Post by Julanan av-Feromep on Feb 4, 2013 19:00:44 GMT -5
RIEME SARET-ASHERON
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THE BASICS;;
NAME: Rieme (Rye-eh-meh) saret-Asheron
AGE: 10 Coelenu; physically the equivalent of a 16-year-old human.
SEX: Male
SPECIES: Yukawian Nexalonian
HOMEWORLD: Nexalon
CODENAME: N/A
ALIASES: Julanan av-Feromep, to avoid being recognized by any other Yukawi
AFFILIATION: Civilian
STATUS: Working at a seedy pub on Earth.
CANON: No.
PLAYBY: None for regular form, Toothless of How To Train Your Dragon for alternate form.
THE GOOD STUFF;;
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PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
Rieme is a couple of inches below the average Yukawi height, coming in at about 4'6" tall, and weighing roughly 100 lbs. He looks a lot like a human adolescent with dark-tanned skin, but he has distinctively pronounced canine teeth, and long, pointed ears (nearly five inches from where they connect to his skull to the tips) with no lobe, but the edges folded inward, giving them a conical shape; all traits found in virtually all Yukawi. As an individual, however, he has a lanky body with lean, wiry muscles throughout. His hair is black, reaching to about the middle of his back in length, and his eyes are bright green sedalen (the Nexalonian term for having vertically slitted pupils).
Typically, like most Yukawi, he enjoys wearing brightly-coloured clothes that often clash in style as well as pigment; bright orange and emerald green are his two favourite colours. A typical example of what he enjoys wearing would be a bright orange long-sleeved form-fitting top, underneath a green v-necked sleeveless vest, and black leather pants and boots. He usually wears his hair in a ponytail when he's like this.
He does, however, have a 'uniform'--the black leather pants and boots he wears, as well as a black leather, sleeveless vest he wears beneath his other clothing. In colder climates or weather, he will wear a long-sleeve black tunic, made of a material similar to wool, but softer and not scratchy, underneath his vest. When wearing his 'uniform', he always wears his hair loose.
He also has some Mahomec formal clothing he brought with him from Nexalon; being traditional Mahomec style, it's primarily white, made up of black leather boots with gold buckles, white trousers and a tunic made from a material much like Earth silk, and a long white cloak with a high collar; it's distinguished by the coloured borders and embroidery of the cloak and tunic, in this case black borders with gold embroidery, and a black belt around his waist with a large gold crest on the right side of the matching gold buckle; the crest bears the engraved image of a serpent-like creature, coiled around a sword. On the left side of his belt, by his hip, hangs the black sheathe of a thin, curved sword, similar to the ancient Earth blade called sabre; because of his formerly high rank, it's a beautifully crafted weapon, made entirely for elaborate display out of precious metal, with gold embellishments on the sheathe and a solid gold hilt fashioned to look like a serpent, as well. When he wears his formal clothing, he has his hair braided neatly.
In his other form, he appears as a large, black dragon with gleaming, mirror-like scales. His head is flat and almost shovel-like in shape, with a backward-swept crest with four horns. He has short, stubby legs, huge wings, and a long, flat, rudder-like tail, with another set of sail-like 'fins' at the base just behind his rear legs, and a larger set at the end of his tail, both of which are mobile and used to aid his maneuverability in flight. His eyes are bright green, as they are when he's in his normal state, with vertical slitted pupils.
(For better visualization, just imagine Toothless, but bigger. His head-flap things are stiff, not mobile, being extensions of his skull; he's not missing part of his tail, and he can't breathe fire (though that's not really related to his appearance...)
PERSONALITY:
Like most Yukawi, Rieme tends to keep a pretty positive and upbeat attitude, often being excitable to the point of hyperactivity, and easily entertained and amused. However, he can also be more serious than most people are accustomed to seeing from a Yukawi; this is due to his experiences, as the vast majority of Yukawi off-worlders are familiar with have never seen battle, and certainly have never received formal training. Both these things went a long way towards sobering up his attitude in the face of a serious situation.
That said, the one thing Rieme hasn't overcome is his racial predisposition towards looking to others for leadership; the Yukawi were practically bred, and literally trained from an early age, to be followers, not leaders. On his own, he tends to be very reactionary without someone there to give him direction, following mostly his whims and random ideas. Once he /does/ find someone to follow, though, he throws his all into their every command, and while he can be disrespectful and talk back frequently, he never disobeys a direct order, and he always strives to accomplish his mission at any cost.
At the present time, though, he has recently failed at his most important mission of all, and the consequences leave him depressed and rudderless, at a loss for what to do next. He's prone to bouts of melancholic reflection when he's alone or thinks no one is paying attention, staring off into nothingness. He avoids being recognized by other Yukawi, largely out of a deep sense of shame for having lost and been forced to flee, and not wanting to face them, or answer any of their questions.
The only thing that's guaranteed to bring him joy no matter what, is flying, which makes it incredibly frustrating that he can only do it every once in a while when he finds a sufficiently dark and rural area to hopefully not be spotted.
His temper, however, is much easier to rile. He can be provoked, usually more easily in the defense of others than in defense of himself, funnily enough. When angered, he often turns to insults and verbal baiting; he is more than happy to get into a fight, but will typically try to get the other to throw the first punch. If he gets ticked off enough, though, he will willingly throw himself at his target, and once in a fight, he's in it 100%, no holding back.
Whatever his emotion, it usually shows clearly in his face and posture; the Yukawi were never good at learning how to conceal their feelings.
POWERS AND/OR ABILITIES:
- Shapeshifting: Rieme's primary go-to power. He changes from his normal Yukawi form, into a large, winged reptilian creature very similar to ancient Earth legends of dragons (the western kind, not the Eastern kind).
- Speed: While in his dragon form, he possesses incredible airborne speed and maneuverability, giving him a distinct advantage over the majority of other travel methods. He can reach speeds of up to 200 miles per hour if he manages to get high enough to dive and build up momentum, making him faster than the Legion flight rings, but not nearly so fast as a speedster over land. (This power only applies to his dragon form.)
- Strength/Durability: In his dragon form, he grows considerably, and gains strength and durability in proportion to that. Neither of these traits are in the 'super' range, with the exception of his head; his skull and crest are exceptionally dense and hard, allowing him to fly head-first into targets like cruisers at top speed, and come away with little more than a minor headache and some mild dizziness. And while his size gives him some resistance to impact damage (like crashing into something), his scaly hide also provides some protection from 'smaller' attacks, like a bullet or a knife. (This power only applies to his dragon form.)
- Night Vision: Having sedalen eyes means that Rieme has excellent night vision in both his forms. That said, he still does require some light to see by, however minimal; in totally lightless conditions, he's just as blind as everyone else.
- Reaction Time: This is a general Yukawi trait; they're known for having great reflexes and never freezing up under pressure. While they may not always know what to do, they will always do something, however ineffective it may be. Given their creativity and adaptability, they usually do find something to do about a situation.
- Smash Him With A Hammer: Rieme has been trained to fight, and has had experience fighting in real combat situations. While he definitely has no honed skill or enviable finesse, what he does have is brutal efficiency and a knowledge of what's effective. He can't slice and dice like a pro, but he can bludgeon you with a blunt object until you stop moving, and what he lacks in strength and size, he makes up for in ferret-like speed and a stubborn refusal to stop wailing on you until you cry uncle.
WEAKNESSES:
- Wardrobe Malfunction: Rieme can absorb some things, like clothes, into his body when he shapeshifts, allowing him to still be decent when he eventually turns back. This is limited, however, solely to form-fitting clothes made from organic materials (it works especially well with leather). Synthetic or loose-fitted clothing will simply be torn apart as he changes form and grows, while metal objects will bite into his flesh and cause him pain, forcing him to turn back. So basically, he has to be careful what he wears and carries.
- Land Legs: While Rieme's dragon form may have super-speed in the air, on the land he's clumsy beyond belief. Those stubby little legs were not made for walkin'. If he attempts to run across land at any speed, even across flat even terrain with nothing to trip over, he'll wind up tripping over his own legs within ten strides and go rolling head over wings over tail.
- Tongue Tied: Rieme can only roar and screech in his dragon form; he has no means by which to communicate. He can't even wear telepathic ear plugs, because in his dragon form, he doesn't have external ears.
- Blinded By Light: Sedalen eyes are designed to let in as much light as possible, to enable sight in conditions of low or poor lighting. Shine a bright light on them, and you blind them, painfully.
- Acting Without Thinking: While being reactionary can sometimes be an asset in battle, it can also be a very big detriment. He can't think ahead more than maybe one or two steps, and sucks at coming up with plans beyond a general outline of "here's our goal", often figuring out how to reach that goal as he goes along, if he manages to figure it out at all. A lot of this stems from the conditioning the Yukawi go through in general to keep them looking to the Mahomec for direction. It also affects him outside of battle, when he says things he shouldn't have without thinking, or does things that in hindsight he really shouldn't have.
- Authority Issues: Rieme has sworn his loyalty only to Asheron, and as a result will often be rude and deliberately uncooperative towards anyone else who tries to give him a command. He's gotten somewhat better recently due to Asheron's imprisonment, but still maintains that he is loyal first and foremost to his Adimanat.
- This Is Not The Yukawi You're Looking For: Rieme is in hiding, and as a result cannot use his power publicly, and must take pains not to be recognized by other Yukawi, among whom he's quite infamous. This is a frustrating handicap from someone who's not used to holding back in any situation, and limits his options in combat situations.
- Bruce Banner Syndrome: While his alternate form possesses all the strengths listed in the previous list, Rieme's true form lacks all of them, and is no stronger, nor durable, than you'd except from a four-foot-something imp.
GOALS:
None. At the present point in time, Rieme is a rebel without a cause, a wanderer without a destination, a ship without a sail or rudder. In a way, you could say his current goal is to find a goal to work towards.
HISTORY:
Birth—3rd Coelenu (0-8.5 years old)
Abandoned by his mother and having never known his father, Rieme spent these early years living as an orphan on the streets of the Nexalonian port-city Nerefal. His earliest memory was fleeing from aliens whom he’d stolen food and money from; they were the first to call him ‘Rieme’, which meant ‘thief’ in their tongue. He liked the sound of it, so he kept it as his name.
3rd-4th Coelenu (8.5-10 years old)
The Rebellion of the Princes began when King Gabrilon’s three sons declare war against him. The eldest prince, Adimanat-Prenor Asheron, established his base in Nerefal, which was his patron city. Rieme met him for the first time on the street just after he arrived. Being in disguise, Rieme did not even realize he was Mahomec, let alone one of the Adimanat, and was caught in the act of stealing from him, something which would normally have cost him one or more of his fingers as penance. Asheron, however, chose to spare Rieme, and give him a position amongst his servants; the child naively came to believe this was an act of kindness, which belief became the foundation of his loyalty to the man. The truth was, however, that Asheron used this public display of mercy as the first of many attempts to dispel the reputation he’d received for being the most cunning and cruel of the princes. Rieme was essentially Asheron’s personal errand boy, doing anything he asked of him, and was treated much like a favoured pet; nonetheless, he adored Asheron, and saw him as a mentor or even a father-figure.
4th-5th Coelenu (10-12.5 years old)
Asheron had Rieme made a benat, or a soldier in his army, despite being underage. The role of a typical benat was to serve at the bottom of the ranks, virtually anonymous amidst the other cannon-fodder; Asheron would often call on Rieme to perform certain errands for him, however, continuing to take advantage of Rieme’s fierce loyalty to him and eagerness to please. His reputation as Asheron’s loyal pet began to increase.
5th-6th Coelenu (12.5-15 years old)
Gabrilon was finally defeated just after Rieme’s birthday. Asheron and his brothers, as part of the treaty upon which their alliance had been based, set to work abolishing the monarchy in order to establish a new government, in which all three of them would rule together as the Contrilon. One of the first acts performed at the end of the war, according to tradition, was the promotion of noteworthy soldiers of skill and loyalty to the title of Materas, or knight. Rieme was one of those who were promoted. Publicly, Asheron claimed it was due to his great loyalty and courage during the conflict; the hard truth of the matter was that Asheron saw the potential in Rieme to become an even more valuable tool if molded correctly, and part of being made a Materas was being sent to the Nexalon Military Academy for formal training in combat and tactics. Meanwhile, rumours abounded throughout the Mahomec nobility and politically-inclined Yukawi that Rieme’s promotion was a blatant show of favouritism.
His time at the Academy was exceptionally difficult for him. As a benat, particularly one taking orders directly from Asheron, Rieme was accustomed to simply being given a task, and then going out and finding a way to accomplish it, with little to no planning beforehand. In the Academy, he and those other Yukawi who attended suffered through the process of having the concept of planning, tactics, and politics beaten into their heads, sometimes literally. These were subjects that did not come naturally to their species as a rule, but were required of them due to their rank in the service.
6th-7th Coelenu (15-16 years old)
Not long after the new government had been established, diplomacy between the brothers began to break down. Rieme, much to his relief, was pulled out of the academy several times to be sent on special errands for Asheron, missions of espionage and sabotage against the other princes that were well-recognized precursors to the beginning of one of Nexalon’s Elaborate Games. Before long, Asheron and his brothers once again left the capitol in order to settle their differences where they would cause the least amount of damage, with Asheron being on one side of the playing field, and his two brothers being allied on the other. Knowing he stood no chance of being able to defeat the combined forces of his brothers with the meager following his barely-rehabilitated reputation would inspire, Asheron was still too ambitious to give up, so he played a risky gamble; he broke millennia of Mahomec tradition and appealed to the Yukawi by offering them better treatment, more rights, and even equality. His words, being too good to be true, were rightfully viewed as empty promises at first, until he enacted a plot that changed everything.
Asheron had a niece, Sakranel, an ardent supporter of his who still lived in the capitol during the conflict, and was soon to undergo the coming-of-age rituals that would grant her the unique power every Mahomec was promised by the Goddess. He had collaborated with her in secret just before the war was officially begun, hatching a plot that would prove his words to the minds of the doubtful Yukawi; Sakranel would help smuggle one of his loyal Yukawi Materas back into the capitol, to be disguised as her and take her place during the ritual. If all went well, the Yukawi would be granted a power instead, and act as living proof that the Mahomec were not the only ones favoured of the Goddess. It was an exceptionally risky gamble, not only because it was uncertain that the ritual would even work on a Yukawi, but also because it would undermine his own authority as one of the Goddess’s supposedly chosen children. For this reason, it required a Yukawi who was unwaveringly faithful, one that Asheron knew without a shadow of a doubt would always serve him faithfully and that he could always easily control. Rieme was chosen for this reason, combined with his closeness to her build and ability to mimic her voice. The elaborate costuming involved in the ritual kept his skin and hair hidden from all observing the ritual until it was too late, and Rieme gained the power of Rekitris, or shapeshifting; in the chaos that followed his identity being revealed, he was able to escape the capitol city with some aid from Sakranel, before the shocked and appalled Mahomec audience could recover and organize to capture him.
Rieme then returned to Asheron’s base of operations, where he was promoted to the position of Materas-Prenor, essentially becoming Asheron’s lieutenant; it was purely a political move to tie Rieme even closer to Asheron and more firmly and publicly establish Rieme’s loyalty and subservience to Asheron, something which even Rieme himself had an inkling of, because even he knew that he had none of the qualifications for the position. He was Materas-Prenor in name only, in essence acting as the mascot of Asheron’s army. This had some effect on Rieme’s morale, making him question what Asheron was asking of him as he felt overwhelmed by what he was being made into; to quell this, and fully cement Rieme’s loyalty to him, Asheron made another move that wasn’t risky so much as scandalous; he granted Rieme the right to take on his name, essentially adopting him. The Yukawi became almost fanatically loyal to him as a result.
After that, Rieme was declared an abomination, a heretic, and an embodiment of sin by the other Mahomec, but the Yukawi flocked to Asheron’s army in droves, seeing him as their champion, and Asheron, who had empowered and even adopted Rieme, as their saviour.
7th-8th Coelenu (16 years old)
The war fell heavily in Asheron’s favour for the majority of the year. His forces had increased exponentially after Rieme gained his power; furthermore, Rieme himself became a force to be reckoned with, being sent on solo missions in the dead of night to attack and disrupt supply lines in the dead of night, hunt down and terrorize enemy scouts and messengers, and to sneak behind enemy lines to sabotage and destroy their heavy artillery. His alternate form became a symbol of fear to Asheron’s enemies, and as a result, the forces of his brothers began to suffer severe drops in morale. It seemed that Asheron’s victory was all but guaranteed. Unfortunately, this did not last.
When he first hatched the plot to have a Yukawi granted powers, Asheron considered the possibility that this would inspire the Yukawi to rebel even against him, the one who’d granted that power. He had thought he’d circumvented this outcome when he’d selected the young, naïve, and obsessively loyal Rieme to be given the Gift of the Goddess; this, however, underestimated the potential for cunning and manipulation possible in certain Yukawi individuals. One such Yukawi individual was Paroru, a commander in Asheron’s forces who fulfilled the tasks that officially were the lieutenant’s. Paroru was as ambitious as Asheron, and saw the potential in what Asheron had done for a Yukawi revolution to take place, and he sought to lead it, and place himself as king. To that end, he began to secretly establish a cult within Asheron’s army, comprised of those who were most loyal to him over Asheron, removing the long-standing religious conditioning that prevented any Yukawi from harming a Mahomec and turning them into fanatical zealots for his cause. These zealots, he then commanded in Asheron’s name, under the guise of being an elite strike force under the Mahomec’s command.
It was Rieme who first saw that something was amiss about Paroru and his special shock troops, when Asheron began to have Rieme accompany them on special missions. Disturbed by their behavior, but not knowing exactly what it implied, he reported his misgivings to Asheron, who then privately investigated it further.
8th-9th Coelenu (16 years old)
Asheron ultimately uncovered Paroru’s plot, and had Paroru arrested and charged with sowing sedition within the ranked and plotting treachery against his commander; he was sent to the capitol to be imprisoned there until the war’s end, when he would be tried and sentenced for his crimes. His obedient zealots, however, managed to engineer his escape and subsequent disappearance, while spreading the belief that Asheron’s actions against Paroru were out of jealousy due to Paroru’s increasing influence, and that they were evidence that Asheron’s promises were nothing more than lies—that the prince would never abide being equal to another, especially not a Yukawi, and that Rieme was nothing more than an obedient dog, and had been granted power because of that. The irony that one so power-thirty and blood-lusting could use what basically amounted to the raw truth against him, was not lost on Asheron. Following that, his army began to fall apart as his followers abandoned him, and the tide of war was irrevocably turned.
9th-10th Coelenu (16-17 years old)
Asheron was soundly defeated by his brothers in the end. Just before he was captured and imprisoned, he issued his final command to Rieme, ordering him to flee Nexalon and go into hiding on some other planet, until such a time as Asheron could summon him once again. By this point, they were well aware that Rieme had not only gained a unique power from the Gift of the Goddess, but the extended lifespan of the Mahomec as well, because while he should’ve been the physical equivalent of a human in their mid-twenties, he’d barely aged at all since undergoing the ritual some four Coelenu prior; so Asheron was confident that however long it took, when he was once again in a position to command those loyal to him, Rieme would be there still to answer his call. So it was that Rieme fled Asheron’s base in Nerefal, going to the city of Lunawi, which, having not been involved in the war, still had active spaceports. From there, under the false name of Julanan av-Feromep, he managed to buy passage on a passenger ship to get off-world. He wandered aimlessly for a while, but eventually found his way to Earth, where he hopes to encounter enough other Yukawi to remain apprised of the situation back home, while staying out of trouble and, hopefully, unrecognized by his own people.
THE NITTY-GRITTY;;
SCREENNAME: Faulkner
Time spent roleplaying: 9-10 years
Other Characters: N/A
RP Sample:
He missed the moons.
He didn't realize how much he'd taken them for granted until he went off-world and could see them no longer. His people measured their lives by the movements of the moon--their measurements of time, the equivalents of Earth's 'weeks' and 'months' and 'years' were named for the three moons and their different passages across the Nexalonian sky.
His birthday was to be soon. He didn't have a name for the date--it wasn't the "fifth of June" or the "twelfth of May"--but he knew it by the phase of Coelenu's face. Coelenu, the gleaming, golden moon whose passage was longest. Rieme's birthday, or as near as he could remember at least, was when Coelenu's face was but a sliver of gleaming light in the sky, only a few days before it became completely dark. Looking up to see the moon's face each night, watching for when it was just the right side of barely-there, he would count the days until his birthing day would come ‘round once more.
Earth had but one moon. If it even counted as that—from what he understood, that dull grey sphere in the sky was its own little world, occupied by the Legion which served the United Planets. It’s passing of time was far quicker than Coelenu’s, faster even than blue Demwarev (though not quite as fast as glaring red Ritaley Bidenin). No, to keep track of the passing of time back home required special clocks, made by knowledgeable Yukawi tinkerers to calculate the phase of each moon, and the time of day, back on his home world.
He hadn’t thought to acquire one of those clocks before he’d left. And now it was too late; no one besides a Yukawi could be bothered to build, let alone sell, a device that measured their annoyingly vague units of time.
Stuck dwelling on these morose thoughts, Rieme stared up at the dull ceiling of his meager apartment, hardly any light filtering through the blinds of his window at this late hour. Sleep evaded him, though this was hardly news; he had been a nocturnal being for many Coelenu—many years, he corrected himself; if he was to stay here for long, he needed to adopt the lingo—and the largely active-during-the-daylight-hours lifestyle of most Earth-dwelling beings was something he did not look forward to having to do. He hoped to get a job that would allow him to continue sleeping during the day, but two days after having arrived on Earth, he still hadn’t mustered up the courage to even leave his room.
Sighing, he closed his eyes and turned over onto his side. He was… depressed, he supposed. So far from home, stuck with the shame of his last cowardly act, he wallowed in his melancholy, with little inclination to actually do anything about it.