"No apologize! Boots!"
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Character - Retire, Dragon - Adopt
NAME: Shallan
GENDER: Cis female
PRONOUNS: she/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Bisexual
BIRTHDATE: Late summer 2747
AGE: 22 as of summer 2769
LOCATION: Semaca Weyr
OCCUPATION: Squadrider
WING: Mazurka Squad
APPEARANCE
EYES: Blue
HAIR: Red, long
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5' 6", slender
PLAY-BY: Shallan Davar (The Stormlight Archive)
FULL APPEARANCE: Pale-skinned, red-haired, and blue-eyed, Shallan was certainly not born for warmer climates. Freckles dot her nose and cheeks, though they're far less noticeable than they were in her childhood. She's about average height for a young woman of her age, though she sometimes wishes she were taller. She's slender, and will never be particularly strong. Her preferred clothes are dresses in cool colors, though she's starting to warm up to trousers. A quirk of hers is that she likes to wear a glove on her left hand even when gloves aren't called for; it's something she got from her mother, and likes to continue to honor her.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY: Despite being shy and reserved in her youth, Shallan has blossomed in her time away from her family home. She carries herself with confidence and poise, even if she might not feel them inwardly. Her quick wit, long restrained, finds itself used too often. Shallan loves wordplay and puns, both in writing and speech, and likes to subtly insult people. When she's in an unfamiliar situation, she's a great actress, pretending like she knows exactly what's going on. She's becoming more forward in the romance department, despite a near-instinctive blush that pops up whenever those subjects are brought up. Ultimately, she wants to make something of herself, and is determined to be a lady deserving of respect and status.
Shallan is a great artist and loves to draw everything interesting she sees. She keeps her sketches meticulously organized as a record of Pern. One thing keeping her from being the lady she wants to be is her tendency to get caught up in sketching, even during important events. She has a fantastic memory and can pay attention to a couple of things at once, but it isn't enough to quite make up for her tendency to get absorbed in sketching.
Still insecure despite everything, she feels she's putting on a facade of competence. She sometimes feels like she's putting on a mask over the naive little holdgirl she still feels like she is, rather than having truly developed into someone new. Time will tell if she becomes confident in herself internally as well as externally.
HISTORY
FAMILY: Parents (both deceased), four older brothers (oldest presumably deceased)
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A
BIRTHPLACE: Davar Hold - minor hold under High Reaches
HISTORY: TW: murder, abuse
Born as the youngest child and only daughter to the lord and lady of Davar Hold, Shallan initially lived a happy, if sheltered, life. She didn't know much about the world outside the Hold, but this never bothered her as a small child. She was especially close to her eldest brother Helaran, despite the large age difference.
Everything changed when she was nine. Unbeknownst to Shallan, her mother had been making some deals with High Reaches Weyr to improve the station of herself and her husband. In exchange, they would provide metal for flamethrowers and weapons, since Davar Hold was situated near a rich vein of ore. Helaran refused to be a warmonger, and eventually killed his mother and a visiting High Reaches associate out of desperation before she could finalize a large shipment. Helaran disappeared into the night, and Shallan never saw him again.
Her father was forced to cover up everything, and grew bitter and overprotective. He told anyone who asked that his wife had been unfaithful, and that he had killed her and her lover. While he never laid a hand on Shallan, he lashed out physically and emotionally at her remaining brothers, and his children grew afraid of him. Shallan began to develop her wit in order to keep herself and her brothers sane, and read the few scrolls that her Hold owned over and over. She began to sketch everything and everyone around, practicing for hours a day despite her father's displeasure.
This continued for about five Turns. Recognizing that his metal - and therefore money - were running out, Shallan's father began looking for marriages for the eldest of his remaining sons, and grudgingly sent Shallan to foster at High Reaches Hold using some of the connections his wife had created. Away from her father and her home, Shallan began to blossom. She became close to an older woman who took her under her wing as a mentee. The news of her father's death by illness didn't faze her - there had been too many bridges burned.
Before her tutor could begin to arrange her a suitable marriage, Shallan was unexpectedly Searched at age seventeen. Not wanting to remain in the Weyr that had ruined her life, Shallan requested a transfer to Semaca, and was accepted. Shortly after arriving at Semaca, she received a firelizard egg from a friendly rider, which hatched into white Pattern.
UPDATES
- Fall 2767 - Shallan Impresses to blue Ophoth. She is thrilled, and also smug that Kaladin didn't Impress.
