Post by Inkwell on Jun 13, 2011 23:22:36 GMT -5
Astor
Name: Astor
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Prisoner: Yes
Crime: Arson, Murder (various counts), Attempted Murder
Craft/Rank: Outlaw, previously Journeyman Woodcrafter
Appearance: Astor stands at average height, about 5'9''. He is a stockily-built young man, obviously used to hard work outside if his ample muscle and tan skin are any indication. His torso is perhaps a little longer than the normal proportion, as are his arms: his strength obviously lies in his upper body. His shoulders, while broad, are rounded, as is most of the rest of him: he is not a man of angles, but rather blocky curves.
His jaw is wide and covered in black stubble that matches the thick black hair on his head, short and swept back from his face save for a single unruly strand that falls into his forehead. His mouth is wide and tends to quirk lopsidedly, his lips full and actually fairly attractive if one ignores the small scar that mars the left side of the bottom lip. His nose is as blocky as the rest of him, with a thick, knobby bridge that makes it one of his most identifying facial features... besides his eyes. Astor's eyes are electric blue and impossibly wide, practically circular. They are ringed by permanent dark circles, both from stress and from Astor simply not being a man who sleeps much. He also tends to squint a lot, because, though he won't admit it, Astor needs glasses. He is farsighted and cannot clearly see anything less than about fifteen feet away from him.
Given his history, Astor has some interesting scars. Besides the one on his mouth, his entire left side is covered in healed-over burn scars. These don't plague him much, but they do limit his sensitivity to a degree, especially in his left hand which is somewhat effected.
When Astor gestures, he gestures with the entirety of his upper body. His hands, shoulders and head all take part in getting his point across. This is a direct result of his generally hyperactive and sometimes childish nature. His expressions are also not only varied but all extreme. He is capable of subtlety but only when he is being deadly serious, which generally isn't often -- even a serious situation, to Astor, is often a game, so you will very likely never see a subtle expression on his face. His smiles are full-face smiles, his frowns are the most butthurt of frowns, his snarls are almost animalistic. One can always tell Astor's mood simply by looking at him, which is likely helpful given his otherwise unpredictable and quickly-changing nature.
Personality: How does one begin to describe the roiling ball of insanity that is Astor's mind? The answer: very, very carefully. Astor is a man that it would be wise to walk on eggshells around, because the first rule of his personality is that it is always subject to change. He is notoriously unpredictable, which is perhaps why he has so few actual friends. Even if he loves you one moment, it's no guarantee that he won't hate you with the passion of a thousand fiery suns the next.
Like his expressions, Astor's emotions are never subtle, generally because he shows them so plainly. He is often a caricature of himself. His anger is explosive, his joy boundless, his sadness world-ending and his lust unspeakable, even though the actual emotions he's experiencing are perhaps less-so. He tends to make everything larger than it is, both because he honestly believes everything concerning him is a 'big deal' and because he really has no brain to mouth filter. He says what he wants to say and cares very little about the consequences, unless of course he's speaking to his Idol Figure.
The world for Astor is very clearly divided into a hierarchy. The very top of the heap is his Idol Figure, or rather, someone that he latches onto as a nurturing and parental figure in his life. They become his rock, his source of joy, praise, company and confidence. This may seem outwardly fairly benign, until one realizes that Astor will go to almost any lengths to get this praise and company. He will often latch onto someone whether they like it or not, hound them constantly, beg and whine and generally act like a spoiled brat. He also gets frighteningly possessive once he has made his choice, and will verbally or even physically attack anyone that seems to be getting too close to his Idol. For lack of a better analogy, he Impresses upon a certain other person, and then becomes the most possessive, aggressive dragon ever while simultaneously depending upon them for everything as a dragonet would its weyrling and believing that his Idol can do no wrong.
Next is himself. Astor sees himself as a godling of sorts: if his Idol is a perfect being, incapable of fault, then he is that perfect being's protege. He is free to do as he pleases and answers to no one. The world is his sandbox and the people and animals in it are his toys. To Astor, everything is a game, including the lives of other people, because they don't matter. He enjoys nothing more than playing with the world as a child would play with action figures: that is, setting them up in a nice, 'normal' situation and then introducing a foreign and disastrous element.
Usually, that element is fire. Astor is a mild pyromaniac: he sees fire as the most primal and effective form of destruction short of a flight of feral, enraged dragons. In a way, this adds to his own 'dragonish' qualities: he sees the world simply, he (for lack of a better word) Impresses, and he... well... flames. He loves the way they look, the way they smell, and the way they crawl over wood and human flesh alike. Fire holds no fear for him, either, especially not after having most of his left side burned. He survived then, didn't he, so fire clearly cannot harm him. He is its Master, as he is Master of most of his other toys.
Those toys being the humans he surrounds himself with. Astor is a man that likes to feel big, but to feel big, he needs to feel needed. His abandonment issues run deep and have resulted in him having an obsession with making people dependent on him, merely so they 'won't leave'. If he takes a fancy to another person or animal, he'll generally try to sway them into liking him by force rather than general human interaction. He is unused to working for what he wants and so merely takes, generally by breaking the person utterly and then taking it upon himself to lovingly, tenderly fix them like the caring and nurturing person he is. So they'll never leave, right? Because they love him and trust him, right? RIGHT?!
History: Astor's life, up until about age of twelve, was fairly normal and even wholesome. He was raised by a mother that he adored and a father that, while hard-working and often busy, did his best to make time for his only son. They were a close-knit family and when Astor's mother became pregnant, it seemed as though they would only get closer.
The baby died while in the womb and unfortunately, thanks to blood poisoning, neither she nor her mother survived. Both Astor and his father, Isaak, were horribly affected by this news. Isaak moved what was left of his family far away, uprooting both their lives because it was the only thing he could think of to get away from the loss of his wife and daughter. Astor, meanwhile, withdrew into himself and began nursing a burning hatred for his father.
Isaak had once explained to him why his mother was pregnant, and had made it expressly clear that it was something a man and a woman did together, but that the man was essential. He had been trying to teach Astor a life lesson, most likely, but all Astor got out of it was that it was his father's fault that his mother was dead. His father had put that baby in her stomach. If it hadn't been there, she would have lived. Thus it logically followed that Isaak was solely to blame.
With his mind settled on this matter, Astor began to act out violently, fighting with his father first verbally and then physically. He also tried to set fire to various parts of the house several times. Isaak, who was already a broken and tired man, sent his son off to a crafthall in order to put some distance between them. He figured that all Astor needed were more friends of his own age and something do to, and he would become the happy, open boy he'd once been.
This didn't quite work. Astor saw this as utter abandonment and rejection on his father's part, and added that to another reason to hate him. Eventually his hatred grew so single-minded and strong that it shattered him completely inside. If his real father was such an evil person, then he would find a new father. He would rebuild his world around him to suit his needs and make the good life his father was denying him for himself.
He latched on to his teacher at the crafthall, Madik: a man who was gentle, patient, and most importantly, gave him praise. He began to build up and image of this man in his mind, the image of an idol, a god who could do no wrong and would always unconditionally love him. He needed it, so he invented it. The other apprentices became his playthings and subjects. If they weren't properly in awe of him, he bullied them until they were. A notable example of this occurred when he was nearly seventeen, and broke another boy's fingers for refusing to praise his work. He then spent hours carefully setting and binding said fingers, unprompted, all the while whispering sweet nothings to the boy and assuring him that he was so sorry and that it was okay and that he'd always be there to protect him, now that he understood. The boy was too scared to leave the crafhall and in fact began to follow Astor constantly and do his dirty work when Astor himself couldn't be bothered.
This continued on for some time, never quite so bad that anyone took notice of something off behind Astor's bright smiles and his well-carved crafts, but enough that there was always a slight tinge of unrest surrounding him. It was probably good that no one knew of his habit of carving little effigies of people he disliked out of wood and then burning them, or his love of sneaking out into the fields at night and lighting a fire just to see if he could control it. To him, these were games, fun diversions.
And then things got very serious. Madik's young son entered the cratfhall. Astor had come to think of himself as the man's child. His only child. The only one he could love and praise and laugh with and touch on the shoulder just so. He knew he had to get rid of the other boy who was now getting all of the attention that was supposed to go to him.
So he set the apprentice quarters on fire. The son perished, as did all of the other apprentice woodcrafters, because Astor had made sure to bar any exits. He was twenty-three at the time, now a journeyman and working directly under his teacher, so he knew the crafthall inside and out. His next stop was Madik's quarters.
This man had chosen another over him. Had betrayed him. Abandoned him. Just like Isaak had done. Astor set his room on fire too, barring all exits as before, but this time, he didn't leave for another destination. He sat in front of the door and merely listened to the crackle of the flames and the groan of the wood. He smelt the fire and the various things it consumed. He leaned right up against the door and felt the heat -- and there was his undoing. He was caught under the flaming door when Madik, who was not a stupid man, axed it down to escape.
He was badly burned, bruised all over, with a good deal of broken bones. The moment the door was off him, he was carted away to Warden's, where he was healed well enough to be getting on with and was imprisoned for a turn. The guards were impossible to turn to his way of thinking because he couldn't get his hands on them to hurt them without being severely punished, and the other prisoners were usually too busy with their own lives to pay him much attention. With the loss of his previous Idol, he'd been living more or less in the shadows, still displaying his extreme emotions and simplified view of things but without a central rock to give him focus. The breakout focused him, certainly, more than anything else had.
And now, he plans to stand for one of the stolen dragon eggs. What could possibly go wrong?
Other stuff: All that training in the crafthall didn't go to waste: Astor really is an accomplished woodcrafter, and he does still delight in making effigies of people he doesn't like and burning them. It's therapeutic.
Brigith
Name: Brigith
Color: Tortie
Flower: Mourning Bride
Hex Code: CC6600
Age: Hatchling (at the moment)
Appearance:Brigith may have the coloring of a housecat, but that doesn't mean she's built like one. This girl is more along the line of a panther, all muscular power under a pretty hide, capable of slinking and face-hugging the larger of her sisters. She's a little smaller then a pink, a bit bigger then a brown - maybe she won't be able to fight off Juarth and Beoth with her claws alone, but she can do enough damage with them to give the young men a smarting.
In terms of color... Brigith is a 'tortie'. She has no one true color, and this, in itself, may be a problem. There isn't a way to classify her, but she is certainly unique. It's a good thing that she enjoys being hidden away, as her coloring and mottled pattern give excellent means of hiding. Maybe not so much those bright bursts of orange but... A girl can try, can't she?
Personality: Brigith is a dragon of extremes. There is no gray area, no in betweens, and there is nothing else but 'this is GOOD' and 'this is BAD'. What counts as good and bad varies greatly on her moods at the time, and whether or not Hers likes it. Once filed away in one of the categories, her ideas stay there; if you make an enemy of Brigith, it isn’t likely to change anytime soon. Brigith will not try to argue her points and beliefs as she is right, and others are silly for thinking otherwise, but she’ll instead look to Hers to defend her.
Her sense of extremes extends also to her rider; Brigith loves her rider. She loves them so much that she needs to always protect them - the world is hard, and the jungle is BAD. People want to cripple her! They would, if they found them, and Hers must be protected. In order to do that, she needs to keep them away from the big badness, needs to keep them only to herself, and if they disagree… well…
What's a girl to do?
In her paranoia, a trait only strengthens as she gets older, Brigith buries her psyche deeply into that of her rider. Her fears are their fears, her happiness their happiness, and once Brigith has sunk her claws in, she does not ever let go - she is devoted to her rider because he is part of her, as she is him. Being the girl she is, to the extremes she goes, Brigith's love spills over to her rider, much like every other emotion. She makes sure Hers knows this, and has no problem reminding them.
Brigith is nosy, invasive, and she absolutely needs to know all of the business, ever. Refusing to give her information results in a paranoid state where YOU are the enemy and must be destroyed. She is obsessive in her desire to know all, to protect her home and Hers, and anything else she puts her mind to.
On that note - can we say OCD? Yes we can! She doesn't need to do everything multiple times, but when Brigith gets an idea into her head of how things MUST be, she tends to get, well...
Obsessive.
Don't get in her way.
Why Me? To any casual observer, Brigith and her latching on to Astor to be nothing more then like calling to like - the paranoid, the slightly off-kilter, the obsessive. She is a clingy, self-indulgent creature, and she needed someone to appease her rather erratic whims. In Brigith, Astor will find his unconditional, if somewhat intense, love. He will also find power in her uniqueness, her atypical ability to hurt others, her innate ability to protect them from her worst fears: being stolen, being found. As for Brigith, Astor is her protector, and even in the shell he loved her. He warned others from her, he had been willing to take hits for her. Astor is not a weak mind, but he is in touch enough with his baser instincts to allow her to dig her little pinpricked claws in as deep as she wants.
Doting on him and loving him will keep her from any serious breakdowns, and hopefully the same will be true for him. She is meant to be a damper on his explosions and keep them from raging out of control.
They make a dangerous pair, the two of them, and Brigith will make sure Hers knows they can have others see it too.
