Name: Trude
Age: 15
Nameday: 3560.02.07
Sex: Female
Sexual Orientation: she's not sure yet...
Craft: none
Rank: Candidate
Location: Western Weyr
Physical Description: Trude looks almost cherubic with her round face and soft features. Her skin is tanned from living at sea and holdless for so long, with a slight dusting of freckles across her nose and shoulders. Long and messy, her red blond hair frames her wide green eyes, little button nose, and smallish mouth. At 5'5" and probably as tall as she is going to get, Trude is skinny and waifish in build and carriage, though she can "lady" it up when she wants to.
She will wear whatever is thrown at her at this point, though she does still like pretty dresses and fine fabrics; she'll happily play Dress Me Up Dolly with anyone who wants to take her on as their project.
Personality:
If you were to judge this particular book by its cover, you might come to one of two conclusions about Trude: she's either deeply odd, or deliberately rebellious. And you'd be wrong on both counts. With her lack of practical life experience, her surface eccentricity is not the result of a desire to be different, but a matter of not knowing how to not be different. She marches to the beat of her own drummer because she has never heard any other kind of music, even though she knows other songs exist and yearns to experience them.
Trude is a portrait in cognitive dissonance. Her innate gentility and wistful refinement contrast sharply with her semi-feral presentation. She is nothing if not a romantic; she deeply romanticizes the past, and tries to bring some of those qualities into her own life. Her gracious manner and strong sense of honor might be considered quaint by some, drawn as they are from times long gone, but they are part and parcel of who she is. With her natural intellectualism and tendency to idealize the Glorious Days Of Yore, her curiosity is more theoretical than practical (she'd rather read about a thing than try it, at least at first).
Having been more alone during her life than even the most solitary Holdless, she needs large amounts of time just by herself. She is easily overwhelmed by the population of the Weyr and living in a barracks situation and meals taken together with the other Candidates, and will go quiet or skitter off someplace to hide alone for a little while until it passes and she can breathe again. Yet paradoxically she craves human contact in a way most people could not possibly understand. She hungers for interaction with those who feel similarly to how she feels, even if it's just to be in the same room as they are. Once she has decided you're her friend, you have a devoted friend for life.
Surprisingly courageous at her heart, Trude can deal with large-scale crises fairly well; her instinct is to react first, deal with the situation, then quietly freak out later. She is not a helpless creature by any stretch of the imagination, even though she does come across as a bit naive at times. Despite what she may think of herself, once the opportunity presents itself, she is idealistic and courageous when she's fighting for what she believes in. And what she believes in is the safety of Pern from Thread. Now that she's a Candidate, her only dream is to one day Impress one of the great beasts for herself and become a dragonrider, valiantly defending Pern from the scourge of Thread!
Positive Trait List courageous when it counts, intellectual, romantic, determined
Negative Trait List deeply introverted, skittish, feral, naive
History:
The daughter of a well-off minor holder and his wife, the youngest of several children, Trude was raised like a little lady, pampered and a bit spoiled by her doting parents and the staff of the farming hold on the Southern Continent. She learned how to read at an early age, prompted by stories of days gone by told to her at bedtime and the Teaching Songs sung by the hold's Harper, and she gobbled it all up. It was so romantic, riding dragons and flaming Thread!
Then one day in 3569, when she was 9 Turns old, she was tempted away from her family while at the beach by a strange man with a firelizard as a pet. Trude was fascinated by the tiny miniature dragon -- like from the stories and songs! The man, a pirate, waited until they were a good distance away from her family and snatched the little girl up, taking her wailing back to his waiting pirate ship. The pirates' intent was to sell her off to a slaver for a good price. Trude kept insisting her parents would come looking for her, but they never did. To this day she doesn't know her family were slaughtered by the pirates before they could send for help; she thinks they just forgot about her.
After about a Turn, Trude was sold to another pirate crew to do with as they wished. This group of pirates, while hard men and women, weren't entirely heartless, and after awhile they more or less adopted the girl as their pet mascot rather than sell her off. They dressed her up like a little pirate and allowed her the run of the ship (though she was never allowed on shore). In time she came to think of them as her surrogate family, seafaring aunties and uncles. She was taught by them how to climb the rigging and how to defend herself with a sword or a knife, how to fish and how to swim and how to hunt. It was an adventurous life for one so young as Trude!
Until, against all belief to the contrary, Thread returned to Pern. The ship was near the shore of Tillek when the silver menace began to fall from the sky, and though they managed to evade it, not a single crewmember came away unscathed mentally. Especially Trude -- she had remained below decks and hid shivering in the deepest part of the ship's belly, below the water line. She knew what was happening -- she remembered the tales she'd heard of long ago.
The pirate ship and Trude carried on their merry way until 3575, when Thread finally caught them during a storm, causing the ship to founder and wreck along the mountainous west coast of the Western Continent. Trude survived by ducking underwater, remembering from the stories that Thread couldn't survive water, but the rest of the crew, who had remained on deck, were wiped out by the Threadfall. She managed to make it to shore after the wreck, though she was badly shaken and battered, and for several sevendays survived on what she could scavenge from the wreckage of the ship or forage for. She was terrified, afraid she was going to die for sure or get caught out by Thread.
Luckily Trude was spotted fishing along the coast by a dragonrider from Western Weyr who was out flying sweeps. The girl had never seen a dragon up close before, let alone ridden on one -- what an experience! She was brought back to the Weyr and taken to the Healers, and after they'd heard her story, one of the dragons Searched her. Trude couldn't believe it -- she'd been rescued! Not only that, there was the possibility that she could someday be a dragonrider like in her stories!
Is this a dream come true? Time will tell….
Other:
Candidate Specific Questions
Do you want them to have an official Search RP? No
Do you understand they will age every passing year regardless if you're there to RP the or not? Yes
Do you want them to have a possible Stands Impression? No
