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Digithe Joined: 24 Aug 2003 Posts: 884 | Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 5:10 pm OOC: So... this ended up being kinda long for some reason. Bear with me and feel free to skim ^^;
Name: Rylaen “Lan” Prouielle (ri-LAY-en “LAN” proy-EL) Age: 24 (-ish? What age is everyone?) Occupation: Inn-owner’s son / Stable-hand / “Lady’s Personal Guard” Alliance: None specific (?) Items: A long, slender spear; a long, sturdy knife Description: The first thing anyone notices about Rylaen is not his red-gold hair, his imposing height, his warm, mischievous grin, or his sun-darkened skin, but his sharp, golden eyes. The hair – wind-swept, yet somehow expertly so – lends to his handsomeness and gives him a distinguished look, but is not unusual, even if somewhat uncommon. His height is also not unusual, especially looking at his parents, and there are just as many people with skin as tanned as his as not. Those eyes, however, are almost unique to him. Furthermore, they can carry as much or more emotion than the rest of his face. While they can be as warm and inviting as his smile, they can also pierce you right to your soul, as though he could weigh your conscience, measure your mind, and read your thoughts just by looking into your eyes. Few would be surprised if someone told them that he had bored a hole straight through a mountain with one of those glares. While not so muscular as his father, who had once aspired to be a blacksmith, Rylaen is trim and well toned. A few outlanders visiting the inn he lives at might find this odd, but most are too preoccupied by his eyes to think much on it, and the rest soon learn that there are enough interesting things about him that being muscular hardly occasions comment. Rylaen is very energetic, and eager to be always doing something useful, or at least interesting. He is rarely indoors if he can help it, and if he can’t make the work more interesting somehow, he works quickly so he can move on to other things. Though only a handful know it, Rylaen has not slept more than six hours any given night in his memory. He has always been up as late as he can manage doing things, and woken up appropriately early to keep right on with his activities, whatever they may be. In fact, the average amount of sleep he gets is probably closer to four or five hours. Consequently, he has permanently etched on his face a somewhat tired look, which, when combined with his abundance of energy and particular grin, makes him appear always relaxed and at ease. Of course, one of his projects was to become a master of his own face, and he has accomplished it long since. Should he wish it, he could shape his expression to look as angry or as stern or as worried as he wishes, despite that look of tiredness. Perhaps Rylaen’s most well-known characteristic is his loyalty. If Vaeron held a “Best Person to be Friends With in a Pinch” contest, Rylaen would surely win it. He will always go out of his way to help a friend, if blindly sometimes. There have been several occasions where he has come home with scrapes and bruises for jumping in when a friend was being bullied. It is widely known that if he gives you his word that he will see something done, it will get done. Often, an “I will try” from him is just as good as an “I’ll do it” from anyone else. However, he does know his limits, and will not promise to do something he knows he cannot just to look good. History: Rylaen was born the eldest of four children to Gavyn and Elayne Prouielle in a small village named Vaeron. Even from birth, it was clear that the boy had a sense of powerful curiosity and a lust for adventure that were only strengthened by his grandfather, whom he was named after. According to his mother, the name came from the Old Tongue, rylae’en, meaning “he who serves,” or perhaps “he who defends,” with a strong suggestion of an boundless faithfulness – the Old Tongue was always difficult to translate, of course. The old man was a retired officer and a war hero, or so he said. It was fitting of his name, yet only a handful in town had heard anything of the sort from someone besides the man himself, and even less believed it. Rylaen, however, ate up every story his grandfather told him, and it was not long before he made it known that he hoped to one day earn his name. Despite his father’s opposition, the boy followed his grandfather around like a duckling after its mother whenever he could break away from his own parents. Gavyn and Elayne ran a well-respected inn called The Faithful Servant in their little town of Vaeron, and they expected Rylaen, as the eldest son, to inherit it, as Gavyn had inherited it from his father, who in turn had inherited it from his father before him. Rylaen expected to leave home long before any such thing happened to join the Queen’s Guard, but he learned quickly not to voice any such dreams in front of his father. Gavyn had, in fact, been the second son, and apprenticed to a local blacksmith when he was younger. Even in the common room of his inn, many years later, he would have been hard-pressed to convince anyone who did not already know him for the Innkeeper that he was not a blacksmith. It was when his older brother ran off to join the Guard, only to get himself killed in a “fool accident,” that Gavyn was forced to give up his hopes of being a blacksmith, and was forced into his current profession. Not surprisingly, he thought very little of his eldest son’s attachment to his grandfather. If Rylaen’s father was stone-faced, stern, and hard to please, his mother was all warmth and full of knowledge that she shared with the boy willingly. Whatever question he asked – and he asked many, to say the least – she would have an answer for, or else a suitably impressive turn of phrase that left him thinking she had given him an answer. At least, it was long enough for her to actually find a proper one. Furthermore, while she would not openly contradict her husband in front of her children any more than he would her, she endeavored to take her son’s mind away from the chores that could only remind him of how he would never be a soldier. What started innocently enough took off like wildfire in a drought-ridden field. She showed him once how he could carry more dishes than usual by holding them just so, and suggested he play “Balancing Act.” He took to the challenge, eventually re-interpreting the game as “Take dishes to the kitchen in a fantastic way without breaking them” – he admitted that the title was not nearly as clever as the original, but it was closer to how he played the game. From stacking as many as he could onto his arms in the beginning, he moved on to stacking things on his head, to balancing some on a foot and hopping on the other, to even juggling. From there, he came up with his own game of sliding across the floor on cleaning rags, which eventually turned into him sliding across the floor doing handstands on those rags. Needless to say, he was a delight to the customers who would have otherwise gone without any entertainment. When he was seven, he demanded to “secretly” watch his mother prepare the meals, and even helped out with a few. After two weeks, he got out of his mother’s hair for a week, much to her confusion, only to stride into the common room on the first day of that next week at dinner with a blindfold on, declaring that he could guess what they were eating and what it was prepared with just by smell. The folks were amazed by the trick, and he repeated it once every week without fail, grinning from ear to ear. It was only a game, of course – any fool who lived in an inn and bothered to pay attention to the meals could do it, or so he expected – but he reveled in the applause. It was little more than a year later that he discovered what would be his most famous game. Around that time, he began to notice just how different the various patrons of the The Faithful Servant spoke; the accents and the gestures and expressions were almost all different, if easy enough to catch the meaning. Seeing the game behind this – he would later call it “Imitations” – he deliberately spent as much time with outlander patrons as he could, asking questions about their homeland and anything he could to wring out native expressions, or just to hear the person speak, without seeming too suspicious. When he’d gotten several days of study on a particular country, he would replicate it for a day, asking how he was – in character, of course – and adjusting accordingly. He got so good that by twelve, if it were not for his appearance, his family was convinced that he could blend in like a native in any country in the world – or, at least in any country whose trade ran along Vaeron. He even surprised several of those people by speaking in their accents to them, convincing more than one that his family back home had died, and that this kind family had taken him in. Yet, if he was best known for Imitations, his best-known Imitation was that of nobility. He developed a way of tilting his chin just so and affected an accent and manner that everyone seemed could convince the Queen that he was her long-lost brother. It was little more than a trick, of course; few that he performed this Imitation for actually spent a significant amount of time around nobility, and Rylaen’s own experiences with the upper class were few and far between. So, his Imitation was a large part speculation, a large part guessing what the audience expected, and only the tiniest part study. In the mean time, of course, he’d learned other games. His favorites were the Soldier games he played secretly with his grandfather, learning to wield the staff, the spear, and the sword using varied lengths of tree branch. Yet, he learned any other game he heard of with just as much speed and enthusiasm – he even convinced his sisters to teach him the rules of the so-called “girl’s games” on principle, though he never tried to play them with anybody. By the time he reached sixteen, he at least knew the name of every game that was to be known in the village; there were few that he wasn’t good at and fewer still where he didn’t at least know the rules inside-and-out. It was about this time that his beloved grandfather passed away, leaving to Rylaen a long spear, with feathers decorating the base of the spearhead which were once a vibrant green and white. Though those feathers had long since grown dull, the slender spear’s head, a blade nearly six inches long, had apparently been dutifully sharpened and replaced when too small to sharpen, and the haft was as sturdy as the day it was made. Though Rylaen was not allowed to take it out of his room – his father was furious when he saw it, but could not refuse his father-in-law’s last wishes – he treasured it more than anything else he’d ever owned. Despite the prohibition against the thing, Rylaen managed to sneak out every night with the weapon to practice the forms and techniques his grandfather taught him. He still practiced his swordsmanship with the bits of tree branches, but he thought that receiving the spear was somehow significant, and that he should focus on that above any others. Though his grandfather’s training had already brought him far, the renewed dedication which Rylaen showed at this time would have truly made the old man proud. The young man refined his technique as much as drilling can do. It was on his seventeenth birthday that he got the experience that was necessary to move him further. The day passed without any more comment than another birthday would have – he received a lovely, hand-made, dark brown travelling cloak from his mother, which he prized nearly as much as the spear, even if he didn’t expect much chance for travel. It was the night that would have aroused comment, if anyone but Rylaen knew. As usual, he snuck out late with the spear to practice. He was practicing his forms off in the field he always went to, when he felt what he could only say was a tickling at the back of his mind. He had felt it a few times in the previous year, but not so strongly as that night. Though he could never explain exactly how, he opened his mind to that tickling, and began to see a stream of images in his mind’s eye. At first, it made no sense – he thought perhaps he was going crazy. Then, his mind seemed to put words to the images. “Blue River,” was the first thing he understood. Then, that it was a name of a wolf. Blue River seemed to be calling to him, asking for help. He had been scouting away from the pack, when he ran into an angry bear and was unable to run away. He was, apparently injured – Rylaen took a few seconds to understand the image of a porcupine, which was attached to a smell which seemed to contain fear and regret. That delay was mostly in surprise that he could comprehend Blue River’s emotions from a smell. Hours later, in a bit of a daze, he was resting on a rock, his spear resting in the crook of his elbow, having just finished dressing Blue River’s last wound. Those several hours were a bit of a blur for Rylaen. Anything preceded by speaking with a wolf would be so, of course. He only vaguely remembered saving Blue River from the bear and tearing up his shirt to dress the wolf’s wounds. It took a short while, but when he figured out how, he began to inundate Blue River with questions about why he could speak with wolves and if he knew any others who could also, and many more about wolves and nature. They were answered graciously, but the wolf eventually got tired. Before going to sleep, he provided Rylaen with a wolf name – Young Heron. It was more than that, really. It was an image of a tall heron, with red-gold feathers like Rylaen’s hair, a beak as long as the heron itself was tall, and smelling strongly of a child-like curiosity. It was after that night that Rylaen began to notice how much sharper his senses had grown in the recent months. He had no longer felt the need to carry a lantern to his practices at night for nearly a month. He actually had felt like he recognized smells in dishes that he hadn’t seen his mother prepare. He was even able to hear his sisters’ whisperings behind his back that he hadn’t caught before. Though he couldn’t understand it, and dared not attempt to explain it, everything at least fit together. His eyes, burnished gold since birth, were exactly the color of Blue River’s, the wolf that he had suddenly been able to somehow “speak” with. Those eyes, which too often earned him startled looks of surprise now let him see by the moon as though it were the sun. His trick of guessing the contents of a meal by smell alone was no longer a trick – he could smell things now he didn’t even think could be smelled. When he asked the next wolf he was able to contact about it, he was told that he was what the wolves call a “Wolf Brother.” Needless to say, he kept this development a secret. He was fairly certain that nobody would be keen on hanging out with someone who could talk to wolves – it was too close to being a wizard, and they were not exactly well received those days. In the meantime, with his outgoing, friendly charisma, Rylaen had become quite well-known in the town; with the addition of his handsome face, he had become especially well-known among the women. When not working at the inn, he was often seen hanging around pretty girls wearing that mischievous grin he was so famous for. Yet, despite popular gossip he actually only rarely favored any one girl above others, and never had any serious – or improper – relationships with any. It was a very pretty girl indeed that he would even kiss. Rylaen’s parents, however, only knew the gossip version of it, and believed that their son had slept with nearly every pretty girl in town by the time he was twenty-four. Well, his father believed so, anyway – Elayne was considerably more skeptical when it came to gossip about her children. It was at that time, after he had learned of yet another break-up, that Gawyn decided to do something about his “well-versed” son. Gawyn announced Rylaen’s engagement on the day of the boy’s birthday, and informed him that formal, chaperoned dating would commence in a month’s time. Rylaen, of course, objected furiously, wanting to find the right woman on his own. Of course, Gawyn was not to be swayed. A chance at escape came to Rylaen rather like a gift from divine providence. He was working in the local lord’s stable – a part time job he’d picked up months before because his younger siblings were taking care of more work at the inn that he used to do, and because the serving girls were particularly attractive – when he noticed one such serving girl bustling in, apparently from the city, in quite a hurry. Rylaen had gotten to know her quite well, having met her in town at the markets long before he started working at the manor, and was surprised (?) to see her so upset, and even more so to see her in her mistress’ dress. When she explained that she needed to pretend to be the Lady and asked his help, he was hesitant at first. This was something that could get him burned as readily as falling into a bonfire. However, when she hinted that he could escape his arranged marriage and experience what it might be like to be a Queen’s Guard at the same time, he was sold immediately. OOC: The above two can be changed to fit how Christine has things happen
About Wolf Brothers (or Sisters): Wolf Brothers are an ancient thing, and existed before humans ever knew how to wield magic. Being a Wolf Brother has nothing to do with magic, according to studies by wizards. However, though Wolf Brothers were never common, as time went on, they became even rarer. Wolves nowadays know of them mostly through stories rather than direct experience. Wolf Brothers can be identified by their golden eyes. They have enhanced vision and can see as well with a full moon as normal humans can with the sun. Their sense of smell is nearly as good as a wolf’s; they can tell the difference between people by their scent, and can even smell emotions. Their hearing is also better than a normal human’s. In addition to this, Wolf Brothers are able to communicate in a somewhat telepathic way with wolves nearby, just as they could with each other. This communication is very simple, and does not involve language as humans understand it. Rather, it is the wolves send each other detailed images and emotions and smells to convey their messages, and the words a Wolf Brother’s mind might come up with to describe these images is rarely what he or she would use in conversation with another human. For example, humans are “Two-legs” and horses might be “Four-legged hard-feet.” The detail of the images sent also depends on the wolf’s understanding of the thing. As wolves don’t care much about humans, they all appear mostly the same in the images sent, with faces blurry and indistinguishable. On the other hand, Wolf Brothers tend to take on habits of wolves. When angry or upset with someone, they will often begin to growl. They might test the air or twitch their nose when something smells particularly awful to them. In the worst case, some have even completely lost their human self and run off to join a passing pack of wolves. Misc.: Most people who know him well call him “Lan,” a nickname he’s had since his first younger sister was born – she couldn’t pronounce “Rylaen,” and her shortened “Lan” just stuck His hair looks expertly styled because his sisters begged him to let them do it and he eventually gave in. Apparently, his hair is really soft and fun to play with. OOC: This is all subject to change. I think I had some other ideas on his description, but I couldn't remember them, and wanted to put this up with Amelia's as a beacon of hope for everyone who actually still wants to do this RP.
Comments? Complaints? Suggestions? Questions? Key Lime Pie? (I've done that one before, but I just got back from FL and am on a Key Lime Pie kick XP) |
Melia Stahlflugel Joined: 4 Aug 2005 Posts: 613 | Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 9:33 pm I like him! :D
I hope everyone will re-appear soon... |
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