Age: 24
Nameday: 3549.11.29
Sex: Male
Sexual Orientation: Is it female, of age, and at least mildly attractive? He’ll take it.
Weyr: High Reaches Weyr
Rider Rank: Wingrider
Previous Rank/Craft: Journeyman Harper (Novelist, dabbles in drawing and painting)
Physical Description: A slim man of average height and boyish looks. His overall frame is lanky, a bit knobby in the shoulders and a bit long in the chin. He has pale peach skin and blond hair that is a tossup between sandy and strawberry. Within deep-set eyes, his near-black irises are so large that he tends to appear slightly cross-eyed when focused on something directly in front of him. This tends to lend to an overall appearance of innocence, which he takes full advantage of.
While he generally focuses on cultivating this trustworthy image to his own ends, he does have a colorful set of sneers and smolders that he will absolutely switch on if the mood is right.
Personality: This wide-eyed young man is sweet, polite, and perhaps even a bit dashing. He’s certainly chivalrous where the ladies are concerned. He tends to exude a bright, if unconscious innocence, a humble fellow with a faint tinge of sorrow beneath the surface of his words once one gets him talking long enough on the right subject. Once in a while, though, he might give a particularly sharp look, or crack a somewhat off-color joke. Both would feel a little foreign coming from him and might elicit a startled glance or a raise of a brow from acquaintances and those who hold shallower levels of friendship.
In short, that is because he’s something akin to a soft, adorable stuffed animal shell that has been sewn around a sarcastic sack of wherry waste instead of puffs of batting and a squeak-maker. Most likely in that last scenario, somebody got close enough to squeeze him, and instead of a cute little peep, something far less pleasant leaked out. He looks harmless on the outside, but on the inside Delris is a wicked little imp. He enjoys tormenting his half-brother and closest friends with pranks and affectionate but irritating or startling gestures, like unexpected pinches. His choice of words in those private moments is often chock full of biting sarcasm, but can also be quite demonstrative in that or any setting. It is is very sincere toward certain people, and a targeted attack toward others.
He relishes pulling the wool over people’s eyes, especially when he manages to get away with something under the nose of one of his superiors. Back when training at at Harper Hall, while it was only an occasional occurrence and his system rarely worked more than once on any of them, he did things like convince one of his masters to forgive a “lost” assignment, another to excuse him from a boring class for a couple of days to help elsewhere—harmless stuff, but boy, was it satisfying.
Of his works of a less harmless nature, the few ladies who know him well enough would know it’s safer to remain unmoved by his sweeter speeches. For one who assumes he’s serious, she’ll have an unpleasant surprise later on when she learns she’s lost her heart to someone who just had no idea she felt so strongly! Oh dear, he's so sorry! He’s a discreet but shameless opportunist.
Well, not exactly shameless. Guilt is for the weak and dependent, so he just kicks it under the rug and focuses on something else until it quiets down. That won’t ever come back to bite him. Nope, just a big forgotten vault of shame and self-loathing, filling up a little more every day. Totally never going to hit some sort of limit on that, no sir. The truth, however deeply he tries to bury it, is that with each heart he breaks, a small part of his own is also crushed. He may never admit it, but each time he connects with a woman on even a slightly deeper-than-surface level, there is a longing for something more than a moment’s gratification. Part of him dares to hope that maybe, just maybe… maybe it will work out this time. With this one. This is why he can seem so sincere. He is sincere… until he remembers that there is no such thing as love. So he flees before the opportunity comes for him to be rejected.
He’s pretty good at making friends, but does end up with enemies despite his best efforts to dodge such entanglements. Though true enemies are thankfully rare, when he wins himself one, it’s usually a humdinger in his opinion, whether it be an enraged father or brother defending a lady’s honor, or a superior who knows his deceit and never gives him an inch of wiggle room. He tries to avoid it, but illicit behavior of any sort inevitably results in a comeuppance sooner or later. He’s suffered some real shiners, cracked ribs and one knife wound over the last ten turns or so.
Delris is good at bending the spoken word to his will, but also writes and publishes novels, including romances. If we're being honest, he thinks they are completely asinine—he knows what love is really like, and he knows his audience. He writes merely for the marks and, on occasion, other perks. Just because some passionate fans assume he’s a romantic person doesn’t make him so, but he’ll let them have their little fantasies. The ultimate irony of it all is that, somewhere in the deeps of his heart, there is a longing to be loved by one woman, but he struggles to believe in that being a possibility, sneering at it from underneath all of those layers of jading and spite. If he ever meets this mythical “The One,” he’s probably going to hurt her long before realizing, and accepting, who she really is.
While his brother Osris never falls for and is actually capable of mitigating some of his behavior, the only thing that has ever truly succeeded in tying him down and tempering him thus far is his dragon, whose gentle nudging and blatant displays of love and affection for Delris and others have vastly reduced the occasions that result in true heartbreak. While his earliest escapades were all fun and games, the weight of the effects on both himself and the people around him have become much heavier, especially now that Qeryth is always around to hold him accountable.
Positive Trait List Charming, persuasive, affectionate, desires commitment
Negative Trait List Selfish, manipulative, two-faced, fears rejection
History: Delris was born in Nabol Hold to a couple of book shop owners. He spent a large part of his childhood escaping into those books, taking comfort in the fantasies, romantic love stories and consistently-happy endings. His parents were good to him and his half-brother Osris, but acted like they hated each other for as long as he can remember. He never knew who started it or how, but they were constantly retaliating against each other’s infidelity by imitating it, then arguing and never talking about it, solving nothing. He couldn’t understand why, but they must have loved each other deep down, for they stayed together through their differences even though they were well-off enough to split the business and part ways. Delris always wished they would split up, because their behavior was so frightening when he was young, then hurtful and annoying, and he found it just unbearably idiotic by the time he was mature enough to up and walk out of the house himself, leaving them and taking Osris with him. If that was married life, he wanted nothing to do with it, and hoped his brother avoided it as well.
They studied at Harper Hall, where Delris took a cue from the books he’d read and learned to harness the power of words in a way that was actually profitable. He became a novelist, making good marks with lies about love and happy endings. When he developed the interest in it, he imitated his parents and applied his skills to making a certain sort of friends as well. He avoided the stigma for a good while with his wily ways, but eventually got himself (rightfully) pegged as a womanizer when one too many of his dates discovered and talked to others.
Quite timely, from his perspective, he and his brother Osris were Searched to High Reaches Weyr for a fresh start. He enjoyed the simplicity of his work as a candidate, and continued his novels as best he could in his spare time. Sometimes he found it even easier to finagle what he wanted there than it’d been at Harper Hall, where a few of the Masters were some of the wiliest people Pern had to offer. He was much more careful with the ladies at the Weyr, dallying with only one at a time and not for very long, developing skill with seemingly sincere apologies when things “weren’t working out” after a few weeks, or days. He rarely went long without having someone to keep him company, thanks in part to the constant greenflights that went on at the Weyr. He also encouraged a sort of “tragic hero” reputation for himself that was quite helpful. He was a poor lonely boy who just wanted to be loved! And there was a fairly regular supply of those who erroneously thought they might be the right one do it.
Life was pretty good until Qeryth hatched. The greatest gift he’d ever received—the love of a dragon—came with a price: total fidelity to High Reaches Weyr, and the looming possibility that he might have to give his own life in serving it.
During their first blooding, Delris' self-preservation sirens were going full bore, and it effected their performance poorly. They made some stupid mistakes and have a bit of scoring to show for it, but managed to stay in one piece. Thankfully, Qeryth had the instincts and the joyful fighters’ spirit. She has always been pleased to fight her natural enemy, and to give her best in doing so. The man, on the other hand, is still deathly afraid of it, now that it has become “real” to him as a rider. It is a horrifying creature from nightmares that devours living beings and can’t be reasoned with. He counts himself very lucky to have not lost anyone to such a terror. Though he often wishes Qeryth had come before Thread returned so they could live freely outside of a Weyr, he’ll fight it for the sake and happiness of his dragon, understanding that he has no real choice in the matter. With time and experience, though, his confidence should grow.
Other: Both Delris and Osris are illegitimate; Delris the son of the father, Osris the son of the mother, born two weeks apart. Os is the elder of the two.
DRAGON
Name: Qeryth
Age: 3
Color: Green
Size: 22’
Physical Attributes: Where her rider’s innocent appearance and demeanor is somewhat affected, Qeryth’s is completely natural. She is on the smaller side of average, a very slender-bodied green with large, expressive eyes and a pretty little nose. Her legs, toes and headknobs are well-formed but seem to be staying relatively shorter as she grows, as are her wings. Her proportions cause her to somewhat resemble a perpetual nestling-waif.
Whether because of her compact proportions causing chafing or just plain old genetics falling that way, Qeryth’s hide is prone to irritation, rashes, and complications with surface wounds. This condition requires regular visits to a dragonhealer to manage to ensure that she can safely jump between in threadfall.
Personality Qeryth is a sweet, warm, welcoming creature. She’s always polite and loves to visit friends and family, or even better, entertain company in her own weyr. Those connections to others, especially blood kin, are very important to her. She feels a bit lost without those tethers, and the more she has, the better. She can suffer from separation anxiety when away from her rider or a beloved dragon for too long, so she spends a lot of time speaking long-distance with her siblings and friends who aren’t in sight or who live elsewhere. She lost a few of her siblings on their hatch day, and even though she knows it’s silly, from time to time she still calls out and strains to spot them in the nothingness when she goes between.
She has a strong sense of class structure within her kind, tending to defer to browns, bronzes and golds without complaint, sometimes even if their requests cross the line of common sense. Though she’s heard that Western approves all colors for leadership, she knows such a goal isn’t right for her. She is no one special, and perfectly happy to live the mundane life allowed those of lesser rankings.
Qeryth loves fighting Thread! She is a bit gung-ho, wanting to be like the strongest and bravest dragons in the Weyr and in stories Delris has written or read to her. Her heroism is a little exaggerated and not particularly realistic. Her stamina isn’t the greatest (piffling, even!) and she’s definitely not invincible—facts her rider has to remind her of quite frequently.
When she rises, if there isn’t any chaser in particular that she especially desires, she will attempt to pick a blue or brown who is bonded to a woman. Maybe that one will be the right one for her rider? All she can do is try. She believes no one is meant to be alone, and believes Delris would be happiest being loved and surrounded by a veritable clan of his own blood, as she is among her own kin. She is glad that she was shelled as a green, not for the fact that her instinct to rise often would be enjoyable for him, but that her consistent, gentle requests for him to stay just one more night afterward might eventually bring about something fulfilling and long-term, if not permanent.
Other: (Why Me?) Qeryth saw right through the front Delris puts up from the moment she felt his mind during the first Touching, and was baffled by her own conclusion that he has completely convinced himself that he must pretend to be something he already is. That fascinating paradox, perhaps, was the deciding factor in her choosing him over someone who valued family as much as she does. Family is very important to Qeryth, and she will gently impress this value upon her rider, who, aside from his half-brother, seems to have rejected the idea of family altogether.
Since common sense isn’t quite so common, at least for Qeryth, Delris will be there to provide that in spades. He’s not so willing to blindly trust everyone, nor bend his knee at the first whim of a someone with a knot above his own. Hopefully, his reluctance and her enthusiasm will eventually balance each other out. This also applies to Threadfighting—girl needs a bit of a woah! now and then to remind her that she isn’t some legendary, invincible hero like the ones she’s heard about in harper tales. He’d like them both to enjoy their life together for a long, long time, thank you!
Origin: Qeryth appeared as a prize during EoP’s 2018 Christmas event, “Have An Eggcellent Holiday: CYO Eggs!”
Dragon Art or Proof of Obtainment:
