"Giving in so soon? There's no such thing as 'surrender' in Threadfall."
BASICS
NAME: Ingrid
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Heterosexual
BIRTHDATE: Early Winter 2749
AGE: 25 as of Late Winter 2774
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Brownrider
WING: Moonshot
APPEARANCE
EYES: Green
HAIR: Blonde
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'4", lean but muscular
PLAY-BY: Ingrid (Fire Emblem)
FULL APPEARANCE: Ingrid is a woman of slightly below average height, with pale skin, green eyes and blonde hair kept short in an efficient bob that fits easily under a riding helmet or goggles. Her build is naturally slender, but she has built up layers of muscle over turns of dragonriding and she moves with the practiced athleticism of a veteran rider. She prefers clothing that is well-made, but not ostentatious, doing her best to look the part of a professional dragonrider. She is very pretty, although she rarely does much to highlight her looks.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY: On first impression, Ingrid is every bit the polished professional- a polite, self-serious rider, who givers her all to her duty and encourages her wingmates and peers to do the same. She sees her dragon, her training and the fight against thread as the most important parts of her life and is thoroughly absorbed in her role as a dragonrider. She spends much of her leisure time as she can reviewing threadfighting formations or sneaking in some extra training. Ingrid struggles to find balance and often doesn't see the interest or appeal in many of the things people enjoy outside dragonriding.
Ingrid loves Harper stories, especially the ones about weyrs and dragonriders. Harper ballads were part of what originally inspired her to dream about becoming a dragonrider and she continues to hold a deeply idealistic view of what being a rider should mean and expects that riders hold to all the old virtues, being diligent and loyal and true and always honorable, except when it would endanger the people they are meant to protect. She is also very fond of food- including both eating and cooking and will never turn down an extra sweet.
While Ingrid does her best to be as polite and courteous as a dragonrider should be, she does not hesitate to speak her mind, especially around other riders, who she expects to live up to her own demanding expectations. She has no tolerance for lazing around and she believes there is a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things. She can be quite bossy and overbearing when she's decided someone could be doing something better. She likes to be in control, of herself and others, and doesn't always understand others' ways of doing things.
Ingrid's memories of her former fiance and weyrmate, Daglarius, are highly idealized. She still thinks of him frequently and warmly and believes he was the perfect rider. Ingrid doesn't think much of traditionalists- always wondering if the leaders of Igen didn't do all they could to protect the blueriders in their care. When bad things happen, she is prone to casting blame and holding a grudge, sometimes undeservedly so. She will eventually apologize if she realizes she was in the wrong, but it can take a long time to get there.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Parents
Two older brothers
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A, formerly Daglarius of Blue Fraldarth
BIRTHPLACE: Galatea Hold
HISTORY:
Ingrid was born the third and youngest child of the Lord Holder of a minor hold beholden to Igen. The soil was poor and agriculture was limited, with food often in short supply even for the hold's elite. Life was often hard at the edge of the desert, but it was home. The people of Galatea made do as best they could and their lord and his family did their best to manage the hold fairly and justly. Ingrid's parents rationed alongside their neighbors when times were lean and did their best to live simply, rather than being a burden to their people. They provided their children with a few more luxuries than they allowed themselves, devoting what resources the hold could spare primarily to Ingrid and her brothers, but Ingrid's childhood was still a humble one by the standards of Lord Holder's daughters.
Ingrid's two brothers were many turns older than her and so she generally played with the common children of the hold as a child. Ingrid had little interest in traditionally ladylike pursuits and was always happier on runnerback than in a gather gown. As she was industrious and clever and eager to learn all that was necessary to help a hold like theirs thrive, nobody objected to her lack of skill in embroidery or dancing.
Ingrid was betrothed to Daglarius, the heir of a neighboring hold with more fertile farmlands, when she was 16. The match was a happy one that suited them both well and would have served as the foundation for an alliance of great benefit to both holds. Ingrid admired Daglarius' honor and dedication to his people and the two bonded over their shared beliefs in a Lord Holder's rightful role.
A turn later, Daglarius was Searched by Igen Weyr. He hesitated to accept, torn between his duty to the weyr and to Pern and his duty to his hold and to Ingrid. In the end, after speaking the matter over with Ingrid, who encouraged him to go the weyr, Daglarius accepted the Search. He quickly Impressed to blue Fraldarth. Ingrid regretted that Daglarius would not be her husband, but she had always had a great admiration for riders and was proud of his willingness to join the fight against thread. Her love and respect for him grew with every letter she received telling tales of his life at the weyr.
Almost as soon as the news of Daglarius' Impression arrived, Ingrid's father began pushing her to seek a new engagement. Their hold desperately needed the resources a marriage alliance could bring. Daglarius had brothers Ingrid could wed in his place and should none of them appeal to her, there were other Blooded families who would make appealing allies. Ingrid met with all the suitors her father suggested, but none won her heart as Daglarius had. While she wanted to do what she could for Galatea Hold and felt guilty for the difficulties her refusals caused, she could not bring herself to accept a match to a man she did not love and her parents never forced the issue.
Secretly, Ingrid wished to follow Daglarius to Igen, to live besides him in the weyr, perhaps to even someday become a rider herself. When Daglarius graduated weyrlinghood and invited Ingrid to come be his weyrmate, Ingrid joyfully accepted, confident that her brothers and parents could continue to run Galatea Hold without her.
The two lived happily together until Daglarius died in threadfall, after leaving formation to flame a piece of thread before it could reach a rider in the lower wing. The loss devastated Ingrid. Her parents urged her to come home and once again consider betrothal and marriage, but Ingrid knew that wasn't her path. She would honor Daglarius' memory by becoming a candidate and continuing his legacy. She blamed the riders and larger dragons of the lower wings in part for her weyrmate's death, resenting them for staying in the relative safety of the lower wings and suspecting they willingly allowed blue and greenriders to die in their place, out of antiquated beliefs that they were less important because of the color of their dragons.
Ingrid soon Impressed a large brown named Delinarth, a pairing that initially disappointed her, especially when Delinarth failed to respond with conviction to her stories of her beloved's death or to condemn the ways the weyr had failed to protect him. Throughout weyrlinghood, the pair bonded and learned they had more in common than Ingrid had initially believed. Delinarth's early lack of reaction to Daglarius' death had stemmed not from malice or indifference but instead the care he took with his words and his hesitance to pass judgment when he did not know the full details and didn't care to speculate whether the rider Daglarius had saved had felt guilt over his death.
Upon their graduation, Ingrid and Delinarth chose to transfer to High Reaches Weyr. Igen held too many memories for Ingrid and she preferred to move somewhere more egalitarian and less traditional, where she would hopefully no longer have to doubt whether gold, bronze and brownriders truly cared about the lives of all their peers, regardless of the color of their dragon.
About a turn later, Ingrid and Delinarth flew to the rescue of a blue weyrling and his rider, who had crashed in the course of a routine errand. The blue, Imeterth, had fought bravely to protect his rider from a pack of roaming whers and Ingrid recognized in the pair an echo of Daglarius' courage. This time, this bluepair, Ingrid and Delinarth could still save and dragon and rider agreed they would do all they could to see that Lobelia and Imeterth met a happier fate than Daglarius and Fraldarth once had. They brought the pair safely back to the weyr and visited them often as they recovered.
Delinarth bonded strongly with Imeterth, his initial impulse of duty and protectiveness soon reinforced by a genuine fondness for the thoughtful, sincere blue. Ingrid too got along well with both Lobelia and Imeterth and when the pair graduated, invited them to move into her weyr, so Delinarth and Imeterth could stay close.
