Well now, that does sound like a personal problem!
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Retire Zhalia, Maranth's art can go back into the adopt pool, but I encourage it to be used for a Wyzeth bab
NAME: Zhalia
GENDER: female
PRONOUNS: she/her/hers, they/them/their on occasion
ORIENTATION: Demiromantic bisexual
BIRTHDATE: Late Winter 2737
AGE: thirty-three as of Winter 2770
LOCATION: Semaca Weyr
OCCUPATION: rider, search rider, local flirt
WING: Minuet
APPEARANCE
EYES: gray, set under heavy lids
HAIR: brown, glossy and wavy down to her shoulders
HEIGHT AND BUILD: six feet even, with rich curves and strong muscles
PLAY-BY: Kat Dennings
FULL APPEARANCE:
Zhalia is Trouble with a capital 'T'. She's a knockout with lush curves and a well-honed skill with cosmetics. She dresses for battle every morning with tailored gear. If she was a holder or a crafter rather than a rider, she might grow her hair down to her hips. But since she is a rider raised by riders, she keeps her hair trimmed to her shoulders. That her hair is usually left down rather than pinned up is testimony to her own vanity.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Zhalia is smart, almost too smart for her own good. She puts disparate pieces of data together in ways that shouldn't make sense, but do. In self defense, she often disengages from other people's problems. Just because she can see the connection between event A and consequence triangle doesn't mean that she wants to spend her time explaining the relationship.
But because she can see the intangible connections, she's often seen as too perceptive, or odd. So she tends to play up her image as a beautiful airhead. Faranth forbid she ride green and have a brain. After her forced transfer, she learned to cultivate a shallow persona. It's not terribly hard sometimes, given her vanity.
HISTORY
FAMILY: birth - Massive, but lost
adopted - Bless of blue Myrth (mother), Sheffe of bronze Julith (father), Anaen of green Xyrnth (auntie)
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: M'loma of bronze Hanilith (adoptable NPC)
BIRTHPLACE: Fort Hold
HISTORY:
Zhalia of green Maranth was born Ladreki, the second born child of a family that would one day also spawn Blaze of gold Nornth. She was lost in a raid during the war and raised at Benden Weyr. Her family became a triad of riders who raised her like the daughter they could never have, with an eye towards setting her loose on the Sands when the proper time came.
Well, the proper time came. And went. And came again. Zhalia was one of a handful of female candidates that was left standing, time and time again. She watched Vilketh hatch and choose Taliri over Risae. She saw Sido Impress Nuuth, again leaving Laretta's eldest daughters unattached. Her friends in the candidate barracks Impressed and left her behind for weyrlinghood.
It was Risae's last clutch before she aged out, the last gold. Zhalia stood with Laretta's eldest as they faced Nuuth's first gold egg, The two weren't friends - neither of them would claim that title - but there was a certain understanding. Risae was old blood, and Zhalia had been raised old blood. Golds were rare, and more likely to pick holdborn girls than weyrborn.
Wyzeth picked a petite little redhead, and Risae vanished shortly thereafter. Zhalia continued to stand, having lost track of many former candidates-turned-weyrlings. She was nearly aged out when the most peculiar thing happened. There had been no celebration when the most recent gold graduated, which was odd. It was, in fact, as if Wyzeth and her rider had completely disappeared. But the next clutch - the last clutch she would be eligble to Stand for - was much larger than it should have been. Vilketh had never been known to produce particularly large clutches, but there were at least seven eggs that were . . .
Well, whatever the reason, Maranth was the second dragon to have of that clutch, right behind her brown sister. Secondhand Serenade wasted no time in spilling a bundle of green limbs onto the sand.
Well, well, well. What do we have here?
Zhalia was sick during the fire stone training, so when Maranth unexpectedly Rose - early, the first of her clutch - she produced two eggs. These eggs were folded into the next gold clutch, and the greenpair were forcibly transferred to Ista Weyr. It was the easy, almost practiced way Benden's leadership folded Maranth's eggs into another clutch made Zhalia suspicious. When High Reaches was revealed to have a hidden queen, those suspicions took form.
Zhalia put in for a transfer to Semaca Weyr when the first mystery egg appeared. She had never forgotten the discrepancies at Benden, but this was the first time she had more evidence towards her theory. Her request wasn't approved until After. After a Fortian bronze rider rescued a traumatized gold and her rider from the weyr Zhalia had once called home. After Junior Weyrwoman Emma returned home to Ista to plan for the next move in their bid to keep the peace. After a friend, long thought dead, reemerged with her faded gold.
