Name: V'gar
Age: 24
Sex: Genderfluid
Sexual Orientation: Demisexual(Or, "Don't touch me, I don't know you! D<" )
Weyr: High Reaches Weyr
Rider Rank: Weyrling
Previous Rank/Craft: Journeyman Wherhide Crafter
Physical Description: Hardly bulky and overly built, V'gar barely tops 5'8" and tends towards lean wiry muscle which hides the wicked strength that exists behind their facade of relaxed, carefree and often gentle smiles. That is all that gentle though, muscles can bunch up and react in moments, strength is quick coming and it is as brutal as the scars that V'gar wears on their face as proof of years spent growing and learning lessons that might be too hard for others. The patchy eyebrows they sport often pull down over dark, nearly black, squinted eyes that will line deeply as time goes on and while they rarely ever frown they aren’t known for being easy to read at face value. “Do they dislike me? Are they annoyed?” Who really can say?
Large calloused hands, deeply tanned skin from living in the desert, scars not only on the face but littering the arms, and a crop black hair braided tightly into dozens and dozens of tiny braids, keep people from generally getting close enough to see how this rangy rider sees fit to express themselves to the world. Being so skinny and wiry keeps clothing hanging rather loose from them and that works out rather well as that identity and expression can change from day to day and sometimes multiple times a day. While generally it falls under the general 'they' V'gar will accept just about any pronoun thrown at them with a sort of grace, as they know full well it's hard to tell and they embrace that fully with amusement. Some might call them pretty, others hard, but either way all that matters is that they're happy and comfortable with themselves.
Personality: In Igen the desert is hot, the desert can be brutal and heartless, the heat can bake you with the intensity and this all shaped V'gar into who they are and what they would come to be as time moved along. Naturally they adopted the tendency towards being mistrustful of outsiders and others that the hold they were born into generally propagated in the first place, everyone was doing it! While it isn't instant their trust can be earned by those that try hard enough or insist long enough that they would be worthwhile company and while these are few and far between, there are those that, for their sins, have earned that right. It very well may be a sin to become friendly with this rider, for their vices can far outweigh their drive and creativity if they're given half a chance to scratch the ever present itch. Alcohol, smoking, and food so spicy it would send you howling at the moons were staples for quite some time to this former crafter, if they weren't found tanning wherhide with a plume of smoke around their head or drinking too long into the night afterwards while still pursuing their craft, people almost didn't recognize them. Stargazing with friends and cooking could start out innocently enough and turn into anything but.
It should be noted, that while they can give into these vices, often it's the heavy call of their drive for what they're doing, be it crafting or now training and fighting thread, that pulls them back and keeps them from imploding. Creativity can be grasped at to turn these flaws of character towards more interesting outlets and if people are tough on them these things can shine through all the brighter for being so muddied in the past. Bend them, twist them, hold them too close to the flame and work them past the point of breaking; these things will only serve to make them stronger and cause their strong drive to kick in, leaving all others in the dust behind them as they work even harder to prove their worth. They were born for this; it's their reason for being. V'gar won't defy those around them that wish to see greatness within them; rather they'll turn the tables around and give that drive back to others in a desire to see all those around them succeed.
To succeed in the Pern devastated by thread is not easy, but it makes protecting those who cannot protect themselves all the more important and no one knows this more than those that have lost people it its sudden arrival. Friends gone, entire holds nearly decimated by falling spores blown on winds, they have known suffering and have seen it through hardened features. V'gar would have given their life to have been able to save their friends, but they were in a Weyr, many miles away and protected in a way that those they cared for were not. While this was a blessing it left them with the taste of bile in their mouths, for their choice had nearly swayed another way the day they were Searched and this was a common occurrence. Indecision is a daily part of the rider's life, in the past and even now, but with the return of thread some of that waffling dance back and forth between multiple decisions has been washed away in the face of it.
Despite having lived a life that was devoted towards a craft and more than one wild day of excitement and unpredictable actions, V’gar is not completely driven by these things alone. Thanks to events in their past, a life saved by the sacrifice of another, the rider is more than a little prone to giving what they have, be it time or materials long worked on or even crafted tediously, to others without a single thought to why they were doing it. They were just helping after all! It can be abused by those around them if they aren’t vigilant about it, this generally stemming from their issue with linear time in general. If they were to mention something that they believed happened turns and turns ago, only to discover, to the amusement of those around them, that it happened less than one turn prior, they would likely blush and try to play it off. Time and turns and days even jumble up in the rider’s head and sometimes something that felt as though it occurred merely a day before was really months ago, this has lead V’gar to simply live in the moment in which they currently exist and generally they won’t think too hard about the past if they can help it. That’s when all the trouble arises after all!
Positive Trait List: Driven, Creative, Selfless, Lives in the moment
Negative Trait List: Indecisive, VERY slow to trust, Gives in to vices when it gets tough, Jumbles up time and events
History: There were only a handful of people in a caravan who know the early turns of Vangar's life and no one knows where they've gotten off to, for they certainly deserve punishment for their treatment of a mere child. At five turns old, the small child with the scarred face was witnessed working, scrubbing down wagon wheels and carrying baskets or boxes to and fro, by a young bar maid in Igen that threw down what she was doing and stormed to the caravan owner in an utter rage. The only answer that she was given was that the child was working off the debt of parents turns deceased, for the debt was still owed and only labor could pay it off now in the face of their youth. Disgusted, angry, furious even, the bar maid named Vraga found a way to pay off the debt that the child 'owed' the monsters of the trade caravan and when they pulled out it was with one less mouth to feed that had transfered over to her alone. No partner in the world, life savings of marks now gone, Vraga took the child under her wing and named them Vangar scrambled their name so that it showed her own in there as well, asking her newly adopted child every step of the way what they wanted to do, who they wanted to be and what would make them happy.
While they never had much they always had each other for the first few turns that Vraga and Vangar were together as a makeshift family and while they were faced with many challenges in the form of distrust and almost pariah sort of views for the child's origins, they were never turned away. Thanks to being freed from their essential indentured servitude, Vangar ran amok at first, learning what true freedom and happiness could be while being given the chance to play and experience everything that the Hold had to offer from friendship to new sights and sounds. It wasn't long until their mother discovered how they viewed the world, that their ever changing self descriptions and the way that they viewed the world was much different and she protected them from that, wanting to preserve their right to be as such. She impressed upon them that they should work hard, play harder, and live life to the fullest as they now had the opportunities that they never would have had before in that caravan, a place that they might have worked until they died. Would have worked until they died.
At age 11 they chose the craft they wished to follow, one that was close enough to home that Vangar could run home to their mother, to see her and be rowdy with the friends that they'd eventually made and that had stayed if they so wished to do so. Masters were hardly accepting of this entirely, but they knew the wild spirit, the indecisive soul, that was placed in their hands and they gave them all the creative space they needed.... for a turn. Then with all the strength of the craft hall they cracked down and real learning began. In the face of being somewhat cut off from their old life, Vangar bucked at first and then threw themselves fully into it, knowing that the one way back to the norm, to the known, was to run headfirst into the unknown and learn everything that was being placed before them. It was hard, it was daunting and full of hot sweaty days in the desert craft hall learning practices that were as ancient, if not even older, than the Pernese themselves. Inexplicably they loved it and the 'norm' became that, so much so that even on free days they would be pressing to learn more and more, experience new things.
For what had their mother told them?
The hard work stayed for so long, for such an incredible span, that it became a part of who Vangar was by the end and they couldn't ever truly stop thanks to the force of their driven soul. Their mother sacraficed so much for them, wouldn't it be a shame if they weren't able to work just as hard as she? At twenty one turns they walked the tables to journeyman, able to make just about anything involving wherhide, a medium that they didn't know at the time would come to be so important to them. Along the way to that title they made new friends, ones that hadn't left to pursue other crafts or that had simply stayed around for a similar one and the group of five of them were quickly discovered to share the same sort of vices and desires, ran with the same crowds before in a way. Life became a party after their graduations to journeymen, they went out into Pern to experience and to learn different things, the entire group of them. While Vangra had picked up both smoking while they were learning, a tip passed down by elders in the interest of relaxing on micro-breaks, they picked up drinking and partying in the hours afterwards, in the time between. Frienships came and went around the group of five friends but they were always together... until one night.
Alone and drinking at a bar, their mother's bar of all places, where she had lived and worked and eventually succumbed to sickness and death at, Vangar was toasting her life when a rider of all people walked in and sat beside them. Through the haze of warm and glowing liquor and fond memories tinged with just a bit of saddness, the crafter found themselves reaching out and running one heavily induced hand along the edge of the jacket, recognizing it as something they had once made. If they had been sober they might have been amused that the rider didn't pull back from such an odd figure just randomly touching them, but they were instead caught off-guard themselves by the laughter and the conversation that it sparked. For the man knew who he was. While they will never admit to fully being unaware of how they came to the Weyr, somehow Vangar made a decision, a waffly and incredibly tilted decision, through all of the alcohol that they'd injested. Maybe it was because of the vulerability they were experiencing at their mother's old workplace, maybe it was how things were changing in life, it could even have been the fact that the man claimed to be an uncle in a way that had them questioning the truth.
The next morning the sun shone down on High Reaches Weyr and found Vangar waking up at what felt an unreasonable hour with an even more unreasonable hangover. So began life as a candidate, stripped of any vice they once had in the interest of learning just as they had when they had been a mere apprentice in the craft hall. It was sobering and it was almost nostalgic in a way, the work and the need. Now at just barely twenty three turns old, the wiry and braided newcomer was offkilter and spent most of their time running around cleaning and mucking and suddenly, without what seemed to be very much warning at all on their part, they were shoved out onto the sands in a solid white robe to meet their 'destiny'. Destiny, whatever that was to Vangar, was a small green with eyes that stared right into them, that knew them for what they were and everything that they could bring and everything that needed tempered and met head on. She promised help, she promised love, unconditional and deeper than what V'gar was certain they could handle. Her patience was their mother, her love almost felt like Vraga reaching out one last time to make certain they were okay.
Tears were to be expected.
Other: V'gar has lost many people throughout their life and as such has pushed more away than they've gained, but Ngawanth is working to change that very slowly.
DRAGON
Name: Ngawanth
Origin of Name: From Ngawang, meaning “Powerful Speech” in Tibetan, it was the name given to the 5th Dalai Lama upon their full monastic ordination. It was the 5th Dalai Lama that initially unified Tibet under a single state and establishing diplomatic relations the surrounding countries.
Color: Green
Inspiration: The Hanged Man, one of the more contradictory cards in the major arcana, this card is both enticing and unnerving as it signifies a paradox that can often exist within a single life. To win is to release control, to sacrifice one’s self for others is to be victorious in the enlightenment received by such an action, and maybe the greatest lesson that The Hanged Man can teach is that by giving yourself time and ‘standing still’ you can move forward with all the time in the world.
Personality: Live and let live, to a point. Ngawanth is a dragon that believes the right decision can be reached in anything by waiting and allowing the correct answer to come with time, a suspension of actions is needed in order to get to the root of the indecision. While she’s more than willing to wait for the opportune moment, she can react freely and with confidence once that moment truly comes, for in this she’s completely certain that she’s made the correct decision after all. Sometimes waiting is all about finding another way to do something, a second outcome that wasn’t so freely available the first time the issue was posed, in this she is a master of fluid thinking and reaction, as if it were a dance where the steps are ever changing.
It might not come as much surprise to others that she restrains her own desires to give way for those of another then, that she’ll sacrifice her own happiness in order to see the safety or happiness of another come long before her own. Come what may, she accepts what is and is more than willing to put her own self interest aside for the sake of others and the Weyr each time she rides into the sky. “A higher cause” is what she often calls it when asked and she fully understands her standing within the hierarchy of High Reaches Weyr and accepts the role that she plays in keeping all those without dragons or a way to defend themselves, free of thread. This does not mean, however, that she is willing to sacrifice her own health or that of her rider; if that particular priority were to come into question she would quickly overturn it in favor of a new perspective on it. Without her rider she cannot help others and without her wings said rider couldn’t help the Weyr either, they both need one another and the Weyr needs all the dragons and help they can get to fight the menace of such an Old Enemy.
Just as easily as she can overturn the priorities and perspectives in one aspect of her life, she can quickly twist them in all others as well. Ngawanth will not hold onto toxic frienships or relationships and is completely unafraid to let go of those that bring her nothing but strife without even a ‘fare thee well’ or a flick of her tail. In this, as in many things, she is relaxed and willing to take a deep breath before she makes a decision, but should she be given long enough to understand something as a detriment to herself or others she will cut it from her life with ease.
Ngawanth is comfortable in her awareness and her willingness to think things through in a manner much different than her action prone siblings, but it generally means she is left in their shadows as they run off to save the world as bravely and as quickly as possible. This is a place that she enjoys, for it means she can help them from those same shadows.
Size: 25'
Physical Attributes: A thin little green with a slightly longer neck and tail than average, Ngawanth is almost fragile looking despite her size and that often leads to others underestimating her strength and stamina. Her soft head is crowned by long head knobs and ever watchful narrow eyes that can almost give her a distrustful look when she’s initially sizing someone up as they flash a mixture of disorienting colors as she makes up her mind.
A scattering of scars across her haunches marks the consequences of hesitation and inaction on both the part of her rider and herself from their first threadfall together. Though the wounds were taken care of meticulously there was little hope of them not forming a pattern of scars that much match her rider’s own.
Additional Notes: While her flame may be short it burns hot and she tends to hesitate with it for just the right moment, a trait she and her rider will need to work on as it could lead to disastrous results.
Ngawanth does not rise very often, while she might at least once a turn take to the skies, she finds little use for it as she will simply give in to the fastest of the pack rather quickly rather than actually looking for a perfect suitor.
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