"Boo! Did I surprise you? I bet I did! I was trying to, anyway."
- Volo, Pokemon Arceus: Legends
BASICS
NAME: Volo
GENDER: Male
PRONOUNS: He/Him/His
ORIENTATION: Bisexual
BIRTHDATE: Spring 2741
AGE: 34 as of 2775
LOCATION: High Reaches
OCCUPATION: Wherhander, former trader
WING: Sunburst
APPEARANCE
EYES: Grey
HAIR: Blonde, long, up in a bun. Bangs tend to fall in front of one of his eyes.
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 6'6", lean build
PLAY-BY: Volo (Pokemon)
EXPY SOURCE: Volo (Pokemon Legends: Arceus)
FULL APPEARANCE:
Volo typically has a smile on his face, it came with being a trader. He stays on top of his appearance religiously. He is always clean, his hair is always done up the same way, and his clothes are always neat and tidy. He walks around with an air of confidence and tends to walk rather quickly.
He has very long hair, longer than you would think as he always has it in a bun. It reaches about mid-back, and while he can keep most of his hair out of his eyes, one bang always falls in front of one of his eyes. He is rather tall and muscular- not the bulky kind, just lean muscle. Volo's clothes are comprised of a lot of blue, white, and yellow tones.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Volo is a very personable person. Outwardly, he is kind and energetic. He'll talk to anyone who would give him the time of day. As a former trader, he has very good communicational skills, such as persuasiveness, a good sense of humor, and the ability to next-to-always find a common thread between him and another in a conversation (mainly so he could chat them up for a deal). He prides himself on hard work and the survivalist skills that he picked up while travelling.
The truth of the matter is that Volo isn't as nice as he tries to present himself. He is spiteful, backhanded, and backstabby. He loves to cause minor inconveniences in other people's lives for fun, and even more so does he love to lie to others. At this point it's pathological. He tries his best to use others for his own personal gain at every turn, be it by attempting to convince them to ally with him to get ahead, or by more slimy, blackmail-y means. He is often lonely and has a hard time making or keeping friends, but does not know how to change this.
Volo has a strange, secret obsession with Faranth. It developed when he was younger and it spiralled out of control as he got older.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
- Volus (father, alive)
- Ethelo (mother, alive)
- Cynthia of Gold Eliask (distant relative, alive)
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A
BIRTHPLACE: In a caravan travelling across Pern
HISTORY:
Volo descended from a long line of fairly prolific caravan traders. They weren't always traders, at one point they were scribes, but that was many turns ago. Despite being a fairly large group, large enough to reasonably establish a cothold at least, the trader 'clan' tended to break up into smaller groups to cover more ground and collect more marks. As the only child of two of these traders, he was expected to carry on their legacy. This was an expectation he was happy to live up to.
They never stayed in one place for too long, so the only friends he had as a child were the adults in the caravans, as well as the occasional weyrbrat or holdborn child he met for maybe a day or so. As a very lonely child, Volo grabbed onto whatever he could have as a friend, even for a moment, and didn't let it go until they packed up and moved to another selling spot.
This changed once he heard harper tales of a great gold dragon named Faranth. As a little kid with no one his age to really bond with, he started filling the void with these fanciful stories of the gold. It got to the point where he would imagine that, maybe, one day she would just show up and whisk him away to a Weyr with other kids his age that he could actually be around long enough to befriend. That never happened though, and a regular searchdragon was nowhere to be found either. This stuck with him through his teen and adult years.
Eventually, despite fanatical obsession with Faranth, he found something else to fill the void of loneliness growing within him. That thing being marks. If he was rich, he would be happy, or at least that's what he thought. Eventually he broke off from his parents' group of traders, taking a few other members who wanted to cover more ground with their sales.
Everything was going well for a good while. Sales were high, he wasn't too out of place with the fellow traders he'd surrounded himself with. Nothing could go wrong, right? Wrong.... sort of. The traders were cooking some meat over a campfire after setting up camp just outside of a hold. The smell from this meat had attracted a variety of creatures who didn't dare get too close... except for one. A white wher bounded out of the woods around them aiming to get a good meal out of the barely roasted meat.
Volo, in a moment of panic at seeing what he percieved to be a wild wher, threw the meat near it. He hoped it would just leave after eating their dinner, but it didn't seem to be satisfied. It marched its way over to Volo, who was downright terrified, and bit him- not too hard- right on the leg. The blood had created a bond between the two of them. The white had misunderstood and thought that Volo was feeding it, so it wanted to stick around so it could get more food out of them.
Volosk was his name, but it wasn't always. The wher was almost his age and had been previously bonded to a handler who didn't care for him, and Volosk broke their bond and left their name in the dust. After realizing that he was now stuck with this wher, Volo made the best out of it. They now had a source of protection from any real source of danger, this allowed them to take riskier but quicker pathways from location to location. It was great! He had a life partner now, a friend who would always (hopefully) be by his side. He had no need for fanciful daydreams about Faranth... but he still had them as it was second nature at this point.
Recently, his group set up at High Reaches Weyr. They made some good sales, and good sales made good marks, but he wasn't happy. Something beckoned to him about this place, maybe it was that childhood dream about settling down at a Weyr and making a bunch of friends. It spurned an idea within him, he would stay at the Weyr and join up with one of the squads.
He has since joined up with Sunburst Squad and has yet to actually make any actual friends. Despite having no real understanding of inter-weyr politics thanks to his upbringing, seeing a wherhandler win the election for Weyrleader lit a small political fire under him. He has plans to learn as much as he can and then run in the next election.
