Age: 55
Nameday: 09.20.3520
Sex: Male, but also takes other pronouns if under his pseudonym
Sexual Orientation: Suffering
Weyr: Western
Rider Rank: Wingrider
Previous Rank/Craft: Journeyman Historical Archivist
Physical Description: Almost comically pear shaped, E'roe is wider at the bottom than he is at the top, no doubt thanks to his love of sweets. His face is long and oval-shaped as well, with a rounded but strong jaw. E'roe's eyes are a watery blue-ray, and his nearly white skin and lack of hair overall paint him as a gaunt and haunted looking individual. His mustache is small but trimmed and slightly curled, perhaps the only thing he really takes care of. As a rider, however, he has grudging muscle mass built in despite his odd frame.
Personality: E'roe physically, mentally, and emotionally seems the classic tormented person. His attention is drawn to the macabre, the sublime, the shadow every person casts, and there are times where even the mild-mannered rider can be manic in his obsession about it--especially when caught in a whirlwind of writing, following his muse until the bitter end. There's a spark of genius there, but it's smothered in misery, as he puts it.
While his dragon is more of a downpour, E'roe himself is more a light and constant rain, in skies of never ending grey. He is polite in most company, albeit one to rarely crack a smile, and his brusque manner can make him seem antisocial, but overall he presents himself as a capable (enough) person. It's when work happens that he really takes a dive. He tries, but he never really does much. He doesn't like to. E'roe doesn't think himself a man of particular physical talent and shies away or attempts to trade off jobs that ask too much of him; other than Threadfall, he'd much rather be shut in with his work and his drinks. Or with food. Mmmmm food.
Pass the austere veneer and you enter...a second equally dreary layer E'roe possesses. He's not the most social person at the weyr, and while he keeps fastidious manners, he can also be taciturn and blunt if his energy is low. (And his energy is often low as a rule of thumb.) On the flip side, his writing style is much more flowery in flavor, sometimes almost reading like someone else wrote it.
Happiness is fleeting, but sorrow is forever. E'roe lives with this principle in mind and has trouble improving his mood or his dragon's. (And really, Dhumavath is happy to be sad, paradoxically.) On the rare occasion that there's relief from his dark moods, he might go so far as to crack jokes with his fellow riders. The man has a keen wit with wordplay, as shaped by his craft, and it's a shame that it's so often put to terribly downtrodden poetry and short stories than anything else. Then again, he knows he's something of a shame. He bathes in it, dips his quill in it to write, and so on. Despite his morose personality, however, E'roe manages to be perfectly functional in Pern society, much in the same way someone training with weights on their legs would eventually get used to them.
His only real issue as far as he's concerned is, well, not going to comfort food. Or comfort wine.
Blood relatives are the only ones that see the much more gooey center beyond the layers of disaster. Having adopted his brother’s children, E’roe has taken on more fatherly responsibilities that he never thought he would have a chance to. It was a struggle at the beginning, but his devotion to Rowan, Daimon, and Astriana is unmistakable now. As the only living relative left, he feels the need to become a more responsible adult to impress them, and it’s with the three around that E’roe began to open up more. Every day, however, he still fears that he hasn’t done enough for them, especially for Rowan whom faces his own challenges as a blind young man in a world once more touched by Thread. As such, though E’roe might look like a layabout, he would never truly leave the fight against the old enemy.
Positive Trait List poetic, imaginative, polite
Negative Trait List dreary, gruff, lazy
History: The backs of short story and poetry collections written by one “Madame Macabre” would tell you that the author has had a run in with ghoulish and faelike creatures Pern has never seen before, and that her writing is a nonfictional account of her experiences as she dives deeper into the lore of the “Dark World,” the realm of dreams and nightmares come to life. The truth is a lot more bland in comparison.
Eganroe had always suffered from vivid night terrors and dreams alike ever since he was a child, and he found the easiest way to combat them besides never sleeping again was to write them down in a journal. From there he began writing more and more, shaping a canon from the formless chaos of his mind, and only yearned to sharpen his skills as he grew older. Harper Hall was a secondary home to the boy as he learned, but he was often mocked for writing the Pernese equivalent of emo teenage poetry. In response, he created a secondary persona for his writing and withdrew from his peers save for classes, deciding that if he couldn’t get the job done, Madame Macabre could. His story-crafting history was spotty at best, however, and Eganroe quickly grew discouraged about his future prospects under the new name.
After reaching Journeyman rank as a historical archivist, he chose to leave the hall to pursue a career path with his writing. Several avenues were attempted: he even tried children’s stories (which were denied on the grounds of being too mature in theme). It was during a stint at Monaco Bay that he met Dhumavath by complete accident, having been attempting to try and do something with his archivist internship there. (If he couldn't write nonfiction, he could at least help preserve it.) The baby brown had dolefully suggested he go back to those terrible and horror stricken stories again, which seemed a better idea than trying to preserve a past he had no hand in and which Dhumavath was sure nobody honestly cared for.
After a smattering of training and what barely constituted a graduating class, E’roe did just that. Over the turns, he revisited Madame Macabre and crafted short story after short story, poem after poem. If nothing else, he had a prolific career in so far as volume generated, even earning an underground following mixed with genuine fans and people ironically buying to chew it up in critical circles. A mark was a mark, after all! While he never went back to Harper Hall for further archivist training, E’roe did lean on it for a steady job where he could and occasionally added the odd historic event in his series with a twist.
Eventually in order to stay close to family again—Eganroe felt a touch guilty to have all but fled them in the past—he stationed himself at Western Weyr and helped with the record keeping there. It also didn’t hurt that he could get a home and decent meals without worrying about that himself, leaving him free to make copy after copy of his stories to inflict upon the public in his spare time.
Then tragedy struck. A plague went through his old home, taking E’roe’s brother and his wife and nearly one of the children as well. He immediately took the three kids into the weyr, channeling his grief either through writing or by helping them get settled into a particular task at the weyr. It was one of the rare tragedies that E’roe didn’t want to focus on. Close to a decade later, he’s become something of a role model, the responsibility of which has caused the man to try and better himself for their sake.
The reminder of mortality is a sobering one. Doubly so with Thread’s return. Dhumavath lost his cherished weyrmate that first day, and he hasn’t wholly recovered. E’roe now struggles with that continuing fallout along with balancing life as a rider, a second life as a pulp fiction author, and a third life as a father figure. And for a man who had spent most of his life avoiding hard work, it’s been something else.
Other: E'roe writes under a feminine nom de plume, feeling that women are closer to the exquisite experience that is life and death and the pain that bridges them, as they can give birth.
I added also that he makes his own copies to sell!
DRAGON
Name: Dhumavath
Insp: Named for the Hindu goddess Dhumavati, who represents the fearsome aspect of Devi, the Hindu Divine Mother. She is often portrayed as an old, ugly widow, and is associated with things considered inauspicious and unattractive in Hinduism, such as the crow. Dhumavati is said to manifest herself at the time of cosmic dissolution (pralaya) and is "the Void" that exists before creation and after dissolution. While Dhumavati is generally associated with only inauspicious qualities, her thousand-name hymn relates her positive aspects as well as her negative ones. She is often called tender-hearted and a bestower of boons. Dhumavati is described as a great teacher, one who reveals ultimate knowledge of the universe, which is beyond the illusory divisions, like auspicious and inauspicious. Her ugly form teaches the devotee to look beyond the superficial, to look inwards and seek the inner truths of life.
Age: 35
Color: Brown
Size: 35'
Physical Description: Much like his rider, Dhumavath is on the smaller and fatter end for his kind; even his spine spikes are rounded rather than true triangles. There tends to be grey present in even his happiest moods, and with his darker coloration can almost appear more rock than hide. His face is also long, his jaw bones thick and almost runnerbeast-like. Though overweight, he knows generally how to throw it--well, anywhere except while chasing, anyway.
Personality: It's in the name: doom. Doom is what preoccupies Dhumavath, whether past, present, or future. Negatives, consequences, mistakes, all of it replays and mixes and invents new and terrible terrible scenarios in his mind. What silver linings there may be are quickly crowded and covered by gloomy clouds. His somber attitude refuses to be lightened up by even the most cheerful of company, and in fact the brown resents being near such bright lights. He thinks most dragons too short-sighted, too vivid for his dull and dreary tastes, and humans? Hah. The light he had kept for himself once upon a time is gone now, and he'd rather go blind in darkness than to squint at someone else.
Neither athletic nor aggressive, he prefers to keep to himself and ruminate on the dark portents he believes he sees in the world. The brown is seeped in sadness, but it's a quiet kind. His one and only vent is through his rider's love of writing, which has helped Dhumavath put words to his otherwise seething mass of darkness inside. Not especially kind words for the most part, but poetic nonetheless. He is a gentle dragon, though, and a perfect pillow to sleep against or living dark void to scream into. And while E'roe generally avoids difficult tasks like the plague, Dhumavath doesn't mind trucking through them to help someone, though he might moan about it to his rider all the way.
Dragon Art or Proof of Obtainment:
