Post by giftwrapped on Sept 27, 2011 11:46:21 GMT -5
DFCustoms2013Alpha
R'ley
R'ley
Name: R'ley - formerly Ripley
Age: 33
Gender: Female
Prisoner: No.
Crime: >|
Craft/Rank: Goldrider
Appearance: R'ley isn’t exactly a delicate flower of a woman. For one thing, she’s tall. As in, five feet eleven inches tall. She has a pretty enough figure for a woman her height, but she’s not very curvy and her cleavage isn’t going to be turning heads any time soon. She’s closer to “skinny” than “toned,” though that’s just a genetic predisposition and has no bearing on her actual muscular capacity, since she’s more than capable of completing the physical tasks necessary to rider life. And she’s not exactly the feminine standard of beauty by any means, either. Her hair is atrocious, for one. The colour, a kind of dark auburn, is pretty, but she seems to have no idea how to style it. “Short” and “ferociously curly” tends to equal “horror story.” Her eyes are mud-brown, and her face just isn’t “pretty.” But there is a sort of ageless quality to her. It’s not that she looks young, per se. It’s just that you can’t really tell exactly how old she is. She could be twenty-five or she could be a young-looking fifty, and there’s no way you can tell just by looking at her.
Personality: Probably the best word to describe R'ley is intense. There's nothing this woman doesn't do with a single-minded ferocity that often comes across as off-putting. But it's not R'ley endeavoring to make you uncomfortable - rather, it's simply the way she operates. People in the past have tried to get R'ley to tone herself down, and she's found it to be completely impossible. When it comes to life, R'ley has one setting, and that setting is "charge headlong into it screaming obscenities." She figures, it's worked for her so far, it'll continue to work as time goes on.
She's bright, very bright, though her aptitude will always be for Pernese things. It's a pity she was born in the era she was and Impressed a gold, in a way; in another time she might have excelled as a brownrider, leading a wing against Threadfall. That said, she doesn't make a bad goldrider, either.
Though she's not charismatic, there's something about R'ley that tends to grab and hold the attention of others. Maybe it's that she's a brilliant strategist - though she doesn't often get the chance to show this off. It's more likely that there's just something about her (though nobody's quite sure what it is) that tends to draw people to her in a crisis. Perhaps it's that she rarely loses her head when it counts (she'll throw a fit at people over small things, but if there's a crisis, R'ley can one hundred percent be depended on to be calm and level-headed), or that she does like working with people, as long as they're not stupid. She doesn't pull punches, though, and if she thinks you're an idiot, well...you'll be the first to know. From her.
And she does know how to fight. Dragonriders aren't supposed to, but then again, Warden's isn't much of a "traditional" Weyr, is it? So R'ley has no qualms about engaging in a fistfight if the situation calls for it, or even just if she needs to blow off steam. Brisk physical activity is the best way to calm yourself down, after all.
History: Ripley's early life was uneventful; raised at Benden Hold by a vintner and an ex-harper, she was not particularly talented in either of those crafts, but seemed to prefer the idea of only staying in Benden to train as a Vintner to heading all the way to Fort for Harper training. So when she was twelve, she was packed up and shipped off to Vintnercraft Hall. Her apprenticeship was just as uneventful as everything else, and she walked the tables (with no particular talents and no interest in attempting anything more) at age twenty-three. She was sent to a Weyr, largely because there is nobody on Pern who consumes as much alcohol as dragonriders do.
The first year there consisted largely of learning to break up drunken brawls and kick the asses of anyone overly drunk who started hitting on her. Weyrlife was good for Ripley, who seriously enjoyed pretty much everything about it, from loose sexual mores to a surprisingly party-tastic atmosphere to all the attractive people on beautiful dragons. It was really just a dream come true for Ripley, who had been bored as shit everywhere else. So she spent most of the time that wasn't spent making or serving alcohol sleeping with dragonriders. It worked out pretty well.
She was twenty-four when she met C'ross, a bad-tempered, stunningly handsome bronzerider with a dragon that, if anything, captivated Ripley significantly more than even his rider could. They hit it off...terribly. Ripley got on C'ross's bad side, C'ross pushed all of Ripley's buttons, and they spent most of their time fighting like cats in a sack. But when personalities like that clashed, it was inevitable that somewhere along the line, fighting would turn into foreplay - and it wasn't long before Ripley and C'ross ended up in a relationship that was little more than a string of one-night stands.
It solidified into regular meetings that eventually became romance. C'ross taught Ripley how to fistfight and deal with dangerous criminals - not because he felt she needed it, but because she harassed him until he did. Ripley started working as a part-time guard at prisons in neighboring holds and guard staff for criminals when the Watch needed laypeople. She kept up her work serving drinks, of course, but...this was more interesting. And for a while, things worked just about right. And then C'ross met I'saac. And, well. Ripley was a lot of things, but she wasn't stupid. C'ross's interest in the greenrider didn't escape her, even if it did him.
It's never pleasant, to lose your boyfriend of several years to another person (especially a man), but Ripley, jaded and unsentimental as she was, knew that elusive thing called "true love" (though neither of them ever used a phrasing that embarrassing) when she saw it. And staked for thread if she was going to be the one holding C'ross back from that. So she phased herself out of his life. Not in the sense that she stopped coming, but in the sense that she let him go. The Pernese don't have the proverb "If you love something, set it free." But they might as well have. He was happier with I'saac. That was the most important part.
She kept in contact with C'ross as friends until Warden's Weyr was built and her bronzerider took his lover and transferred to the Southern Continent. She still wrote him, occasionally, but monthly letters turned seasonal...turned biannual...turned annual. Eventually, they stopped. Ripley moved on. She kept her post at the Weyr, doing a little bit of everything but mostly guard work (it kept her busy) and bartending (it kept her busier). She was always present for Hatchings, more out of curiosity for dragons than anything else. For several, there were no gold eggs. And then, two turns after C'ross left, a gold egg was laid.
She attended that Hatching as well; at thirty-one, she certainly considered herself much too old to Impress a dragon. And after all, none had looked at her before. But apparently her thoughts and past experiences meant nothing, and golden Nostromoth made her decision for her, heading straight for the Stands and dragging an astonished Ripley right over the railing. She immediately elided her name, refused to acknowledge the rank "Junior Weyrwoman," and refused segregated classes. She did, however, keep the flamethrower. She likes the flamethrower.
She and Nostromoth were unassuming for goldriders, and R'ley, pain in the neck though she turned out to be, did good work when she wasn't being an all-consuming bitch. On the other hand, shortly after Nostromoth's second birthday, a call went out for rider transfers to Warden's. They needed golds. R'ley...didn't want to go. Painful reminders of old wounds were just that - painful.
Nostromoth volunteered them anyway. The bitch.
Other stuff: R'ley is not thrilled at the idea that Nostromoth will be Rising in her maiden Flight at a prison Weyr full of crazies, assholes, and criminals.
Pets
Name: Jones
Species: Tomcat
Color: Orange tabby
Appearance: He's big - very big, at nearly eleven pounds - and it's all muscle. He's slightly scarred up from old fights, but still a pretty good-looking cat.
Personality: ...He's a cat. He views everyone with a sort of detached malice, except R'ley, with whom he is very, very friendly. This is, naturally, only because she feeds him.
Name: Facehugger
Species: Firelizard
Color: Brown
Appearance: Brown so dark that he’s nearly black. Out in the sunlight and bright light, it’s easier to realize that he’s just a dark brown and speckled with bits of lighter brown.
Personality: He's generally a fairly curious little firelizard, the sort who wants to investigate everything and everyone. He’s clingy. Terribly, terribly clingy. Leaving him alone for long periods of time means noise, noise, NOISE as he tries to punish people to leaving him. Can you say ‘abandonment issues’? This firelizard sure can’t, but hopefully his owner will find a way to deal with it. Thankfully, he’s also incredibly cuddly. Unfortunately, he prefers to cuddle faces. Can you also say ‘cock block’?
Nostromoth
Name: Nostromoth, but R'ley calls her Mother
Color: Gold
Age: 2
Appearance: Nostromoth is - there's no two ways about it - huge. Not just in length (she has that in spades, though; hitting 48 feet easily) but also in girth. She's a bulky dragon, and while much of it is muscle - her build in that respect is almost closer to that of a wher than a dragon - there's padding to go with it. It doesn't hamper her in the sky, but it means that she has traded all maneuverability for stamina. Her wings reflect this: enormously long and tapered, they make her resemble nothing more than a massive Pernese version of an albatross when she's in flight. She's not an attractive dragon, but she gets the job done.
Her colour is unusual but not stunning - a weird gold that seems almost dark grey out of direct sunlight, the only time she really has that stunning shine that other golds have is when the sun is shining directly on her. The only place you'll find pure gold on this lady is in small patches on her face, shoulders, and haunches - as if someone took a rag and scrubbed away the grimy greyish patina and exposed a proper gold dragon below.
Personality: The uninitiated sometimes make the mistake of assuming that Nostromoth is called Mother because she’s in some way loving. This couldn't be farther from the truth; it's just that R'ley gave her the nickname in a fit of sarcastic pique and it stuck. Nostromoth is quite possibly the most hands-off gold that Pern has ever seen. She takes very little interest in others, especially humans, whom she seems to view mostly as interesting tools to make things happen. But even in the case of dragons, Nostromoth doesn't seem to have a lot of interest to spare. She is calm, cold, and strangely formal when she speaks with anything, regardless of its species. Unsurprisingly, it's often quite difficult to hold a conversation with this dragon. More often than not, she is entirely silent, speaking only in commands or short answers to questions. If you want Nostromoth to share something with you, you'd better know how to issue painfully direct questions. Otherwise, you're getting nothing.
That said, Nostromoth's silence is a busy one. She has Plans, that much is obvious. R'ley would have preferred not to accept the gig at Warden's when the call went up across the Weyrs, but Nostromoth simply ignored her rider's wishes and volunteered them immediately. Whatever plans she has concerning Warden's are mysteries even to R'ley, though; Nostromoth has a rigid idea of hierarchy, and unless you are of higher rank than her, this gold will simply refuse to honor any requests she sees as unreasonable or unnecessary. This is problematic largely because Nostromoth is a gold dragon and sees nobody as being of greater rank than her. It's an understandably huge point of conflict with her rider.
But for all her coldness, Nostromoth does care what happens to those around her. She just cares in a way that consists mostly of her going around behind the scenes fixing things so it works well. When she decides she has a mission, she will follow it through to the very end, and currently, she has decided that her mission is to ensure that Warden's Weyr runs like clockwork. She takes herself and her role much more seriously than R'ley does - in fact, she's decided that if R'ley doesn't see her role as exceedingly important, then she will take it twice as seriously to make up for it. She will fight viciously to protect the Weyr if need be, and she makes the well-being of its residents her first priority. Usually.
Questions
1. How does your character feel about the Warden's Weyr practice of allowing squads be led by anyone who shows ability, regardless of their dragon's color and their gender?
2. What is your character's view of the criminals?
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3. How does your character feel about letting criminals stand?
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4. How does your character feel about the irregular colors?
5. How does your character feel about Warden's Weyr not having the positions of 'Weyrleader' and 'Weyrwoman'?
