" My dearest friend, in whom I trust without hesitation, without doubt─
Come what may, I know you will strive on.
You will strive, and in the end you will triumph, on this journey and the next, and the next, and the next.
And when you have fought the good fight, only to find, yet again, that it is not enough─
I will be there.
This I promise. This I swear.
Beyond darkest night waits a new dawn. I pray you greet her with a smile. "
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Retire
NAME: Marius, formerly known as Tsenral
GENDER: Male
PRONOUNS: He/Him/His
ORIENTATION: Gay
BIRTHDATE: Early Summer 2745
AGE: 25 as of Late Fall 2770
LOCATION: Fort Weyr
OCCUPATION: Weyrfolk, cheesemaker
APPEARANCE
EYES: Green
HAIR: Brown
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'3", skinny
PLAY-BY: Picrew maker by @makowwka
FULL APPEARANCE:
Marius is easy to overlook--quite literally. Standing shorter than most women and with a gangly, skinny build, he's easily mistaken at a glance for someone still in their teens. A closer look shows an older face, Turns of sun exposure leaving its mark. He's on the fair side, with a profusion of freckles. He has muddy green eyes, and relatively thick, dark eyebrows. His face is on the rounder side, with a wide, short nose. He has wavy brown hair that mostly falls down to nearly his armpits, though there are shorter pieces in the front owing to his impatience with a comb. He usually wears the bulk of it up in a bun to keep it mostly out of the way. His voice is of medium timbre, though soft.
There are two easily visible, pale scars on his face, on his right cheek and forehead and the other on his chin. Less easily noticed, but much larger, is a scar on the back of his head; it's usually covered by his hair.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Marius is a friendly, often cheerful young man. He tries hard to get along with everyone, and succeeds in a lot of cases, though he's less good at forming strong friendships than he is making just about everyone's acquaintance. While he likes most people he meets on a surface level, he can be extremely slow to fully trust someone. He's also terrible at remembering faces, and it takes several meetings for him to recognize someone on sight. Despite his friendliness, he's also more than a bit awkward, bad with words and with a tendency to trail off mid-sentence. Combined with the fact that he's rather soft-spoken, it can lead to the impression that he's quieter than he really is.
He's incredibly stubborn, convinced that he can do everything on his own regardless of the circumstances. He hates accepting any help, but feels an overwhelming urge to help everyone else with their problems. He's fiercely independent, even when it makes no sense to be; he only grudgingly asks for help with anything written, since no amount of effort has resulted in him learning to read. He has a bad habit of acting like he's perfectly fine even when he's ill, figuring that he can handle it on his own. He's also not particularly bright, and occasionally resents his lack of knowledge on most subjects, even if he's too proud to ask anyone to teach him what he lacks.
He's a bit jumpy, not necessarily easily startled but easily scared. He assumes the worst when people are angry with him, and is frightened by ghost stories. However, the idea of ever fighting back against anything that he finds frightening is abhorrent to him; he's a pacifist through and through.
Though he can't remember what he did before--though his callused hands tell him that he was no stranger to some sort of labor--he knows that he likes to knit. It's a peaceful sort of activity. Cooking too, is enjoyable, and making cheese even more so. And eating cheese. And talking about cheese. He really likes cheese.
He can occasionally get a bit morose, wondering what he's lost. Did he have a family? He doesn't like not knowing.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Mother, Mittsen, Fisherman (Estranged)
Father, Ralleno, Fisherman (Estranged)
Older brother, Nosen, Fisherman (Estranged)o
Younger brother, Rami, Fisherman (Estranged)
Younger sister, Nomi, Fisherman (Estranged)
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None
BIRTHPLACE: Remote seahold east of Keroon
HISTORY:
Marius--then known as Tsenral--was born to be a fisherman, or so his parents said. He may have been small, but he was plenty nimble, and everyone needed quick hands on board a ship. Not that his family's ship was much more than a boat. They fished for themselves, and little more; between the sea and their small field and the single herdbeast they usually owned, they always had enough. Sometimes they managed to send a good amount of excess to Keroon Hold as tithe, but mostly they just got by.
Unfortunately for everyone, Tsenral and the sea were not meant to be. Every time he went out, he got seasick, and things never did improve. He kept hoping that when he got older, it would get better. It didn't. He was relegated to working on land and never going out on the boat: cooking, and sewing, and tending to the field. He was happy enough; in such a small cothold, there was no "men's work" or "women's work", just work that everyone had to share in sometimes.
That wasn't to say that all times were good. His siblings mostly resented that he didn't have to help with some of the "hard" work. In moments of anger they'd call him puny, or weak. A malingerer. They'd push, but he never pushed back. It always blew over quickly, but the guilt occasionally remained.
As he got older, he would accompany whichever of his parents would take the tithe to Keroon. He loved seeing what he thought was more of the world, never knowing that it was only a very, very small piece of Pern. He imagined Igen Weyr as only a day's journey farther, and Benden as maybe a day beyond that. He had no idea what the world's true scope was; to him, a week's journey was an unfathomable distance when Keroon itself was strange and exotic and a whole three days away.
Eventually, his older brother married, and their family expanded; they had a child and it grew further still. Tsenral had no interest in any of that. Oh, he had an inkling that he preferred men, but he knew that the expectation was that partnerships produce babies and, well, he'd sooner none at all than... that. With the extra pair of hands though came extra mouths to feed, and they fished and farmed more.
It was a good Turn. There was enough to spare that they would tithe not only to Keroon, but send some straight to the Weyr, as a show of thanks. Tsenral and his mother were to go, but she fell ill at the last moment. He went alone instead, with nothing but the little hand-cart full of dried fish and seaweed and his father's directions. None of them could read or write, but at least he was good at remembering directions. The journey was much, much longer than the journey to Keroon.
He made it eleven days without incident. Winters along the coast were cold, but not unbearable. On the twelfth day it rained, and the terrain grew more treacherous near the river where the road would fork: west to Igen, and north to Lemos. He pressed on regardless. He was careful, but no care could prepare him for a steep path that was no more than bare rock slick with moss and nothing to grab onto. When he was halfway to better footing he slipped, his heel going out from under him. His head hit first, and he and the cart returned to the bottom of the hill.
Another traveler found him hours later, barely conscious and wandering aimlessly down the road.
He remembers nothing of himself before Lemos. Not his childhood, not the fall, and not the cotholder who called him Marius for lack of anything else to call him on the way to Lemos Hold. It somehow stuck; it was his now.
It was assumed that he'd recover fairly quickly, and that soon he'd be on his way home... wherever home was. When memory didn't return, he was sent to Healer Hall, but they could do no more for him there than the Healers at Lemos could. However, he didn't stay there long after the revolution at Fort Hold. He was expected to take a side, and he just... didn't know. He left for the Weyr, knowing that the politics there were ever more complicated, but that the Weyrfolk were largely able to live their lives undisturbed. He was... okay with that.
His parents asked after him at Keroon, but no one remembered him passing through; Igen had no record of their family sending a tithe that winter.
At the Weyr, he learned where he could actually help out. He was actually a decent cook, and was especially skilled at cooking fish for some reason, though he couldn't have named a single one of the fish he cooked. But more, he discovered that he loved cheese. Making cheese was, he was fairly certain, new to him; no one had needed to explain cooking, he just did it once he got started. But cheese? He liked that far, far more. He liked learning that different kinds of cheese treated in different ways came out with so many varied flavors.
He could stay here. Keep out of trouble. Maybe someday, he'd remember, and bring cheese home. Wherever that was.
