BASICS
NAME: F'ola
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/Her/Hers
ORIENTATION: Bisexual
BIRTHDATE: Early Spring 2745
AGE: 25 Turns as of Early Winter 2770
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Rider
WING: Moonshot Wing
APPEARANCE
EYES: Green
HAIR: Red
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'11"
PLAY-BY: Fordola Lupis (FFXIV)
FULL APPEARANCE:
F'ola is a tall, muscular woman who usually looks as though she's angry. If she were smaller, and more serene, she might actually be called cute; she has a narrow, angular face, with a small nose and fairly full lips. Her round eyes are bright green, though her eyebrows are perpetually drawn downward. She has thick, straight red hair, cut fairly short into a relentlessly practical bob.
She tends to dress simply, not wanting to draw an excess of attention to herself, and not wanting to look as though she's trying to dress above her station.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
F'ola is not a bright and sunny person by any means whatsoever. She's bitter, and grumpy; she would sooner insult someone and drive them away than say a single kind word. She doesn't really trust anyone, and certainly doesn't like them. She's especially untrusting of metallic riders, usually going so far as to avoid speaking to them entirely. Her early days at High Reaches definitely left an indelible mark on her, but she will vociferously deny that she's at all changed by it.
Despite her hatred of metallic riders, she's firmly of the belief that they're supposed to lead. She's almost fanatically loyal to High Reaches, and would do just about anything for the Weyr she calls home, save to accept the possibility that democracy may be a good thing. Greenriders like her simply aren't meant for anything more than to be obedient followers. Soldiers.
On very rare occasions, she can show a softer side. When she lets her guard down, she's almost sweet and playful, though the bite of sarcasm is still always present. This, however, is almost solely reserved for Zaurith; around other people, she's just too wary.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None
BIRTHPLACE: Cothold east of High Reaches Hold
HISTORY:
TW: Bullying
Fordola's early life is remembered as a soft sort of happiness. There was a war when she was very young, but her cothold was always passed over, too small to be of any consequence. She learned to farm, to coax life out of the thin, rocky soil. She learned to fish in the nearby rivers, and how to strike a bargain with passing traders for salted meat.
And then a dragon came; a green, looking every bit like the regal, wonderful creatures the songs had always said them to be. It was only days past her fifteenth Turn-day, a fact that the rider was keen to confirm. Soon after, she was asked if she'd like to go to the Weyr. When she declined, mentioning that she didn't wish to leave her home, it was made very clear that she had little choice in the matter. And so she went to High Reaches and was pressed into Candidacy.
A part of her knew she should resent the Weyr. It had taken her from her family, given her no say in the matter, given her stiff new clothes and bulky-feeling rank knots... and yet she couldn't help but feel a devotion to the place. Love, even. This was what power looked like. This was wealth, and not having to scrabble among the rocks to ensure that nobody was going to starve to death during the winter. She hadn't come willingly, but she faced the first clutch to hatch—only a bit over a month after her arrival—eagerly. She could stand atop them all.
That brief dream was utterly crushed when a confident, brightly-colored green stepped up to her instead. My F'ola! Goodness, look at how many people are here to see us.
In Impressing a dragon seen by most of High Reaches as lesser, as utterly unworthy, F'ola found in herself a defiance she'd never known existed. They'd made her into this. They'd taken her here and shoved her to the bottom of the pile, and forsk them all. This didn't go particularly well for her, especially when her newfound outspokenness made an enemy of one of her fellow Weyrlings, a bronzerider. The consequences of speaking up, both physical threats—some followed up on, in the form of fights she could never have won—and the social consequences, were quickly made clear to her. She eventually learned to accept it as her lot in life, all the while her anger and bitterness grew.
And then the unthinkable happened right before she could graduate: Golre was killed, and Fortian leadership took over. Despite her hatred for High Reaches, F'ola's loyalty to the Weyr she loathed made these new interlopers immediately suspect. Who were they to declare themselves the triumphant conquerors, to install new leadership and new laws? Worse still when the new Weyrwoman was a greenrider. Titles were renamed, but the same remained: people who weren't meant to lead a Weyr were doing so. Somehow that was even worse, though F'ola could never really articulate how.
Thus began an endless parade of people from other Weyrs trying to dictate High Reaches' existence. Leadership was rarely native-born, and when they were, they were unsuitable. F'ola thought things might even go back to the proper ways, until the twin golds finally rose, ending all hope of that when one was killed during her flight and the other died soon after. Worse still when the Weyr elected a man who wasn't a rider at all to lead.
But at least things settled down, for a time. F'ola's learned distrust of metallic riders never really faded, nor did her almost fanatical loyalty to the Weyr. It, more than the place she had come from, was home, and she'd do anything to see it safe. Disastrous Threadfalls didn't worry her, so long as the Weyr could exist on its own terms, and not at the whims of outside Weyrs giving assistance. Which was why she was more than relieved when another gold finally hatched. She may have hated the rider and her dragon, and wanted nothing to do with them, but it was necessary for a strong gold to lead the Weyr back to prosperity.
