"I'm not after easier days or greener pastures. Find me a monster to fight."
BASICS
NAME: Quintar
GENDER: Nonbinary (AFAB)
PRONOUNS: They/them/theirs, she/her/hers
ORIENTATION: None of your business
BIRTHDATE: Early summer, 2750
AGE: 24 as of 2774
LOCATION: Fort Weyr
OCCUPATION: Wherhandler
WING: Dusk Squad
APPEARANCE
EYES: Blue
HAIR: Red
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'5, muscular
PLAY-BY: Liv Hewson
FULL APPEARANCE:
Quintar falls a bit short of average height, but a lifetime of hard work and dedicated training has left them muscular and strong, well-equipped for the work of a wherhandler. They keep their red hair cut a bit above their shoulders, short enough to be out of their way while long enough to satisfyingly bounce. They favor sturdy, practical clothes, of good weyr quality without any unnecessary flourishes. They always seem to be in motion and will find something to do with themselves if left idle for too long, even if it's just pacing the room.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Quintar knows exactly who they are and what they want. They aren't meant to sit at home and do ordinary things and they certainly aren't meant to be still and wait for life to pass them by. They need a cause to fight for, an adventure to go on, something worthy to protect. They want to be someone important, someone who does things that, if not great, are at least interesting. Their greatest fear is being powerless and in their urge to prove their own skill and drive, they often think before they act and make bad choices just to prove that they can. Luckily for Quintar, they think well under pressure, so they can usually get themselves out of most of the trouble they get themselves into. The guard training they've had, as well as their willingness to throw a punch, makes them pretty handy in a fight.
What Quintar struggles to recognize is how their need for excitement impacts the people around them. They want to do what they want and the collateral damage rarely occurs to them until it's too late. Deep down, they don't really understand what it is other people want or need and empathy will never be something that comes naturally to them. They don't want to be a bad person. They just have trouble seeing the world through other people's eyes and don't really understand why it's important that they do so.
Quintar has the drive and determined to learn the things that interest them, but they're not a particularly gifted student and learning does not come easily to them. There are still a few gaps in their basic wherhandler knowledge from when their training was interrupted they have never seen the need to fill. As a result of their upbringing, Quintar isn't particularly enamored with dragonriders. They'll work with them when they have to and are sure some are decent enough people, but as a whole, they think riders are decidedly over-rated.
Quintar is stubborn and usually convinced they know best. They might forgive, but they rarely forget and are pretty good at holding a grudge.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Father: Tonquinn
Mother: Gertar
Sisters: Quinn (+3), Tontar (-2), Gerquinn (-5)
Younger brother: Tarquinn (-3)
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A
BIRTHPLACE: Cothold beholden to Fort
HISTORY:
Quintar was born the second daughter of a long line of stubborn people. Their cothold had been burned down during the war and instead of splitting up and moving on, they'd rebuilt everything they lost. And they never forgot who it was that took it all from them. Quintar, unlike much of Pern, didn't grow up revering dragonriders. She didn't question it or dwell on it. It simply was what it was. The sky was blue, the Red Star was red, riders were dangerous. Quintar had no aspirations to be a deep thinker, not when there were games to play, chores to finish and a whole world to explore.
When Quintar was 17, her family's hold burned again. Fort Hold claimed it had been a natural wildfire. Quintar's uncle was pretty sure it had been set the dragons again for some unknown reason. Quintar didn't pretend to know one or the other. Some things were simply unknowable. And regardless, they had no crops. Their outbuildings (which Quintar's fore-bearers had not learned to build of less flammable material) were destroyed. And winter was coming. Quintar's neighbors and extended family relocated to Fort Hold, alongside many other cothold refugees, because there was little else to be done.
Quintar's hold didn't have the money to rebuild and didn't trust the clearly floundering Fort Hold to provide it for them. Which meant they all, including Quintar and her siblings, were going to have to find jobs. Quintar's older sister was sent to the weyr. Quintar's parents tried to find apprenticeships for her younger siblings, until Tarquin was also searched. But Quintar knew from the moment she set eyes on the hold exactly what she wanted to be: She wanted to be a guard.
The next turn was one of learning and change. Quintar had never before been around so many people, so many buildings, so many stories. It was at Fort Hold that Quintar first learned there were people who identified as neither male nor female and they realized it described something about them they had never before been able to put into words. Their family, despite their small hold origins, were largely supportive when Quintar came out as nonbinary.
Quintar spent the turn doing anything that would earn them a mark or two, not for the sake of the family's "rebuild the hold" funds, but for them, so that the day they turned eighteen, they could buy themselves a wher egg. Their egg was small and yellow and despite the size, for a moment they dared to dream it could be a gold. It hatched a small green instead, who declared her name was Task. She was sweet and patient and easily talked into whatever adventures Quintar wanted to go on. It was perfect.
Quintar signed up to join Fort Hold's guards as a new trainee the next day. But their training was cut short when the common people of Fort Hold rose up in rebellion a turn later.
Quintar had never made a secret of their work for Fort's Lord and Lord Consort or their loyalty to them. That loyalty made their family's temporary home a target. The initial group was small enough that Quintar and Task were able to hold them off long enough to evacuate their family and flee into the countryside.
The family wandered for a time. Quintar and Task protected the group and hunted for their meat, while Quintar's parents foraged for edible plants and berries. They hid in caves during threadfall and slept under the stars. It was a good life and Quintar was happy, but when they came across a small hold willing to have them, the rest of Quintar's family was tired and ready to put their wanderings behind them.
Quintar tried. They tried to settle down and return to the sort of quiet, peaceful life that had once seemed like enough. But they weren't the person they had been when they left home at seventeen. They had seen and learned and done too much. They wanted more.
They considered going to Ruatha or one of the larger minor holds, but doubted any Lord would want a former guard of Fort's fallen lords. They considered Fort Weyr, which was always in need of wherhandlers to help defend their territory against thread, but they had never been entirely sure it hadn't been a blast of Fort's misaimed dragonfire that had destroyed their ancestral hold. And some things could not be forgiven.
And then they learned of Semaca from a passing harper, a small weyr far away, too new to have taken part in the war. They'd been attacked by strange, giant felines. Clearly, they needed more wherhandlers to protect them. Semaca was wild and unsettled and it needed help. While Quintar didn't particularly want to work and live with so many riders, in every other way, it was exactly what they were looking for. Quintar borrowed the harper's flit to send Semaca a message volunteering their services.
A few sevendays later, Semaca sent a dragon to transport Quintar and Task to the southern continent. Quintar said goodbye to their family, confident that they were safe, and that they had waited long enough already to move on to the next adventure.
Early Fall, 2774 - After much badgering from Quinn, Quintar reluctantly submits to transferring to Fort to be near the rest of their family.
