" All you bound to the Dales follow me, follow me
From this road I'll not lead you astray
And though kept is your heart
It longs to be roaming free
So I'll lead you all—come with me "
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Retire
NAME: Tam
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/Her/Hers
ORIENTATION: Homoromantic asexual
BIRTHDATE: Early Spring 2727
AGE: 43 as of Late Fall 2770
LOCATION: Semaca Weyr
OCCUPATION: Wherhandler
WING: Weyr Guard
APPEARANCE
EYES: Brown
HAIR: Brown
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'3", lean
PLAY-BY: Jennifer Ehle
FULL APPEARANCE:
Tam is a little on the short side, and packed full of lean muscle. She's not big, but she's strong enough to get by, and it shows when one catches sight of her bare shoulders (which isn't often, as she worries about sunburn). She's somewhat on the fair side, though freckled, and she often burns in the sun no matter how often she's exposed to it. She has a face rather on the long, narrow side, with a sharp, slightly hooked nose to match. Her dark eyes are somewhat widely spaced, and crows-foot wrinkles can be found around them. Her eyebrows aren't especially thick, and both a bit lighter and redder than her hair, a trait from her red-haired father. Her hair is a medium brown, thick, and straight, down to her mid-back. She tries to keep it out of the way, but really, she's quite proud of it and likes to show it off when she can.
She has several scars, though few easily visible on a regular basis. Most are on her elbows and knees, with a couple on her shins and forearms. All are from small, generally unremarkable incidents, she just has a bad habit of itching when she shouldn't, causing even small cuts to leave a scar.
She tends to dress in extremely plain clothing, bordering on shabby. Anything fitted feels too tight to her, and skirts just get in her way. She prefers loose trousers and blouses, though she's starting now to wear at least slightly feminine blouses, after a couple decades of wearing whatever she could get, usually something that had been made for a man.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Tam is a confident, remarkably stubborn and relentlessly practical woman. She's sure of her own judgement, and quick to take action in all situations. She hates waste, being determined to find a use for everything and everyone, and all in all makes a terrible follower. She's spent too long as a de facto leader for that; she'll openly question things she disagrees with and blatantly disobey if she feels she needs to, and her values don't always align with everyone else's. She puts the good of the group—her people—first, followed by herself, then the rest of the world. Things like rules are unimportant when contrasted with what's good for those she cares about.
She has a great capacity for caring, able to bring a lot of people under her wing and consider them hers. She has no family around, but she considers a lot of people to be her extended "family". Loyalty is of the utmost importance to her, and she both gives it and expects it of others. The greatest hurt one could do her would be to betray her trust, for though she can be somewhat wary and slow to give it, it is absolute.
Her own deeper feelings she hides well. Even after all this time, she's homesick; no matter how long she's stayed, nothing has felt like home for the past twenty Turns, and she misses the home she lost. She can be rather morose at times, getting easily disappointed by failures even as she pretends to be hopeful. She has a temper, strongly repressed, though when she lets it out it's an explosion of pent-up fury that can damage relationships a long while after the fact.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Older sister, Marva, Holdless
Younger sister, Ira, Holdless
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None
BIRTHPLACE: Cothold in High Reaches territory
HISTORY:
TW: Death, violence
Tam was never supposed bound for much. She was given a simple name for a simple farmer girl, and that was the end of it. She'd be cared for by her two older siblings, and come to look after the younger three. She'd have a simple, unremarkable life, and marry an unremarkable boy and have unremarkable children. And for the first several Turns of her life, this held true; sure, she got her bumps and bruises, same as any other child, but even as a war began things were peaceful.
But in times of war, nothing stays simple, or unremarkable, or peaceful for long. Tam was nine when her cothold and several others in the area were first raided by riders from High Reaches. Her mother was killed trying to protect the fields, along with a few of the other adults that Tam had grown up considering almost family. But farmers were stubborn folk, and so they replanted and rebuilt, albeit with heavy hearts that couldn't quite shake the weight of all they'd lost.
For nine Turns they were largely overlooked once more. Riders came a few times, demanding the young as Candidates, and the holdfolk learned to hide those who were of the right age, claiming all had already been taken. The last time they came, Tam and several others were hiding in a cramped cubbyhole at the bottom of a grain silo. From their hiding place, they heard first shouts, then screams. They stayed put until long past nightfall, when all had gone silent. When they finally emerged, fearful and hungry, they found the cothold ransacked and abandoned, empty of any people save for bodies.
The young people had few options; some wanted to try to rebuild, assuming that nobody would return to loot a cothold that had been destroyed. Others were shellshocked, unable to make any decisions at all. Tam took charge, pointing out that worked fields would always be obvious from the sky, and cajoled the others until they largely agreed to follow her away. Anywhere outside of High Reaches' territory, where Golre could no longer rule their lives.
And like that, they found themselves Holdless, vowing to return someday.
"Someday" was a long time coming. For Turns they wandered, losing members, gaining new ones, becoming feared for that which they had lost. The war ended, but having made their way across most of a continent, few wanted to return, regardless of the promises they had made more than a decade before. They were comfortable where they were: there was hunting to be had, and the caves they'd found protected them from Thread. Tam always held onto hope that she'd see her home again someday, but as time wore on she found that fewer and fewer of her friends were willing to leave, until she was left with no support at all. Even her two living sisters wanted to stay.
When, almost twenty Turns after leaving, she did finally set off for the home she'd lost, it was alone. She'd led the others to safety, but now they had to fend for themselves. In a way she felt guilty, worrying that they might come to harm without her, but she'd made a promise. She wouldn't renege on it. Time wouldn't erase what she'd once said.
It was a long journey, but when she finally arrived, Tam knew it was no longer home. The land hadn't been worked since they'd left. The ground was hard and rutted, and rocks from the hills above had tumbled to dot it, traps for any plows that dared try to cross it. She stayed a few days, rediscovering the halls that had once been home, and then moved on. She didn't really have a plan any more; she'd accomplished what she'd set out to do. She'd returned; she'd never promised she would stay.
Not, it turned out, that any sort of plan she'd made would have included what actually happened. She befriended a younger Holdless boy on the road, who was eventually Searched by High Reaches after they'd worked together for a few weeks. Tam was invited along, not as a Candidate—she was far too old for that now—but to have a place to stay, her only companionship being taken from her by a dragon. Warily, she accepted. She couldn't bring herself to trust High Reaches, not after what had been done to her cothold, but she could still go.
She didn't stay long though. As soon as she heard word of a new Weyr looking for any sort of people to help out, she left. Semaca, it was called. A chance to start over, Tam called it.
