Rakana
Played By: Cymiri
Character Name: Rakana
Pronunciation: Rar Car Nar
Character Type: Crafter
Rank: Healer Assistant
Political Alignment: Traditional as Toast
Age: 20
Gender: Female
Sexual Preference: Heterosexual
Appearance:
Rakana has her father's wide pale blue eyes, and deep auburn curls to her waist like her mother. Her bashful grin is deeply endearing on the few occasions she shares it. It’s not a perfect face, a little thin, a little long, but it has a charm. Like that last canine pup in the litter.
She's an average height, rather too slim and while she has a little curve to her chest it isn't much. Her limbs, on the other hand, are a little over-long for her frame. It means she has elegant hands and slim wrists. It also means she has long, bony ankles and feet and no chance of ever getting her shoes anything other than bespoke, an expense she could well do without.
Personality:
Rakana is smarter than a girl should be, though she is also clever enough not to admit it even to herself. She is naturally quiet but can be engaging and witty with it, unless you back her into a place where she thinks you want her favors. Then she tends to be tongue-tied, stumbling and blushing, though endearingly so. She's similarly a little gauche if you compliment her more than she thinks she deserves, though deep down inside she will also be carefully filing that praise to take out and treasure when there is a drought of the same.
She is also a bona fide nice person. No, really. Simple, but honest hearted. Even her staunch adherence to her personal interpretation of tradition comes across as something less stupid than proper when you are actually face to face. Behind her back, some mock her- but she doesn't care. In return, it doesn't take much to get her to like you. A genuinely well intentioned or kind natured person could do a lot with Rakana. Someone with other intentions could do enormous damage. And if you are the sort to enjoy it, she easily forms a crush on anyone who meets the standard because she is plain desperate for positive attention. She's a walking devotee.
O'rak's asectic principles have stuck in the girls head, utterly unremovable. There's no room in life for frippery and indulgence. The Weyr is to be served at all times. She owns little, almost nothing ornamental- even her gather dress is achingly plain- and her quarters are stark. She even eats like a bird, only partly naturally.
In a fair world, Rakana would be comfortable as an apprentice healer, dreaming of journeyman status and well able to achieve it- she is honestly good at it, and knows a lot more about the specific field of midwifery than a 'casual' helper should. But Rakana herself would be the first to veto the idea! No decently bred young woman courts a man's job like that! For shame, what do you take her for?
She's even a bit itchy at working with an 'official' female healer- but there has to be some crafthall approval, she supposes, and she respects Dilaedis greatly despite the reservations.
Good girls remain just that, however. They do not encroach on the male world in any way. Although she would have made a good healer of any type, she would never, ever have drifted close to a craft save for the fact that midwifery is patently a girly thing and obviously needs girls to do it. Those male healers odd enough to feel otherwise just slide right on in to her 'freak: to be avoided' category. Let’s not even touch on the *cracked* fathers who think they should be hanging around as spectators! In her head, she can honestly state that she is doing nothing wrong. She's being useful and well behaved, unlike some of the lower cavern sluts who spend half their day on their backs under anyone at all because they are work-shy!
That's another one of those odd lines she tippy toes along. Because it is her place and her *duty* to bear good strong children to some bronze or brown rider and keep the proper Fort bloodlines going; and there's a niggle of conscious there that she has got to be this old and hasn't done that yet. What is she doing that's so bad that good men don't want her? Of course, she isn't *actually* naive enough to have missed that Fort sometimes allows unpleasant things to happen to its women without anyone caring, and that it sometimes seems unfair. But at the same time only bad girls chase everything male, don’t they? It’s got to be their fault? Even if they didn't *seem* to be chasing anything at all?
The net result of this clash between strict, cherished views and a quick mind is that she lives in true trepidation of doing something that gives some lesser (rankers do no wrong, after all) the wrong idea and ends up catapulting her into the 'bad girl' camp, all the while desperately trying to do the 'right thing' and please a proper man to the point she breeds his child. Since she is shy and retiring around men anyway, it just makes for a whole heap of awkward. Which is a shame given that she is quite pretty and quick witted and genial with it, and if she'd just relax it would help.
Birth Place: Fort Weyr
Parents: A Laundry Worker and Bronzerider O'rak
History:
Rakana was born into an awkward half-place in Fort at its darkest. Being the child of a bronzerider might carry some honor (and safety) for a boy...but she was born the wrong sex for that. What rank or privilege is *any* woman not perched on a gold's shoulders or the spawn of an uppity Holder Lord? Yet concurrent with that blood came a heavy mantle of duty. Having been born all wrong to start with, what right-minded girl wanted to risk the further disappointment of a ranked father- or worse, his displeasure- when his attention was gifted so very infrequently? She has no delusions of being 'worthwhile' because her gender alone bars her from that, but she is darned if she is going to be useless, or some slutty embarrassing disappointment- or worse, a bona fide abomination.
Effectively, she was blessed with a connection to rank of utterly no use to her, but that still undeniably existed and weighs on her.
The pressure to good behavior is there, though, for any well bred woman. But in honesty, most rankers barely care for the boys they breed, and usually Rakana would have been freer to slip gently off the radar as she chose. Unfortunately, her foolish mother spent most of her pregnancy *guaranteeing* a boy to her father. Unfortunately, her father took a bit more interest in his children then the average bronzer. Unfortunately, he was as hard-core traditional as anyone could ask for. Unfortunately, she came to adore him because she had no one else.
Her mother had wanted safety and privilege as the mother of a bronzer's son. Rakana was the fourth girl she birthed. She'd fobbed it off before as her partner's failing, but O'rak had boys already. Unfair as it was- and even more so to take it out on her infant daughter- Rakana was the child that started the caverns-wide rumor that her mother could only carry girls, guaranteeing her mother'd never attract the men she wanted. So she shunned the girl. And not merely by disappearing...she wanted Rakana to *know* it was her fault and not her mother's that her mother's life didn't go as planned.
So Rakana was desperate as a child for the scraps of love and attention earned from a father who was not disinterested enough to forget her totally but patently preferred his male children when he had time at all. Truth be told, she was desperate for attention from anyone, but her oh-so-adored father in particular. Even his sons barely ever earned approval, however! Rakana earned a munificent "There's a good girl." a total of once before his death, when childish babble unwittingly passed on some resistance-linked information. She would happily have spent a lifetime attempting to get another. Now she lives her life trying to make an overly strict dead father who will never know the difference proud of her.
She has never stood. She had well enforced that girls stand for nothing but gold by the beating she earned for well-speaking the female on a green in the wing her father served in at the time. It wasn't really that hard to keep to that particular principle. Deep down, Rakana doesn't really like dragons. Oh, she values and appreciates them for their sacrifices, but up close and personal they scare her just a little too much, with their size and the stink of firestone and their funny eyes and their riders- either virile and overwhelmingly manly for her naivety; or the sad twisted freaks on green and blue. She's never confided that secret to anyone, but it’s another small way in which she privately feels a failure. No male child of a bronzerider would be so ridiculous, would they?
She's proud of her infirmary work though. It makes her feel useful and proper. And it’s good to be birthing children into the world.
~~Crafter Information~~
Craft: Healer
Specialty: Midwifery
Rank: Assistant
Where your character studied: Fort Weyr
Pronunciation: Rar Car Nar
Character Type: Crafter
Rank: Healer Assistant
Political Alignment: Traditional as Toast
Age: 20
Gender: Female
Sexual Preference: Heterosexual
Appearance:
Rakana has her father's wide pale blue eyes, and deep auburn curls to her waist like her mother. Her bashful grin is deeply endearing on the few occasions she shares it. It’s not a perfect face, a little thin, a little long, but it has a charm. Like that last canine pup in the litter.
She's an average height, rather too slim and while she has a little curve to her chest it isn't much. Her limbs, on the other hand, are a little over-long for her frame. It means she has elegant hands and slim wrists. It also means she has long, bony ankles and feet and no chance of ever getting her shoes anything other than bespoke, an expense she could well do without.
Personality:
Rakana is smarter than a girl should be, though she is also clever enough not to admit it even to herself. She is naturally quiet but can be engaging and witty with it, unless you back her into a place where she thinks you want her favors. Then she tends to be tongue-tied, stumbling and blushing, though endearingly so. She's similarly a little gauche if you compliment her more than she thinks she deserves, though deep down inside she will also be carefully filing that praise to take out and treasure when there is a drought of the same.
She is also a bona fide nice person. No, really. Simple, but honest hearted. Even her staunch adherence to her personal interpretation of tradition comes across as something less stupid than proper when you are actually face to face. Behind her back, some mock her- but she doesn't care. In return, it doesn't take much to get her to like you. A genuinely well intentioned or kind natured person could do a lot with Rakana. Someone with other intentions could do enormous damage. And if you are the sort to enjoy it, she easily forms a crush on anyone who meets the standard because she is plain desperate for positive attention. She's a walking devotee.
O'rak's asectic principles have stuck in the girls head, utterly unremovable. There's no room in life for frippery and indulgence. The Weyr is to be served at all times. She owns little, almost nothing ornamental- even her gather dress is achingly plain- and her quarters are stark. She even eats like a bird, only partly naturally.
In a fair world, Rakana would be comfortable as an apprentice healer, dreaming of journeyman status and well able to achieve it- she is honestly good at it, and knows a lot more about the specific field of midwifery than a 'casual' helper should. But Rakana herself would be the first to veto the idea! No decently bred young woman courts a man's job like that! For shame, what do you take her for?
She's even a bit itchy at working with an 'official' female healer- but there has to be some crafthall approval, she supposes, and she respects Dilaedis greatly despite the reservations.
Good girls remain just that, however. They do not encroach on the male world in any way. Although she would have made a good healer of any type, she would never, ever have drifted close to a craft save for the fact that midwifery is patently a girly thing and obviously needs girls to do it. Those male healers odd enough to feel otherwise just slide right on in to her 'freak: to be avoided' category. Let’s not even touch on the *cracked* fathers who think they should be hanging around as spectators! In her head, she can honestly state that she is doing nothing wrong. She's being useful and well behaved, unlike some of the lower cavern sluts who spend half their day on their backs under anyone at all because they are work-shy!
That's another one of those odd lines she tippy toes along. Because it is her place and her *duty* to bear good strong children to some bronze or brown rider and keep the proper Fort bloodlines going; and there's a niggle of conscious there that she has got to be this old and hasn't done that yet. What is she doing that's so bad that good men don't want her? Of course, she isn't *actually* naive enough to have missed that Fort sometimes allows unpleasant things to happen to its women without anyone caring, and that it sometimes seems unfair. But at the same time only bad girls chase everything male, don’t they? It’s got to be their fault? Even if they didn't *seem* to be chasing anything at all?
The net result of this clash between strict, cherished views and a quick mind is that she lives in true trepidation of doing something that gives some lesser (rankers do no wrong, after all) the wrong idea and ends up catapulting her into the 'bad girl' camp, all the while desperately trying to do the 'right thing' and please a proper man to the point she breeds his child. Since she is shy and retiring around men anyway, it just makes for a whole heap of awkward. Which is a shame given that she is quite pretty and quick witted and genial with it, and if she'd just relax it would help.
Birth Place: Fort Weyr
Parents: A Laundry Worker and Bronzerider O'rak
History:
Rakana was born into an awkward half-place in Fort at its darkest. Being the child of a bronzerider might carry some honor (and safety) for a boy...but she was born the wrong sex for that. What rank or privilege is *any* woman not perched on a gold's shoulders or the spawn of an uppity Holder Lord? Yet concurrent with that blood came a heavy mantle of duty. Having been born all wrong to start with, what right-minded girl wanted to risk the further disappointment of a ranked father- or worse, his displeasure- when his attention was gifted so very infrequently? She has no delusions of being 'worthwhile' because her gender alone bars her from that, but she is darned if she is going to be useless, or some slutty embarrassing disappointment- or worse, a bona fide abomination.
Effectively, she was blessed with a connection to rank of utterly no use to her, but that still undeniably existed and weighs on her.
The pressure to good behavior is there, though, for any well bred woman. But in honesty, most rankers barely care for the boys they breed, and usually Rakana would have been freer to slip gently off the radar as she chose. Unfortunately, her foolish mother spent most of her pregnancy *guaranteeing* a boy to her father. Unfortunately, her father took a bit more interest in his children then the average bronzer. Unfortunately, he was as hard-core traditional as anyone could ask for. Unfortunately, she came to adore him because she had no one else.
Her mother had wanted safety and privilege as the mother of a bronzer's son. Rakana was the fourth girl she birthed. She'd fobbed it off before as her partner's failing, but O'rak had boys already. Unfair as it was- and even more so to take it out on her infant daughter- Rakana was the child that started the caverns-wide rumor that her mother could only carry girls, guaranteeing her mother'd never attract the men she wanted. So she shunned the girl. And not merely by disappearing...she wanted Rakana to *know* it was her fault and not her mother's that her mother's life didn't go as planned.
So Rakana was desperate as a child for the scraps of love and attention earned from a father who was not disinterested enough to forget her totally but patently preferred his male children when he had time at all. Truth be told, she was desperate for attention from anyone, but her oh-so-adored father in particular. Even his sons barely ever earned approval, however! Rakana earned a munificent "There's a good girl." a total of once before his death, when childish babble unwittingly passed on some resistance-linked information. She would happily have spent a lifetime attempting to get another. Now she lives her life trying to make an overly strict dead father who will never know the difference proud of her.
She has never stood. She had well enforced that girls stand for nothing but gold by the beating she earned for well-speaking the female on a green in the wing her father served in at the time. It wasn't really that hard to keep to that particular principle. Deep down, Rakana doesn't really like dragons. Oh, she values and appreciates them for their sacrifices, but up close and personal they scare her just a little too much, with their size and the stink of firestone and their funny eyes and their riders- either virile and overwhelmingly manly for her naivety; or the sad twisted freaks on green and blue. She's never confided that secret to anyone, but it’s another small way in which she privately feels a failure. No male child of a bronzerider would be so ridiculous, would they?
She's proud of her infirmary work though. It makes her feel useful and proper. And it’s good to be birthing children into the world.
~~Crafter Information~~
Craft: Healer
Specialty: Midwifery
Rank: Assistant
Where your character studied: Fort Weyr