"Dear Daphne..."
BASICS
NAME: Actaeon
GENDER: Male
PRONOUNS: He/him/his
ORIENTATION: Heterosexual
BIRTHDATE: Spring 2750
AGE: 25 as of 2775
LOCATION: Fort Weyr
OCCUPATION: Journeyman Healer
APPEARANCE
EYES: Brown
HAIR: Black, short
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'11, athletic
PLAY-BY: Justin Baldoni
FULL APPEARANCE: Actaeon is a well-built young man of about average height, more muscular than is apparent at first glance. He tans easily in the summer and tends to retain some color even in winter. He keeps his black hair cropped short and neat. Actaeon dresses well and favors clothes on the more formal side, but falling short of ostentatious.
All dragons can hear Actaeon's thoughts sporadically. At the moment, Actaeon, who has not spent much time around dragons, is not aware of this. Once he is informed of this tendency, he will not be able to prevent it, but will be able to make a certain thought is heard with practice and focus.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Actaeon is ambitious and driven. He's highly intelligent, with a sharp mind and a keen memory. He has a surprising taste for harper songs and tall tales, the more far-fetched the better. He doesn't believe them, of course. Actaeon lives firmly in the real world and considers himself far too sensible for such whimsy, but they entertain him and are amusing to ponder.
Actaeon spends a lot of time in his own head. He's a chronic overthinker, with a penchant of missing the forest for the trees. The bigger picture and obvious solutions often elude him. He tends to hold himself at something of a remove. He's not great at understanding people and is too worried about looking foolish to really let his guard down or try to connect with people. He finds it easier to express himself in writing than out loud. He believes healers should strive not to let their emotions get in the way of their work. An excess of sentiment at the wrong time leads to mistakes and healing is, first and foremost, a job in his mind.
Actaeon wants very much to be important- or at least respectable, although he's not always entirely sure what that entails. He became a healer not for the greater good but because he wanted to be someone and healers are "someone." He's a true professional and dedicated to craft and does find meaning in what he does, but remains driven as much by ambition as true compassion. He isn't entirely selfish and does try to use his training to help the less fortunate, but he's not a bleeding heart either. He would like to earn his master's knots someday and takes what opportunities he can to further his skills and reputation.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Mother: Acta, retired, Fort Hold (+31)
Father: Goff, stablehand, estranged (+29)
Master: Iona, masterhealer (+46)
Apprentice: Georgiana (-11)
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None but has a crush on Daphne
BIRTHPLACE: A minor hold of no real significance, beholden to Fort
HISTORY: Actaeon was born to a small hold, on the outskirts of Fort's territory, where the land was poor and resources were few. Most people lived difficult lives. Only lord holder lived richly, or at least seemed to live richly to young Actaeon. He was the illegitimate son of one of the Lord Holder's drudges. He was an only child, with no siblings, who had few friends largely because he did not go out of the way to make friends. He didn't know who his father was and often daydreamed he was someone important, like a lord holder or a crafter or a dragonrider, who would elevate Actaeon's lot in life. Actaeon was disappointed when he learned his father was one of the lord's stablehands, of no particular importance, who had known him all his life and simply never had any particular care for him.
Actaeon was always an ambitious child. He loved Harper Songs, which seemed to promise there was probably a better life somewhere out there, somewhere else, for people who made something meaningful and important of themselves. He was always a precocious child, with a quick mind. He taught himself to read from old records and the hold's harper’s notes, with a bit of guidance from the headwoman and said harper, because important people could read and Actaeon was going to be an important person.
When Actaeon was twelve turns, a master Healer, master Iona, stayed at his hold for a few months. Being a Healer would suit Actaeon nicely, he decided. Determined to be her apprentice, he made himself perpetually underfoot, offering to run errands and begging her for instruction. Master Iona eventually agreed to take Actaeon as her apprentice and Actaeon left his hold behind without looking back.
Actaeon spent the next decade traveling Pern besides Master Iona as her apprentice. Master Iona went from small cothold to small cothold, doing what she could for places without enough dedicated healers, staying for a few months before moving on. It wasn't the glamorous life Actaeon had envisioned a healer led, and sometimes he wished they would settle down in one place, but there was meaning in the work and he was learning more each day. Someday, he would earn his journeyman's knots and control his own destiny.
In 2772, Master Iona and Actaeon arrived in a small mining hold. The hold's three whers had taken ill with a nasty cough. Knowing nothing of wher healing, they were unable to help. Only one of the whers recovered- for reasons unknown to Iona or Actaeon. Master Iona decided to travel to Fort Weyr for a time and learn the basics of wher healing.
Iona and Actaeon spent several months at the weyr, learning from and training their healers. That spring, Actaeon attended the Vessels hatching, assisting some of the weyr's healers, where he met a candidate named Daphne, who had been bitten by her sister's new dragonet. At the Hatching Feast, Daphne told Actaeon of the virtues of written correspondence. When Actaeon and Iona left soon after, Actaeon, nurturing the beginnings of a crush on Daphne, began writing letters to her, although he never sent them, fearing she would find it foolish.
In 2774, Actaeon earned his journeyman's knots. He decided to return home, for a time. He hadn't set eyes on his birthplace or seen his mother since he left with Master Iona, all those turns ago. Actaeon remained at the hold for several months, doing what he could with his healer's training. The Lord Holder's niece, Georgiana, told Actaeon of her ambition to be a healer and asked to be his apprentice. Actaeon taught her what he could but was still too new a journeyman to train an apprentice alone. With the permission of Georgiana's family, Actaeon agreed to take her to Fort Weyr where she could pursue a formal apprenticeship with some of the masters he had studied under not long ago. Actaeon's mother agreed to accompany them and settle down in Fort Hold, close enough to visit more regularly with her son.
While Actaeon imagined he would eventually go to Healer Hall to pursue his master knots, he decided to remain to Fort Weyr, for a time. Threadfall injuries presented opportunities to further develop his practical skills and perhaps to earn some acclaim if he managed to save someone suitably important in a suitably impressive way. And perhaps some part of him wondered what might happen if he saw Daphne again.