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Name: Lyfrocier
Age: 22
Nameday: 3554.01.02
Sex: Male
Sexual Orientation: Bisexual
Craft: Courtesan - clothing designer specialization.
Rank: Journeyman
Location: Western Weyr
Physical Description:
Tall, athletic, and well-built, Lyfrocier looks far more like the kind of man who'd be accustomed to physical labor as opposed to his former craft. At roughly 6'4", he's already got plenty of presence on his own, but the way he carries himself makes him appear to loom over others without much effort at all. For all his size, though, Lyf isn't particularly strong at all, and instead excels in more dexterous areas than anything else; as a result, he moves with a sort of dancer's grace, and maintains a kind of poise that gives him a regal air.
His features are strong and distinctive, with a prominent nose, equally pronounced cheekbones, and a near-perpetual scowl topped off with heavy eyebrows for a decidedly displeased expression. He has a well-trimmed beard, kept short and clean, and wears round glasses that would give him something of an adorable, owlish quality, were the rest of him not so harsh. His eyes are a dark brown, and his tightly-curled hair is a deep brown-black, save for one shock of white just above his right ear due to a birthmark that stretches to the corner of his eye in a similarly bleached patch that stands out against his dark skin. Usually, Lyf keeps his hair tied back in a utilitarian bun from which nothing is permitted to escape, and he only rarely fusses with any kind of beads or accessories in it.
Personality:
For all his frowning and looming, Lyfrocier is actually a very carefully measured man, with little seeming to make any ripples on his surface. He appears to take everything in stride, provided it’s nothing that directly affects him, and often serves as a near-glacial force of balance in stressful situations. When under fire, Lyf is highly skilled at maintaining his composure, keeping his head above water until every bit of the problem has either passed or has been resoundingly dealt with. He tends to respond to these issues with the same calmness, although he’s shown himself to have plenty of bite to him should he finally be pushed far enough--he’s not exactly a forgiving man, and while the first instance of this type of thing will be met with a cool hand, if it resurfaces past that, he responds with far more harshness and finality. He’s not against giving people a chance to prove him wrong, but he has his limits, of course.
As opposed to many social matters, he finds his stride in the pursuit of knowledge. Lyf has a particularly voracious intellect, and one of his few joys is the study of--well, honestly, whatever he finds intriguing at the time. Anything that catches his interest doesn’t so much attract it as it does completely devour it. When Lyf finds something to focus on, he throws every bit of his intellect and attention into learning about it, picking it apart and discovering every intricate nook and cranny there is to find. As a result, he’s surprisingly knowledgeable about a variety of (debatably useful) topics, but when it comes to things that don’t really captivate him, he finds it difficult to keep his attention where it belongs. In some ways, this tendency branches out to cover the people he interacts with as well--if he finds someone intriguing, he’ll hang on their every word (in a way that he hopes isn’t too terribly obvious, of course), but if they come across as dull or uninspired? He can hardly wait to be finished with this conversation.
Lyfrocier knows how to navigate most social situations quite well, provided they’re in a formal setting or at least have some guise of it. When placed in a strictly casual environment, however, he flounders more often than not, and will find any reason he can think of to leave before he makes an utter fool of himself. He’s set himself up to project a very specific image, and if he isn’t completely sure he can pull that off, he’d almost rather not try. He’s unfortunately rather pessimistic, especially when it comes to his own view of himself, but anything more than brief glimpses of how bad it truly is under everything else is highly unlikely. Lyf doesn’t really know how to handle deeper emotional connections, and while he’s not completely sure that he wants to isolate himself in every way possible, he’s just clueless on how to talk to people on a genuinely personal level.
Unsurprisingly, given his nearly complete lack of optimism and how easily he fixates on matters, Lyf tends to go over his own failures again and again, particularly if they were major setbacks of some kind. Although he also tends to blow these mistakes far out of proportion, there is a bit of a purpose to these over-exaggerated views of what happened: self-review. Lyf is constantly looking over everything that makes him him, analyzing his existence with just as critical an eye as the one he takes to his fashion designs. What is deemed acceptable is kept, and even expanded upon--whatever isn't, however, will be excised as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, this results in quite a lot of bottling things up, especially if they're distasteful traits or memories that he'd rather not engage with; at his absolute worst moments when his composure finally cracks, all of these unsightly things come spilling out, much to his disgust. It's at these rare times when others can finally get a good glimpse of all the things Lyfrocier tries to hide, as well as some of the internal mechanisms that keep his near-clockwork facade going, and he utterly despises that kind of vulnerability. He considers his restraint to be one of his best features, and the fact that he's (supposedly) able to keep all the less-than-pleasant bits of himself out of the public view is a testament to that--in the same vein, however, he also places far too much importance on these smothered traits, blowing them far out of proportion in his own head. He’s very critical of himself and his own actions, and will pick what he’s done apart until he feels that there isn’t anything more he can say on the subject. Usually, this takes months.
He hates showing weakness of any kind, and is usually far too proud to dare ask for help. As a result, he keeps a bit of a wall between himself and others, not wanting to open the door for any deeper interactions that might result in anything unpleasant escaping; this almost exclusively applies to his own emotions, and any more ‘genuine’ displays of how he’s feeling are completely considered to be mistakes on his part. Lyfrocier does not in any way like making mistakes, and is often far too hard on himself, especially when what these ‘errors’ on his part usually are--feelings he sees as unbefitting someone of his position. Even though he's currently just a Candidate, he still insists on carrying himself with the same poise and precision as always, and he has no intentions of letting go of that.
Positive Trait List: Attentive, composed, diplomatic, calculating, intelligent.
Negative Trait List: Pessimistic, obsessive, proud, self-repressing, headstrong.
History:
The only son of a minor Holder just outside Western Hold, Lyfrocier has always been used to a well-padded life and high standards. He was raised to hold himself with the grace and dignity befitting his station, and hold his family and Hold above all else--and why wouldn't he? To be a Holder was to be an essential part of Pern, and he fully intended to take up that mantle when it was time. Until then, however, he entered into Courtesan training, at first intending to learn the ways of diplomacy and negotiations; instead, he found his attention caught by something less...well, diplomatic. He had a burning interest in design from the moment he first began studying it, and his decision to pursue it seemed only natural to him. If he wanted to be a respected figure eventually, he'd have to look the part, wouldn't he? And considering the nature of what he'd decided would be his work, Lyf reasoned that he'd pick up plenty of people skills on the way. Negotiations for materials, tactful ways to handle unpleasant designs (and people), maintaining a high quality of work and keeping up his standards--it all made perfect sense to him. His parents, although somewhat confused, provided no opposition; they were more than happy to see their son pursue his own interests, and helped him find the master that he felt would be the best for him.
In this manner, Lyfrocier dedicated himself to his training, quickly showing plenty of promise in his chosen craft. He picked up the majority of his more avant-garde tastes from his first master, and remained a rapt student until it was finally time for him to walk the tables. After becoming a journeyman, Lyfrocier decided to branch out just a tad, spreading his attention a bit beyond the local epicenter of Western Hold itself and into the areas surrounding it. It was in one of his periodic trips in search of just the right fabric for his projects that he ran into someone with a bit more information on him than he would have liked, and Lyf quickly decided that he well and truly hated the overly familiar way the dragonrider talked to him. Unsurprisingly, he didn't respond very pleasantly to the man's attempts at genial conversation, although he didn't have much choice but to deal with him at least a little bit. He was part of a trading caravan that Lyf was trying to do business with, and served as something of a guard; what really threw Lyf for a loop, however, was when the guard asked how his father's dragon was faring.
As things turned out, once all the misunderstandings and short bursts of yelling had died down and were replaced with proper explanations, his father wasn't his father at all, at least not in the biological sense. According to this new information, who he'd known as his uncle, a man who had been practically stricken from the family records for leaving his family in favor of becoming a dragonrider, was in fact the man responsible for his existence--and Lyfrocier didn't like the thought of this one bit. But was it really true? He couldn't easily believe such a claim, but he couldn't simply ask his parents without the conversation veering into explosive conflict, given how touchy the subject of his uncle had always been.
So he did what he, in his measured and well-planned wisdom, thought was best: hunt the b*****d down and ask him what his problem was. If he really was his father after all, then he'd left his Hold and family behind, and all for--what, really? Thread was gone. Dragonriders weren't keeping the Hold running, and surely he knew that. Lyf was certainly old enough to set off under the guise of taking a trip to study another designer's work, and with a little finagling through his connections, was able to track him down without too much difficulty.
At the end of it all, he'd come face to face with someone not even remotely like what he'd expected. S'roc was--relaxed, easygoing, and sat proud and unbending upon his Brown, unwavering in the face of Lyfrocier's judgment. After far more arguing than he'd ever admit, not to mention tears, which were the worst possible outcome, he had his answers. They weren't enough to really explain it all, but Lyf was able to build a slightly different picture of his life than what his parents had painted.
S'roc, then simply Syrocelle, had fallen in love with a woman as a young man of 23, going completely head-over-heels for the daughter of a fellow Holder. Their courtship had been brief, but fast--and it wasn't long before they got in over their heads. Together, they had a son--Lyfrocier--and for two and a half Turns, things...went. They both had quickly discovered that they weren't ideal parents, and were terrified of ruining their child's life before it had even properly begun; how would they know that they were doing anything right? Lyfrocier had been an unexpected arrival in the first place, and they had never quite been able to pick up the momentum they felt proper parents should have. After the pair had been approached by a rider with the intention of offering them the mantle of Candidacy at Western Weyr, they weren't terribly sure what they should do--on one hand, the promise of becoming dragonriders was practically a dream come true, and their union had been somewhat scandalous from the start. The Weyr could be a fresh start for them, away from the judgment of Syrocelle's family and the trappings of his status that felt more suffocating than anything else.
There was just one thing they had to attend to first, however: the matter of their child.
Syrocelle's younger brother had been trying his best for a family for Turns to no avail--children were all that he and his wife had ever wanted, and despite no small amount of effort, they remained childless. After they approached him and his wife and asked the couple to give their son the family he deserved, there had been plenty of arguments to be had with regards to why they were leaving, but Lyf was taken in all the same, and without a second thought at that. It seemed a simple enough solution, really, and had, in fact, worked out quite well by all accounts. Lyfrocier had hardly had reason to complain about his home life, and had grown into a fine young man, although perhaps a touch too tightly-laced; as for S'roc and his love, they hadn't lasted much longer once the pair Impressed and found their hearts lay with their dragons instead of each other. Things ended amicably, but they still ended all the same.
At the end of it all, Lyfrocier was more than stunned, to say the least. S'roc had laid it all out so plainly, as though he had nothing to hide--and really, Lyf didn't think he did. What motive would he have, besides? It was all in the past to him, and that was that. Lyfrocier himself remained unwilling to change much of his own views, though; S'roc wasn't his father, no matter where his parentage truly lay, and he owed this man nothing. His family was waiting for his return, and although he was far from content with the knowledge he now had, he deemed it to be enough for his tastes.
But the way S'roc had talked about it all, though--having a dragon, becoming a rider, having a soulmate who truly understood every fiber of your being--it left something of a curious imprint on him in a way he hadn’t anticipated. S'roc's dragon seemed to think he had the makings of a rider in him as well, and Lyfrocier found himself at a crossroads much in the same way S'roc himself had. Surely a little independence wasn't going to be that big of a deal--he'd have to keep it under wraps of course, much like he'd hidden this very visit in the first place, but it would be easy to figure out. His parents trusted him without a doubt, and while going behind their backs for something much more serious than a simple day trip was almost enough to make him balk, Lyf couldn't shake the thought. His doubts were by no means insignificant, and there was a large part of him that simply wanted to turn around and go back to his home, leaving S’roc and his dragonriding in the past where he should have stayed.
He did. S’roc was by no means his future, and Lyfrocier had too much to think about to make a rash decision right then and there. He returned to his family and continued his training, throwing himself into his work as he processed everything he’d learned; he kept their meeting a secret, reasoning that it would never come up again.
Months later, however, he was approached again on another outing, this time by a different Searchrider pair. Again, he said no, although--this time, there was more hesitation. The thought that dragonriding had slipped through all of his walls to become something he almost yearned for was difficult to stomach, and Lyfrocier wanted to find a way to smother it as quickly as possible. So, he did what he thought made perfect sense--once again, he took matters into his own hands, and decided he’d go through with it. Just for a short while, enough to whet his appetite and then be done with it. After catching the Searchrider by surprise to try and explain that he'd changed his mind, the gears started turning. He explained the trip to his family as a different posting for his craft, and was sent off with plenty of blessings and fond farewells.
As it turned out, that decision had the opposite effect. Much to his chagrin, Lyfrocier found himself steadily growing enraptured with Western Weyr, turning his interest toward what it had to offer. He used it as inspiration for much of his newer designs, something he’d sketch out after he’d finished his lessons for the day, and started to wonder if perhaps this hadn’t been that bad of an idea after all. He’d still come back home once he’d gotten his fill, of course, and is relatively certain that he's doing a good enough job at not getting attached to the Weyr at all. Now, with the news of another clutch on the horizon, he's coming up on his first proper Hatching--and he's a bit more nervous than he'd like to admit.
Other: He's a skilled artist and tailor, and is almost constantly working on some kind of outfit concept. He's very secretive about his designs while they're works in progress, and while he isn't opposed to drafting anything up on commission, if he's going to be making it, he'll generally disappear for a few weeks and then return out of nowhere with what you've asked for.
He has a particular fondness for fruit, and would very much like to learn how to bake a really lovely pie with some sometime. In the kitchen, though, he's hopeless.
Candidate Specific Questions
Do you want them to have an official Search RP? nop!
Do you understand they will age every passing year regardless if you're there to RP the or not? yep!
Do you want them to have a possible Stands Impression? nop!
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