Post by Cawley on Jan 14, 2011 21:32:07 GMT -5
[/b] Light Yagami[/ul]
“Your will is my command.”
NAME,
Simon Benedict Cawley
NICKNAMES,
Most commonly called ‘Cawley,’ Simon is occasionally also called ‘Ben.’ He’ll answer to anything, however.
GENDER,
Male
AGE,
Twenty
VILLAGE,
Berk
“This is a, er, dragon-free area. Thank you for you consideration.”
APPEARANCE,
Of average weight and slightly taller-than-average height, Cawley was quite gawky as a child; as an adult, he’s broad-shouldered and wiry. Though he’ll never come close to the typical bulk of Vikings, he’s developed a bit of muscle from manual labor and is both sturdy and quick on his feet. The crooked-fingered ands once softened from tasks at the monastery have again become callused and rough from the menial tasks he’s used to, though he’s remarkably unscarred except for the brand of entwined runes (fe, hagall, and naud) on his right shoulder blade. His angular face features high, graceful cheekbones but is smattered with pockmarks and is all together quite plain, though it does hint at Anglo-Saxon ancestry instead of the expected Nordic. The man’s dark brown, faintly amber eyes are equally unattractive to look at, particularly because they’re almost black. He has short, lank brown hair the color of cherry wood that frames his face and, in the back, hangs to the nape of his neck. All in all? While some might consider him almost handsome, he doesn't stand out too much.
Pulvis et umbra sumus.
PERSONALITY,
► quiet » While he can speak the language with a certain level of fluency, Simon prefers to avoid unnecessary chatter - besides the fact that he’s just naturally not social, he’s afraid he’ll make a stupid mistake and humiliate himself. When he does speak, each word is chosen carefully and analyzed for any unintentional meanings. This shyness, however, allows him to observe rather than contribute, and he’ll often catch details in situations that others were too busy to notice.
► superstitious » Despite his time as a man of the cloister and his subsequent transplantation into a land of dragons, Cawley retains many superstitions from his childhood: if the milk spoils, a fairy is near. If a woman miscarries, a witch must have been jealous. And dragons, of course, always represent evil.
► cautious » Cawley does not take unnecessary risks - and on occasion, he won’t take ‘necessary’ ones. Sometimes, this carefulness may seem exaggerated: around dragons he acts as if he’s walking on eggshells, and on boats or on the docks he is particularly high-strung - he never learned how to swim. It can’t be that hard, though, right? You just sort of… flop your arms and legs in tandem?
► perfectionist » Some people might say that he’s organized, and that’s true - though it stems not from a want of order but simply an obsession over the most tedious of details. If he sees something out of order (and that’s quite a common site in Berk), he either has to stop and spend several minutes correcting it, or it will drive him insane for the rest of the day. When copying down text or illustrations, he takes special care to avoid errors and the results are often indistinguishable from the original. Cawley has an incredible memory, and when relating an event or some other tidbit of information, he avoids unnecessary embellishments and is accurate.
► opinionated » Though he might not be vocal about his opinions, Cawley most certainly has strong ones - once you’ve made an impression on him, don’t expect it to change any time soon. Critical and oftentimes hypocritical, Ben is more likely to notice one’s flaws, focus on those, and form his opinion based on that over the individual as a whole.
► sneaky » Another trait that typically isn’t openly displayed, Cawley isn’t exactly… trustworthy. He and his own wellbeing are his sole concerns, and he isn’t about to risk his neck or stay loyal to a doomed cause just to prove his point. If he thinks that another team will bring him more benefits, he’ll switch sides without a second thought - as long as the risks don’t outweigh the benefits. He also uses his observational nature to collect and analyze any information he might overhear. He also has no qualms with stealing or lying, and has a magpie-like tendency to hoard whatever shiny objects he might pocket. Cawley will often deny events that cast him in a negative light, often using false flattery to worm his way to a more comfortable existence.
[/ul]
"I’m afraid I don’t recall. Refresh my memory, please."
BACKGROUND,
As his name so clearly suggests, Simon is not from the humble village of Berk but from an equally humble village in the northern reaches of England. His parents were two peasants trying to eke out a living, his two older sisters simple maids pining for village boys. Simon idolized his older brother, Peter, despite the fact that the boy was only a year or two older. Peter wasn’t too keen on starving quietly, and it didn’t take much to convince Simon to accompany him on thieving missions: sneaking into others’ fields and orchards to snatch unripe corn and apples, pocketing a tiny lump of cheese when walking past someone’s stand at market… Neither ever thought of the consequences if they were caught - they were more concerned with keeping their stomachs mostly full.
When Simon was about twelve, an early autumn frost destroyed most his family’s crops before harvest - the same happened to many throughout the village. When winter finally made its appearance, everyone was already half-starved. There were no more fields to pilfer from, no more market days. They were reduced to foraging, competing with the animals for whatever meager greenery remained. After his sister Mary fell ill, she was too weak to fight off the disease and succumbed quickly. The ground was almost too frozen to bury her.
And Peter was not keen on starving.
As the desperation increased, Peter finally formulated an equally desperate plan - breaking into the pantry of the wealthiest man in the village. Once this was accomplished, they found that this man’s food stores were only slightly better than anyone else’s, and yet they pocketed everything they could see. The man started an uproar when he discovered his larder had been pillaged, and somehow the two Cawley brothers were ousted as the thieves. It was a miracle that they weren’t lynched - at least, as far as Simon knows, Peter survived. That night, when minds in the village were ugly and malignant, Simon was spirited away by his father to live at a monastery further inland.
Needless to say, Simon - or Brother Benedict, as he eventually became known as - struggled with the ascetic lifestyle to start with. Why would you wear rough clothing when nobles sent you bolts of silk to adorn the altar with? Why would you fast when your larder was bursting with food? Why would you be forbidden to speak freely? Why were you not permitted to have any personal belongings of your own, not even the pitiful trinkets you brought with you…? As a social child, he soon made friends, but even that wasn’t enough to guarantee happiness in such a foreign place. His solace soon became something he’d scorned for most of his life - literature. One of the brothers taught the novice how to read and write, and by the time he was thirteen he was often permitted to transcribe the monastery’s literature. He read as he copied - Bible passages that he soon almost knew by heart as well as the classic: epic tales by Virgil and Homer about lands in the distance Mediterranean, Odes by Horace… You weren’t supposed to like the pagan classics too much, of course, but he soon came to love them just as dearly (if not more) than the Christian works he jotted down.
When Simon was fifteen, this half-austere, half-idyllic lifestyle was interrupted suddenly by a Viking raid. Like most victims, they had no warning - one moment he was half-awake in his dormitory, listening to the familiar snores of his companions, and in the next chaos reigned. When he heard the victorious cries of the invaders as they coursed through the monastery, he was up and sprinting towards the library before the rest of the novices were even fully awake. In the library he found a few brothers frantically trying to hide the few books the monastery possessed and joined them. Their efforts didn’t accomplish much - even as he tucked a Bible into a hidden cubby in the stone walls, the Vikings discovered the library. He doesn’t exactly remember what happened that night, except for a few choice facts: the library burned. A brother was beheaded. He threw a candelabra at one of the raiders. Looking back, he was lucky that he didn’t get his own head lopped off.
Whatever transpired that night, he was knocked unconscious at one point and woke up the next morning wedged between two other novices on a boat full of barbarians in the middle of the ocean. Just your average day’s abduction, really. One of the other novices was a worthless, blubbering lump of flesh named Thomas, but the other was useful enough: a lean boy named Bjorn (or Brother John, depending on your point of view) whose mother had been a Scandinavian trader. Bjorn knew enough of the language to communicate with their captors, and a few of the Vikings knew a few words of English. Simon picked up a few words himself, and in a month he was managing short sentences of his own. They weren’t getting flayed or barbecued or anything like the stories implied, but that was hardly a bright point. He was still an Anglo-Saxon slave heading to an utterly foreign country that he knew only as the home of the barbarians that populated nightmares.
A few days passed before they hit mainland; Bjorn and Simon - who had already been friends - made a pact to watch each other’s backs. Bjorn played precocious, joking around with the Vikings and showing off the various tricks he’d picked up over the years, while Simon observed and worked at whatever chore he was put at. Thomas, who refused to work, was culled (to no one’s surprise).
Within the year, however, the two were split up at market - Bjorn remained with the village that had captured them in the first place, and would probably be freed given the fact that he shared their culture, while Simon was sold to a man from a obscure village even farther north called “Berk.”
The man’s family was kind enough, for the most part. They didn’t seem keen on beating him or punishing him excessively as long as he completed the work. The man’s wife seemed to regard him as some sort of pet, occasionally favoring him with extra food or new, warm clothing, while the man’s two oldest daughters seemed to find him highly amusing. The man also had a single son about Simon’s age and he was an utter jerk that Simon could hardly stand. Stubborn, arrogant, and viewing Simon as lower than dirt, the boy seemed to think that Cawley was his personal servant. He often dragged Cawley along to ‘Viking training,’ which took place in a peculiar sort of arena…
And the first time Cawley saw a real dragon was a humiliating experience that he will never quite forget. ‘Overreaction’ does not quite cover the sheer terror he felt. These were mythical creatures, messengers of the devil that belonged only in the Old Testament and the classics, beasts who should never have existed. Sure, he’d heard the Vikings whispering about them, but he’d presumed that they were just some stupid pagan superstition. Needless to say, he was not required to accompany the boy to the arena again.
Over time, he became acclimated to dragons, though he continued to fear them in a certain way the Vikings never did. The first time he came ‘face-to-face’ with a dragon on his own was during a raid on the village. He’d been tasked to watch over the infant daughter of his master, and a tiny terror had snuck into the nursery and almost made away with the child; Cawley managed to drive it away and was rewarded appropriately.
He was about sixteen when he actually killed his own dragon. After a bit of training, he had joined the village defenders in beating back dragons, and one particular night he found himself fighting alongside his master’s son. They found themselves isolated from the rest of the village, fighting a Hideous Zippleback quite intent on carrying both boys off. Cawley was no expert in warfare, but he was the one to lop off the first head - the other boy quickly followed suit with the other head. A few seconds later the boy shoved Cawley up against the nearest hut, swearing that if the slave took credit for the kill he’d find himself on fire.
He certainly wasn’t going to argue with that - no interest in becoming a human torch.
The next years passed quietly - or at least, as quietly as they can in a village constantly attacked by dragons… until the idiot son of the leader had his pet dragon and they all went on a foolhardy mission to kill the queen dragon. He was dragged along to the fight, of course, despite his timid protests. Seeing that massive monstrosity break out of the mountain was nothing short of horrific, and never in his life had been more certain that he was going to die.
They didn’t, of course, though the alternative was less than ideal: suddenly the village was infested with the hideous beasts. Even his master’s son, who had always been enthusiastic about killing the grotesque creatures, landed himself a Monstrous Nightmare. That didn’t end too well, though - the boy started a ‘dueling ring’ pitting dragons and their riders against each other. Probably illegal, and for good reason - the boy’s Nightmare became overexcited during a battle and lit itself on fire, sending its rider up in flame. Unfortunately, the boy survived, and Cawley was tasked with patching him back up. Only recently did the boy become well enough to leave the house again.
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