Tristaanian Greymoor

unwanderinggirl · August 2014

Name: Tristaanian Greymoor
Age: 30 (b. Roalis 29, 2689)
Race: Passive
Place of Origin: Muffey, Anaxas
Occupation: husband, father, refugee, looking for steady work in an unfamiliar country

Background:

Born to two Brunnhold professors in Muffey, Tristaanian’s parents spent much of their time surrounded by with magic and concerned with their status within the teaching community. Still, they willingly produced two children, just barely two years apart from each other. Nevinia was first, and she was a bold girl from the start, loud and rambunctious. Tristaan followed later, a quiet, content baby who may have just made the perfect second child for busy parents … almost. The two grew up practically best friends, as Nevie was somewhat of a tomboy, irreverent of her parents’ disapproval. Adventures outdoors and mischief became their daily routine, much to the chagrin of their family. They promised each other fervently that should one join the Seventen, they’d join together, though as small children neither of them could imagine their friendship being separated. Just after his sister’s 10th birthday and her celebrated acceptance into Brunnhold, Tristaan’s parents decided to test the magical validity of their son themselves in secret, strangely fostering fears that he was a passive. It was no small crime, and the whole event was a traumatizing blur in the boy’s mind. It still is. At the tender age of 8, Tristaan found himself an orphan on the streets with nothing but the clothes on his back and his father’s silver pocket watch in his grubby hands, branded a passive two years too soon. The shame his very existence would have brought his professor parents was apparently too great a burden for them to bear publicly, and so they simply chose to deal with him in their own way. His parents promptly found that the best way to forget their son was to lavish themselves upon their daughter. He has no idea what kind of excuse they could have come up with to explain his disappearance, and is still horrified at the thought.

He spent a great deal of his youth as a street urchin, somehow ending up in Vienda’s Soot District. Even he doesn’t remember the details, being hardly old enough at the time of his abandonment to describe where he grew up in the first place. Eventually he was conscripted off the street with a bunch of other homeless children of various heritages and races into dangerous and brutal textile factory work, where he was treated little better than slave labor. At the age of 16, after another passive friend and fellow factory worker was beaten to death, Tristaan witnessed his first diablerie … and ran from both the chaos that ensued as well as himself.

After struggling on his own in the wilderness for a few months, a caravan of Red Crow took the wandering passive in, lent him some social skills, taught him to handle a blade, and gave him a glimpse into what it meant to belong somewhere. He was given a home and a father figure by an old wick named Guaril. The seasoned warrior took it upon himself to give Tristaan a channel for his frustration, disappointment, anger, and sadness through patient training in combat. He sought to empower the boy from whom all power had been stolen and decreed invalid, though Guaril could only do so much in his attempts to get Tristaan open himself to healing deep wounds and letting go of old scars. Some of his love sank through hardened skin, but the passive often rebelled against the feelings he’d told himself he couldn’t have. Guaril grew to consider the passive more than just his friend; instead believing the boy the son he'd never had. His hopes were that the young man would settle into spoke life, find himself a wife, and forget the silly gollies and their silly unnecessary laws. Unfortunately, Tristaan was just not ready or just not willing, and he let his own insecurities and fears keep him from becoming truly attached to his new-found family. Instead, he reluctantly drifted from the wicks who cared for him roughly around his 22nd birthday.

Whether it was willingly or by circumstance, Tristaan sort of half-stumbled, half-fell into mercenary work to make ends meet, mostly in Old Rose Harbor and at sea on the Vein. While it provided a very limited sense of purpose and a good amount of coin, if not some broken bones and tale-worthy scrapes, it was still an unsatisfying path. Driven by the same desire to prove himself worthy to parents who he’s convinced he’ll never see again, he found himself falling into a vigilante sort of role instead of an underground criminal, never entirely capable of shaking an unasked for sense of goodness (or at least a desire to be perceived as somehow good). He served on a few ships when they needed to protect some illicit, secretive cargo, hunted down a few livestock thieves, collected the reward on a handful of minor wanted persons, and the like. Since his childhood, all of his choices have ultimately been about running away: from who galdori society has told him he had to be, from who he wanted to be, and from whom he possibly could be--whether or not he chose to recognize that as truth until much later in his life.

And then Intas 2712 happened: a well-paying gig with a circus, a rather attractive Yellow Eye witch, an unexpected bar-fight, and an un-asked for diablerie changed the trajectory of Tristaan’s life forever. It was, at first, his own diablerie that set an entirely new chain of events in motion, busting a rather wide hole in the personal and emotional barriers he had carefully constructed for his own self-preservation, opening floodgates both unexpected and untraveled. The gentle hands of that same lovely witch, Sarinah, carefully dismantled what remained of the rubble, one stone at a time, though that process was neither pleasant nor simple. It was, for the most part in the perfect vision of hindsight, complicated, difficult, confusing, painful and loud. Just when everything seemed to come together, it was instead burned to pieces during the fire in Old Rose Harbor in Hamis of that same year. What should have been devastating, however, was a well-hidden gift.

Tristaan returned to spoke wick life with Sarinah and the Red Crow he once called family, a life he first fled from out of fear, and began to let go of things even while the country itself began to pick up swords and grimoires in rebellion. The two married, started a family of their own, but were not unscathed by the revolution that began to sweep like wildfire through their homeland. They lost friends, family, even an unborn child, but it seemed as though for once in Tristaan’s life those things no longer dragged him further down into insecurity and self-loathing but instead (finally) began to move him forward.

Five years later and the slow, fiery descent of Anaxas into chaos has raised Tristaan into a different man: a man he was told he could never be. While he still bears the marks of those who attempted to beat the same hopes from his very flesh, none of it feels quite like the same the burdens they once were. Though circumstances are, honestly, no better than they have been, Tristaan himself--for the most part--considers himself better than he ever was, passive tattoo and all: a husband and a father, having set himself free from both socially- and self-imposed laws. Surely, not all his wounds have been miraculously healed, deep as they still run, but new growth has covered some of their sting and allowed the man a new perspective on the cards he was dealt so long ago.

Goals:

Tristaan’s underlying goals are very simple: be himself and love his family. He’s more comfortable in his scarred, branded skin than he once was, but that doesn’t mean he is completely sure of who he should be or what he’s meant to be doing, other than survive the current issues of the times and enjoy the gifts he's been given. Protecting and providing are high on his list of goals, for obvious reasons. He wouldn’t mind finding a way to put some more distance between his family and Little Anaxas, though those opportunities are slim in Thul’Ka as a non-native, slightly unwelcome Anaxi refugee. He’s very aware that they’re living under the illusion of safety and stability, despite being somewhat free from the same serious risks of danger they left behind …Tristaan is also convinced that all it will take is one spark in the tinderbox of a refugee town to light yet another fire in the wrong place.

If there's something greater to be caught up in, Tristaan may actually be in a mental and personal place that allows his participation in it, whether he knows it or not.

One day, he wouldn’t mind knowing more about himself, as a passive specifically, but he’s pretty much resigned himself to never having such an opportunity to see below the surface of genetic, magical inability in his lifetime, if ever.

Personality:

Tristaanian is a bit louder, a bit more out-going, a bit more cheerful, and a bit less private than he once was. Burdens have been shed; layers have been peeled away; worldviews have been shifted; wounds have been healed; horizons have been vastly broadened. His warm, ready smile is somewhat brighter and more genuine now that it no longer hides something so buried, broken, and tarnished. Spirited and driven less and less by a desire to prove himself to those who have already chosen not to notice and more by a deep sense of responsibility and love for those who have, he is focused, hard-working, and much slower to anger than ever before.

Commitment has focused his passions, fatherhood has tamed his tongue, and hardship has tempered his spirit. He enjoys a good laugh, a good drink, and a good anything with his family, especially with Sarinah.

Growing up an orphan, mistreated as a passive, and generally dumped on by society, Tristaan has been forced to define himself on his own terms, first as a man and now as a husband and a father. This has definitely not always been an easy road, nor has it at all been glamorous, pretty, or even entirely enjoyable. All of it hurts. The difficulties have had their rewards, obviously, but he still wrestles on a regular basis with the deeply-ingrained sinking feeling of helplessness that has hounded at his heels his entire adult life. While some rough edges have softened in the past five years, others have only become sharper, pulled into focus by the responsibilities he has opened himself up to with whole-hearted willingness: being a committed partner in a mutual long-term relationship is hard; parenting is hard; revolutions are hard; becoming a refugee in some distant country is hard. Damn hard. All of it. Hard on a man who has had to make his own terms in a life that marked him as a failure with a bit of ink and abandonment, though Tristaan has slowly, carefully, and with great difficulty made the conscious choice to allow these trials to refine him instead of ruin him. Most of the time.

He still runs the risk of falling into moody melancholia, especially now that he’s stationary again. The motion of spoke life and the flow of the seasons were great healers for the passive, and it was a difficult decision and huge unspoken sacrifice on his part to choose to flee Anaxas to Mugroba once unrest turned bloody and chaotic. Not only is that a heavy burden on his shoulders, but the fear of stagnation in a burgeoning refugee community is a very real, very terrifying feeling for Tristaan. He’s unwilling to give up hope that an eventual return is possible, though he knows that to maintain a family and to be present with those he loves requires him to live in the now as it is, not as it could be or as it was or never can be.

Physical:

Tristaan could unfortunately never hide his galdor heritage – then again, he no longer cares to do so. His features reveal his aristocratic lineage, with high cheekbones, arched eyebrows, straight teeth, and a sharp chin. Though his nose is bent just so, with the faintest hint of a scar from under his eye to his opposite cheek, as though it’d been broken once – or a few times – this does very little to mar his looks. He is often slightly unshaven if only because he can be with more than a bit of salty grey hair sneaking into the dark of stubble left untended on his chin, but he willingly cleans up nicely when required. He is only barely above average height for an Anaxi galdor, lithe and well-muscled from a youth of hard labor and an early adulthood of wick life, combat, and general misadventures. His small, galdor-bred stature belies a lean, determined sort of strength and speed that he’s content to let fool others when it suits him (which is just about always). His hair is thick, wavy and dark black, with uninvited stray strands of rebellious early grey sneaking in. Once long, his locks are cut shorter now as a necessity in the heat of Mugroba, falling a little shy of his shoulders when not pulled back in a topknot or ponytail. His eyes are a calm, steely grey, almond-shaped and with long, graceful eyelashes.

He no longer makes effort to keep hidden the brand that once defined his existence, obligatory dark lines of his passive tattoo bared more as a badge of honor than of shame these days. Living alongside wicks again, the comforting influence of his wife Sarinah, and now the necessity of desert life have definitely allowed him to throw any modicum of conservatism out the window in terms of dress. He prefers to dress for comfort in the dry, oppressive heat of Mugroba; if any of his tanned, scarred skin is visible as a result, it’s not the concern it may once have been.

Tristaan is a minimalist when it comes to accessories: a generous handful of earrings; a simple silver ring as a symbol of his personal commitments; his galdori father’s pocketwatch (restored to working condition); and a short, curved blade sheathed on a worn leather belt that once belonged to Guaril (the only man he’d willingly call his Da). Spoke life has taught him that most other possessions are temporary, if not entirely unnecessary.

Other Notes:

The first Greymoor wick child was conceived and lost in 2713.

The second, a boy (Kieran), was born Yaris 14, 2714 (which makes him not yet three as of Roalis 2717). He’s an obvious mix of both his parents, wrapped into a rambunctious little package with wild curls of black hair and dark, gold-flecked eyes.

The third is TBD sometime in 2717.