~Doric~

Puppet Master: Liza

Character Name: Doric

Character Age: 23

Gender: Male

Rank: Rebel

Hair: Medium brown, the color of deeply toasted bread. He keeps it cut somewhere between shoulder and chin length so that it's just long enough to tie up into a horsetail when he doesn’t want to bother with it (which is nearly always)

Eyes: Dark brown and a just a tad almond shaped.

Build: Slightly taller than average, with most of his height in his legs. As a teenager he was terribly gawky and heron-like but half a dozen years of training and lots of food have filled him out and built up some (ok, a lot of) muscle.

Face: His face is square to oval, with a well defined jaw and broad cheekbones. His nose is strong and his eyes are wide set under slighted arched eyebrows. There are a number of small scars from the multitude of nicks and scrapes he's accumulated over the years and a thin scar cuts through the edge of one of his eyebrows.

Dress: He's not terribly picky about clothes, as long as he's capable of moving in them. Mostly, he likes a pair of loose breeches and a tunic. He prefers sandals to boots, but will wear either without complaint. His favorite color for clothes is brown.

Personality:Protective to a fault, he has a strong sense of responsibility that can occasionally be infuriating. For the most part he's a very kind-hearted person, but highly emotional situations make him *extremely* uncomfortable. This can often lead him to make insensitive remarks that he later regrets. He also has trouble showing affection, and for goodness sake, please don't ask him to talk about his feelings…just don't.

Talents: He's the only real swordsmen in the camp thanks to his noble upbringing and long hours of practice have made him a formidable opponent when it comes to daggers, staves and hand-to-hand fighting. This makes up for his utter horridness with anything ranged, especially bows. In fact, he has refused to even pick up a bow for years now and doesn't even own a throwing dagger.

History: Doric actually has two histories. One is a mix of actual events, carefully edited half-truths and outright fabrications and the other is what really happened. Only a few people (just Chandri at the moment) know the latter history, but to save confusion both are being put up on the profiles page.

What he tells everyone:
Son of Beneth, a desert chief who seduced a noble woman named Aldema de Cerinthe. When Aldema realized she was with child, she hastily married the first man to propose, a fat, aging, but rather rich earl. Within months of their hasty marriage the husband was stricken with a fatal heart attack, giving Aldema an excuse to withdraw from courtly life and retreat to a small villa in the desert. There, only eight months after her engagement she gave birth to Doric. Doric grew up shielded from the close scrutiny of palace life and was taught the courtly arts befitting the son of a earl.

When he was sixteen his mother took ill. On what she believed to be her death bed she told her son of his true father. By the time she recovered Doric was gone in search of his him.

He arrived at the oasis bruised, battered, thirsty and feverish. His grandmother, Twyla, healed him and the men took him in as though he were their nephew. He has spent the last seven years of his life learning to ways of the desert. After learning of the plight of the slaves he vowed to take his now dead father's position as rebel leader.

What really happened:
It's true, Doric is the son of Beneth and Aldema, Aldema did marry an ancient earl who keeled over shortly after their marriage, and Doric did grow up in a small villa in the desert learning the courtly arts (although he did often skip his Istrobanian lessons) but after that the story starts to change.

At sixteen, while his mother was in perfect health, Doric realized he had fallen head over heels in love with his best friend. His best friend, as luck would have it, returned his affections. Heartwarming, but also problematic as Doric was supposed to marry in three years and his mother would be less than thrilled to find that Doric and the miller's redheaded son Ady had been enthusiastically swapping spit for several months.

When the inevitable eventually happened and Doric and Ady were caught, his mother leapt into damage control mode. Doric's betrothal was moved up two and a half years after several hasty negotiations and Doric was effectively placed under house arrest. Unable to cope with the idea of being married to someone barely in her teens Doric fled into the desert.

He arrived at the oasis bruised, battered, thirsty and feverish. His grandmother, Twyla, healed him and the men took him in as though he were their nephew. He has spent the last seven years of his life learning about the Rebels and being beaten to a pulp by the training master, Wyatt (and made into a better fighter in the process). After learning of the plight of the slaves he vowed to take his now dead father's position as rebel leader.