Post by stormecho on Dec 2, 2011 21:18:42 GMT -5
Candidate Application
Name: Lethe
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Aromantic asexual
Rank: Candidate
Location: South Run Weyr
Appearance: Lethe cannot be called pretty - her face is a strong one, winged brows and hawk-like nose giving her a haughty appearance. Grey eyes and dark hair - cut raggedly at neck length - mark her as from the High Reaches, and she has not led a pampered life. Her fingers, though long and nimble and the perfect image of harper's hands, are calloused and scarred, covered with tiny nicks and cuts from the blades she wields. A longer scar slices down the base of her left thumb, and aside from the collection of smaller cuts, she has one last impressive scar on her cheek under her left eye.
She is well-muscled, and even stands with a certain attitude - not confidence but certainty of where she is and what she needs to do, a sense of purpose. There is little doubt that she is trained in fighting, and she doesn't even try to hide it - her alertness to her surroundings and the ease with which she handles blades makes it clear.
Personality: Sharp and cold, someone had once compared Lethe to one of the blades she so favours.
It is not an undue comparison. Lethe is... hard to get along with, for one. She is not aggressive, nor easily provoked into a rage, but she is coldly confrontational. She has high standards, and holds herself and everyone else to them. She believes in logical decisions and sense, especially when everyone is inclined to fall into chaos and melodramatics. She has a tendency to pick apart others' decisions, challenge them if she believes them to be flawed and she does not back down easily. This alone has ensured she has few friends and many enemies, as she rarely respects authority unless it is justly earned - and earning it, in her opinion, should not be a matter of inheritance or chance.
Despite being overly critical, Lethe has a head for tactics and is excellent at analysing the situation. She likes challenges, and constantly sets goals for herself, pushing to meet them with an impressive drive. However, one might argue that she has too much determination, as she will sometimes push herself too hard. Forgoing food, her current exhaustion - she does so often. She focuses easily - too easily, sometimes, and it is hard to get her to relax. She is always on the alert, always observant, and it is simply impossible for a human being to be so all the time, but she tries. Those are her blindspots. Where she would admit that someone else should rest so they can be in good health, so they will still be able to think and be useful - she does not accept that for herself.
She is used to the disdain or anger of others, and thus does not tend to trust or notice others. She does not reject overtures of friendship, but does not expect them to last. She is awkward with social interaction, lacking any sort of easy charisma or tact to keep from ruffling others' feathers. She is too blunt, too straightforward, and her viewpoint is often less personal and too critical to make it easy to hear. Lethe is most definitely not a people person - she cannot connect with them or soothe them, and she is embarrassingly bad at comfort and sympathy. The most she has ever come to friends is sparring partners, and even that is a mixture of an equal and a potential threat.
She considers herself cautious, but others might assume her to be paranoid - she carries at least two blades openly on her at all times, and at least one other hidden, and instantly expects that anyone not openly carrying a weapon has a hidden one. Overestimation of an opponent is, in her opinion, far better than underestimating, and it adds to her inability to relax around other people, no matter how innocent or harmless they may appear.
She appreciated the blade analogy, then, considering her constant quest to become sharper, refining and honing her skills and knowledge.
Family: S'yam - Father, 50, rider of blue Niebeth
Prinla - Mother, 53, rider of green Dimorith
Keilar - Brother, 19
Vitte - Brother, 13
Background: Born to a dragonrider pair - remnants from High Reaches - at Ista Weyr and with an older brother, Lethe was never incredibly attached to her family. Her parents were aloof, held apart from their children by duty and also by choice - they did not have the temperament to raise children, and never took a great deal of interest in her or her brother personally. Lethe did not miss that contact, and as she and her brother grew and they acquired another sibling, she learned to rely on herself - she disliked running to Keilar for help simply because he was bigger and stronger.
Argumentative even as a child - and quite fond of using "Why" as her weapon to ferret out the reasons for things - she often irritated the older children. Some chose to pick on her, either subtly or outright pushing her around, which she did not take well. Her fights, in the beginning, were the classic scraps of children, un-aimed and with no idea of what she was doing. Eventually, her mother learned of this and attempted to show her how to defend herself, the first time there was true interest in what her daughter was doing. Lethe had no natural talent in unarmed brawling, and proved it, gaining bruises at every opportunity - but she was fascinated with knives, and though she was not instantly skilled with them, she took to practising with a surprising dedication.
The children, like they tended to, grew up and no longer continued to bully her. At that point, it didn't matter - she learned because fighting with a knife in her hand sharpened the world, bringing it to a terrible and beautiful clarity of movement and edges and light. Everything became clear and honed and she longed to exist in that state all the time, which only drove her onward.
The politics of the Weyr was not something she paid attention to at the age of twelve - her parents were some of the dragonriders who went with Oolarnth to re-found High Reaches, but she was not affected, remaining a Candidate at Ista. The arrival of the coalition to argue about Thread was, if surprising, not something she might have paid attention to if not for the reaction of the Istan riders to it.
Dismissive. Contemptuous. Not that she learned of it instantly - only once the coalition became known and blamed for the disappearances of firestone and eggs from Ista's own sands. Her knowledge of it was spotty at best, but her interest grew as the Weyrs acted against the islands. She was not exactly honourable about her way of finding things out, pestering riders or simply lingering to try to overhear on conversations, outright asking without any attempts to hide her curiosity. She would never be good at subterfuge, so she didn't bother trying. Her questions were innocent enough, though, and what she learned was sparse anyways - just enough to give her a location, an idea of what was going on.
Rebel riders, stealing from the other Weyrs - but she could not quite equate the impressive effort it must have taken to organize the raids, to stir the Weyrs to anger, with a selfish desire or a need for piracy. If they were rebelling, it was for a reason. And she wanted to know what it was.
Arranging to be dropped off at the archipelago was difficult, but manageable. Even spending time with smugglers was tolerable - other than some initial attempts to unnerve and scare her, she was left alone.
Waiting for a rider, however, was not. It took two weeks, while she paced and perused what surely had to be stolen knives and practised and fretted because she wasn't doing anything. When the rider arrived, though, she found herself Searched and taken to the Weyr, on a rather more drastic course of action than she had believed herself capable of in the past Turns.
Pets: None.
Color Preference: I seriously have none. Dragons are dragons and thus awesome and I can see her on any colour - what's important is the development, plot and interaction that stems from it. So, uh... yeeeeah.
Metallic Only: Nope~