Name: Y'io (formerly Yario)
Age: 23 (Nameday 3551.01.06)
Sex: Male
Sexual Orientation: demisexual, prefers ladies
Weyr: High Reaches Weyr
Rider Rank: Wingrider
Previous Rank/Craft: Journeyman Harper
Physical Description: At 6'3", Y'io is built whip-thin, skinny but not scrawny, with the lean, ropy musculature of a distance runner. His face is a bit too masculine to truly be termed "heart-shaped," but that's the closest description, with sharp, angular features, a straight nose, and a fairly full-lipped mouth. His heavy-lidded eyes are yellow-hazel in color and slightly uptilted at the edges, topped with heavy dark eyebrows (usually expressionless save for the occasional single eyebrow arch). His hair is glossy black with a distinct blue sheen to it; stick-straight and uneven in length, it hangs roughly to his waist. He usually ties it back in a low tail, with choppy fringe that hangs in uneven chunks in his face; when he's fighting Thread, it goes in a tight tail twisted and coiled beneath his flight helmet. (If you want a face claim, Ezra Miller comes closest)
Y'io's voice is a soft, nondescript light baritone; he rarely raises it for any reason, and usually speaks in a near-flat monotone. He can sing quite well, though, usually accompanying himself on his harp. He is an eloquent, expressive musician despite his flat demeanor who uses his body as much as his breath or fingers to make music.
Y'io is something of a clotheshorse; he has a variety of outfits depending on what he's doing. For performing, he'll wear brightly-colored tunics wrapped closed in the front, sashes and close-fitting trousers with tall fur boots. His Gather finest also tends to be colorful, shirts and jackets with elaborate trim and sleek boots. For everyday wear, he prefers simple shirts and comfortable trousers with workaday boots. He even has a specific outfit for wearing beneath his flight leathers, which are completely black, including the fur trim. In the summer, his shirts and tunics tend to be sleeveless; in the winter he wears long-sleeved tunics along with a fur-lined long coat and a thick knit neckscarf.
Personality: Y'io is, first and foremost, a walking paradox. He is a collection of seemingly contradictory things; he's a "people person" who likes to do things alone, soft-spoken but not at all shy, cool and reserved but not unfriendly. Y'io is unapologetically eccentric, in the truest sense of the word. This eccentricity turns up mostly in his sense of humor -- dry and deadpan and wicked, he loves spouting flat non-sequiturs and playing subtle pranks on people, so subtle that sometimes they don't even know they're being pranked.
The thing people tend to find most disconcerting about Y'io is his stone-faced expression. He has the best poker face ever and the ability to hold it no matter what; it's exceedingly difficult to get a visible reaction out of him, over anything. It's nearly impossible to make him laugh (out loud, that is -- he might be dying of laughter on the inside, but he won't let his poker face crack), let alone even smile. And if you do manage somehow to get a reaction, pat yourself on the back -- and remember what you did, because he'll remember and won't let you get away with it again.
He's actually a fairly sensible man, despite the eccentricity, with a strong sense of personal responsibility. Y'io is extremely self-disciplined; he can learn or do whatever he puts his mind to, and is willing to do whatever is needed to accomplish a task. He radiates stability and happily serves as anchor with his calm, rock-steady presence and rational, if impassive, observations on the situation. He's cool as ice in a crisis, seemingly immune to freaking out or panicking. Trustworthy and punctual, he's a man of his word. If someone asks him to be someplace, he'll be there early, completely prepared and ready to go. If something needs doing and no-one else has stepped up to do it, he will. He's the ultimate team player.
There's more behind Y'io's cool stability and poker face than simply not wanting to tip his hand. Oh dear, is he a fool for love. He falls in love far too quickly and so very hard and with exactly the wrong people. And when things inevitably turn sour, he bashes himself unmercifully for not listening to his intuition, falls into a self-loathing funk and locks down his battered heart, along with his emotions. His self-loathing when he is betrayed is brutal, mainly because he feels a fool for trusting someone he shouldn't have yet again, and his subsequent vindictiveness against whoever hurt him (or who hurts anyone he cares about, for that matter) is poisonous and vicious. His need for vengeance is toxic and will eat him alive if he doesn't get it out of his system one way or another.
Mind you, nearly all of this inner turmoil is completely unknown to most people, thanks to Y'io's flat, deadpan expression and eccentric mannerisms. Most of the time one won't notice anything is going on with him. And he prefers it that way. Less likely to get hurt.
Positive Trait List Reliable, self-disciplined, team player, sane and stable, trustworthy
Negative Trait List Eccentric, vindictive and vengeful, prankster, self-loathing, emotionless and flat-affected
History: Y'io was born in Fort Hold to a family of distinguished Harpers that goes back generations. It was expected of him to become a Harper as well, so he was sent to Harper Hall at age 10, where he specialized in music composition and learned to play many different instruments. Despite the intense training and his own personal dedication to music, Yario fell in love hard at age 17 with a girl named Mavri, a fellow apprentice Harper. She ultimately broke his heart a year later (he thought she had fallen for a dragonrider and run off with them, not knowing she'd actually been Searched). Gutted, Yario developed his impassive outer shell and flat demeanor as a result of this incident to protect himself against ever experiencing something like that again.
Yario walked the tables at 19 to become a journeyman Harper and was assigned to a minor hold in Ruatha territory. No sooner had he arrived than he was Searched almost before he was settled in by the hold's watch dragon, and after confirmation by a proper Search dragon he was sent to High Reaches Weyr. He was a model Candidate, punctual and studious, much as he had been at Harper Hall, and he Impressed brown Taliorth at age 20. As with Candidate training, he and Taliorth excelled at Weyrling training, and the pair flew the first Threadfall after a thousand turns and survived.
Y'io only recently realized Mavri, the girl who broke his heart, is also at High Reaches...
Other: Y'io is still a Harper as well as a wingrider. He can play multiple different instruments including flute (his favorite), gitar and harp, as well as sing. He writes songs based on events around the Weyr, stories and gossip he hears from others, and also from books and poems he reads (including some of Theo/O'thio's bodice-rippers).
DRAGON
Name: Taliorth
Age: 3 (shelled 3571.08.22 from Rhianth x Kronoseth's clutch at High Reaches)
Color: Brown
Size: 38'
Physical Description: Taliorth is a big boy, not as big as browns can get but still impressively large. Barrel-chested and muscular, he's got a powerful build, with strong forelegs and broad, strong wings. His hide is a light brown, the color of milky klah, with a dark brown stripe that starts under his chin and extends over the top of his head over his knobs, down his neck and back, over his spines to the forks of his tail. Three rings of dark brown also circle his neck, and he has dark brown markings around his eyes.
Personality: Where Y'io is stone-faced and emotionless (on the surface at least), Taliorth is outspoken and positively bubbly. This dragon says the first thing that comes to his mind more often than not, and will communicate his rider's mood and meaning to whomever His is speaking to -- a trait which often gets a deep sigh from Y'io. Taliorth has a knack for bringing out the best in Y'io; he can get him to at least show some emotion, thereby forcing the harper to actually accept his feelings as legitimate and not in need of suppressing.
The hardest thing for Y'io to accept when he Impressed was that the love that Taliorth held for him was unconditional. From day one, this dragon has willingly reaffirmed his love and adoration of His on an almost constant basis. He is as sane and stable as his rider is, and just as reliable; this pair can always be counted on, whether it's during a Threadfall or transport duty or whatever is needed of them. They're an asset to their wing, and to High Reaches as a whole.
Dragon Art or Proof of Obtainment:
