"When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses."
- Shirley Chisholm
BASICS
NAME: Yannis
GENDER: Male
PRONOUNS: He/Him/His
ORIENTATION: Heterosexual
BIRTHDATE: Summer 2742
AGE: 35 as of Fall 2777
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Ex-Holdless, sort of drudge and all-around manual laborer
WING: N/A
APPEARANCE
EYES: Blue
HAIR: Blond
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 6’10”, Muscular
PLAY-BY: Brock O’Hurn
FULL APPEARANCE:
- Yannis is a big man, standing six feet and ten inches in height and having muscles that wouldn’t be out of place on a blacksmith. He is naturally light-skinned, but turns as one of the Holdless has given him a permanent tan. His hair is wavy and long, hanging to his shoulder blades, and a dark blond with hints of brown in it. His eyebrows are definitely brown and cleanly defined over piercing blue eyes. He wears a short, tidy beard and mustache. He wears whatever clothes he can get his hands on for the most part, although he does love color when he can get his hands on something bright. He also wears as much jewelry as he can - it makes for a good, portable thing to trade for more useful items.
Notably, he has an old (but still clear) brand on his forehead.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
- Yannis has it in him to be a good man. He really does. Unfortunately, that isn’t how he turned out. On the positive side, he is a genuinely caring man. He loves his wife and daughters. He wants what is best for them. He wants them all to be safe and happy.
He is also selfish, and thoughtless, and short-sighted. He’s gambled himself into deep debt before and has it in him to do it again, given the chance. He’s clever, and he’s capable of planning, but he doesn’t always think through whether or not his plans are good ones. He doesn’t tend to look at what might go wrong, just how things might go right.
Thirteen turns as a Holdless man have made Yannis even more calculating than he was in his youth. While still prone to leaping on opportunities when he sees them, he’s also more than capable of lying in wait for the perfect opportunity. There is very little that is beneath him when he considers things a matter of survival. Honestly, at this point in his life, his morality is more a matter of what’s best for him and his family than what is good on a more objective level. There are very few lines he won’t cross in order to assure the survival of his daughters, his wife, and himself.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
- Wife, --, ## [+/-#]
Daughter, Cotozi, 12 [-23]
Daughter, Kiaya, 11 [-24]
Daughter, Galina, 10 [-25]
Daughter, Sasha, 9 [-26]
Father, Hennis, 59 [+24]
Mother, Yanadalyn, 60 [+25]
Sister, Hendalyn, 37 [+2]
Brother, Henndal, 32 [-3]
Brother, Yanen, 30 [-5]
BIRTHPLACE: Nabol Hold
HISTORY:
- Born as the second of four children in a simple family of laborers in Nabol, Yannis was always something of a daredevil. He liked to get into things and have adventures, and was always up for any sort of dare or challenge. His fondest wish in life was to be Searched, but bad luck kept that from happening. At least, he considered it to be bad luck; in his mind, nothing else could explain his inability to meet with a searchrider and become a candidate. He’d hear about a searchrider coming after the fact, or be unable to make it to see one on the day one came to Nabol.
As he grew into adulthood, what had been a casual gambling habit turned into a problem. Yannis managed to make a string of exceptionally bad bets, gambling himself into a hole that he couldn’t see a way out of. Unsure how else to manage, he turned to crime to solve his problems.
It was, in his head, easy. He picked out a wealthy vinter to target. The threat of violence, his face hidden by a mask, and he’d be free of his debts. He didn’t mean for things to turn violent, and he definitely didn’t mean to get caught. It didn’t much matter that he hadn’t actually killed his victim; he’d certainly bloodied him badly, and there were worries that Yannis might have permanently addled the man.
With a fresh brand on his forehead, twenty-turn-old Yannis is cast out. He struggled on his own for a while before he fell in with a band of other Holdless, his size making him an asset to them, somebody able to help with any hard labor that needed doing and who could help protect the less physically able members of the band. It wasn’t really a good life, but at least it was relatively stable.
When he met his wife … well, Yannis was of the opinion she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
He turned twenty-three the summer that his wife was carrying their first child, and a daughter they named Cotozi was born in the fall of 2765. She was a gorgeous little yellow-haired babe, and Yannis doted on her. Then, for the next three turns, he was presented with another daughter, until he had four, some with blonde hair and some with brown, green-eyed Cotozi the standout from her brown-eyed sisters. He tried to give them the best possible life, but there wasn’t really much to give them in the life he’d earned himself.
2773 was a hard turn. Blight hit the crops, making food more scarce and it was even harder to put food in the bellies of four growing girls. Yannis went to bed hungry more often than not, trying to feed his wife and children before himself, but things still seemed to hit the youngest girl, Sasha, harder than anyone else. Sometimes during that turn, Yannis wondered if having children out in the wilds had been pure selfishness.
There was no real attachment to any of the Holdless outside the family, and so it wasn’t surprising when they once more met up with a new group, families with children who would have similar priorities.
It was the winter 2775 when disaster turned into luck. The blizzard that hit them was perhaps the luckiest event of Yannis’s life; he and his wife got rescued from the weather and swept off to High Reaches Weyr where, wonder of wonders, they were allowed to stay. Oh, it probably wouldn’t be permanent, at least not for Yannis and his wife, but there were nights when they talked in hushed voices about possibly leaving the girls behind when they were driven back out. Their daughters, at least, didn’t have to suffer more privation.
He nearly swallowed his tongue when, that first spring in High Reaches, all four of his daughters somehow acquired firelizards. The youngest was seven. Who in their right mind gave a firelizard to a seven-turn-old!?
Then, when they had been in High Reaches Weyr for about a turn and a half, one of the other ex-holdless, Aragon, Impressed a wild wher. That gave Yannis an idea of a path to make himself more useful around the Weyr. He was too old to bond a dragon, which would have assured they never would have thrown him out, but if he bonded a wher … well, even if they still got cast back out, a wher would mean protection and help hunting. It would be a positive change, and it would make it easier to provide for his girls in the future.
The poisonings in the fall put a kink in his plans. The former Holdlesss were especially under suspicion for the attacks, and there was no way that he’d be accepted as a wher candidate at the moment. Still, there were options. He could possibly have someone buy an egg for him if no one would sell him one. Or maybe some other option would present itself. All he needed was an opportunity. And, Yannis being Yannis, he never considered the practicality of his new goal. He just threw himself into it.
UPDATES
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