Post by Stranger on Oct 9, 2010 5:34:43 GMT -8
Name: R'iner (formerly Rainer)
Age: 18 years (born early autumn)
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Rank: Green winglet
Location: Eyrie
Personality:
R'iner's weathered appearance tends to speak for itself - hinting at a person who has spent too long bearing the same unbearable burdens, wrestling with the same moral issues with no clear answers. Yet despite the harsh set of her features, she comes across as being a friendly sort within your first five minutes of meeting her. A child of horse merchants, she is an easy conversationist with a light flair for the humourous, mild in her opening remarks and with a way of putting people at ease by means of her cool easiness.
Get beyond those initial five minutes however, and you will find that the usual polite and genial exteriors hide a personality that is practical, straightforward, and rather blunt at times. R'iner is a straight-talker by nature, and often prefers to get to the point without mincing her words. Tough and measuring, she is aloof and distrustful of most people even if she has known them for a while - unlike most, R'iner rarely relies on first impressions and prefers to take longer to get to know others.
At times of heavy stress or frustration she becomes erratic: fluctuating from mood to mood and often hinging within a brooding, moroseness that is somewhere between explosive silence and mellow thoughtfulness. A certain tension marks her movements and her speech at such times, as if every moment she expects something to happen; something terrible or tragic. Much as she tries to mask the scars of her troubled youth, she can never quite hide the survivor instinct that has made her what she is - and it shows in her actions and attitudes towards others. Not that she is delibrately obstinate, but she often finds it hard to connect on a deeper level with others thanks to her early loses. A certain recklessness and despair of life she would never admit to tinges her actions and casts a shadow over her personality: why bother trying so hard, knowing that someday the koxi could just come - and everything would be taken away again.
Yet beneath the hardened and scarred exterior there is still life: a glimmer, maybe, of laughter, a glint of a memory of happier times, of youthful dreams of greatness. All things being said, R'iner is intelligent and loyal, and though she may be cold, she does genuinely care for and respect those around her - a trait that has earned her the grudging respect of many in return. Few are those who are truly allowed to befriend the woman, but those who do find her a better friend than her reputation creates her to be.
Appearance:
R'iner stands at 5'8", not tall as men go, but a good height for a woman nonetheless. She is of medium-build with a tendency towards heavy bones, rangy and just a tad lanky, muscular and well-built. Yet despite her frame she is balanced and light in her movements, and the sharp-eyed person will note how she naturally stands with her weight distributed equally over both feet. There is a curious feline-like litheness in her movements that expresses itself with every shift of a hand, every pace of a step or turn of the head – a natural tension that seems to set her apart in her very movements. She is a person always on the edge of her toes, wary and alert, and it shows.
The feminine aspects of R'iner's body are in evidence, though not in an obvious way. Ragged brown hair, cut short for functionality’s sake, crowns the space between her ears. Her facial features are relatively sharp, well-defined and undoubtly feminine - but there is little of delicateness in them. Hers is a weather-beaten face despite her youth, with small streaks of line scarring just barely visible over the left cheek. Her skin carries a dark tan from her hours in the sun. Her eyes are fairly large and dark brown in hue - unreadable deep orbs set beneath dark brown brows. Her hands, naturally petite, are so scarred and callused they appear bigger and rougher than they really are; and her left hand is missing half of the smallest finger along with the tip of the fourth finger.
R'iner is relatively simple in her dressing, preferring working tunics and wher-hide breeches whenever possible. She favours light blue, forest-green and beige or cream hues which blend well with her hair and eye colours. One thing she would never wear, however, are clothes of any kind that might reveal her back - and with good reason. Men who have shared her bed would know of the long etching scars that mar her back from shoulders to hips; but to all others the reason remains hidden. For social occasions she keeps a few high-backed gowns stacked away somewhere in her weyr, and when properly dressed can come across as being both elegant and poised - albeit in a cool, detached sort of way.
Family:
Russant (father), Horse Merchant - deceased
Marylena (mother), Horse Merchant - deceased
Kendrick (older brother), Horse Merchant
Rosa (younger sister) - deceased
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Simourv Name: Portemmorreph
Simourv Color: #70E24C
Simourv Age: Hatchling
Personality:
protective, clumsy and gets scars but determined
Appearance:
- pretty, large for her colour
- wide, dark eyes
- lively, lovely lime green feathers
- feathers of different shades mixed in on chest and head, create a varied iridescent sheen
- inky black markings on wingfeathers
- large, heart-shaped mark beneath left eye
- feet just a bit too large for her body
Parentage:
Gray Eceph X Black Alianph
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History:
R'iner was born as Rainer, the second of three children to Russant and Marylena, horse merchants based in Sayaie who specialised in trading performance horses coupled with sales of draft horses they had bred themselves. It was a small, family-run farm located like most others on the outskirts of Sayaie; and like most such operations everyone in the house was expected to chip in. Rainer inherited her parents' love of the sleek, tall performance horses and sturdy draft breeds early in life, and alongside her older brother Kendrick and younger sister Rosa she assisted in their care and management with no complaint and much enthusiasm, learning the tricks of the trade as she grew.
Her father Russant was a tough character, an honest enough trader as horse merchants went, though like most of his kind he was not above "doing" up a horses here and there to hide its poorer attributes. But he would never stand for any pure, unadulterated doctoring of a sales horse to fool a potential buyer; and from him Rainer learnt that the seller who did such things would eventually find that buyers despised him for making them fools. From her mother, Marylena, she learnt to be strong, fastidious and unafraid of dirty chores - whether it be mucking out the stables or getting muddy brushing down a horse fresh from rain-soaked roads. Tough though the daily running of the horse farm was on the three siblings, they were a family; and though Rosa had dreams of being a scribe or a poet, both Kendrick and Rainer lived life with the knowledge they would one day be horse traders like their parents had been.
But things would eventually change with the raids of the xymokoxi, which grew with the years as simourv populations failed. In the Year 52 a vicious band of koxi took the edge of Sayaie by surprise. Driven by desperation, a group of the local defenses went out on warhorses with guard dogs to try and draw the beasts away so their families could escape. Amongst them were Russant with a small pack of their family hounds.
The simourv eventually came to their rescue of course, but too late. Of the little group of local defenses only 3 people would survive as the koxi broke through long enough to slaughter numerous heads of cattle and many horses. Kendrick, running to push his fleeing mother and sisters away from a simourv entangled with a koxi, was hit by a glancing blow and left with severe lacerations over his back. Five of the family's horses were killed, along with all their dogs.
And Russant; whose body was never found.
The loss took the family hard. Marylena moped for days, and was never quite the same tough, self-sure woman she had been. Kendrick, always quietly cheerful, became morose and solitary. Rosa withdrew into her books and poems, spending ever more time with the ponies she had loved since childhood. And Rainer, denying her grief, threw herself into her work with a vengeance, procuring new horses and dogs as they struggled to rebuild the farm and the sales operations.
With the passing of Russant, however, death seemed to have taken an especial interest in the family. Marylena, languishing without her husband and partner, came down ill in winter three years later and had not the will to pull herself out of it. She died eventually without seeing the spring. The family pulled itself together after a period of grief as it had done before, with Kendrick now taking the lead in running the business and the farm's daily operations. But late in the Year 56, the koxi came yet again.
And this time, it was the 11 year old Rosa they took.
It had been a quiet evening on the farm and Rainer had ridden out with Rosa to bring in their ponies - a rare occurrence as the younger girl had developed a fear of open areas since the last koxi attack. But life had to go on, koxi or no koxi, and paddocks were necessary for a horse trader. Kendrick had managed to have their farm shifted deeper into Sayaie's boundaries, leaving the outskirts to the poor or the unwary. Though open fields still formed much of the farm's land there was a certain sense of safety in knowing your outer neighbours were closer to the looming threat beyond the city's borders.
Or so they had felt, or they would never have let their horses out into the paddocks at all.
The first they knew was the screaming of their ponies from over the small hillock just ahead. But before they could do anything a handful of ponies had broken over the hill and were streaming towards them in full flight. Shouts broke out from the nearby farmsteads. Rainer immediately heeled her mare around as a horribly familiar reptilian shape emerged over the hill and barreled towards them. The mare bolted, to Rainer's relief - until an instant later when she realized that her younger sister was no longer seated behind her. Looking back, she caught a sight that would forever tear at her heart: Rosa, running up towards the fray, towards her favourite palomino pony, shouting at it to flee faster.
Rainer threw herself off the mare, tumbling for a moment before she regained her footing and raced after the child. The beast was intent, it seemed, on butchering Rosa's little palomino galloping headlong towards them. The little girl yelled as she ripped grass and sod and hurled them at it, and then all at once the beast whirled towards her, eyes glaring as it bore down on the child. She screamed again, in terror this time, and Rainer's own screams cut the air as she saw her sister disappear into the massive jaws. Fury overtook fear and without thinking she threw herself at its flanks, pounding the hard, cold scales helplessly until a sharp twist and kick caught her across the back and flung her aside. Her back burning, she was conscious enough to realize the beast was looming, raised one hand in a futile gesture of defiance, then felt pain rip through her fingers as something billowed into the koxi from one side, smashing it into the ground with the impact.
The simourv had come once more; just in time to save Rainer, but too late for Rosa.
She knew little else after that; but she woke grieving on her own bed in the farmhouse to find a stone-faced Kendrick beside her. No words were needed between them; they had lost yet another member of their close-knit family, and no words would ever give meaning to what they felt. Nor could any thoughts answer the questions that lanced through both of them. Why had Rosa gone back for the pony? Why hadn't she run? Deep inside, Rainer knew her sister had done it for the same reason she had thrown herself screaming at the monster. But guilt ripped in flashes through her whenever she thought of it; guilt that opened nightmares and turned her sleep to shouts of what she might have done, how she should never have brought her sister along at all. None of which was very helpful.
And so, eventually, she stopped thinking too deeply on it as well.
The funeral arrangements came and went, aided by concerned aunts and uncles; and then the spring trading went into full swing for the city's horse merchants. But as soon as summer came around Kendrick tapped his trader links and purchased a new farmstead in Chydyn. Rainer arranged for the sale of the farm property and most of the livestock. They had suffered too deeply in Sayaie to ever find safety or security in the city's numbers again, and both felt that their only hope might be in relocating to Chydyn, closer to the Eyrie of the simourv who were their only true defense against the koxi.
The move , though tedious and lengthy, came as a sort of relief as they left behind Sayaie with all its memories. The siblings settled into their new lives at Chydyn, taking solace in the protection offered by the trees, and began to re-establish themselves as horse traders.
