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Name: Eridan
Age: 5 turns (as of 3574.12.1)
Sex: m
Sexual Orientation: n/a, but probably bi when he grows up
Craft: n/a
Rank: weyrbrat
Location: Western Weyr
Physical Description:
About average height for a child his age, he's on the plump side from being adored (and overfed) by his grandparents for the past several turns. He's probably going to stay that way for most of his life because he eats when he's unhappy and he finds a lot to be unhappy about. He'll grow up to be average in height, with curly brown hair and brown eyes. He'll also have horrendous acne as a teenager.
Personality:
This youngster will exaggerate to ridiculous lengths to get attention and sympathy. So, obviously, Eri likes to tell people he's had a hard life. As in, he really likes to tell people that. He wants people to feel sorry for him: abandoned by his father (who later tried to kidnap him), uprooted from his loving home with his grandparents by his mother, then abandoned by his mother when she Impressed a dragon at High Reaches Weyr and left in the care of his incompetent uncle (who Eri's certain wishes he didn't have to look after him). Woe is Eri!
Eridan is very much inclined to feeling sorry for himself and shifting the blame to others (or just circumstances, if there are no actual people who can be blamed), and he'll do so in the most dramatic way possible. He throws epic tantrums, has the focus to sulk for days at a time, and is always grievously wounded whenever he's injured, and illness always brings him right up to death's door. He'll tell people all about it at great length, with much embellishment and little regard for the facts. Fortunately, he has a fertile imagination which supplies him with endless ways of tweaking events to better suit his preferred narrative.
Obviously, Eri likes to be the center of attention, and that means that he's become very good at seeking out new audiences. He is quick to attempt to befriend new people, though his manner might be off-putting, as his preferred method of making friends is to make people feel sorry for him and spend time with him because of that. Hopefully he'll learn more effective strategies as he gets older. People who scorn him are reframed in his mind as nemeses who actively dislike him. The same for people who disappoint him or slight him in some way. Unfortunately, his focus allows him to hold grudges for a long time.
His focus is not always a bad thing, though. In fact, usually it's one of his best traits: he's able to listen with intensity and can learn rapidly because of that focus. He is able to keep to assigned tasks and see them through without requiring constant prodding and reminders. He is able to set goals and work toward them (even though right now his plans tend toward the absurd rather than the practical). This is not a kid who is easily distracted.
And then there's the dragon thing. At the moment, Eri associates all the bad things that have happened to him with dragons. He was taken from his home on a dragon. He was so afraid going between for the first time that he wet himself while still on the dragon's back. His mother left him because she Impressed a dragon. Nothing good comes from dragons. He doesn't want to meet any more dragons, or ride dragons, or talk to dragons or anything. He might grow out of this, he might not. It will depend on how things go for him.
Positive Trait List creative; outgoing; focused
Negative Trait List unforgiving; melodramatic; self-pitying; dislikes dragons
History:
Eridan's father walked out on his mother a month before he was born and didn't come back for two turns. Then, when he did come back, he dedicated himself to making Eri's mother's life wretched. For reasons of practicality and security, Eridan and his mother lived with his grandparents for what little he can remember of his (earlier) childhood. He liked living with his grandparents. They were very forgiving, very permissive, and very free with the sweets. His mother wasn't around as much, since she worked outside the home, but she sometimes brought him fancy buttons or colorful fabrics from work to amuse himself with, and he never doubted that everyone in his household loved him.
When things got much worse, with his father coming around and making threats and finally attempting to kidnap him, Eri's uncle R'bin, a brownrider at Western Weyr, came and took Eri and his mother away to live with him at the Weyr. The trip was terrifying and somewhat traumatic for Eri, and although he settled into the creche and Weyr life fairly quickly, he remained afraid to travel by dragon, or even to get too close to them. Fortunately, he and his mum moved out of his uncle's weyr pretty quickly, so he wouldn't have to spend too much time around Huarangith, R'bin's dragon.
Things were definitely improving for Eri after that: he was making friends in the creche, learning his way around the Weyr, and finding that his mother spent much more time with him than ever before. And then, came the double hatching at High Reaches Weyr. His mother and uncle went without him (just because he happened to be sleeping over at a friend's weyr and it was two in the morning!) and while they were there his mother Impressed a green hatchling and never came back. Eri is very upset about this and would quickly come to associate dragons with all the bad things that have ever happened to him, no matter how unreasonable it is for him to do so.
Now he's living with his uncle again and they're both adjusting to that. Or trying to, at any rate.
Other:
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