" And all along the way
I was dreaming dreaming
But I lost my way
Now you're leavin' me hangin’ from the earth "
BASICS
NAME: Culann
GENDER: Male
PRONOUNS: He/Him/His
ORIENTATION: Straight
BIRTHDATE: Early Summer 2750
AGE: 24 as of Late Summer 2774
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Weyrling
WING: N/A
APPEARANCE
EYES: Hazel
HAIR: Medium reddish-brown
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 4’, stocky
PLAY-BY: Leigh Gill
FULL APPEARANCE:
Whether he likes it or not (and he usually doesn’t), Culann’s most striking feature is his height—or lack thereof. He’s much shorter than average, all of his limbs disproportionately short despite an approximately average-sized torso. He has an oval-shaped face, fair skin, and a medium reddish-brown hair that he refuses to call “auburn”; that would be pretentious. He keeps his hair cut quite short, and favors hats whenever he feels he can get away with them to hide his swiftly receding hairline despite his young age. He does prefer to keep a beard, since it makes people far less likely to mistake him for a child. The hairline could do it too, but his vanity won’t quite let him get away with using that to age himself up in the eyes of others. He’s keenly aware of how other people perceive him, and dresses rather neatly, in well-tailored clothing whenever he can afford it.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Culann is nothing if not hyper-aware of how people perceive him. He knows that some would see his height and use it as a reason to laugh at him; he tries his hardest to give them something else to laugh at instead. If they’re laughing with him, they’re not laughing at him. He’s a smiley, jocular sort who’s always trying to keep people entertained with witty observations, and he’s not above using others’ insecurities to do it. He tries not to, because he knows full well what it’s like to be mocked for something he can’t control, but sometimes he can’t think of anything better and falls back on making fun of others. He can be somewhat disruptive in social settings, because he doesn’t really know how to turn off this instinct and he thinks he’s much funnier than he actually is. He has no good sense of when seriousness is called for.
Friendly and generally outgoing, he’s quick to make friends but can tend to have trouble keeping them due to his often-barbed tongue. Tact is really not his strong suit, even when he’s not actually trying to be funny. He doesn’t really pull punches, and he doesn’t sugar-coat it when he thinks people are in the wrong. Luckily, he’s pretty forgiving, and rarely thinks people really are wrong, at least not for long. He’s not mean-spirited, usually, just blunt.
He has a tendency to try to make amends with baked goods when he realizes he’s gone too far. He just isn’t very good at baking, but a lifetime with a mother who’s also a terrible baker has led him to possess a rather outsize opinion of his own skills in that area. He can and will get very offended when his lack of skill is pointed out to him.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Mother, Aoifuna, Farmer
Father, Dekine, Farmer
Older brother, Oranteis, 2748, Candidate
Younger sister, Rippei, 2752, Farmer
Younger sister, Niarse, 2755, Candidate
Younger brother, Anisi, 2757, Farmer
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: None
BIRTHPLACE: Cothold outside High Reaches
HISTORY:
Born to a farming family at a small cothold, Culann had a blessedly uneventful upbringing. From a very early age, it was clear that he was physically a bit different from his peers. He was smaller, and took a bit longer to learn to walk than most infants, but he was otherwise healthy. Trouble started when he was old enough to understand that other people—other children foremost in importance to him, but adults too—saw him as different in some fundamental way that went beyond just his build. He hated it, especially the way children, having not yet learned tact, sometimes laughed.
As he grew older, it became clear that he wasn’t going to be of much help in the fields the way his other siblings—and most of the other children in the hold old enough to be trusted with it—were. He instead learned to do what was usually considered “women’s” work: sewing and cleaning and helping with the cooking where he could. That led to further ridicule, and he started to respond by cracking jokes. Not about himself, but about anything else he could come up with. Other people, situations, whatever it took to get people laughing with him rather than at him.
When he was old enough, he began to despair of ever finding a wife. He tried, but Turns passed with nothing working out. The Searchdragon was an unexpected wrinkle. It had been a long, long time since a dragon had landed at the little farmstead, but what the rider found wasn’t just one Candidate, but several, including Culann and two of his siblings. All three accepted, going to High Reaches. Life was about to get very, very different.
