YOU ARE MINE, AND YOU WILL HAVE NO OTHERS BEFORE ME. A terrible, indescribable love pressed into her mind, driving away all thoughts of Venin or the blue dragonet that seemed bent on taking her last friend away. Who could she ever love, aside from this wretched thing? The bonding consumed her, and she reveled in finally finding the one being on Pern that fully understood her, and reveled in who she was and how she felt.
In the end she and Venin both impressed. S'del could take a short hop between for all she cared, it didn't take anything special to impress! And then, the unthinkable happened.
Peresa's 18th nameday, thread returned. Barely more than a week after impressing, Telgar was cracked and broken like a ruin. In a panic, the dragons of the weyr evacuated their young hatchlings, scattering them across Pern as coordinates were fumbled in their haste to return and try (and fail) to fight for their home. Venin, Peresa, and their dragons were left without mentors in a small hold neither of them recognized (the original home of the rider that had evacuated them, betweened to in his own panic with them in tow) with no mentor and no ability to fly or between of their own. And when their 'savior' never returned, they were left to figure things out on their own.
With time to grow to fly, and then the time to fly back across the continent to Telgar (as they had never been taught to between, and still had to avoid thread), to much had changed, and no one was left. High Reaches, they heard, was where most refugees had been taken. Flying there took even longer, but eventually they made it.
Other: HOOOO BOY does she hate S'del!
DRAGON
Name: Shoggoth
Age: 1 turn (3572.04.13)
Color: Green
Size: 28'
Physical Description: Shoggoth is a huge dragon, for a green. Easily larger than some blues, she's nearly, nearly large enough to rival a tiny brown. Not quite, but if she had her way...She does not lack for bulk either, and she looks like she could crush some of the more waif-ish greens with a swat of a claw. She tends to walk low to the ground, almost slinking, and slowly, though once she builds up momentum she can bear down on her prey like a freight train. Her flight style is erratic, more impulse and instinct than planned swoops or grace. Tatters and tears in her wings, and scarring across her back and flanks make her look far older, more weathered than her few turns. Nine out of ten times her eyes are dark, near-black reddish purple.
Personality: Shoggoth was born keenly aware of the corruption and inequality in the world. While that might have made some dragons keen to foster change, all it did was make Shoggoth angry. Her passions are dark and tempestuous, and only rarely would one ever call the dragon calm or quiet. Her rider has suffered, and she would make the world suffer in return, even those that had no hand in it. She is savagely protective of those she chooses to find worthy of her time, but is also not at all above turning on them should they dare to stray from her side. She strongly dislikes the idea of life at a weyr, bowing to some bronze or gold, but her rage at thread is greater still, and makes her situation tolerable.
Once set on her path, woe betide any who get in her way. She may not be the most clever dragon (and in fact seems more like a very large wher than most dragons, all instinct and grit) but she is adaptable, and not at all afraid of brure-forcing her way to a solution...literally and figuratively. Nothing can stop her, and nothing would make her ever forget her grudges. If she can't hurt the ones who hurt her or her rider, she'll hurt those close to them instead. All that matters is what she wants.
Pros: Versatile, committed, protective, resilient.
Cons: Wrathful, possessive, base, violent.
Dragon Art or Proof of Obtainment:
For post-threadscore:
Scars. The first thing a normal person would notice about Peresa is definitely the scars. Peeking out from a wide blindfold, the erratic and extensive thin lines tell a clear tale of the damage thread has wrought on the young woman. The majority of the ruin is thankfully hidden—exposed it would make even practiced healers a bit nauseous, she boasts—but, more or less, amounts to a mangled hollow mess where her eyes once were. Twisted flesh and empty sockets, even the exposed bone here and there bears engraving-like traces of thread's attempt on her life.
Once you get past the wreckage though, she's a tough young lady.
After the loss of her eyes she's seemed only to grow bolder, more upfront. The threat of becoming paralyzed by fear was so great that she just rejected it, and that resulted in a slightly more reckless attitude.
