Rivek of blue Risk

Name: Rivek
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Prisoner: Nah. Not her style.
Crime: None she’s ever been caught at!
Craft/Rank: Wherhandler (former runner)

Appearance: Rivek has been compared (unkindly, but not inaccurately) to a runt wher herself – appropriate that she would be a wherhandler, really. Rather than the willowy and graceful build one would hope for, she pretty much lacks curves altogether, instead sporting a scrawny, compact frame that nonetheless sports a decent amount of whipcord muscle and almost no spare fat. Her skin tone is naturally dark by Pernese standards, darkened even further by the Southern sun, and her eyes are a brown so deep as to be near-black, hooded under prominent brows. Her hair would likewise be thick and dark, except that Rivek has learned from long experience that hair is so much less maintenance when you just don’t have any. At any given time, her hair length is anywhere between “cue ball” and “straight out of the military buzz cut.” She seems to like it like that.

Everything about Rivek is sharp edges, from the prominent cheekbones to the hawklike nose in profile. She is angular and bony, and despite coming in at just shy of five foot one, she somehow manages to look like all legs. The lass never lost her runner look, even Turns out of the craft. When at rest she just looks awkward, a tangle of long limbs and jutting elbows; even if she tolerated physical affection, getting cuddly with her would not be pleasant for any parties involved. Granted, Rivek is very rarely completely still. If she’s not out and about, her good leg is jiggling, or her hands are fidgeting with something. And when she’s active, that awkward look disappears entirely. Her former ground-eating lope may have been ruined by the limp that dogs her steps, but something as simple as pain can’t stop a born runner. At 22, it still remains to be seen whether she’ll ever slow down, or if she’ll just keep going like some bizarre AIVAS gadget.

Personality: Ever met a herding canine? Boundless energy, intense focus, tendency to bark at strangers? Now shave that canine, put it on two legs, give it a wher and some obnoxious personal habits. Okay, meet Rivek.

Rivek is completely, unswervingly reliable. Complete strangers could entrust her with flit eggs, large bags of marks, or small infants, and trust that she’d do her best to look after said items/offspring vigilantly. To those who don’t know her, she might be considered… well, a little off-putting. On first impression, anyway. When Rivek is business, she is just a little too intense for most people. But once you get to know her when she’s off-duty, she’ll be more open with her quirky sense of humor and playfulness. Rivek is a creature of habit – not compulsive by far, but in the sense that she likes to have things just so. Her room is obnoxiously untidy, but she insists that it is a System, and anyone who rearranges things will probably be grumbled at.

Rivek strikes most people as a bundle of tightly wound nervous energy. She is rarely completely still. And well aware of both her own background and her chosen Weyr’s reputation, she seems to have a sort of low-grade paranoia about pretty much everyone when she first meets them... or else she assumes they have a bone to pick with her. Prisoners generally meet with vague suspicion from her, and dragonriders get a kind of grudging, reluctant respect. The difference is that Rivek has control. She can keep her emotions in check, stop herself from lashing out at people… and while her first impressions of people tend to be poor, she is willing to revise them as necessary.

Socially, Rivek is clannish and content to let others lead. She’s comfortable with taking orders from higher-ranking wherhandlers, and in fact does so happily. She likes knowing exactly what is expected of her, and that’s easiest if she can just look to a fellow handler for guidance – she finds it calming to have a clear goal. With her peers, she tends to be restrained with words, but more in the sense that she is concise rather than shy. If she has an opinion, she’ll make it known, but she’ll just come out and say it.

Rivek likes men and women alike – though mostly women. But good luck trying to pursue a relationship with her that's anything but a quick Flight stand. The simple fact is, Rivek is not very good with affection. She just doesn’t really know what to do with it. She’s that gal where you could hug her and she’d just sort of fidget and flop like a startled fish. And for Faranth’s sake don’t go to her asking about your relationship problems. It is like asking a wher to do advanced calculus – it might be adorable at first, but then it’s just kind of sad. If Pern were ending, and the survival of the human race depended on Rivek’s ability to acquire a mate… well, okay, see previous comment about liking ladies, but Pern would still be doomed either way.

History: Rivek was born in a minor hold in Fort environs, as the middle child of... well, a lot. Sometimes that happens. Pern. No birth control. Her parents were both minor crafters, and one by one her siblings were apprenticed off to various crafts as well. There's no other dragonriders or wherhandlers anywhere in her family, at least as far as she knows of - maybe a distant second cousin or something, because if you trace it back far enough everyone in a Hold is pretty much distantly related to everyone else, but nothing to remark on. In short, her family was nothing special.

It was obvious that Rivek was born to be a runner. Running was just... what she did. When she was stressed, needed time alone, or even just bored, Rivek would go outside and push herself until the endorphins made her problems vanish... at least temporarily. It was lucky she wasn't born during a Pass, or she probably would be dead. And her steady, trustworthy demeanor meant that she could be entrusted with the frequently sensitive messages given to runners. She learned all the traces by heart, lived happily at the station, and would have never even thought about dragons or whers... If it weren't for her own stubbornness.

Rivek was given a mission to run a message to the leaders of Fort Weyr. Top secret, they told her. Watch business. Something too important to be entrusted to firelizards, who could be waylaid or intercepted. While she had never met dragonriders before, it was a tremendous honor, and one that she wouldn't give up lightly. True, she hadn't been feeling well lately... But hey, probably just a little bug, right? Wrong. Rivek had managed to come down with fire-head right before the most important run of her (admittedly brief) career so far.

She ran anyway.

It was a stupid thing to do, and she paid rather dearly for it. She arrived a full day later than she was expected, stumbled into the Weyr, and promptly collapsed going down a set of stone steps. She cracked her head but good, too – but more importantly, she broke her leg. Badly. The Weyrhealer had to stitch her up and stick her in a spare bed in the infirmary.

Between the fire-head, the broken leg, and the rather impressive concussion, she was laid up for quite some time. Against her will, for the latter part of it. But it's hard to argue with persistent dizziness, all the charming symptoms of fire-head, and a Weyrhealer armed with fellis. Rivek was miserable, but she stayed until the healer was at last convinced that she was well enough to walk again, at least. As soon as she was well enough to walk, she went back to running. And she kept running… until her leg gave out altogether.

Turns out the damage went a little deeper than the healer had realized. Exacerbated by stress, it turned into a permanently career-ending injury. Low on marks, barred from her craft, and too stubborn and proud to go home with her tail between her legs… Rivek ended up in the less desirable parts of Fort Hold, doing whatever odd jobs someone would pay her for. Most of them involved Dust, in some capacity. One of her regular employers noted the limp and her chronic pain, and coaxed her into an unsavory arrangement: she was ‘paid’ in raw fellis, the juice rather than the processed Dust. It took the edge off, helped her work, made her feel like her old self again. Soon enough, she was only a step or two away from trying the powder itself.

It was at that point that she stepped back and reassessed her life. Something needed to change. She reached out to old acquaintances, people she’d met when traveling as a Runner; one of them, now a wherhandler, knew one of Fort’s queens who had recently laid a clutch. Rivek wisely didn’t mention her current activities, and asked to be presented to the queen. The old gold took a shine to her, and agreed to offer her an egg.

It was wher or Dust. Rivek chose wher.

Not that it was easy. Kicking the fellis habit was hell – not fatal to the newborn Risk the way that a Dust addiction would be, but still hell. But Risk was worth it. She wouldn’t put her wher’s life in danger. For the sake of her bondmate, she could shape up and pull herself together. The blue wasn’t tremendously sharp, but he made up for it with love. Rivek was transferred to Warden’s shortly after the first Hatching there. With the addition of the prisoner weyrlings, and some of the prisoners getting bolder, more wher guards would be needed to prevent escape attempts.

Other stuff: Rivek is mildly claustrophobic. She’s fine with just walking around the prison complex and the like - obviously, or she’d have a heck of a lot of trouble living at Warden’s. But if she’s in a very crowded area, or in a very small space with all the exits blocked, she is prone to anxiety and occasionally panic attacks. If you put her in a cell she would flip a tit.

Pets

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Name: Risk
Color: Blue
Age: 3
Appearance: Risk is... big for a blue. Very big. If it weren't for his color, he could be mistaken for a brown. And it's not just that he's tall; he's big all over. Risk is distinctly stout and barrel-shaped through the midsection, with thick legs and powerful haunches. When he runs, it is with a positively goofy-looking lollop that nonetheless gets him where he's going. Like most Hold-whers, his ears are cropped for his own good, should he ever have to fight, but Rivek refused to have his wings clipped. His overall color is a very light sky blue marbled with an even paler icy blue; he has a darker "saddle" marking on his back, along with the crown of his head and his muzzle.

Personality: Risk loves you. And “’you” is general. Whers are supposed to be suspicious and irritable and potentially extremely nasty…but it seems that Risk entirely missed the memo on that. This blue is pretty much the least irritable wher in existence. He loves Rivek unconditionally, to the point where he will risk anything and everything for her, but…well, let’s be frank. Risk is not the brightest of all whers. And it’s not just that he’s a blue; some blues are a hell of a lot smarter than Risk is. It’s just that somewhere along the lines, when the brains were handed out, Risk seemed to have missed the memo. He’s dumb, but not in a bad way. It’s really rather endearing. Risk is dumb, but he loves you, and what he lacks in brains he makes up for in sheer enthusiasm. Rivek wants something from him? Risk will do it as best he can, and with the impossible tenacity of a wher who lives his entire life to please his handler. A kind word from Rivek is worth more than anything else.

He has a short attention span and is oddly attracted to the sort of games he likely should have stopped caring about as a wherling; fetching, chasing, all the things he should have given up, Risk still maintains. It’s a bit like he never entirely grew past the wherling stage. That’s not to say that he’s by any means physically immature—he’s a grown wher and perfectly capable of chasing should the need strike him—but really, he’s a bit like a puppy. The obnoxious, excitable puppy that spends most of its time chewing on your shoes. Except that Risk won’t chew on Rivek’s shoes; he’ll chew on the shoes of other people and hope that Rivek doesn’t notice. And if she does? Well…hopefully, declarations of love will ameliorate it. Risk relies heavily on these declarations; he did something stupid, but he did it because he loves Rivek, and not for any other reason. So please don’t be mad?