Post by Katlyn on Nov 23, 2012 23:48:36 GMT -5
Name: Katenina (Kat, Kitty, or Nina)
Pronunciation: Ka-te-ni-na
Age: 20
Gender: f
Sexual Orientation: straight
Rank: Candidate/Harper
Birthplace: Chakmar Hold (Birthdate. 1348.9.21)
Family: Mother: Aranina
Father: Katern
Siblings etc: Karten (7, Ruatha Hold, future, adopted by their aunt and uncle)
Significant others: Aldust (27, Harper Hall, future; Master/teacher and very close friend)
Personality: Katenina is a dreamer. She’s always had a very positive outlook on life and as a child would spend much of her time imagining various story lines, more often than not with dragon involved. Her father, who had harper training before taking over the hold, frequently told her stories of dragons, which she loved and which fueled her over active imagination. Her dreamy personality has also led to her being a bit of a wandered, and as such, she loves being out in the wild, hiking and just generally exploring the areas around her. Nina has an overall care free nature, though she does seem to know when to be serious as well. The easiest way she’s ever approached the serious things though, at least for the Harper Hall, have been for her to pull on that active imagination and pretend she’s someone else. In fact, she’s quite good at pretending to be someone who she is not.
Nina keeps her more negative thoughts to herself. She still has much grief over the loss of her family that she never really came to terms with the death of her family and friends when she was younger. While she loves her little brother to death, it was easier for her to leave him in the care of someone else, in an attempt to try and move on and forget about her family’s death. While she is friendly by nature, she is reluctant to make relationships which are too close or strong, for fear that one day something might happen to tear those people away from her as well.
Physical description: Katenina is small in height, not quite five feet tall, and somewhat dainty as well, though she’s still got enough muscle on her to stand her own if necessary. Her skin has just the slightest bit of tan color to it, though it’s still pale enough to blend in well with her hair, which is a light honey brown or dark honey blonde, depending on which way you decide to look at it. Though her hair is lightly curled and long enough to reach her waistline, she normally keeps it braided and pinned up at the base of her neck in some fashion or another. But her real unique feature is her eyes, which are a honey amber color, just slightly lighter in color than her hair, though with a bit more honey to them. Despite the fact that she’s twenty turns old, she looks to be a few turns younger. Her features and gaze always seem to have a fairly dreamy state to go along with her dreamy personality.
Nina has a few standard modes of dress. She’s either dressed in clothes befitting a minor holder’s daughter, such as a nice dress, or she’s dressed befitting her job in the harper hall. That is to say, in loose pants, boots which go to just below her knees, a loose shirt and hunter’s vest. The colors always vary, though they tend to be neutral in color except for when she’s acting in an official harper capacity, in which case her shirt is harper blue. Her belt almost always has a knife hooked to it, along with a few extra pouches which hold just about any minor thing she can think to carry. Of course, she does dress with the weather, and the occasion.
History: Katenina was born to the lord holder of the minor hold Chakmar Hold. She was the newly wedded couple’s first child, and the only daughter that they would end up having. Her mother, Aranina, had a hard time with her first pregnancy and every pregnancy she had that followed ended in miscarriage. It seemed for many turns that Katenina would be their only child, and thus the future lady holder of Chakmar Hold. Even without that fact being a contributing factor, Katern insisted that his daughter excel in her education, including the extra-curricular “learn how to lead a hold” type items. One could never be sure when something would happen.
Even as a young child, Katenina’s head always seemed to be in the clouds. He would never stop imagining great adventures that she might one day take. Almost all of them centered around the great Weyrs and their dragons. Oh sure, she knew the reason that the Weyrs and their dragons existed was to fight Thread, but being that she was born in an Interval, she really didn’t know how serious the threat of Thread was. Eventually her imaginative nature lead her into the forests around the hold, where she started to hike and explore all the time. Once that started happening, her parents both thought it prudent to teach her basic archery and foraging skills, just in case she got lost. That didn’t stop them from sending people with her and putting a boundary on her exploration.
When Katenina turned twelve, her mother finally gave birth again, this time to a baby boy. Karten. Katenina was thrilled to have a baby brother and she spent much time with him in his first few months of life. But as it always did, her adventurous side finally caught back up with her and she returned to exploring. Shortly thereafter, her father got ahold of a clutch of flit eggs. She just happened to be in the room at the right time when they hatched and managed to impress to the two brown ones which hatched, though the flits hadn’t been intended for her. In the end, though, everyone walked away from the hatching happy.
It was politics that led to the events that followed. Katern knew that the Interval would be ending in less than a decade, if the histories were correct. He was firmly of the belief that the ancient Hold-Weyr contract should be followed through on. When the Lord Holder of Telgar Hold, which Chakmar Hold looked to, found out about Katern’s insistence on loyalty to the Weyrs, he cut off Telgar’s responsibilities and protection. The Lord Holder was one of many Holders who had refallen into the mindset that Weyrs were no longer necessary.
Being that Chakmar Hold had very little protection, when the raiding holdless clan came by, it was an easy target. The Raiders of their time were no longer the raiders which simply took the bare basics, and then only when necessary. These Raiders had descended from the groups which took everything and left no witnesses. Chakmar stood no chance which a large group found their way to the rather defenseless hold.
Katenina had finally convinced her father that morning to let her wander off on her own since she had the two flits, and she was far from the hold when it was attacked by the group. It was nearing nightfall before she started her return back, with a pack full of useful herbs and even from fruits she’d managed to find, but the smoke rising up into the sky made her hasten her return. What she found was a hold that had been all but destroyed. At first, the thirteen turn old thought that there were no survivors, but as she returned to what had been her home, she heard the soft sounds of crying. After digging for a candlemark or two, she found her baby brother, scared but otherwise unhurt.
As the two were practically holdless themselves, she hunted around the destroyed hold for anything of use. Two days later, and with a large pack carrying food and two changes of clothes as well as a blanket for the pair of them as well as some other essential supplies, Katenina left the only home that she knew, Madu and Ghasel in tow.
It was her intent to head for the Weyr, so she traveled west over the mountain range which housed Telgar Weyr. In her travels, she missed the weyr completely and shortly after her fourteenth nameday, she and her baby brother arrived at another minor hold on the western side of the mountain range. The holders there were fairly sympathetic to their situation as their own hold had fallen victim to the holdless clans before and she and her brother spent the roughest months of that winter housed there, but once spring settled in, the pair continued on.
By summer Katenina had made her way all the way to Ruatha Hold, where she had a distant aunt and uncle living. It just so happened that there was a Gather going on when she arrived, so it didn’t take her long to find them. When she explained to her relatives what had happened, they offered her a place to live. What she didn’t know was that there was a Harper nearby listening to what she had been telling them.
It wasn’t necessarily that he was eavesdropping on their conversation, as they weren’t exactly talking in private or quietly. When Katenina left baby Karten with her relatives, the Harper approached her. The conversation that followed was interesting, but the harper had come to realize that Katenina not only had a natural gift for tracking and survival, as well as gathering, her active imagination easily allowed her to pretend to be someone who she wasn’t. He invited her to the Harper Hall, saying that she stood a chance at getting a position there, though not explaining exactly what that position was.
After much deliberation, Katenina returned to her aunt and uncle. The couple was childless and, upon hearing the offer that their niece had been given, promised to raise Karten as their own. She saw no reason to doubt their promise and so, with much heartache, left her baby brother with a family she knew would take good care of him and went with the harper to the Hall.
Aldust, the harper she had met at Ruatha, kept the real reason he was brining Katenina to the Hall a secret from her until he had had a chance to explain to the Master Harper his reasoning. With the natural skills Katenina seemed to have, Aldust believed that she would serve as a good agent for the hall, going out to other halls and gathering information to bring back. As Harpers served as the diplomats, and with situations like the one which happened to Chakmar Hold not exactly rare, anyone they could get to bring information was essential. Only once the Master Harper agreed that she could be an asset was it explained to Katenina the real job she might be taking up.
Unsurprisingly, Katenina found the idea to be quite exciting. She agreed to the suggestion without hesitation, though it would be another turn before she was actually sent out. The time in between was spent expanding her knowledge on everything from political situations to other survival skills, should they be necessary, and even to learning how to ride a runner. She gathered all the basic skills in music she would need to pass herself off as an actual Harper, though singing definitely eluded her as a skill. At least playing a flute and guitar were things she was more than capable of doing.
Finally the Master Harper felt she was well trained enough to send out, and so Katenina and Aldust, who was basically her master on the matter, were sent to Telgar Hold. Her first mission out of the Hall wasn’t entirely routine, as they were at the Hold on the information that the Lord Holder’s eldest son was planning to overthrow him. Despite her dislike of the Lord Holder, as it was his relative inaction that had led to the death of her family and hold, Katenina knew that allowing the leadership to change in such a manner was wrong and the pair of them managed to stop the small rebellion with relative success. When it ended, the Master Harper and Aldust both were convinced that Katenina could handle missions on her own.
Katenina stuck mostly to the western half of the continent in her missions, travelling from hold to hold as the Master Harper and situations dictated for the next three turns. It was during the end of one such mission, when she was at another Gather at Ruatha that a dragonrider from High Reaches informed her that his dragon had Searched her. Upon getting the news, she sent Madu back to the Harper Hall, informing the Master Harper of the situation. Little did she knew that he was wanting her to go to the Weyr next anyway, and so when she got the news that she was to accept the Search, she was somewhat surprised.
Still, Katenina obeyed the orders of her Master and took up a place as a candidate at the Weyr. It was only a few sevendays later when Thread returned. The Weyr suffered many losses in the Falls that followed, but she could do nothing more than what her Master told her to do. Thankfully, he gave her the order to do whatever was necessary to establish enough of a working relationship with the leadership to restore relations with the Holders. Unluckily, shortly after she got that order, the leadership was all but killed and those who did remain disappeared from known existence.
As A’ri took charge of the Weyr, she didn’t seem to have much of a chance to establish any relationship. It was only a short time later that word got to her that the Weyr would be timing it back to the beginning of the last Pass, though no one knew why exactly. Torn, Katenina was going to check with the Master Harper first, but in the end she didn’t have the time to let him know what was going on. Instead, she found herself in the bitter cold winter of High Reaches turn 1164.
***
Pet information
Name: Ghasel
Pronunciation: Ge-sel
Age: 7
Type: Flit
Colour: Brown
Personality: Ghasel is the scout of the pair. He’s adept at flying ahead and finding things that need to be found, be it shelter or a person. Ghasel is also the friendly one of the pair, willing to great and make friends with anyone who Nina seems to trust best. That said, he does like to wander off on his own from time to time.
Physical description: The smaller of the two, Ghasel is about the size of your medium size blue flit. He’s a very light yellow, amber brown, with a hint of red-rusty tints around his wing membranes and muzzle.
Name: Madu
Pronunciation: Ma-do
Age: 7
Type: Flit
Colour: Brown
Personality: Madu is a one person flit, not all that friendly towards other creatures or people for that matter. He wants nothing more than to stick with Nina and is extremely protective of her. That said, Madu is a well-trained messenger and gatherer. He knows various herbs and wild grown foods that could keep a person fed and will quickly deliver any message to the intended person without question. He just wants to get back home to Nina as soon as possible.
Physical description: Considerably larger than Ghasel, Madu is nearly the size of a bronze flit and a bit bulky in build. Just as he is opposite of Ghasel in size, Madu is also opposite of his brother in color. Instead of a light colored flit, he is a dark honey color, but like his brother, both his wing membranes and muzzle also have a red-rust tint to them.
***
Candidate information
IC colour preferences: any
OoC colour preferences: any
Family/Friends for Hatching: None
***
Crafter information
Craft name: Harper
Rank in craft: Jr. Journeywoman
Turns in craft: 6
Where studied: Harper Hall
***
Holder information
Hold name: Chakmar Hold
Hold Size: small/minor hold
Other: Chakmar Hold was established shortly after the end of the 5th Pass, roughly around turn 1217, to the northeast of Telgar Weyr in a valley near the northern most end of a valley in the mountains. Originally established as a mining hold, when nothing came up in the mining attempts of a post-Pass use, they eventually turned to logging and fishing. Chakmar Hold is a minor hold under Telgar Hold. It always had a strong history of being pro-Weyr, and as Telgar's Holdership slowly turned anti-Weyr with the rest of the holds, it slowly started losing the protect, benefits, and support of Telgar. Eventually Telgar withdrew all support and benefits, leavening it vulnerable to the attack that would lead to it's destruction in 1361 by a raiding party.
Pronunciation: Ka-te-ni-na
Age: 20
Gender: f
Sexual Orientation: straight
Rank: Candidate/Harper
Birthplace: Chakmar Hold (Birthdate. 1348.9.21)
Family: Mother: Aranina
Father: Katern
Siblings etc: Karten (7, Ruatha Hold, future, adopted by their aunt and uncle)
Significant others: Aldust (27, Harper Hall, future; Master/teacher and very close friend)
Personality: Katenina is a dreamer. She’s always had a very positive outlook on life and as a child would spend much of her time imagining various story lines, more often than not with dragon involved. Her father, who had harper training before taking over the hold, frequently told her stories of dragons, which she loved and which fueled her over active imagination. Her dreamy personality has also led to her being a bit of a wandered, and as such, she loves being out in the wild, hiking and just generally exploring the areas around her. Nina has an overall care free nature, though she does seem to know when to be serious as well. The easiest way she’s ever approached the serious things though, at least for the Harper Hall, have been for her to pull on that active imagination and pretend she’s someone else. In fact, she’s quite good at pretending to be someone who she is not.
Nina keeps her more negative thoughts to herself. She still has much grief over the loss of her family that she never really came to terms with the death of her family and friends when she was younger. While she loves her little brother to death, it was easier for her to leave him in the care of someone else, in an attempt to try and move on and forget about her family’s death. While she is friendly by nature, she is reluctant to make relationships which are too close or strong, for fear that one day something might happen to tear those people away from her as well.
Physical description: Katenina is small in height, not quite five feet tall, and somewhat dainty as well, though she’s still got enough muscle on her to stand her own if necessary. Her skin has just the slightest bit of tan color to it, though it’s still pale enough to blend in well with her hair, which is a light honey brown or dark honey blonde, depending on which way you decide to look at it. Though her hair is lightly curled and long enough to reach her waistline, she normally keeps it braided and pinned up at the base of her neck in some fashion or another. But her real unique feature is her eyes, which are a honey amber color, just slightly lighter in color than her hair, though with a bit more honey to them. Despite the fact that she’s twenty turns old, she looks to be a few turns younger. Her features and gaze always seem to have a fairly dreamy state to go along with her dreamy personality.
Nina has a few standard modes of dress. She’s either dressed in clothes befitting a minor holder’s daughter, such as a nice dress, or she’s dressed befitting her job in the harper hall. That is to say, in loose pants, boots which go to just below her knees, a loose shirt and hunter’s vest. The colors always vary, though they tend to be neutral in color except for when she’s acting in an official harper capacity, in which case her shirt is harper blue. Her belt almost always has a knife hooked to it, along with a few extra pouches which hold just about any minor thing she can think to carry. Of course, she does dress with the weather, and the occasion.
History: Katenina was born to the lord holder of the minor hold Chakmar Hold. She was the newly wedded couple’s first child, and the only daughter that they would end up having. Her mother, Aranina, had a hard time with her first pregnancy and every pregnancy she had that followed ended in miscarriage. It seemed for many turns that Katenina would be their only child, and thus the future lady holder of Chakmar Hold. Even without that fact being a contributing factor, Katern insisted that his daughter excel in her education, including the extra-curricular “learn how to lead a hold” type items. One could never be sure when something would happen.
Even as a young child, Katenina’s head always seemed to be in the clouds. He would never stop imagining great adventures that she might one day take. Almost all of them centered around the great Weyrs and their dragons. Oh sure, she knew the reason that the Weyrs and their dragons existed was to fight Thread, but being that she was born in an Interval, she really didn’t know how serious the threat of Thread was. Eventually her imaginative nature lead her into the forests around the hold, where she started to hike and explore all the time. Once that started happening, her parents both thought it prudent to teach her basic archery and foraging skills, just in case she got lost. That didn’t stop them from sending people with her and putting a boundary on her exploration.
When Katenina turned twelve, her mother finally gave birth again, this time to a baby boy. Karten. Katenina was thrilled to have a baby brother and she spent much time with him in his first few months of life. But as it always did, her adventurous side finally caught back up with her and she returned to exploring. Shortly thereafter, her father got ahold of a clutch of flit eggs. She just happened to be in the room at the right time when they hatched and managed to impress to the two brown ones which hatched, though the flits hadn’t been intended for her. In the end, though, everyone walked away from the hatching happy.
It was politics that led to the events that followed. Katern knew that the Interval would be ending in less than a decade, if the histories were correct. He was firmly of the belief that the ancient Hold-Weyr contract should be followed through on. When the Lord Holder of Telgar Hold, which Chakmar Hold looked to, found out about Katern’s insistence on loyalty to the Weyrs, he cut off Telgar’s responsibilities and protection. The Lord Holder was one of many Holders who had refallen into the mindset that Weyrs were no longer necessary.
Being that Chakmar Hold had very little protection, when the raiding holdless clan came by, it was an easy target. The Raiders of their time were no longer the raiders which simply took the bare basics, and then only when necessary. These Raiders had descended from the groups which took everything and left no witnesses. Chakmar stood no chance which a large group found their way to the rather defenseless hold.
Katenina had finally convinced her father that morning to let her wander off on her own since she had the two flits, and she was far from the hold when it was attacked by the group. It was nearing nightfall before she started her return back, with a pack full of useful herbs and even from fruits she’d managed to find, but the smoke rising up into the sky made her hasten her return. What she found was a hold that had been all but destroyed. At first, the thirteen turn old thought that there were no survivors, but as she returned to what had been her home, she heard the soft sounds of crying. After digging for a candlemark or two, she found her baby brother, scared but otherwise unhurt.
As the two were practically holdless themselves, she hunted around the destroyed hold for anything of use. Two days later, and with a large pack carrying food and two changes of clothes as well as a blanket for the pair of them as well as some other essential supplies, Katenina left the only home that she knew, Madu and Ghasel in tow.
It was her intent to head for the Weyr, so she traveled west over the mountain range which housed Telgar Weyr. In her travels, she missed the weyr completely and shortly after her fourteenth nameday, she and her baby brother arrived at another minor hold on the western side of the mountain range. The holders there were fairly sympathetic to their situation as their own hold had fallen victim to the holdless clans before and she and her brother spent the roughest months of that winter housed there, but once spring settled in, the pair continued on.
By summer Katenina had made her way all the way to Ruatha Hold, where she had a distant aunt and uncle living. It just so happened that there was a Gather going on when she arrived, so it didn’t take her long to find them. When she explained to her relatives what had happened, they offered her a place to live. What she didn’t know was that there was a Harper nearby listening to what she had been telling them.
It wasn’t necessarily that he was eavesdropping on their conversation, as they weren’t exactly talking in private or quietly. When Katenina left baby Karten with her relatives, the Harper approached her. The conversation that followed was interesting, but the harper had come to realize that Katenina not only had a natural gift for tracking and survival, as well as gathering, her active imagination easily allowed her to pretend to be someone who she wasn’t. He invited her to the Harper Hall, saying that she stood a chance at getting a position there, though not explaining exactly what that position was.
After much deliberation, Katenina returned to her aunt and uncle. The couple was childless and, upon hearing the offer that their niece had been given, promised to raise Karten as their own. She saw no reason to doubt their promise and so, with much heartache, left her baby brother with a family she knew would take good care of him and went with the harper to the Hall.
Aldust, the harper she had met at Ruatha, kept the real reason he was brining Katenina to the Hall a secret from her until he had had a chance to explain to the Master Harper his reasoning. With the natural skills Katenina seemed to have, Aldust believed that she would serve as a good agent for the hall, going out to other halls and gathering information to bring back. As Harpers served as the diplomats, and with situations like the one which happened to Chakmar Hold not exactly rare, anyone they could get to bring information was essential. Only once the Master Harper agreed that she could be an asset was it explained to Katenina the real job she might be taking up.
Unsurprisingly, Katenina found the idea to be quite exciting. She agreed to the suggestion without hesitation, though it would be another turn before she was actually sent out. The time in between was spent expanding her knowledge on everything from political situations to other survival skills, should they be necessary, and even to learning how to ride a runner. She gathered all the basic skills in music she would need to pass herself off as an actual Harper, though singing definitely eluded her as a skill. At least playing a flute and guitar were things she was more than capable of doing.
Finally the Master Harper felt she was well trained enough to send out, and so Katenina and Aldust, who was basically her master on the matter, were sent to Telgar Hold. Her first mission out of the Hall wasn’t entirely routine, as they were at the Hold on the information that the Lord Holder’s eldest son was planning to overthrow him. Despite her dislike of the Lord Holder, as it was his relative inaction that had led to the death of her family and hold, Katenina knew that allowing the leadership to change in such a manner was wrong and the pair of them managed to stop the small rebellion with relative success. When it ended, the Master Harper and Aldust both were convinced that Katenina could handle missions on her own.
Katenina stuck mostly to the western half of the continent in her missions, travelling from hold to hold as the Master Harper and situations dictated for the next three turns. It was during the end of one such mission, when she was at another Gather at Ruatha that a dragonrider from High Reaches informed her that his dragon had Searched her. Upon getting the news, she sent Madu back to the Harper Hall, informing the Master Harper of the situation. Little did she knew that he was wanting her to go to the Weyr next anyway, and so when she got the news that she was to accept the Search, she was somewhat surprised.
Still, Katenina obeyed the orders of her Master and took up a place as a candidate at the Weyr. It was only a few sevendays later when Thread returned. The Weyr suffered many losses in the Falls that followed, but she could do nothing more than what her Master told her to do. Thankfully, he gave her the order to do whatever was necessary to establish enough of a working relationship with the leadership to restore relations with the Holders. Unluckily, shortly after she got that order, the leadership was all but killed and those who did remain disappeared from known existence.
As A’ri took charge of the Weyr, she didn’t seem to have much of a chance to establish any relationship. It was only a short time later that word got to her that the Weyr would be timing it back to the beginning of the last Pass, though no one knew why exactly. Torn, Katenina was going to check with the Master Harper first, but in the end she didn’t have the time to let him know what was going on. Instead, she found herself in the bitter cold winter of High Reaches turn 1164.
***
Pet information
Name: Ghasel
Pronunciation: Ge-sel
Age: 7
Type: Flit
Colour: Brown
Personality: Ghasel is the scout of the pair. He’s adept at flying ahead and finding things that need to be found, be it shelter or a person. Ghasel is also the friendly one of the pair, willing to great and make friends with anyone who Nina seems to trust best. That said, he does like to wander off on his own from time to time.
Physical description: The smaller of the two, Ghasel is about the size of your medium size blue flit. He’s a very light yellow, amber brown, with a hint of red-rusty tints around his wing membranes and muzzle.
Name: Madu
Pronunciation: Ma-do
Age: 7
Type: Flit
Colour: Brown
Personality: Madu is a one person flit, not all that friendly towards other creatures or people for that matter. He wants nothing more than to stick with Nina and is extremely protective of her. That said, Madu is a well-trained messenger and gatherer. He knows various herbs and wild grown foods that could keep a person fed and will quickly deliver any message to the intended person without question. He just wants to get back home to Nina as soon as possible.
Physical description: Considerably larger than Ghasel, Madu is nearly the size of a bronze flit and a bit bulky in build. Just as he is opposite of Ghasel in size, Madu is also opposite of his brother in color. Instead of a light colored flit, he is a dark honey color, but like his brother, both his wing membranes and muzzle also have a red-rust tint to them.
***
Candidate information
IC colour preferences: any
OoC colour preferences: any
Family/Friends for Hatching: None
***
Crafter information
Craft name: Harper
Rank in craft: Jr. Journeywoman
Turns in craft: 6
Where studied: Harper Hall
***
Holder information
Hold name: Chakmar Hold
Hold Size: small/minor hold
Other: Chakmar Hold was established shortly after the end of the 5th Pass, roughly around turn 1217, to the northeast of Telgar Weyr in a valley near the northern most end of a valley in the mountains. Originally established as a mining hold, when nothing came up in the mining attempts of a post-Pass use, they eventually turned to logging and fishing. Chakmar Hold is a minor hold under Telgar Hold. It always had a strong history of being pro-Weyr, and as Telgar's Holdership slowly turned anti-Weyr with the rest of the holds, it slowly started losing the protect, benefits, and support of Telgar. Eventually Telgar withdrew all support and benefits, leavening it vulnerable to the attack that would lead to it's destruction in 1361 by a raiding party.
