Post by Chaldais on Feb 18, 2008 16:29:45 GMT -5
General Information
Name: Chaldais
Age: 20
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Rank: Senior Apprentice Fisherman
Appearance
Hair: Auburn
Eyes: Grey-Green
Height: 6' 1"
Over-All:
Chaldais stands like a sea-swept promontory, hardened and smoothed by the battering of wind and wave. His body is labor-firm, his arms sheathed in the corded curve of muscle. Harsh features make him more rugged than handsome, from the awkward break of his nose to the pronounced hollow of his cheeks. His eyes are grey-green, like turbid waters; his hair falls about his shoulders in a wild profusion of auburn, where it isn't haphazardly braided in order to clear his vision. The same ruddy color descends in sideburns and gathers about his lips in a stubbled beard. The young man moves easily, balanced regardless of his ground or seat.
Chaldais dresses in simple, utilitarian clothes, suited to his calling: undyed woolen breeches, a cream tunic, sandals or thin boots, and a black leather doublet with tied sleeves to keep off the rain or the chill. His belt typically sports a long, lean knife, used for gutting fish.
(Note: This character is based loosely on a young Sean Bean.)
Personality
At first blush, Chaldais may seem as personable as the rock outcropping he resembles. Distant and taciturn, he seldom displays his feelings or loosens his tongue. One has the impression that his brief declarations are laden with unvoiced thought, like an iceberg below the waterline.
His sudden sallies of humor-- emerging from the blue, so that they often go unnoticed until after the fact-- tell a different story. Chaldais is not cold, but clannish; he invests deeply in those he considers family and tends to withhold himself from others. To these individuals he displays the warmth and the mirth of firm fellowship. He willingly shares their burdens, emotional or physical, and he can be fiercely protective. Here too he opens a vein of almost naive trust that makes him liable to be hurt. Still a young man, his passions are not well-ordered but rather tightly bottled, and they have been known, on occasion, to burst their cork.
History
As a child, Chaldais lived in his father's tremendous shadow. He idolized the man, and Chelan seemed a figure worthy of a boy's devotion. He was the patriarch of a large family-- four sons and a daughter-- a loving husband to his wife Dasha, and the proprietor of a fishing operation that involved all of his male offspring. With his boisterous wit and his warm, deep voice-- not to mention his prominent paunch-- Chelan seemed larger than life to his more reserved son. He had friends and connections everywhere in Sanctum Hold, and not a few admirers. People would point to Chelan and his brood as a model of what Hold life was all about.
As soon as he could bait a hook, Chaldais accompanied his father and his older brother Darinel on their fishing expeditions down the river, or up to the frigid mountain lakes. Chelan taught him how to tie lures and build weirs, how to sit an oar and patch the bottom of a boat. Like an explorer, he gave names to the important places in Chaldais' world: Granite Falls, Black Pond, Lake Wherryleg. He pointed out the shadowed banks where the greyfish huddle and the time of year when the red snapper make their spawning run. Most important, he taught Chaldais about the importance of family.
"You have to look out for your people," Chelan once explained, turning his knife through the innards of a fat fish. "There's no such thing as an easy catch; we each have to pull our weight, man and boy. Succeed or fail, it'll be together." And then, pointing his bloodied knife-tip over the boy's shoulder, he said with a wicked smile, "You'll want your big brother beside you when one of /them/ things crawls out of the brush." When Chaldais startled and whirled, Chelan's great face erupted into bellows of laughter. He gave the boy a pat on the shoulder and wiped his eye with the back of his hand, wheezing, "There's a lad."
It was a hard life, and sometimes a dangerous one. Chaldais still remembers the time they were caught dead in the center of a lake, hauling up their nets with fevered intensity while the water around them mirrored a sky boiling with the first grey glimmers of Thread. But the hours of bone weariness had their compensations; Chaldais grew strong on the dignity of skilled work, the experience of burdens shared, the joy of familiar jests and fish stories. He learned to regard "people" as the one, indissoluble bond. When Darinel was searched by Sanctum Weyr, Chelan objected, but all the same he dragged the whole clan into the stands to watch the lad try-- and fail-- to Impress. "What can you do?" the old man grumbled. "He's kin."
Chaldais came of age with the placid confidence born of knowing one's place in the world. He would follow his father's trade, as Darinel had, as his younger brothers surely would do. He would play his small but important part in the sustenance of Sanctum Hold. He even had his eye on a certain Headwoman's daughter, who blushed prettily at the thought that she might be the next to join old Chelan's family.
And then, by thread-ends, that well-woven fabric of a life began to unravel.
First came his sister Lissa's departure to live and study with the Harpers in the Upper Hold. She'd always had a gift for music, so Chaldais thought little of her plans until the night when she and Chelan had an argument that rattled the door of his bedchamber. She was gone the next morning and did not return. Chaldais wondered why Chelan and Dasha avoided speaking to one another for several days afterward, and why Liss chose to write only to her mother and-- occasionally-- to Chaldais himself.
Then there was the incident in Sanctum Hold's main hall. While Chelan was haggling with Headwoman Sibongale over a delivery of fish, one of the Hold's scullery women drew him aside and spoke to the old man in heated whispers. To Chaldais' surprise, Sibongale immediately cut short her bargaining; with a crisp clap, she summoned the other servant girls to the far side of the chamber, where she had discovered tapestries needing to be removed from their walls and beaten clean. Chaldais himself lingered, and fingers of ice crept over his heart when the lone maid clutched Chelan's wrist and murmured something about a child. Leaving the Hold that day, there were no stories and no jests. Chelan seemed weary, and despite his smile, the look he cast sidelong on his son was tinged with a very human fear. Chaldais focused narrowed eyes on the path ahead, set his jaw, and pretended not to notice it.
For the first time, Chaldais gave ear to those rumors that had always circulated in the Hold about old Chelan and his many admirers. What had seemed to him sallies of wit, or envy, or fancy-- the usual lies told about charming men by those who wished they were so-- now assumed a more disturbing aspect. Could this man, Chaldais' hero and the patriarch his close-knit family, really have betrayed his mother's trust? How often? How far had it gone, and with whom?
Such questions were still churning behind his eyes when Nasrin, Sibongale's daughter, informed Chaldais that she was being sent up to Sanctum Weyr to stand for Impression. The maid who was almost his betrothed would instead be ensconced across the valley, celibate for now, destined perhaps to the promiscuous life of the dragonrider. Crushed and furious, Chaldais stalked the room in a tumult of emotion that twitched through every fiber of his frame, biting back the words that threatened to come down on her like molten lava. Nasrin could only explain, sadly, that it was what her blood wanted, what Sanctum's Blood required; she owed her family obedience, and trusted that he of all people would understand that.
"And what of the family we might have?"
"If we forsake our parents, Chaldais, what can we expect from our children?"
Her words felt like salt in the wound, and moreso because he couldn't argue against them. Family, Chelan had always said. You always look out for your people. Chelan the adulterer. Perhaps, Chaldais thought, "family" really meant covering for the sins of the fathers. Perhaps "people" could only be trusted to look out for themselves.
When it came time for Nasrin to leave for the Weyr, Chaldais stood with puddled brow and a heart of lead to see her off. When the brown dragon that came to fetch her snuffled up Chaldais as well, he agreed to the search without quite knowing why. Later, he reasoned that it would give him a little more time with Nasrin, and an opportunity to talk her out of her decision-- if he could bring himself to do so. He knew that his father would be livid, but the old man's blessing seemed to him less important than it had before. In any case, he would soon be home again like his brother Darinel.
Chaldais is a young man at a crossroads, pulled in several directions by the very impulses that once held his world together. The life that once seemed so simple, so pure, has become unbearably complex. Should he try to take Nasrin home against the wishes of her mother? Should he keep his father's secret, or side with Dasha and Liss? Could he really cast his line beside a man with Chelan's faults, and if not, what was left for someone who had always planned to follow his father's trade? Might he actually Impress, and what would such a life with Nasrin be like? Who, finally, should he regard as his people?
FOR CANDIDATES:
Honorific: Ch'dais
Preferred Color: Bronze/Brown
