Tristan
Jul 25, 2015 2:46:46 GMT -5
Post by Zeke Ruffgar on Jul 25, 2015 2:46:46 GMT -5
Name: Tristan
Species: Red Squirrel
Gender: Male
Dibbun Weapon:
Tristan was not present at Redwall during his Dibbun years.
Adult Weapon:
A pacifist to the core, Tristan travels unarmed. He walks with a short ash staff which rises to just below the shoulder. The squirrel uses it for balance and to feel out surrounding terrain. He refuses to engage with it in violent situations, barring defensive action. The body of the staff is covered in strange carvings done by Tristan himself – etched portraits, geometric oddities, and simple notches lie ingrained in the wood, interwoven in seemingly nonsensical patterns. For this purpose, Tristan also carries a simple whittling knife, a slate blade with reed bindings. Delicate and small, any suggestion that the blade be used as a weapon would be met with a sharp laugh.
Appearance:
Tristan was the runt of the family. He was a wisp of a squirrel, undersized and underweight. His fur was the chestnut tone common to his species, with a white underbelly and lighter feathering at his tail tip and ear tips. His eyes were a deep brown.
As a child, Tristan grew more slowly than other young squirrels, leading those who did not know him to incorrectly gauge his age. His small stature and large eyes resulted in the frequent use of the word “cute” from mothers and grandmothers throughout the tribe, a descriptor that he naturally balked at. Tristan could most often be found draped in his older brother’s ill-fitting hand-me-downs, most commonly a roughspun brown tunic. He aspired to one day wear the tribal warrior garb of his clan: a sturdy beaded tunic, dyed a murky green, with elm bark greaves, bracers, and pauldrons. Unfortunately, his strength and stature (or lack thereof) put the idea out of the elders’ consideration.
After the accident, Tristan’s appearance remained largely the same, but a mist clouded his dark eyes, like morning fog over a still lake. The scars around his eyes faded to be barely visible, silver gossamer interruptions in his chestnut fur, but his eyes never cleared. He grew to be a respectably-sized squirrel, but was always of a smaller, more slender build. Tristan discarded his tribal garb after setting out, burning it in a private ceremony of mourning. He took up a short ash staff, to regain his independent mobility in his travels, and chose a tunic and cloak of an inky green-black that melted into night foliage.
Personality:
As a young squirrel, Tristan had a bit of a complex; being the younger sibling, he had a lot to prove, and his stature did not help his case. Fiercely independent, and impossibly incompetent, his hobby seemed to be stubbornly refusing assistance in order to make a point. Like all young Korraka, he aspired to be a Kokirrim warrior, a goal his elder brother Marke was on the cusp of achieving. Although he tried desperately to be tough and gruff, he could not help but emit a certain aura of playfulness that did not help his warrior image. In the years before he noticed the disappointment, in both his parents and greater tribe, that he was not another Marke, his energy could illuminate the rainiest of days in that forest.
As he grew, and didn’t, Tristan started to notice his shortcomings in the eyes of others. He had the same incorrigible smile, but his eyes, liquid pools of warmth, began to carry a new depth of sadness. As he began to have the greysight dreams, he began to feel the cold distance of the rest of the tribe, and the fear and loathing in his own parents. He was forbidden to speak of what he saw, and cursed as a bad omen, left to battle the images that plagued his fitful dreams alone. His extroversion faded, and scrambles through the trees with other kits were replaced with solitary climbs, as if the treetops could provide an escape.
After the accident, Tristan was possessed by a feral rage. He blamed himself for Marke’s death. He felt he could have prevented it, if he had spoken, but simultaneously wished that the dreams would stop – perhaps with no greysight of the event, it never would have come to pass. With his newfound blindness, Tristan had to relearn his world. Unable to grieve, he threw himself aimlessly onward, alone.
As time passed, Tristan become accustomed to his blindness, and found his other senses to be heightened. Touch and hearing were quickly replacing lost sight, and the dreams, his blessing and his curse, did not leave with his eyesight. Dreams still plagued him, and vision fragments provided, on rare occasion, some extrasensory knowledge of his surroundings. Even with his loss, Tristan had little issue navigating earth and treetops alike.
His anger also departed with his sight. The sorrow could not be released, but Tristan had come to a sort of acceptance of his lot. He wandered with a firm belief that his curse must do some good, his path an amalgam of randomness and premonition, with the hopes that he might use the sight to do some good, and right his perceived wrong. He had little regard for his safety, but this indifference was rooted in a sort of peace rather than recklessness. His burden might be uncontrollable, painful, and unpredictable, but it was a part of him, and he had proved that staying silent helped no beast.
History: (significantly abridged/truncated. Sorry, you only get the beginning here )
Born into the Korraka tribe of the Eastern Forests, Tristan was the second son to Isolde and Wotan, joint chiefs of the tribe. Their first progeny, Marke, was the apple of his parents’ eyes. A keen learner, he took after both of them in his own way. He was strong. He was quick. He was confident, yet polite (or, rather, as polite as a young squirrel could manage). One of Tristan’s earliest memories was of his parents discussing his size while on a climb. Wotan: “He’s just small. A little different.” Isolde: “And not in a good way.” The consensus around the tribe was similar – it was not so much that they resented him, or were disappointed in him. There was just a feeling that everyone was perpetually expecting to see a younger Marke, and were confused at where he might have gone.
The situation only grew more complicated after Tristan began dreaming. He held his dreams in little regard, as do most young ones, but he began experiencing peculiar things – greyed images of sick squirrels, sweaty brows, half-hearted coughs, and that morning the tribe began showing signs of spotted fever. A dream of wilting foliage and departing birds, met with a morning scouting report that the lake had begun to visibly recede – the worst drought in shared memory. His dreams were seen as bad omens, and his parents forbade him to speak of them. They were infrequent, but the irregularity only served to make their incidence more frightening.
After waking to an image of his father with blood on his paws, fulfilled by the returning patrol assisting a wounded Wotan, Tristan swore to stop his dreams. Bruumi, the tribe’s healer, gave him nightshade extract to sleep deeply, with no interruption. For weeks, Tristan believed it to be working. It soon proved that while he dreamt no ordinary dreams, the remedy was powerless against his greysight, as he thought of it. He once again half-woke, body seizing while blurred fragments played through his mind, colorless flashes of truth. And, like always, he would wake from the fit to see his parents watching him, his father angry, his mother averting her eyes, as if that could hide her shame.
Tristan spent seasons in a near-isolated state. While he had developed a natural agility, his stature proved to limit his future as a warrior, the path avidly pursued by his peers. His nightmares made him a pariah, as if conversing with the young squirrel could unlock the Pandora’s Box in his mind, inadvertently bringing his and their fears to fruition. Marke was the only Korraka who could be found with his brother, and the pair spent many a day climbing together. He did not seem to mind his brother’s differences, and put little stock in his status as harbinger of doom.
Species: Red Squirrel
Gender: Male
Dibbun Weapon:
Tristan was not present at Redwall during his Dibbun years.
Adult Weapon:
A pacifist to the core, Tristan travels unarmed. He walks with a short ash staff which rises to just below the shoulder. The squirrel uses it for balance and to feel out surrounding terrain. He refuses to engage with it in violent situations, barring defensive action. The body of the staff is covered in strange carvings done by Tristan himself – etched portraits, geometric oddities, and simple notches lie ingrained in the wood, interwoven in seemingly nonsensical patterns. For this purpose, Tristan also carries a simple whittling knife, a slate blade with reed bindings. Delicate and small, any suggestion that the blade be used as a weapon would be met with a sharp laugh.
Appearance:
Tristan was the runt of the family. He was a wisp of a squirrel, undersized and underweight. His fur was the chestnut tone common to his species, with a white underbelly and lighter feathering at his tail tip and ear tips. His eyes were a deep brown.
As a child, Tristan grew more slowly than other young squirrels, leading those who did not know him to incorrectly gauge his age. His small stature and large eyes resulted in the frequent use of the word “cute” from mothers and grandmothers throughout the tribe, a descriptor that he naturally balked at. Tristan could most often be found draped in his older brother’s ill-fitting hand-me-downs, most commonly a roughspun brown tunic. He aspired to one day wear the tribal warrior garb of his clan: a sturdy beaded tunic, dyed a murky green, with elm bark greaves, bracers, and pauldrons. Unfortunately, his strength and stature (or lack thereof) put the idea out of the elders’ consideration.
After the accident, Tristan’s appearance remained largely the same, but a mist clouded his dark eyes, like morning fog over a still lake. The scars around his eyes faded to be barely visible, silver gossamer interruptions in his chestnut fur, but his eyes never cleared. He grew to be a respectably-sized squirrel, but was always of a smaller, more slender build. Tristan discarded his tribal garb after setting out, burning it in a private ceremony of mourning. He took up a short ash staff, to regain his independent mobility in his travels, and chose a tunic and cloak of an inky green-black that melted into night foliage.
Personality:
As a young squirrel, Tristan had a bit of a complex; being the younger sibling, he had a lot to prove, and his stature did not help his case. Fiercely independent, and impossibly incompetent, his hobby seemed to be stubbornly refusing assistance in order to make a point. Like all young Korraka, he aspired to be a Kokirrim warrior, a goal his elder brother Marke was on the cusp of achieving. Although he tried desperately to be tough and gruff, he could not help but emit a certain aura of playfulness that did not help his warrior image. In the years before he noticed the disappointment, in both his parents and greater tribe, that he was not another Marke, his energy could illuminate the rainiest of days in that forest.
As he grew, and didn’t, Tristan started to notice his shortcomings in the eyes of others. He had the same incorrigible smile, but his eyes, liquid pools of warmth, began to carry a new depth of sadness. As he began to have the greysight dreams, he began to feel the cold distance of the rest of the tribe, and the fear and loathing in his own parents. He was forbidden to speak of what he saw, and cursed as a bad omen, left to battle the images that plagued his fitful dreams alone. His extroversion faded, and scrambles through the trees with other kits were replaced with solitary climbs, as if the treetops could provide an escape.
After the accident, Tristan was possessed by a feral rage. He blamed himself for Marke’s death. He felt he could have prevented it, if he had spoken, but simultaneously wished that the dreams would stop – perhaps with no greysight of the event, it never would have come to pass. With his newfound blindness, Tristan had to relearn his world. Unable to grieve, he threw himself aimlessly onward, alone.
As time passed, Tristan become accustomed to his blindness, and found his other senses to be heightened. Touch and hearing were quickly replacing lost sight, and the dreams, his blessing and his curse, did not leave with his eyesight. Dreams still plagued him, and vision fragments provided, on rare occasion, some extrasensory knowledge of his surroundings. Even with his loss, Tristan had little issue navigating earth and treetops alike.
His anger also departed with his sight. The sorrow could not be released, but Tristan had come to a sort of acceptance of his lot. He wandered with a firm belief that his curse must do some good, his path an amalgam of randomness and premonition, with the hopes that he might use the sight to do some good, and right his perceived wrong. He had little regard for his safety, but this indifference was rooted in a sort of peace rather than recklessness. His burden might be uncontrollable, painful, and unpredictable, but it was a part of him, and he had proved that staying silent helped no beast.
History: (significantly abridged/truncated. Sorry, you only get the beginning here )
Born into the Korraka tribe of the Eastern Forests, Tristan was the second son to Isolde and Wotan, joint chiefs of the tribe. Their first progeny, Marke, was the apple of his parents’ eyes. A keen learner, he took after both of them in his own way. He was strong. He was quick. He was confident, yet polite (or, rather, as polite as a young squirrel could manage). One of Tristan’s earliest memories was of his parents discussing his size while on a climb. Wotan: “He’s just small. A little different.” Isolde: “And not in a good way.” The consensus around the tribe was similar – it was not so much that they resented him, or were disappointed in him. There was just a feeling that everyone was perpetually expecting to see a younger Marke, and were confused at where he might have gone.
The situation only grew more complicated after Tristan began dreaming. He held his dreams in little regard, as do most young ones, but he began experiencing peculiar things – greyed images of sick squirrels, sweaty brows, half-hearted coughs, and that morning the tribe began showing signs of spotted fever. A dream of wilting foliage and departing birds, met with a morning scouting report that the lake had begun to visibly recede – the worst drought in shared memory. His dreams were seen as bad omens, and his parents forbade him to speak of them. They were infrequent, but the irregularity only served to make their incidence more frightening.
After waking to an image of his father with blood on his paws, fulfilled by the returning patrol assisting a wounded Wotan, Tristan swore to stop his dreams. Bruumi, the tribe’s healer, gave him nightshade extract to sleep deeply, with no interruption. For weeks, Tristan believed it to be working. It soon proved that while he dreamt no ordinary dreams, the remedy was powerless against his greysight, as he thought of it. He once again half-woke, body seizing while blurred fragments played through his mind, colorless flashes of truth. And, like always, he would wake from the fit to see his parents watching him, his father angry, his mother averting her eyes, as if that could hide her shame.
Tristan spent seasons in a near-isolated state. While he had developed a natural agility, his stature proved to limit his future as a warrior, the path avidly pursued by his peers. His nightmares made him a pariah, as if conversing with the young squirrel could unlock the Pandora’s Box in his mind, inadvertently bringing his and their fears to fruition. Marke was the only Korraka who could be found with his brother, and the pair spent many a day climbing together. He did not seem to mind his brother’s differences, and put little stock in his status as harbinger of doom.