Keluute, Male Candidate
Jul 8, 2011 14:29:06 GMT -5
Post by Rii on Jul 8, 2011 14:29:06 GMT -5
Name: Keluute
Pronunciation: keh-LOOT-eh
Gender: Male
Age: Seventeen
Birthdate (Season): (Early) Spring
Location: Alietran Weyr
Rank: Candidate
Wing (if applicable): N/A
Family:
Physical Appearance: Keluute
Keluute is quite slight for a boy of his age, with slender hips and narrow shoulders. He stands at a moderate five feet and eight inches if he stretches without looking it, but he certainly is not physically imposing. He is far stronger than he looks, however, as his experience with archery and feline hunting has developed considerable wiry muscle in his upper body. His legs are not as well built, as their main task is to keep him very still, frequently in awkward positions, for a long time, but they do that well enough.
Most noticeable about Keluute is his hair. Dark blond, but most definitely not brown, it has a very stubborn natural wave that insists on flinging spikes out even when his hair is clipped to within a few inches. He isn't a fan of shaving his skull, so he puts up with it. Whenever he lets it grow out a little (read: doesn't get around to trimming it for a while), it loves to flop in front of his light hazel eyes and obscure his face. Then he might throw a little hissy fit and hack it off with whatever is to hand. It depends on his mood.
One of the things Keluute is glad for is that he isn't really mistakable for a girl, even with his slight stature. His chin and mouth are both wide enough, and his lips thin enough, not to give such a feminine impression, and his straight nose is blocky rather than dainty. And his eyebrows are quite bushy. He's pointed to them more than once to give a polite difference between himself and his sisters. See the eyebrows? They rip out half of theirs. I don't bother. Therefore I cannot be a girl. He has such wonderful logic. And then he (hopefully) doesn't have to talk about why his Adam's apple is so unnoticeable, he could fit into Utake's clothing until he was fifteen, or the fact that he crosses his legs while sitting.
When it comes to clothing, Keluute blames the climate for his discomfort. While hunting felines, it only makes sense to wear thick leather, because it is not particularly common to have only one of the cats causing enough of a problem to hire hunters, and an archer can only loose an arrow in one direction at a time. So Keluute puts up with the sweltering heat. Whenever he gets the chance, though, he prefers far lighter clothing, even if he never goes unclothed except when swimming. It isn't really out of modesty, nor of fear of showing scars - he doesn't have any significant ones, much to the surprise of some who know of his occupation. He just doesn't like going bare-skinned.
Personality: Generally considered shy, Keluute is not one to act or react openly or hastily. He keeps his emotions buried, and his words are often similarly hard to find, though more because he doesn't say a lot than from ambiguity. When he speaks, it is usually clear, if not outright blunt. He likes things being simple and visible, not shrouded in mystery. He has no need for things to be complicated. If he wanted complicated, he'd get a firelizard.
He doesn't dislike people, nor fear them, but he is easily overwhelmed by crowds and abrasive or vibrant personalities. Most of the hiding in his early childhood was to avoid the harsh light of his strong-willed parents and energetic oldest brother. He is very non-confrontational, and raised voices give him headaches. He will put considerable effort into avoiding or, if necessary, diffusing stressful situations before they have a chance to explode, far more effort than he does into anything else directly involving people.
Despite such introversion, Keluute is usually very calm, and yes, quiet, and does not startle easily. He thinks quickly and reacts smoothly when his reactions are noticeable at all, but when crowds and the like push him out of his depth he tends to grow flustered and misjudge everything, from tempers and patience to distances and angles. He doesn't like being rushed, though he can deal with rapid situations. If he is pushed, he often withdraws physically if possible and emotionally if not. He prefers to watch others, and can deal with crushing humanity best if he is some degree removed from it.
There are physical factors contributing to Keluute's reticence. Noranor in particular gave him trouble about his baby-pale hair for his entire childhood, and with his slighter build and lack of desire to go and try to beat his brother to a pulp, he learned to avoid people before they had a chance to bother him. He also has a slight speech impediment, causing his 'r's to sound rather more like 'd's, and so he grew into the habit of speaking only when necessary. Keluute can be very stubborn in his own way, for he likes stability in his routines, even if one routine only lasts for a week or two before he returns to another, as he did while hunting felines. He likes to know where he stands, and he is used to that being insignificant. He does not like being praised and will almost invariably leave if he is, whether or not the praise is warranted.
While he never grew close to anyone in his family, he does feel some vague, not-really-understood obligation with regards to his brother's untimely death. To be honest, he actually preferred Kenra to N'ran, even if she was far too girly for his tastes. After the accident, he spent a lot of time thinking, and eventually came to the conclusion that the only one in the wrong was the green, and perhaps her rider. When Let'reni arranged his own Candidacy, he decided that perhaps he was to pick up where N'ran and Nelmenith left off, and be useful by saving greens from their own foolishness.
Beyond his general preference for calm and quiet, Keluute is a hard worker if the task interests him and a useless layabout if it doesn't. For something that catches his attention, such as archery and feline hunting, he will spend all of his free times and much of his otherwise occupied time working on it to the exclusion of pretty much everyone else. He can be very stubborn about some things, though his stubbornness is almost always applied to long-term projects. In the short-term, he is rather easy to redirect and persuade.
Should Keluute's near-famous patience ever be outlasted, people who have met him are likely to be surprised by the result. He tends to become quite unpredictable, both in relation to his normal mood and whatever it was that he just did, and he frequently vents by arranging horrible (but rarely intentionally physically damaging) pranks and accidents to befall anyone who gets on his evidently strained nerves. He can only take so much stress before he snaps, and he seems to snap slightly differently every time. Not that he snaps very often, mind.
The usual Keluute enjoys spending his spare time working on his accuracy in all sorts of weather, and it is one of the few activities where he is willing to put up with observers. Should they start to pay obvious, significant attention to him, however (or discuss it so that he can hear), he will pack his things and find somewhere else to work. Being the centre of attention does make him very uneasy. He doesn't like sweetener, but sweet food items, and bubbly pies in particular, are quite acceptable to his taste buds. Spicy food makes him cry and run around for something to flush his mouth with. It's really quite amusing to see, and his brothers have both slipped hot pepper seeds, among other things, into his food before. He has gained the habit of carefully testing his first bite, but he often forgets when he's hungry, and anyway Noranor and Nakeran were both sufficiently deft to spice his food whenever he's not looking.
History: Keluute is the third child of five born to Kelnor and Utanora of Black Tree, the holding they carved out themselves under the the protection of Alietran Hold. The holding, little more than a logging camp a dozen Turns after its founding, was named for the distinctive dark wood of the trees in the area. While pretty, and both soft and firm enough to be worked, it has since proved very susceptible to warping due to moisture. In the humid south, that limits its uses considerably, and the would-be-prosperous holding merely trudged along.
Keluute's childhood was rather drab. There wasn't much variation in day-to-day life, and it has instilled a bit of an insistence on routine. His general insecurities helped strengthen that need. His mother, Utanora, cared for each child directly to the age of five (with the assistance of hired help whenever they could afford it). After that, the children were expected to start making themselves useful. The eldest, Noranor, took to wood in all its forms almost immediately. He was the couple's pride and joy, that dark strapping lad. Utanora in particular doted upon the next child, though without forgetting about her first son. Utake proved to be a lovely girl with a soft, teasing smile and laughing eyes. She caught the eye of one of a journeyman miner at one Alietran gather.
Keluute was a bit of a shocker after his excellent siblings. His baby-pale hair never darkened, though his eyes settled on a moderately light hazel not too far from his siblings'. His build was far closer to Utake's than Noranor's, though his younger siblings looked to follow the appropriate gender stereotypes set by the eldest two. Kenra's skin was a little darker than Utake's, and she was a touch too shy to be striking, and Nakeran was, in short, a concentrated version of Noranor in miniature, with the addition of some excess energy.
In the varying but always small community of Black Tree, Keluute stuck out when he wasn't hiding. He didn't like being different. It didn't help that Noranor dismissed him as a sissy from early on and Utake was rather preoccupied with her womanly pursuits (as she insisted everything she did be called, at least while young). The hired hands doing much of the labour often didn't even know that Keluute existed, as he spent much of his time lurking in the trees left standing around the holding itself. If his parents couldn't catch him not doing the monotonous work they set him (the only wood-related task he enjoyed was carving, but he wasn't about to show his work to anyone), then they couldn't punish him.
He managed to spend most of five Turns hiding in the bush before his luck ran out. One of the felines so hunted in Southern for both safety and pelts had wandered away from its birth pride some time before. It ended up near Black Tree. It was starving, tired, and had never come across a human before. It saw Keluute and didn't think twice. It attacked.
Perhaps his luck hadn't run out entirely. The big cat, rather larger than the slight ten-Turn-old, charged Keluute from the front. Hunger made it stupid and clumsy, and it half-tripped on a thick protruding root. As it stumbled, Keluute raised the bow his father had forced upon him and fired his one blunt arrow. The cat was just recovering its stride, only a few paces away, and lifted its head into the arrow's path. At such a short distance, there was sufficient force to drive the dull head through the cat's eye. It wasn't a lethal shot, not immediately, but it certainly distracted the cat long enough for Keluute to get out of the way. Its grating wail also succeeded in bringing everyone within earshot.
Kelnor was finally proud of his second son. While he had been out logging with one of the paid crews, and so not able to respond to the emergency himself, he made sure that the dead cat (quickly finished off by a proper arrow from one of the responders) was neatly skinned and the pelt presented to Keluute. He encouraged the boy to continue his archery, and for the next few Turns, that was what he did. Obsessively. Additionally, whenever word drifted in of a pride that was drifting too close to human habitation, Keluute was abnormally swift to volunteer. Considering the teen's now considerable skill and understandable dislike of the beasts, he became a more and more frequent presence at such missions.
His parents were happy that he had found something he was passionate about, even if it wasn't a true trade. Feline hunters, good ones, were always needed in the South. Besides, by the time Keluute was fifteen, their eldest son was off finishing his apprenticeship at the nearest branch of the Woodcrafthall, their eldest daughter was being courted by a kind and successful young man, already a journeyman miner, and both younger children were early in their healer apprenticeships. Keluute was the only one who still lived at home, but he was gone much of the time. He hadn't actually ever been home when each sibling left, not through conspiring but simple chance.
Off on his trips, he might have become a familiar face to the other hunters, and one they didn't mind seeing, but none of them ever got to know Keluute. Generally the youngest of the groups, and a very good shot for his experience, he rarely spoke and never made eye contact. Whenever he met another hunter for the first time, the initial reaction of the other was generally laughter that such a soft boy was doing such a dangerous job or concern for his well-being. Sometimes the impression lasted past Keluute's first kill of the trip. There would often be stories told around nightly meals, and they usually gravitated to the job (or women). When the others extolled their prowess, some of those who had worked with Keluute more would bring up his accuracy. It wasn't all that uncommon for him to score an eye at twenty paces or more, and his pelts were almost always intact. Keluute left the group every single time the conversation turned to him. He didn't if it shifted to scars, but he never volunteered anything either; he had none. Some of the hunters, particularly those who had started young, had impressive rakes across their shoulders or legs, and weren't afraid to show it.
He was home from one such trip and visiting his younger siblings in Torrel with his parents when a group of dragonriders descended from Alietran Weyr. Keluute had never seen dragons before, and retreated to the shadows. From there he learned that they had come on Search.
Nakeran was accepted. He had not been as ecstatic as his sister about healing, though he enjoyed it well enough, and agreed to go to the Weyr for what looked to be Alietran's last hatching.
Keluute was not able to attend. One of the farther-flung holdings was having trouble with felines attacking their herds, and he headed out to help. He kept one of the pelts back when he heard that his brother was now N'ran, Impressed forever to the brown dragon Nelmenith. Rather than sell it, as was his usual wont, he sent it to the new Weyrling as a gift, and then returned to his silent work.
Life whent on. Utake's courter proposed, the family agreed. She married Shetti at the beginning of that Turn's summer, and some ten months later deliver a boy, Shettu. N'ran was given permission to visit, and invited his various relatives to come see him and Nelmenith in the Weyr. His parents did within the season, Kenra and Noranor by the end of the Turn. Utake was too busy with her new family, and Keluute never seemed to get around to it. When he finally did, N'ran and Nelmenith had graduated from their weyrling training, were installed in their permanent weyr as a full fighting pair, and rather busy with new training.
That training was known to have accidents, and not all of them were caused by laziness or ineptitude. The large Nelmenith, with another brown, were practicing coming in under an injured green and supporting her down to the ground; with no queens, the Weyr was looking for other ways to deal with the situation. For whatever reason, the green playing the injured part this one time panicked. Perhaps her wing became entangled with one of the browns'; no one was ever sure. She moved, too quickly, and sliced Nelmenith's right wing away from his body. The brown bellowed and panicked himself - he vanished between. The green did as well, reappearing some lengths above, her rider desperately calming her as Nelmenith didn't follow her out. No one had seen it, but the green had actually cut N'ran's leg as well, very badly, and the cold of between sent him into shock, which confused Nelmenith and left them without a way out.
Someone later found Keluute deep in the lower caverns, out cold. He'd fled the scene, the dragons' keen chasing after him, and eventually tripped on the increasingly uneven stone. The mild concussion kept him under the healers' eyes until they found out who he was, and then they kept a close watch on him lest he continue his emotional response to his brother's abrupt death. Keluute never tried to commit suicide. In fact, he coped as well as was to be expected, and better than many would have. He had seen people die before, generally new would-be hunters who made a mistake. He hadn't even been all that close to N'ran. The healers put him to work running errands for them for a while, and it was on one of those errands that he came across Let'reni.
Let'reni was an old bluerider just visiting a friend who had transferred from Southern Weyr many Turns before. Keluute was sent over to the elderly brownrider's weyr with a fresh supply of numbweed. Good for the aches of old age, numbweed. Anyway, he'd barely been welcomed in when the brown accidentally wafted a bit of dust into the blue's face, waking him with a fit of sneezing. Somewhere in there, the blue told his rider something or other, because Let'reni deftly drew Keluute into conversation. After determining that the boy was not a candidate, and had not been Searched, and was only here because his brother had just died, the wily old rider called on a pretty young green weyrling to take Keluute down to the current candidatemaster, whoever he was, and tell him that Let'reni of Southern had his eye on the boy. The pretty young green weyrling was very stubborn and had a lot of experience in making younger boys, ogling or not (the latter being the case here), do what she wanted. Keluute ended up with a room of his own (kind of) and told to stay put.
Pets N/A
Dragon N/A
For Candidates:
Elided name: K'luute (KLOOT-eh)
What color does the character want/not want?: Wants brown, does not want green.
What color do YOU want/not want for this character?: Green! I don't want brown, but I'm good with blue. Or a non-canon colour, barring any neon pink or purple monstrosities
Do you care if the character impresses cross-gender?: Yes! Cross-gender is good.
Are you okay with your candidate being mauled; if so, how much?: A little, but nothing debilitating. He's got enough issues.
Is this a stands candidate?: Nope, just plain old Searched holderbrat.
Any other traits (physical or personality-wise) you'd like to see/not see with your dragon?: Not a total opposite personality; complementary is fine, but excessive extroversion might just drive him mad. In a bad way.
Pronunciation: keh-LOOT-eh
Gender: Male
Age: Seventeen
Birthdate (Season): (Early) Spring
Location: Alietran Weyr
Rank: Candidate
Wing (if applicable): N/A
Family:
- Father: Kelnor of Black Tree cothold. 41.
- Mother: Utanora of Black Tree cothold. 37.
- Brother: Noranor of Alietran Hold. Journeyman Woodcrafter. 19.
- Sister: Utake of Alietran Hold. Wife to Shetti. 18.
-Nephew: Shettu of Alietran Hold. 1.
-Brother-in-law: Shetti of Alietran Hold. Journeyman Miner. 20. - Sister: Kenra of Torrel Hold. Apprentice Healer. 16.
- Brother: Nakeran, N'ran of Alietran Weyr. Rider of brown Nelmenith. Deceased at 15, would be 15.
Physical Appearance: Keluute
Keluute is quite slight for a boy of his age, with slender hips and narrow shoulders. He stands at a moderate five feet and eight inches if he stretches without looking it, but he certainly is not physically imposing. He is far stronger than he looks, however, as his experience with archery and feline hunting has developed considerable wiry muscle in his upper body. His legs are not as well built, as their main task is to keep him very still, frequently in awkward positions, for a long time, but they do that well enough.
Most noticeable about Keluute is his hair. Dark blond, but most definitely not brown, it has a very stubborn natural wave that insists on flinging spikes out even when his hair is clipped to within a few inches. He isn't a fan of shaving his skull, so he puts up with it. Whenever he lets it grow out a little (read: doesn't get around to trimming it for a while), it loves to flop in front of his light hazel eyes and obscure his face. Then he might throw a little hissy fit and hack it off with whatever is to hand. It depends on his mood.
One of the things Keluute is glad for is that he isn't really mistakable for a girl, even with his slight stature. His chin and mouth are both wide enough, and his lips thin enough, not to give such a feminine impression, and his straight nose is blocky rather than dainty. And his eyebrows are quite bushy. He's pointed to them more than once to give a polite difference between himself and his sisters. See the eyebrows? They rip out half of theirs. I don't bother. Therefore I cannot be a girl. He has such wonderful logic. And then he (hopefully) doesn't have to talk about why his Adam's apple is so unnoticeable, he could fit into Utake's clothing until he was fifteen, or the fact that he crosses his legs while sitting.
When it comes to clothing, Keluute blames the climate for his discomfort. While hunting felines, it only makes sense to wear thick leather, because it is not particularly common to have only one of the cats causing enough of a problem to hire hunters, and an archer can only loose an arrow in one direction at a time. So Keluute puts up with the sweltering heat. Whenever he gets the chance, though, he prefers far lighter clothing, even if he never goes unclothed except when swimming. It isn't really out of modesty, nor of fear of showing scars - he doesn't have any significant ones, much to the surprise of some who know of his occupation. He just doesn't like going bare-skinned.
Personality: Generally considered shy, Keluute is not one to act or react openly or hastily. He keeps his emotions buried, and his words are often similarly hard to find, though more because he doesn't say a lot than from ambiguity. When he speaks, it is usually clear, if not outright blunt. He likes things being simple and visible, not shrouded in mystery. He has no need for things to be complicated. If he wanted complicated, he'd get a firelizard.
He doesn't dislike people, nor fear them, but he is easily overwhelmed by crowds and abrasive or vibrant personalities. Most of the hiding in his early childhood was to avoid the harsh light of his strong-willed parents and energetic oldest brother. He is very non-confrontational, and raised voices give him headaches. He will put considerable effort into avoiding or, if necessary, diffusing stressful situations before they have a chance to explode, far more effort than he does into anything else directly involving people.
Despite such introversion, Keluute is usually very calm, and yes, quiet, and does not startle easily. He thinks quickly and reacts smoothly when his reactions are noticeable at all, but when crowds and the like push him out of his depth he tends to grow flustered and misjudge everything, from tempers and patience to distances and angles. He doesn't like being rushed, though he can deal with rapid situations. If he is pushed, he often withdraws physically if possible and emotionally if not. He prefers to watch others, and can deal with crushing humanity best if he is some degree removed from it.
There are physical factors contributing to Keluute's reticence. Noranor in particular gave him trouble about his baby-pale hair for his entire childhood, and with his slighter build and lack of desire to go and try to beat his brother to a pulp, he learned to avoid people before they had a chance to bother him. He also has a slight speech impediment, causing his 'r's to sound rather more like 'd's, and so he grew into the habit of speaking only when necessary. Keluute can be very stubborn in his own way, for he likes stability in his routines, even if one routine only lasts for a week or two before he returns to another, as he did while hunting felines. He likes to know where he stands, and he is used to that being insignificant. He does not like being praised and will almost invariably leave if he is, whether or not the praise is warranted.
While he never grew close to anyone in his family, he does feel some vague, not-really-understood obligation with regards to his brother's untimely death. To be honest, he actually preferred Kenra to N'ran, even if she was far too girly for his tastes. After the accident, he spent a lot of time thinking, and eventually came to the conclusion that the only one in the wrong was the green, and perhaps her rider. When Let'reni arranged his own Candidacy, he decided that perhaps he was to pick up where N'ran and Nelmenith left off, and be useful by saving greens from their own foolishness.
Beyond his general preference for calm and quiet, Keluute is a hard worker if the task interests him and a useless layabout if it doesn't. For something that catches his attention, such as archery and feline hunting, he will spend all of his free times and much of his otherwise occupied time working on it to the exclusion of pretty much everyone else. He can be very stubborn about some things, though his stubbornness is almost always applied to long-term projects. In the short-term, he is rather easy to redirect and persuade.
Should Keluute's near-famous patience ever be outlasted, people who have met him are likely to be surprised by the result. He tends to become quite unpredictable, both in relation to his normal mood and whatever it was that he just did, and he frequently vents by arranging horrible (but rarely intentionally physically damaging) pranks and accidents to befall anyone who gets on his evidently strained nerves. He can only take so much stress before he snaps, and he seems to snap slightly differently every time. Not that he snaps very often, mind.
The usual Keluute enjoys spending his spare time working on his accuracy in all sorts of weather, and it is one of the few activities where he is willing to put up with observers. Should they start to pay obvious, significant attention to him, however (or discuss it so that he can hear), he will pack his things and find somewhere else to work. Being the centre of attention does make him very uneasy. He doesn't like sweetener, but sweet food items, and bubbly pies in particular, are quite acceptable to his taste buds. Spicy food makes him cry and run around for something to flush his mouth with. It's really quite amusing to see, and his brothers have both slipped hot pepper seeds, among other things, into his food before. He has gained the habit of carefully testing his first bite, but he often forgets when he's hungry, and anyway Noranor and Nakeran were both sufficiently deft to spice his food whenever he's not looking.
History: Keluute is the third child of five born to Kelnor and Utanora of Black Tree, the holding they carved out themselves under the the protection of Alietran Hold. The holding, little more than a logging camp a dozen Turns after its founding, was named for the distinctive dark wood of the trees in the area. While pretty, and both soft and firm enough to be worked, it has since proved very susceptible to warping due to moisture. In the humid south, that limits its uses considerably, and the would-be-prosperous holding merely trudged along.
Keluute's childhood was rather drab. There wasn't much variation in day-to-day life, and it has instilled a bit of an insistence on routine. His general insecurities helped strengthen that need. His mother, Utanora, cared for each child directly to the age of five (with the assistance of hired help whenever they could afford it). After that, the children were expected to start making themselves useful. The eldest, Noranor, took to wood in all its forms almost immediately. He was the couple's pride and joy, that dark strapping lad. Utanora in particular doted upon the next child, though without forgetting about her first son. Utake proved to be a lovely girl with a soft, teasing smile and laughing eyes. She caught the eye of one of a journeyman miner at one Alietran gather.
Keluute was a bit of a shocker after his excellent siblings. His baby-pale hair never darkened, though his eyes settled on a moderately light hazel not too far from his siblings'. His build was far closer to Utake's than Noranor's, though his younger siblings looked to follow the appropriate gender stereotypes set by the eldest two. Kenra's skin was a little darker than Utake's, and she was a touch too shy to be striking, and Nakeran was, in short, a concentrated version of Noranor in miniature, with the addition of some excess energy.
In the varying but always small community of Black Tree, Keluute stuck out when he wasn't hiding. He didn't like being different. It didn't help that Noranor dismissed him as a sissy from early on and Utake was rather preoccupied with her womanly pursuits (as she insisted everything she did be called, at least while young). The hired hands doing much of the labour often didn't even know that Keluute existed, as he spent much of his time lurking in the trees left standing around the holding itself. If his parents couldn't catch him not doing the monotonous work they set him (the only wood-related task he enjoyed was carving, but he wasn't about to show his work to anyone), then they couldn't punish him.
He managed to spend most of five Turns hiding in the bush before his luck ran out. One of the felines so hunted in Southern for both safety and pelts had wandered away from its birth pride some time before. It ended up near Black Tree. It was starving, tired, and had never come across a human before. It saw Keluute and didn't think twice. It attacked.
Perhaps his luck hadn't run out entirely. The big cat, rather larger than the slight ten-Turn-old, charged Keluute from the front. Hunger made it stupid and clumsy, and it half-tripped on a thick protruding root. As it stumbled, Keluute raised the bow his father had forced upon him and fired his one blunt arrow. The cat was just recovering its stride, only a few paces away, and lifted its head into the arrow's path. At such a short distance, there was sufficient force to drive the dull head through the cat's eye. It wasn't a lethal shot, not immediately, but it certainly distracted the cat long enough for Keluute to get out of the way. Its grating wail also succeeded in bringing everyone within earshot.
Kelnor was finally proud of his second son. While he had been out logging with one of the paid crews, and so not able to respond to the emergency himself, he made sure that the dead cat (quickly finished off by a proper arrow from one of the responders) was neatly skinned and the pelt presented to Keluute. He encouraged the boy to continue his archery, and for the next few Turns, that was what he did. Obsessively. Additionally, whenever word drifted in of a pride that was drifting too close to human habitation, Keluute was abnormally swift to volunteer. Considering the teen's now considerable skill and understandable dislike of the beasts, he became a more and more frequent presence at such missions.
His parents were happy that he had found something he was passionate about, even if it wasn't a true trade. Feline hunters, good ones, were always needed in the South. Besides, by the time Keluute was fifteen, their eldest son was off finishing his apprenticeship at the nearest branch of the Woodcrafthall, their eldest daughter was being courted by a kind and successful young man, already a journeyman miner, and both younger children were early in their healer apprenticeships. Keluute was the only one who still lived at home, but he was gone much of the time. He hadn't actually ever been home when each sibling left, not through conspiring but simple chance.
Off on his trips, he might have become a familiar face to the other hunters, and one they didn't mind seeing, but none of them ever got to know Keluute. Generally the youngest of the groups, and a very good shot for his experience, he rarely spoke and never made eye contact. Whenever he met another hunter for the first time, the initial reaction of the other was generally laughter that such a soft boy was doing such a dangerous job or concern for his well-being. Sometimes the impression lasted past Keluute's first kill of the trip. There would often be stories told around nightly meals, and they usually gravitated to the job (or women). When the others extolled their prowess, some of those who had worked with Keluute more would bring up his accuracy. It wasn't all that uncommon for him to score an eye at twenty paces or more, and his pelts were almost always intact. Keluute left the group every single time the conversation turned to him. He didn't if it shifted to scars, but he never volunteered anything either; he had none. Some of the hunters, particularly those who had started young, had impressive rakes across their shoulders or legs, and weren't afraid to show it.
He was home from one such trip and visiting his younger siblings in Torrel with his parents when a group of dragonriders descended from Alietran Weyr. Keluute had never seen dragons before, and retreated to the shadows. From there he learned that they had come on Search.
Nakeran was accepted. He had not been as ecstatic as his sister about healing, though he enjoyed it well enough, and agreed to go to the Weyr for what looked to be Alietran's last hatching.
Keluute was not able to attend. One of the farther-flung holdings was having trouble with felines attacking their herds, and he headed out to help. He kept one of the pelts back when he heard that his brother was now N'ran, Impressed forever to the brown dragon Nelmenith. Rather than sell it, as was his usual wont, he sent it to the new Weyrling as a gift, and then returned to his silent work.
Life whent on. Utake's courter proposed, the family agreed. She married Shetti at the beginning of that Turn's summer, and some ten months later deliver a boy, Shettu. N'ran was given permission to visit, and invited his various relatives to come see him and Nelmenith in the Weyr. His parents did within the season, Kenra and Noranor by the end of the Turn. Utake was too busy with her new family, and Keluute never seemed to get around to it. When he finally did, N'ran and Nelmenith had graduated from their weyrling training, were installed in their permanent weyr as a full fighting pair, and rather busy with new training.
That training was known to have accidents, and not all of them were caused by laziness or ineptitude. The large Nelmenith, with another brown, were practicing coming in under an injured green and supporting her down to the ground; with no queens, the Weyr was looking for other ways to deal with the situation. For whatever reason, the green playing the injured part this one time panicked. Perhaps her wing became entangled with one of the browns'; no one was ever sure. She moved, too quickly, and sliced Nelmenith's right wing away from his body. The brown bellowed and panicked himself - he vanished between. The green did as well, reappearing some lengths above, her rider desperately calming her as Nelmenith didn't follow her out. No one had seen it, but the green had actually cut N'ran's leg as well, very badly, and the cold of between sent him into shock, which confused Nelmenith and left them without a way out.
Someone later found Keluute deep in the lower caverns, out cold. He'd fled the scene, the dragons' keen chasing after him, and eventually tripped on the increasingly uneven stone. The mild concussion kept him under the healers' eyes until they found out who he was, and then they kept a close watch on him lest he continue his emotional response to his brother's abrupt death. Keluute never tried to commit suicide. In fact, he coped as well as was to be expected, and better than many would have. He had seen people die before, generally new would-be hunters who made a mistake. He hadn't even been all that close to N'ran. The healers put him to work running errands for them for a while, and it was on one of those errands that he came across Let'reni.
Let'reni was an old bluerider just visiting a friend who had transferred from Southern Weyr many Turns before. Keluute was sent over to the elderly brownrider's weyr with a fresh supply of numbweed. Good for the aches of old age, numbweed. Anyway, he'd barely been welcomed in when the brown accidentally wafted a bit of dust into the blue's face, waking him with a fit of sneezing. Somewhere in there, the blue told his rider something or other, because Let'reni deftly drew Keluute into conversation. After determining that the boy was not a candidate, and had not been Searched, and was only here because his brother had just died, the wily old rider called on a pretty young green weyrling to take Keluute down to the current candidatemaster, whoever he was, and tell him that Let'reni of Southern had his eye on the boy. The pretty young green weyrling was very stubborn and had a lot of experience in making younger boys, ogling or not (the latter being the case here), do what she wanted. Keluute ended up with a room of his own (kind of) and told to stay put.
Pets N/A
Dragon N/A
For Candidates:
Elided name: K'luute (KLOOT-eh)
What color does the character want/not want?: Wants brown, does not want green.
What color do YOU want/not want for this character?: Green! I don't want brown, but I'm good with blue. Or a non-canon colour, barring any neon pink or purple monstrosities
Do you care if the character impresses cross-gender?: Yes! Cross-gender is good.
Are you okay with your candidate being mauled; if so, how much?: A little, but nothing debilitating. He's got enough issues.
Is this a stands candidate?: Nope, just plain old Searched holderbrat.
Any other traits (physical or personality-wise) you'd like to see/not see with your dragon?: Not a total opposite personality; complementary is fine, but excessive extroversion might just drive him mad. In a bad way.
That sucks.