Post by tuathade on Oct 2, 2011 2:18:33 GMT -5
W’ill
Name: W’ill (formerly Willari)
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Prisoner: Outlaw
Crime: Dust possession
Craft/Rank: Journeyman Beastcrafter
Appearance: The first thing most peole notice about W’ill is her hair. Intensely red, shot through with hot amber and coppery undertones, it falls in a barely-controlled flurry of curls. Since her retreat to the jungle, it has only grown less manageable; still, given Warden’s policy of cutting the hair of new prisoners, W’ill’s just-past-the-shoulder hair only shows how long she’s been imprisoned. Her skin is fair, almost pallid – she doesn’t tan, even under the Southern sun, she just burns. As for her eyes, they are a puzzling hazel, sometimes green, sometimes more brown depending on the light… and always, always frightened.
W’ill is five foot four, not precisely petite but certainly below average height, and her slim frame doesn’t lend her much in the way of mass. She was a runnerbeast jockey for most of her life, where being small and light is a significant advantage. She has numerous faint scars and nicks, most of them barely visible. Some of them are the kind you get from regular work with temperamental runnerbeasts - a crooked index finger broken and healed not quite right, a faint hoof-shaped crescent on her shin. Others, like the marks on her arms, are... less obvious in their origin.
Personality: W'ill does not belong among the outlaws. She isn't a hardened criminal. Shells, she doesn't even know how to hurt people. What is she doing here, amongst the murderers and the rapists and the worst that Warden's solitary had to offer? Well, it just sort of... happened that way.
Still, she is a practical girl, even pragmatic, and she's used to dealing with situations where she's accidentally in over her head. Now that she's here, she has no illusions about running back to the weyr and making herself a hero. That's stupid people talk. Or suicide. It'd be a great suicide method. Nor is she a weeping violet who will sit around and bemoan her fate. If she wants to live, then she's got to suck it up and make herself valuable so that she doesn't get herself and her dragon killed and fed to a bunch of starving psychotic weyrlings. (Matith is growing pretty quick. She'd feed a lot of other dragons.) So she keeps her head down, pulls her own weight, and tries to make friends wherever possible.
It helps that she genuinely is personable. W'ill comes across as guileless; she's lacking either the book-smarts of a Healer or the witticisms and charm of a Harper, but she's good with animals and she knows her way around the basics of tannercraft, thanks to turns of caring for and repairing tack. She's known for having a soft spot in particular for those younger than her, although W'ill does not discriminate when it comes to making friends with anyone. Nonetheless she is quietly affectionate, upbeat yet unintrusive, the kind of person who can easily vanish into the background anywhere with little effort.
W'ill's big problem has to do with people, actually. She likes them. She wants to trust them and see the best in them, even when she shouldn't. It's... it's kind of an issue. In fact, it's how she got into the Dust; W'ill simply isn't good at pruning relationships that aren't good for her. It's not that she isn't aware of the problems - see above about her pragmatism. She's sharper than she lets on. It's just that W'ill tends to believe that things will get better. She sees the good with the bad, and doesn't believe in weighing them on a scale to see which comes out on top. If she just keeps at it, she can fix things. Make it work. She is reluctant to give up on anything: not a recalcitrant runnerbeast or a problematic relationship. Not even when it would be in her best interests to run and never look back.
History: W’ill never intended to be a dragonrider. Prior to coming to Warden’s, she had never even met a dragon before.
She grew up at Katz Field, surrounded by runners from the day she was born. Willari was the middle child of... lots. Her father tended to stray, and it was not a very well-guarded secret that there was a gaggle of fiery-haired little sprogs popping up all over - all of them half-siblings. It was a weird childhood.
Still, she showed a talent with the runners. And she was small, and tough, and as soon as she was old enough to walk she was old enough to sit in a saddle. She started off as a stablehand, then an assistant to the runnerbeast trainers, learning their tricks by observation. Then, at last, she found a trainer willing to give her a shot as a jockey. The colt was high-strung, prone to overreacting to the slightest touch of the rein and panicking at passing shadows, but Willari had a light hand and a knack for sticking like glue to a saddle even while her mount was flipping the fuck out. She didn't win her first race, but she kept the crazy beast on the track and running in the right direction, which was pretty much a miracle. The second race, she won.
Her record only improved from there. Eventually she got a deserved reputation for being able to ride 'problem' runners, and in most cases train the worst of the bad habits out of them. Balky, temperamental, buckers, pullers, bolters... She'd ride anything. If the potential for speed was there, she could coax out speed. She didn't always win, but her performances were reliably solid.
Among those who started watching was a fellow jockey, and the first in a series of increasingly problematic relationships for W'ill. None of them ended well; they started off harmless at first, and then... spiraled. She doesn't talk about it. But eventually, her performance on track began to suffer. She needed something to put her back on track. A friend suggested a little Dust. The euphoria would relax her, help her focus, put her back in the right mindset. Only a little. Nothing serious.
Less than a year later she had hit rock bottom. At Warden’s, she was a model prisoner. Never violent, always obliging, she eventually gained the trust of the guards enough that they let her work with the runners. There was no danger of her riding off into the jungle, after all. Where would she go? By all accounts, Will was happy at Warden's. Happier than she had been, anyway - she was detoxed, clean for two years, and above all she was safe.
When the breakout happened, Will was with the runners as usual. She couldn't prevent a pack of criminals from stealing them... But she could go with them. Why? Well, she was Flight-addled and it seemed like a good idea at the time. The outlaws looked like they had a plan, like they knew where they were going. And with the guards on high alert, Will didn't feel like explaining to them why she let Jessan and company just run off with the prison's entire stock of runnerbeasts.
Other stuff:
Pets
None
Matith
Name: Matith
Color: Purple
Age: Newborn
Appearance: Matith is tiny at hatching – ridiculously tiny – but she’ll grow into a huge dragon. In fact, she will gain feet on her length at an alarming rate. Like all purples, she is frail at hatching… but whereas some of the outlaw dragons are lean, sharp, predatory creatures, everything about Matith is delicate. With large, round eyes in a pretty face with a snub muzzle, she is expressive even by the standards of dragonkind. Her soft indigo hide is marbled with faint streaks of lighter bluish-lavender and deeper violet. By nature, she would tend towards a softly rounded build, with just the right amount of curve… but, well, she’s an outlaw dragon. Which means, like all of them, she will likely be underweight. Especially with that alarming growth rate of hers.
Personality: Surprisingly optimistic, helpful, hardworking
Oh, don’t let Matith’s appearance fool you. She’s not some fainting Lady Holder. She survived in the jungle this long! She might have gone between like some of her siblings… But then she didn’t. And now she has W’ill, and everything will be better from now on.
Right?
Matith, like her rider, is a hard worker. Life is tough for the outlaws and their dragons, and the little purple accepts this. Complaining about it doesn’t help anyone. In fact, Matith has an oddly stoic streak; when she is hungry, when she itches or feels sick, she’ll do her best to keep it out of her rider’s head. Where other weyrlings might complain, she goes the opposite direction, trying to hide how tough she’s got it. And she’ll fiercely defend her rider from all criticism – W’ill is doing the best she can. No one can magically make it rain meat or oil or anything else they need… So let’s just keep trying the best we can, Mine, and we’ll make do with what we’ve got. Okay?
As one might guess, Matith is proactive. Her health as a purple will limit what she can do, but she’s not the kind of girl who will ever sit back and wait for things to be brought to her. She tries – and she is clever, and resourceful. Trouble is, she has difficulty making other people (and dragons) see that. Matith has no problems “speaking” with humans via W’ill – with her rider to filter the message, she is secure that her meaning will get across correctly. With her fellow dragons, however, she can come across as vague or even cryptic. When she does speak, some of it gets lost in fluff and tangled metaphor. It’s not that she’s shy or nervous – she’s probably just thinking about something else entirely while she’s talking to you, which means that things get mixed up in her head. There’s so many things the outlaws have to worry about!
