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 Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 7:53 pm
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Name: Camilla
Age: 18
Sex: Female
Sexual Orientation: Asexual
Craft: None (Hunter/Furrier)
Rank: N/A
Location: High Reaches Weyr
Physical Description: Cami has dark hair that's wild and wavy. She usually cuts it in a short bob to keep it from getting in her way. Small as a child, she grew up tall but remained fairly slim, with an athletic, boyish figure. She had dark eyes and dark lashes.
Personality: Taciturn and brusque, Cami often comes off as cold and unfriendly until you get to know her. She does not come from eloquent folk. Whispered directions while hunting made up the majority of her interactions, and even those were often replaced with whistles and hand symbols. Consequently, she is not good at striking up a casual conversation, or at knowing how to continue one if someone tries to do the same. She tends to answer exactly what is asked, with no understanding of reciprocity or the natural flow of a conversation. Within her family, words were used to convey information and little else. What they thought was never said at length, but meant to be understood through actions and behavior. Following in this tradition, Cami finds it difficult to express herself in words, but tries to make up for this through other means. She has a natural curiosity about other people in particular, and as she get more used to this different way of life, will slowing start to come out of her shell.
Cami has the older-than-her-age aura of one who, in many ways, raised herself from early childhood. She's lived through things most Hold-bound kids could only imagine. These experiences have given her a self-assurance that helps to bolster her otherwise shy persona. She trusts her own instincts, doesn't intimidate easily, and has a calm demeanor that is difficult to phase. Yet for all her self-reliance and apparent worldliness, Cami can be shockingly naive at times, with a great number of things going entirely over her head. This is just the natural result of living more or less alone for the most of her life. It doesn't mean she isn't curious though. In fact the one time this reticent child would turn talkative is when asking a torrent of questions about some topic of interest to her. She wants to make up for the gaps in her education, and might require some very patient friends to explain things to her. She can be a a little prudish about sex too, something that her single father never really bothered to explain. While Cami isn't dumb, the majority of her skills (and life) have been physical up to this point. She learns fast and has good instincts, but she will never be a high brow intellectual, philosophizing over the meaning of life. To her, skills and knowledge are just commodities to be traded or used to accomplish her goals.
For as long as she's known that it existed, Cami has known that romantic love is not for her. It's just not something she's interested in. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, she feels particularly strongly connected to those friends she is able to make, with a strength of feeling similar to that of a relationship. An introvert by nature, she will never need a large number of people around her, but a small core group of friends is what she craves. When it comes to her friends, Cami is utterly devoted. There's nothing she wouldn't suffer for their sake, and is happy doing any activity as long as it's in their company.
Whether Cami is really brave or just numb to danger by this point is up for debate, but she rarely shows fear or hesitation in even the most dangerous of situations. Not that she's reckless. Her will for survival is remarkably strong. It's what dragged her up that cliff edge when thread still rained around her, or what got her home when a wild canine nearly bit off her arm. She has a desperate, clawing survival instinct that refuses to let her give up when things go bad. She will always be the one to say 'there has to be a way out of this'.
History: Camilla was raised in a northern tribe of nomadic Holdless. Ostensibly traders, the group was still required to spend much of the year living off the land; largely by hunting, foraging, and -when necessary- stealing. In the harsh environment, death during childbirth was not unusual, and Cami was just one of dozens of motherless children in the convoy. Most were left to their own devices, more or less fending for themselves, but Cami was lucky in that her father took more of a front seat role in raising her after her mother died. Though a severe and sometimes brutal man, he had loved her mother deeply and, when she died, put everything he had into raising her daughter. Cami became her father's shadow, following him in everything he did. From the time she was old enough to walk, she was learning how to carry a bow. She learned how to set a trap and skin an animal and, when she was old enough, began to help her father in hunting.
Like most of the children in her community, Cami grew up independent, learning to rely on her own strength, but also how to follow orders. In a world where one wrong move could get you killed, absolute obedience was a necessary survival skill. When a parent told you not to take another step, it was usually because you were about to set off a snare, wake a sleeping canine, or go wandering off a cliff. By the time she was skilled enough to form her own opinions on such things, Cami found that she and her father were typically of the same mind. They made a good pair when hunting together, though they more often worked alone. They spoke little more than was necessary, and might go days or even weeks without seeing each other, but he made sure his pride in her was never in doubt. It was a brusque, reticent kind of love, but it worked for them.
As a loose association of families, the community was both cooperative and competitive: coming together to help each other survive the harsh winters, but competing individually for business when they got to the Holds. Typically, food was shared, but commodities were jealously guarded against theft and tampering. Cami's father was a naturally solitary person, growing more reclusive and withdrawn since the death of his wife, so the pair lived in relative isolation from the rest of the group. He was a skilled enough hunter, and it was rare that they didn't have enough to get by on, but Cami craved more human connection than that. She was quiet, and not good at initiating relationships, but she would offer help to the other family groups in her spare time as a way of making friends, and after a while, had formed some close bonds with the others in her group.
Her father had always been a follower of the old ways. Maybe it appealed to his pessimistic nature, but for whatever reason, he believed High Reach's warning about the return of thread. When it finally happened, the group were travelling along the coastline- stranded and utterly exposed to the devastating rain of thread. Seeing the signs from old stories he had heard, her father found a alcove in the cliff edge and told her to wait there while he went to look for another for himself. Unfortunately, thread came before he was able to find a place to hide and he perished in the silver rain, along with the rest of their community. By the time dragonriders reached them, the group had been completely wiped out.
With their food, runners, and caravans completely destroyed by the thread, Cami knew she likely wouldn't make it back to a Hold before she starved or died of exposure, and that was if the thread didn't come again. Her only chance of survival, it seemed, was to get picked up by someone. Climbing to the top of the cliff edge, she tried to flag down one of the dragon riders fighting thread above her. In the end, it wasn't a rider that noticed her, but their dragon. She didn't have a totally clear idea of what being a 'Candidate' entailed, but it seemed like a fair trade for being rescued. And besides, anything that would help fight the thing that killed her family was alright with her. Hard work is all she's ever known, and life at the Weyr is no different. Yet strict and regimented as it is, she finds her new life fairly comfortable compared to her life on the road.
Other: Since coming to the Weyr, Cami has been put on a long course of remedial lessons. She was never taught to read or write. The most education she got was when she would sneak away to listen to harpers while they were trading in a Hold.
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Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 8:10 pm
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Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 10:15 am
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