Wher-handlers! Whoot! ^_^ These two are a study in contrasts... -- Joining Board

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Date Posted: 20:56:56 03/11/05 Fri
Author: LG
Subject: Wher-handlers! Whoot! ^_^ These two are a study in contrasts...

*steams* I wrote this all up, and yes, there was a lot of HTML. Then Voy threw a hissy fit, so I have to go through and strip it ALL. Since I prefer using bold tags for emphasis, and I deliberately went for lots of emphasis in Oriana's "brief" history because I was aiming for light humor, that's a lot of stripping. Forecasts says "highly annoyed" throughout the evening, with a 70% chance of "bad-tempered" later tonight....

NAME: Hale
AGE: 64
GENDER: Male
DESCRIPTION: Once tall and muscular, Hale is now a bit bowed with age, and though not frail, no longer has much strength left in him. His skin has the texture of old leather, weathered by years of hard work and coal dust, but is very pale due to his nocturnal schedule. He walks with a cane and a limp, and his eyesight is foggy, though he can still hear fairly well. His wrinkled face has more laugh-lines than frown-lines, and though they're clouded by cataracts, his blue eyes still sparkle. His shoulder-length hair is a slatey grey, fading slowly to white, and he has a neatly trimmed beard and moustache.
Though he may not see or walk as well as he used to, and his memory fails him once in a while, Hale's mind is only slightly fuzzed by his age. He does tend to wander around in a bit of a muddle, but he's never been the brightest crayon in the box, and his sense of direction has always been atrocious, so the befuddlement is not a product of age. He's very friendly and gregarious, and though not very talkative under normal circumstances, can be hard to stop once you've got him talking about mining or whers (Halsk in particular) or reminiscing about the "old days". He hates the thought of being a burden or having no purpose, and always tries to be helpful, sometimes doing more harm than good in his quest to be useful. Though good-natured and kind, he's not the grandfatherly type, and is always uncomfortable around children, though he does his best with them. In short, he has a good heart. He also has a rather noticeable fondness for wine under all circumstances, even when you'd think it wouldn't be appropriate.
SKILLS: Though he's not an expert in the specifics and specialties of the Craft, Hale knows a great deal about mining, and everything there is to know about handling a mining-camp watchwher. Obviously, he knows a lot about watchwhers in general, but working in a mine is the only specific wher discipline he knows much about.
WATCHWHER: Halsk - green. On the small side, arthritic and extremely hard of hearing. Once muddy brownish-green, now shading to grey-green on head and neck, legs, wing edges, and tail.

BRIEF HISTORY: Hale grew up in a Hold, and was always interested in the watchwher there, constantly pestering the people who tended it with curious questions. Somebody must have noticed his interest and passed it on to a queen's handler, because she personally sent him an invitation to try for an egg when he was fourteen. He didn't succeed that time... but he remained with her, learning more about whers, and obviously did succeed the next time, or Halsk wouldn't be with him. Once they were trained, he was sent off to work with the Miners, and he and Halsk shuffled from Hall to Camp for years. It was not until he was in his early fifties and suffered a painful but fortunately non-fatal heart attack that Hale reluctantly admitted he could no longer work, and he and Halsk settled down for an unhappy retirement - unhappy for Hale, at least, since Halsk has always been perfectly happy to enjoy her hard-earned rest. Then the disasters struck, and the Miners that the pair had ended up with did their best to care for him, but his health was failing in the privation, and they decided that with it so hard to find shelter anymore, he'd be better off in the warm and sunny South. The sailor they managed to find was blown off-course enroute, and Hale happily declared the deserted island they ended up on the exact kind of tropical paradise he was looking for. The sailor was all too happy to get rid of Halsk, who had taken to being sea-sick, so Hale and Halsk puttered about on the cave-riddled island until a New Isle dragonrider on patrol spotted them and had them brought to the Weyr. (To be frank, I'm not sure Halsk is very happy with having their privacy so disturbed, though she's willing to tolerate it since Hale is happier to be among people again. She also did not enjoy the boat ride to the Weyr, and Hale openly admits that while being sea-sick was, for the most part, involuntary, she probably did do it on the navigator's shoes intentionally.)

NAME: Oriana
AGE: 28
GENDER: Female
DESCRIPTION: Short but big-boned, Oriana has the strength and muscles of someone who spent her childhood tending a farmhold. Her skin is light but not pale, and her hair - cut short just below her ears - is the sort of color that's not quite brown and not quite black, and generally described as simply "dark". Her eyes are pale blue, set in a heart-shaped face, and she can certainly claim to be pretty, though her figure is too pudgy and her too small to make her beautiful. She has a jagged scar down her left shoulder, usually hidden by her shirt, but she's very self-conscious of it.
Oriana doesn't mean to be a coward, but she just doesn't have it in her to be brave. She's not entirely spineless, but she's easily paralyzed by fear - real, physical fear, not the shyness that can cripple personal relationships. In fact, she's far from shy, outgoing to the point of overbearing and almost desperate for companionship. While tunnel-snakes and Holdless terrify her, her only great emotional fear is being alone, and she does her best to surround herself with people. Whether they're actually friends is irrelevant to her. She's extremely self-conscious of the way she looks and appears to other people, and can be very self-centered, but she tries hard not to actually be selfish. Though she tries to change, she's just a little bit lazy, enough so that she generally can't sustain the effort needed to change her behavior. Obviously, though, she has some capacity for empathy and genuine personal connection, or she would never have bonded to Orisk.
SKILLS: A hard worker, Oriana knows a lot about the basic physical processes of farming - the plowing, sowing, weeding, and harvesting - as well as a bit about the rest of it, such as what kinds of seeds to plant when and how long to let fields lie fallow. She's also a fair hand at dying and weaving, though she doesn't have anywhere near a true Weaver's skill; it was a hobby for her, nothing more.
*She knows practically NOTHING about watchwhers.*
WATCHWHER: Orisk - blue. Average in size, dark purplish blue, almost indigo, with streaks of near-white on his muzzle.

BRIEF HISTORY: Raised at a farming hold large enough to merit a watchwher but small enough not to be a full Hold, Oriana chose to hold off marriage for quite a while, until she found someone she loved. This gave false hope to Vallen, the hold's watchwher-handler, who had been deeply but quietly in love with her since mad infatuation had first blossomed when they were both fourteen. (It had matured and smoothed out over the years, obviously, but it had started as infatuation and nothing more.) If he had been brave enough to tell her, she might have found herself returning his feelings, but he was a quiet, reserved man who wanted some kind of sign before he committed his heart, and never realized that a girl who hardly ever saw them because he lived with the watchwher and was only awake at night, while she was AFRAID of the watchwher and was only awake at night, was probably not going to know him well enough to return his interest, especially since he was so good at stalking that she literally never knew he was doing it. (I never said he was bright. He was, however, rather obsessed, as you will see shortly.) The hold broke up after the disasters, though, the soil ruined by the sudden subsidence in an earthquake and its subsequent transformation into swamp. Oriana and three young farmhands, not close friends of hers but inviting her along because they didn't like the thought of a woman travelling alone, headed south in search of new opportunity, and Vallen and Vallensk followed. Silently. In the night. Like stalkers. (Which, really, they were. I TOLD you he was obsessed.) Of course, four people travelling alone, one of them a fairly pretty, relatively young woman, were very soon attacked by a large group of Holdless men, who killed the farmhands and bound Oriana, causing her a few injuries when they did so (one of them being the source of the scar on her shoulder. Now you know). They probably had something unpleasant in mind for her, but fortunately, Vallen saw a chance to be a hero for his beloved, and leapt to the rescue. Unfortunately, Vallen didn't take into account that:
A) there were eleven of them and one of him, and he'd left Vallensk with strict instructions to guard Oriana while Vallen himself fought, and
B) charging into the middle of a group, weaponless, while they still have their own weapons out and have not been noticeably harmed in their previous battle, but HAVE gotten their blood up, is pretty much a recipe for a butt-kicking. (I DID mention that Vallen wasn't particularly intelligent, right?)
Anyway, Vallen ended up very dead very quickly. Fortunately (again), Vallensk took his orders very seriously, and protected Oriana. For quite a while. Until the three Holdless men not brave or stupid enough to challenge a watchwher, under orders to guard something, whose handler has just been slaughtered by its attackers ran away screaming. By now, Oriana had fainted in terror and shock, and came about to Vallensk standing over her, making distressed sounds, and licking the wound on her shoulder. After she managed to free herself from her bonds (the Holdless were not good knot-tyers and had not intended to need the ropes for very long anyway), she managed to have a few clear thoughts despite the fact that the big scary watchwher was standing there and the person who knew how to control it was dead, and decided that a big scary watchwher wouldn't be THAT bad to have around when it obviously liked her and could turn eight men into mincemeat when annoyed. (Unlike Vallen, Oriana is fairly intelligent. Not brilliant by any means, but she does have more than empty space between her ears.) So, with the combination of the Holdless mens' entire meat stock and Vallen's final orders, she managed to convince Vallensk to follow her instead of hang around mourning over the dead body of his handler. Over time, her fear receeded, she learned a bit about watchwhers (though not much, since all of it was guesswork judging from Orisk's behavior), and grew closer and closer to the watchwher. Eventually, she began to get the occasional vague sensation that she was picking up on Vallensk's thoughts and emotions - not often, but every once in a while - and managed to convince herself it was loneliness-induced hallucinations up until the point that she realized that for three days now she'd been callign him "Orisk" instead of "Vallensk", and those vague feelings told her that it was right and proper. Though she didn't have anyone there to TELL her what the names meant, the first name of "Vallensk" while he was Vallen's wher and the similarity of the second name to the first part of her own eventually clued her in. (As I believe I've mentioned, she's not exactly dumb. Brighter than Vallen, at any rate. If someone hadn't told HIM, he would never have known.) Though her ignorance was still abysmal, she felt close enough to Orisk that she wouldn't want anyone to take him away, which is probably as close as she'll ever get considering the circumstances. Due to a series of seemingly unrelated events (a la "Tess of the d'Ubervilles", for the literary nuts or fellow senior high school students out there), she eventually ended up adrift on a raft in the middle of the ocean learning that Orisk got sea-sick and that tunics did not make the best watchwher eyeshields on bright sunny days, and was picked up by a taciturn brownrider in a boat and brought to the island. Since this N'ris fellow was so annoyingly quiet and anti-social, and Orisk did not like anything related to the ocean at all, she struck out inland.

(Yes, the fact that he was "Vallensk" and is "Orisk" now is deliberately significant of his relationship with Oriana. He's capable of a strong bond, and because Vallen was a simple person who gave his whole heart and soul to things he loved, it was a VERY strong bond. Oriana just doesn't have as much invested in or devoted to him, and so the bond isn't and never will be nearly as strong. They won't stand for being seperated, but the bond's just pretty weak. Sorry, Oriana, that's what you get for being self-centered.)

And yes, all my watchwhers DO get sea-sick. I'm not saying it's a standard watchwher thing; other peoples' can love the ocean and adore boats and swimming if the players are so inclined. I just find it a good plot device, whether for amusing or angsty purposes, and so I'm sticking with it. :P If Mikhal's lucky, his will be a bit more water-resistant, but I wouldn't lay bets if I were you. I'm well-known for taking a gag and running with it. Well, actually I'm not, but I SHOULD be. ^_~

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