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Name: Tonori
Age: 24
Nameday: 3551.06.18
Sex: male
Sexual Orientation: bisexual
Craft: N/A
Rank: guard candidate
Location: High Reaches Weyr
Physical Description: Tall and muscular, Tonori has the physical wherewithal to put a stop to most fights before they get started. After training for most of his adolescence to become a guard, he has the martial knowledge to keep any fights he does get into relatively short. He keeps his dark hair cropped close to his skull for simplicity's sake and for that same reason prefers to wear simple dress or his uniform most of the time. He used to wear a small hoop earring, but that was torn out during a practice bout when he was 18 and once his ear healed he never got back to wearing it, or any other piece of jewelry. His nose is not so much crooked as diverted - instead of going straight down the middle of his face, it goes down the middle-ish of his face at about 10 degrees to the right of center. Obviously he snores. His room- and bedmates suffer.
Personality:
Tonori cannot easily be ruffled, which makes him well-suited to his chosen profession. Someone comes running up covered in soot and announces there's a fire in the kitchen? Well, that can be dealt with, no panic required. Same for blood and bandits. Same for thieves, mistresses, and any number of other unusual or alarming situations which might arise in a guard's work. He prefers to work from a rulebook or set of procedures, since improvisation is not his strong suit, but he's perfectly comfortable stepping into a position of authority and directing others according to what he feels is closest to the established best practice.
Another part of what makes Tonori such a good guard is that he never needs to know more than he is told about a situation, and almost never asks questions except to clarify his own understanding of what is expected of him. He absolutely never questions orders, and doesn't particularly appreciate when other do, either. It is his belief that if he was supposed to know something, he would have been told. If he is given directions that are spare on details, he will simply shrug and work with what he does know. There are, after all, protocols in place to handle most situations. Anyone who requests more information after a superior has stopped talking in a briefing is wasting time. He'll let them know later.
Because he absolutely will let people know when they are not performing up to code, or when they seem to be slacking off. He's pretty outspoken in that respect (and, really, only in that respect) and his usual manner of communication is blunt, with little consideration for how his words might be interpreted. To be fair, there's not usually a lot of room for interpretation: he's straightforward to the point of rudeness, and succinct, though never foul-mouthed. The only area in which you'll see Tonori deviate from this is if he disagrees with someone or has been told to keep his mouth shut on a subject, in which case he becomes stone-faced with a vocabulary consisting of the words "sir" or "ma'am" with various inflections ranging from courteous to threatening.
Despite his lack of communicative facility, his disinclination to ask for or provide more information than necessary has given him a reputation for discretion and integrity. He will keep a secret unto death if he is told it is a secret. Even minor ones. He values his word, and takes pride in being of use and providing excellent service once he has given it. He will compromise his personal integrity for the sake of this service, lying at the direction of or for the well being of his employer, but he is not a convincing or imaginative liar, and prefers simply to say that he "couldn't say, ma'am." He does not see this as a violation of his honor or integrity, because he considers that the oath of service he took supersedes anything else he might say or do as an individual. So far that's been working for him because no employer has ever asked him to do anything morally reprehensible.
Some people might think this is because his moral compass just isn't especially well-attuned, which is why he prefers to be employed rather than at leisure, with direction coming from the will and desire of his employer, but they would be mistaken. It can be hard to tell with him, since he's got a fairly inscrutable face and doesn't seem to get flustered or brood over hard things. In point of fact, he has a pretty keen sense of right and wrong, but he believes not as intelligent as everyone else, and that it's better for everyone involved if he goes with the flow instead of putting up a fuss about things he doesn't agree with or enjoy.
He does enjoy things, though. His life isn't just a grey haze of "meh." He genuinely enjoys exercise and martial training, and he likes games of chance and physical competitions. He also likes to relax with friends and listen to them tell stories and jokes, even though he doesn't speak up very often in these gatherings. He likes children, too, although he tends to intimidate them with his size, and singing. He is actually a pretty good singer, though nowhere near harper quality. He rumbles a solid bass and can hold his own with complicated rhythms both vocally and while dancing (another activity he really enjoys).
Positive Trait List self-possessed; uncomplicated; discreet
Negative Trait List poor communicator; uncurious; unimaginative
History:
The fourth of six children born to a family of drudges, Tonori quickly outstripped his elder siblings in height, and weight, and was clumsy with it for much of his childhood. Thus, he spent much of his childhood being smacked and called a clumsy oaf or moron or idiot by everyone in his family, who never considered that calling somebody stupid when what they really meant was they had poor proprioception for a body that seemed to grow faster than Thread burrowed. Even after he learned to be more careful with his elbows and to stop bumping his head on low door frames, the habit of calling him names that meant unintelligent persisted among his family. He took their words to heart, and eventually decided that they were probably right, and he probably wasn't as smart as they were, but he was big and strong.
His mother wanted him to put his size to use as a mine worker, and Tonori went along with it once he was big enough to pass for working age, despite being about nine. None of his siblings, older or younger, were moving out and they needed the income. He didn't mind the work especially. The dark didn't bother him, and while having to hunch in the tunnels was uncomfortable, he could tell he was being useful both underground and at home, and he liked that. He also got along well with his fellow mine workers, who had never heard his family call him a dimglow, and treated him like anyone else, since he isn't actually any less intelligent than average, despite his personal conviction that he must be.
Even things at home improved once he started earning wages, because Tonori was suddenly contributing more than any two of his siblings to the household, so he was fairly content as a mine worker, until word somehow reached the wrong ears that he was underage for the sort of work he had been doing, and so he had to be let go, even though he'd been a good worker and wanted to keep on working. As a kindness, the foreman for his section offered to put in a good word for him at the crafthall, but this offer he refused, claiming that he didn't have the brains for that sort of thing. He was also told that when he was old enough to work the mines, they'd be glad to hire him back, and he was much more willing to accept that.
His family was not. When he went home his mother beat him. Not for the first time, but absolutely for the last. He waited until most of his siblings were asleep, and then he slipped away with no real plan except to not be home any longer. It would have been a long four turns until he was allowed to return to work, and he couldn't imagine what life would be like just sitting around, being scolded for things he couldn't help, like how much he ate. It was the only time he ever let himself run away from something unpleasant, but since it worked out, he eventually decided it had been the right thing to do. Thread had not yet returned, and so he figured he was big enough to handle himself against most people. At twelve turns he was already over six feet tall and powerfully built from hard labor, and he'd learned that most people did not want to start trouble with him, for fear he'd hurt them, even though at the time he had never deliberately hurt anyone.
In the nature of boys seeking their fortunes everywhere, Tonori headed toward the largest hold he knew of, Crom Hold, and had the good fortune to arrive while the lord holder's guard was recruiting. The man he spoke to about signing up probably knew he was too young for the job, but most likely figured he would wash out in training anyway, and let him make his mark. (He was illiterate at the time, although the Weyr has been working on fixing that deficiency.) After all, he was a strapping young lad with good muscles on him, decent manners, and the sort of demeanor that looks pretty damn scary if he just holds still and looms silently. In other words, a pretty good candidate for being a guard, if he made it through training.
He did not wash out in training, and actually took to the martial aspects of it like a dolphin to water. Even more surprisingly, he had an astonishingly high threshold for boredom. Told to do a repetitive task for hours at a time, he simply did it and didn't even complain about it afterward. Told to stand guard in an empty hallway for an entire shift, he did it, again without complaint, or even seeming to mind. He figured that if he'd been told to do a thing, it was something needed doing, and so there was little use in complaining about being the one assigned to do it.
For the first several turns, his easygoing attitude got him a lot of scut work, but when other guards inevitably got in trouble and were assigned those sorts of tasks as punishment, Tonori was told to take over their more desirable posts. At least until they had served their time. However, the fact that he was just as good at these jobs as he was at the ones he usually performed did not completely escape his superiors' notice, and he was eventually taken off the scut roster and given more regular guard work. His confidence in himself grew in proportion to the confidence his superiors showed in him, and he continued to excel in his work.
In truth, he might have been on the road to someday achieving a low officer's rank when Thread returned and threw everything awry. A dragon from High Reaches Weyr came on Search and would have taken him, but when he joined the guard he had claimed to be eighteen, six years older than he actually was, and that although he was truly twenty one turns old, by all official records he was twenty seven, and too old for candidacy. The Searchrider's dragon had told her that he was not that old, but she needed him to say for himself that he was not too old in order to be allowed to take him with her. Tonori was stubborn about holding to his falsehood, until finally she told him that if he was really twenty seven he was too old, but if he was younger than that, she could bring him with her.
It was at this point that one of his companions, the man who had signed him up, in fact, volunteered that he was actually twenty three (he was guessing), and had enlisted in the guard under false pretenses, and could not actually say so with a superior present. It was enough, even though it was incorrect, and Tonori, assuming it was all right to tell the truth based on his superior officer's behavior, confessed that he was actually twenty one. His recruiter nearly swallowed his mustache in surprise and the dragonrider shrugged and set about figuring out how someone his size was going to fit on her relatively tiny green.
Tonori liked the Weyr, and liked being a candidate, even though the mandatory reading lessons were hard and awful. It was a place with enough structure and tradition that he never had to wonder whether there was a right set of actions to take in any situation. He knew without a doubt there was, even if he didn't know what those actions were, himself. He was good at the physical aspects of candidacy, and not as bad at the mental ones as he thought he would be. (Except reading. Reading is a chore.)
Other: Anything else you want to add?
Candidate Specific Questions
Do you want them to have an official Search RP? No
Do you understand they will age every passing year regardless if you're there to RP the or not? Yes
Do you want them to have a possible Stands Impression? N/A
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