Post by wolflover1458 on Jan 27, 2011 8:32:53 GMT -5
What would you like to be called OOC? Wolf
Recruited by: oh no... um...... somebody
Email: wolfgirl1458@yahoo.com
Character
Name: Riverton (he does not think “River” is a cute nickname, but he’ll let his friends get away with calling him that)
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Rank: Leader of Holdless
Sexual Orientation Heterosexual
Family: Father – Rodack
Mother – Nobeka
Brothers – M’tem, Serat
Sister – Pollye, Revana
(He hasn't seen any of his family in Turns, so if any of his siblings have children he is unaware of it)
Appearance: His unremarkable traits makes him surprisingly easy to not notice in a crowd. He stands at just under 6’ (without shoes on) and has matted brown hair and dark blue eyes. The plain normality of him means he can blend in just about anywhere as just another person. But then, isn’t everyone just another person? Some do things, some wait for things to happen. Some Impress to dragons, some can’t even stand to look at them. Riverton prefers the unimpressive way he doesn’t look important; when everyone can perfectly recognize your face the moment they see you, it says to Riverton that everyone thinks of you as highly important. And those are that kind of people that always manage to get power and then abuse it. He’s still substantially good at being noticed if he wants to be noticed, which of course anyone can do by standing up and shouting, but Riverton never has to sink to that to be noticed. Especially around the people he knows, attention can be, in fact, impossible to avoid.
At any regular time, his clothing can be quite shabby. He hasn’t got the time to have fancy clothes, or wear something different every day. Having no Hold to call home makes it just a little harder to have a cozy life. And all that constant roaming doesn’t really help. Riverton doesn’t have a problem wearing the same outfit several days in a row. After all, getting soaked counts as washing clothes, doesn’t it? Certainly, hygiene is important, but not as important as getting work done. Besides, Riverton has always had a strong immune system, and he very rarely gets any kind of sickness. Even if he does, it wouldn’t really change his schedule. Everything that needs to be done isn’t spontaneously going to do itself.
Riverton’s prime is slipping away, and although he’s managed to keep himself in relatively good shape, he’s not as fit as he used to be. He was never the most muscular guy around, and his strength slowly starts to wane away as he gets older. For this reason, Riverton tries to avoid getting in fights if he can help it. Fighting someone head on is a large problem for him. Generally he has to rely on his agility in any kind of a fight. He’s still strong to fight someone, certainly, but he doesn’t get into trouble for no reason at all. If he did, he’d probably have been mortally wounded long before now. He trusts to his instincts, his agility, and his intelligence to keep him alive, and two of those three things tell him that looking for trouble constantly isn’t a good thing. Riverton always prefers to be prepared for a fight. He hates surprise attacks unless, of course, he’s the one behind it.
While usually not one to automatically look disapprovingly at someone, Riverton can have a very cold stare. If you get on his bad side, you’ll know it, and you’ll also know every time you see him if he’s still upset. His memory may not be perfect, but he can remember people that bug him, and he doesn’t let them up lightly. He doesn’t sympathize for the “enemy”, or even for those that are neutral, and traitors do not work well for him, because he places his trust on the other Holdless, and if they let him down, not only will it make him irrevocably upset about it, he’ll make sure they have an unfortunate “accident” or are banished. That’s for smaller things though, and being a traitor is much more serious. Riverton may have no mercy for his enemies, but he has even less, and also no respect, for the enemies that hide as friends. Those Holdless that are in deep on their plot, and yet not completely devoted, might want to seriously rethink things. Weakness and doubt have no place near Riverton.
Personality: Rarely will he immediately pass off as a mean-spirited soul. Riverton usually keeps his emotions concealed inside himself, letting some out through body language, but never outright talking like he’s upset, or worried. He can be slightly impulsive though, and when he gets angry at someone, like, really angry, don’t expect him to keep it to himself. Otherwise he does try to stay in rather firm control of himself. Because he doesn’t let his emotions out all the time, Riverton himself isn’t always sure how he is feeling. He can identify anger pretty well, but everything else can be a bit confusing occasionally. His most common feelings are those of anger and concern. Pity is a rare feeling for him, since he kind of lives with the idea that everyone not with him is automatically against him, and no one against him deserves any sorrowful feelings from him.
If there were a phobia for intense fear of between, Riverton might merit it. The events in his past have caused him to become overly frightened of between and its mysteries. He won’t admit he’s scared of it, but Riverton can’t stand anything to do with the thought of whatever that place is. That adds yet another plus to his rather long list (in his memory, of course) of why getting rid of dragons would be positive for Pern and its entire population. After all, between can’t possibly really exist if there aren’t dragons to take people through it. Sure, firelizards can go through between, but they’re firelizards. They aren’t smart at all, and they can only take themselves and maybe a small object through. Besides, maybe after getting rid of dragons they ought to eradicate firelizards as well. Riverton hasn’t thought quite that far ahead yet though, because he still has to worry about getting rid of dragons before he can worry about firelizards and whers.
For the most part, Riverton is one of those smart, cunning people who can think everything through and somehow at least seem to know what might happen next. Other than on the rare occasions when he gives into to some impulse, Riverton does a fine job of figuring things out to work in his favor. Despite being seriously poorly educated, with his terrible speech and misuse of large words whose definitions he doesn’t fully understand, Riverton is quite intelligent. Not the kind of intelligence that one gets from growing up around Harpers and getting a proper education, but the intelligence that comes naturally to some people, combined with experiences and feelings. Still, that doesn’t make him quite smart enough to solve all of Pern’s problems on his own. Help from others is always beneficial.
For the most part, Riverton has good instincts. They tell him important things, like what to do in a fight and how to handle a certain situation. Without his instincts, Riverton might find himself very lost indeed. However, he has some pretty bad directional skills. Yes, he knows which way is north, and he won’t get lost ten feet from where he was before or anything, but he doesn’t instinctively know the proper way to go in order to get somewhere, even if he has recently been to that place before. Around the places he has been for a long time, Riverton has an excellent memory for how to get around, but for everywhere else Riverton will not be able to find his way around if he can’t remember how he got from point A to point B. Directions are always useful, if he can understand them...
Hobbies/Skills: He has the odd habit of talking funnily, usually with double negatives. Some people might say he does it to get an edge on talking to people and confusing them, while still saying the absolute truth. The reality is that Riverton has always talked that way. His mother was partly to blame for this, since she never really talked properly herself, and as such wasn’t very qualified to teach her children how to talk, even if she tried sometimes (and... she was always kind of strange). Instead of saying “I didn’t expect that to happen” he’ll say “I didn’t not expect that to not happen” and he won’t say it to be confusing. He says it because that’s just the way he thinks. No one ever taught him the proper way to speak when he was a child, and at a certain point he was too old to want to change his thought process. His words can always manage to come out strangely confusing, and even though he understands himself perfectly, it can take a while for someone else to grasp what he said. After getting through the very horrid way in which he expresses his ideas, one can discover that he really is quite intelligent.
Riverton has some good practice handling a sword. True, he may not be the perfect master who can amaze his pupils and never mess up, along with performing amazing feats and other such things, but he’s still admirable at sword fighting. Since he lacks the strength to fight someone head on, Riverton isn’t going to carry around any sort of weapon without having a knife or two with him as well. He’s not any sort of archer, but still proficient at throwing knives and hitting at least close to where he wants to hit. He has his own sword and knives, which he’s either “borrowed” or had someone make especially for him. Riverton hates to use someone else’s weapon because he is more familiar with his own.
He’s rather good at thievery. Well, pick pocketing to be more precise. Riverton knows how to swipe something from someone he’s talking to without them noticing until they try to find that thing an hour later and realize it’s gone. He’s not quite as skilled when it comes to sneaking into somewhere to take something. He can walk silently just fine, but then he might bump into something he didn’t notice, and he’s no good with directions for the most part. He can’t instinctively find his way around somewhere, even if he’s been there before. Riverton can swipe things on a sudden urge, but he never bothers to go back for something he found interesting before. If he’s not exactly sure how to get there from where he is, he’d only get lost.
Pets: None... yet...
History: While not born at a Weyr, Riverton did move to Haven at ten Turns old. He wasn’t a Candidate, but his elder brother, Marretem, was, and his mother, who Riverton had always felt wasn’t completely sane, decided to move to the Weyr. She said that it was “safer” and that “the dragons would protect them from harm”, and so Riverton was actually quite excited to go. His dream at the time was to become a Candidate like his brother, and Impress to a really cool dragon, and then be respected all over Pern as a great dragonrider. Before then, he had spent his time in relative poverty, but never that badly off. His father was a farmer, and his mother was relatively good at several different things, and so he grew up with his family making or growing most of what they used, rather than really buying much of anything. Things were quite different at the Weyr, where farmers could hardly grow food. His father, in fact, never went to the Weyr. He didn’t want to leave his crop, and there was no real employment he could hope for at the Weyr. Nobeka was a fine Lower Caverns worker, but Rodack didn’t want to get involved in that kind of “nonsense”. Other than Riverton’s eldest brother, Serat, and his father, the rest of the family moved to the Weyr when he was ten.
Matem did end up Impressing, to a pretty little Green dragon, and Riverton was naturally delighted. He got to meet the dragon, and even if he didn’t know what she was saying, meeting her was still amazing. Her name was Perrith and, according to M’tem, she was the sweetest dragon anyone could hope to have. That was when Riverton really knew that being a dragon rider was the greatest thing anyone could hope for. He started to spend his nights childishly dreaming about getting his own dragon, sort of hoping for a Green, but also a Bronze, and then wondering if he should change his name to be R’verton or R’ton, or if maybe he could keep his name since he kind of liked it. Like any curious child, Riverton crept around everywhere, meeting the riders and learning all about what it was like. It certainly sounded splendid to him. Perfectly splendid. Perrith was one of his best friends, and she was really nice, and helpful.
But then everything changed. Was it an accident? That’s what everyone said. Did then-twelve-Turn-old Riverton believe them? Not in the slightest. M’tem and Perrith were the only betweening casualty of their weyrling group. When the news caught up to Riverton that his brother had vanished between, never to return, he was devastated. Who wouldn’t be? For a while, he wandered around the Weyr in silence, thinking to himself about all the things that could have happened, but never would again. He would never help M’tem attempt to give Perrith a bath while all she wanted to do was play. He’d never get to take a trip around the Weyrbowl on the back of the lithe green dragon. He’d never have the joy of being a dragonrider with his brother.
It took a few months, but eventually Riverton decided he just didn’t want to stay at the Weyr anymore. His one connection to dragons was gone, and he just didn’t want to be a Candidate anymore. He didn’t blame M’tem or Perrith for their deaths. He blamed the Weyrlingmaster for not explaining things properly, and his dragon for the same thing. He hated the other weyrlings and their dragons for learning to between when M’tem and Perrith had failed. He hated all of the other dragons for not being able to save Perrith. If they could fly between, why couldn’t they have gone in there and taken them out? What did those silly dragons know anyway? The only one that had ever mattered to Riverton was dead. He couldn’t feel love for those beasts any longer. They had let Perrith die.
So Riverton went to his mother and begged her to let him go back home. She agreed, but insisted Riverton get a dragonrider to take him. While Riverton refused, his mother (not quite catching on with how her son felt) pressed the matter and ended up convincing one of the riders to take him back to his father. It was the only way left for Riverton to get home, and while it scared him to death, he took it. He greeted his father and eldest brother happily, and began to live with them shortly before he turned thirteen. To crushed to want to do much with his life, Riverton never got involved in any kind of craft. Instead, he stayed at home and helped his father out when there was work to be done, or wandered off when there was nothing to do. Sometimes he walked around the fields, sometimes he walked through the forest. He spent everyday knowing that if it weren’t for those sharding dragons, he’d still have his brother. Yes, he still loved Perrith, and he could never blame her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t blame dragons. There wasn’t even Thread to fight, so what did they need dragons for?
Of course, even these feelings can’t possibly have been enough to throw Riverton over the edge enough to make him abandon the love all Southerners felt for the dragonriders and what they had done for them. Riverton’s father had a fine respect for dragons; even if he didn’t like the idea of them getting to close to his fields, they did help to protect him from all sorts of dangers. Serat, on the other hand, had never been overly fond of dragons. Always having been a bit of a questioner, he’d always wondered what would attack them if there weren’t dragonriders. After all, he’d never seen anything. The news that dragons had, in effect, killed his brother, set him in a bad mood. Serat was a vital part to the way Riverton came out of his childhood Turns. Serat didn’t have the problem of knowing the dragon his brother had Impressed to wear down how he felt. Serat had a negative opinion of dragons from the moment they killed his brother and he let his family know it. Riverton believed his brother, and it didn’t take much for Serat to light the flames inside Riverton, and since the youngster had stacked up the firewood inside him so carefully over time, the flame grew harsh and fierce.
It wasn’t Perrith’s fault that M’tem had died, for she had died too. She hadn’t been taught properly. No one had cared enough about her to teach her properly. They didn’t mind her dying because she had only been a tiny Green dragon, and not important to the Weyr. No one mourned her death, and her rider and she were forgotten soon after the accident occurred. Dragons didn’t care for each other clearly, and they were the root of all problems. They were huge and numerous, eating far greater amounts and taking up far more room than any person. This was what Riverton told himself. This was what his brother and he strongly believed. There was only one difference between them. Serat was not a doer, nor would he ever be. He preferred working out in the fields and silently hating dragons than to actually do anything about it.
Riverton had no such qualms. As he grew older, his hatred never waned. His mind had twisted around enough that it was okay for him to miss Perrith, and know that she was great, but still hate all of dragonkind simply for their being on Pern. After he reached this level of thinking, Riverton was never content enough with letting dragons go on ruling the Southern Continent. They needed to pay for what they had done, and what they would do. If no one did anything, the dragons would continue on as they always had. While he felt no specific hatred for the dragonriders, or at least not as deep, Riverton was angered with them as well; since they would side with the beasts they called their partners. He could no longer stand people that sided with dragonriders in anything, and he grew increasingly distant from his father and his family that still (for whatever reasoning Nobeka had) was living at Haven Weyr. Riverton started to wonder if it was possible to kill a dragon. The easiest way was simply to kill its rider. How silly that dragons were tied to a person, who they simply could not go on without. Why, if someone were to kill every rider in the Weyrs, there would be no more dragons!
But of course, Riverton wasn’t about to go do something so silly. After all, he didn’t even know how to use a knife. But he decided to teach himself. Was his actual plan to go to the Weyr? He might have considered it a few times, but he always figured it would be foolish. There would have to be someone with him, a lot of someones, who all felt the same way and were prepared to risk everything to get rid of dragonriders. Riverton doubted anything like that could ever happen, because he didn’t know of anyone, other than his not initiative-taking brother, who actually had some hatred for dragons or dragonriders. Riverton decided to learn how to handle a sword, and how to survive in a fight, because he wanted to be ready for anything that might happen. And if he ever found someone who felt like he did, well maybe they could find some way to do something, to not let things stay the way they were and to change things for the better. Would he find someone like that? Riverton had no way of knowing.
Nor did he have any way of expecting he would find several someones. By the time he was 25 Turns, Riverton knew several people on the Southern Continent who weren’t happy with dragonriders. He spent over quite a few Turns going across the different places in the Southern Continent, slowly coming to realize that he wasn’t the only one of his kind. Giving up everyone at his home cothold as dragon-loving deadglows, Riverton decided he would rather be deeper in the Southern Continent. But he wasn’t destined to be alone. There were others who felt the same way he did, and soon enough there was a respectable group of Holdless people hiding in the Southern Continent, largely unknown to the rest of Pern, but with terrifying motives. And Riverton was glad to say that they would finally have the chance to rid Pern of dragons and all the terrors they brought with them.
Recruited by: oh no... um...... somebody
Email: wolfgirl1458@yahoo.com
Character
Name: Riverton (he does not think “River” is a cute nickname, but he’ll let his friends get away with calling him that)
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Rank: Leader of Holdless
Sexual Orientation Heterosexual
Family: Father – Rodack
Mother – Nobeka
Brothers – M’tem, Serat
Sister – Pollye, Revana
(He hasn't seen any of his family in Turns, so if any of his siblings have children he is unaware of it)
Appearance: His unremarkable traits makes him surprisingly easy to not notice in a crowd. He stands at just under 6’ (without shoes on) and has matted brown hair and dark blue eyes. The plain normality of him means he can blend in just about anywhere as just another person. But then, isn’t everyone just another person? Some do things, some wait for things to happen. Some Impress to dragons, some can’t even stand to look at them. Riverton prefers the unimpressive way he doesn’t look important; when everyone can perfectly recognize your face the moment they see you, it says to Riverton that everyone thinks of you as highly important. And those are that kind of people that always manage to get power and then abuse it. He’s still substantially good at being noticed if he wants to be noticed, which of course anyone can do by standing up and shouting, but Riverton never has to sink to that to be noticed. Especially around the people he knows, attention can be, in fact, impossible to avoid.
At any regular time, his clothing can be quite shabby. He hasn’t got the time to have fancy clothes, or wear something different every day. Having no Hold to call home makes it just a little harder to have a cozy life. And all that constant roaming doesn’t really help. Riverton doesn’t have a problem wearing the same outfit several days in a row. After all, getting soaked counts as washing clothes, doesn’t it? Certainly, hygiene is important, but not as important as getting work done. Besides, Riverton has always had a strong immune system, and he very rarely gets any kind of sickness. Even if he does, it wouldn’t really change his schedule. Everything that needs to be done isn’t spontaneously going to do itself.
Riverton’s prime is slipping away, and although he’s managed to keep himself in relatively good shape, he’s not as fit as he used to be. He was never the most muscular guy around, and his strength slowly starts to wane away as he gets older. For this reason, Riverton tries to avoid getting in fights if he can help it. Fighting someone head on is a large problem for him. Generally he has to rely on his agility in any kind of a fight. He’s still strong to fight someone, certainly, but he doesn’t get into trouble for no reason at all. If he did, he’d probably have been mortally wounded long before now. He trusts to his instincts, his agility, and his intelligence to keep him alive, and two of those three things tell him that looking for trouble constantly isn’t a good thing. Riverton always prefers to be prepared for a fight. He hates surprise attacks unless, of course, he’s the one behind it.
While usually not one to automatically look disapprovingly at someone, Riverton can have a very cold stare. If you get on his bad side, you’ll know it, and you’ll also know every time you see him if he’s still upset. His memory may not be perfect, but he can remember people that bug him, and he doesn’t let them up lightly. He doesn’t sympathize for the “enemy”, or even for those that are neutral, and traitors do not work well for him, because he places his trust on the other Holdless, and if they let him down, not only will it make him irrevocably upset about it, he’ll make sure they have an unfortunate “accident” or are banished. That’s for smaller things though, and being a traitor is much more serious. Riverton may have no mercy for his enemies, but he has even less, and also no respect, for the enemies that hide as friends. Those Holdless that are in deep on their plot, and yet not completely devoted, might want to seriously rethink things. Weakness and doubt have no place near Riverton.
Personality: Rarely will he immediately pass off as a mean-spirited soul. Riverton usually keeps his emotions concealed inside himself, letting some out through body language, but never outright talking like he’s upset, or worried. He can be slightly impulsive though, and when he gets angry at someone, like, really angry, don’t expect him to keep it to himself. Otherwise he does try to stay in rather firm control of himself. Because he doesn’t let his emotions out all the time, Riverton himself isn’t always sure how he is feeling. He can identify anger pretty well, but everything else can be a bit confusing occasionally. His most common feelings are those of anger and concern. Pity is a rare feeling for him, since he kind of lives with the idea that everyone not with him is automatically against him, and no one against him deserves any sorrowful feelings from him.
If there were a phobia for intense fear of between, Riverton might merit it. The events in his past have caused him to become overly frightened of between and its mysteries. He won’t admit he’s scared of it, but Riverton can’t stand anything to do with the thought of whatever that place is. That adds yet another plus to his rather long list (in his memory, of course) of why getting rid of dragons would be positive for Pern and its entire population. After all, between can’t possibly really exist if there aren’t dragons to take people through it. Sure, firelizards can go through between, but they’re firelizards. They aren’t smart at all, and they can only take themselves and maybe a small object through. Besides, maybe after getting rid of dragons they ought to eradicate firelizards as well. Riverton hasn’t thought quite that far ahead yet though, because he still has to worry about getting rid of dragons before he can worry about firelizards and whers.
For the most part, Riverton is one of those smart, cunning people who can think everything through and somehow at least seem to know what might happen next. Other than on the rare occasions when he gives into to some impulse, Riverton does a fine job of figuring things out to work in his favor. Despite being seriously poorly educated, with his terrible speech and misuse of large words whose definitions he doesn’t fully understand, Riverton is quite intelligent. Not the kind of intelligence that one gets from growing up around Harpers and getting a proper education, but the intelligence that comes naturally to some people, combined with experiences and feelings. Still, that doesn’t make him quite smart enough to solve all of Pern’s problems on his own. Help from others is always beneficial.
For the most part, Riverton has good instincts. They tell him important things, like what to do in a fight and how to handle a certain situation. Without his instincts, Riverton might find himself very lost indeed. However, he has some pretty bad directional skills. Yes, he knows which way is north, and he won’t get lost ten feet from where he was before or anything, but he doesn’t instinctively know the proper way to go in order to get somewhere, even if he has recently been to that place before. Around the places he has been for a long time, Riverton has an excellent memory for how to get around, but for everywhere else Riverton will not be able to find his way around if he can’t remember how he got from point A to point B. Directions are always useful, if he can understand them...
Hobbies/Skills: He has the odd habit of talking funnily, usually with double negatives. Some people might say he does it to get an edge on talking to people and confusing them, while still saying the absolute truth. The reality is that Riverton has always talked that way. His mother was partly to blame for this, since she never really talked properly herself, and as such wasn’t very qualified to teach her children how to talk, even if she tried sometimes (and... she was always kind of strange). Instead of saying “I didn’t expect that to happen” he’ll say “I didn’t not expect that to not happen” and he won’t say it to be confusing. He says it because that’s just the way he thinks. No one ever taught him the proper way to speak when he was a child, and at a certain point he was too old to want to change his thought process. His words can always manage to come out strangely confusing, and even though he understands himself perfectly, it can take a while for someone else to grasp what he said. After getting through the very horrid way in which he expresses his ideas, one can discover that he really is quite intelligent.
Riverton has some good practice handling a sword. True, he may not be the perfect master who can amaze his pupils and never mess up, along with performing amazing feats and other such things, but he’s still admirable at sword fighting. Since he lacks the strength to fight someone head on, Riverton isn’t going to carry around any sort of weapon without having a knife or two with him as well. He’s not any sort of archer, but still proficient at throwing knives and hitting at least close to where he wants to hit. He has his own sword and knives, which he’s either “borrowed” or had someone make especially for him. Riverton hates to use someone else’s weapon because he is more familiar with his own.
He’s rather good at thievery. Well, pick pocketing to be more precise. Riverton knows how to swipe something from someone he’s talking to without them noticing until they try to find that thing an hour later and realize it’s gone. He’s not quite as skilled when it comes to sneaking into somewhere to take something. He can walk silently just fine, but then he might bump into something he didn’t notice, and he’s no good with directions for the most part. He can’t instinctively find his way around somewhere, even if he’s been there before. Riverton can swipe things on a sudden urge, but he never bothers to go back for something he found interesting before. If he’s not exactly sure how to get there from where he is, he’d only get lost.
Pets: None... yet...
History: While not born at a Weyr, Riverton did move to Haven at ten Turns old. He wasn’t a Candidate, but his elder brother, Marretem, was, and his mother, who Riverton had always felt wasn’t completely sane, decided to move to the Weyr. She said that it was “safer” and that “the dragons would protect them from harm”, and so Riverton was actually quite excited to go. His dream at the time was to become a Candidate like his brother, and Impress to a really cool dragon, and then be respected all over Pern as a great dragonrider. Before then, he had spent his time in relative poverty, but never that badly off. His father was a farmer, and his mother was relatively good at several different things, and so he grew up with his family making or growing most of what they used, rather than really buying much of anything. Things were quite different at the Weyr, where farmers could hardly grow food. His father, in fact, never went to the Weyr. He didn’t want to leave his crop, and there was no real employment he could hope for at the Weyr. Nobeka was a fine Lower Caverns worker, but Rodack didn’t want to get involved in that kind of “nonsense”. Other than Riverton’s eldest brother, Serat, and his father, the rest of the family moved to the Weyr when he was ten.
Matem did end up Impressing, to a pretty little Green dragon, and Riverton was naturally delighted. He got to meet the dragon, and even if he didn’t know what she was saying, meeting her was still amazing. Her name was Perrith and, according to M’tem, she was the sweetest dragon anyone could hope to have. That was when Riverton really knew that being a dragon rider was the greatest thing anyone could hope for. He started to spend his nights childishly dreaming about getting his own dragon, sort of hoping for a Green, but also a Bronze, and then wondering if he should change his name to be R’verton or R’ton, or if maybe he could keep his name since he kind of liked it. Like any curious child, Riverton crept around everywhere, meeting the riders and learning all about what it was like. It certainly sounded splendid to him. Perfectly splendid. Perrith was one of his best friends, and she was really nice, and helpful.
But then everything changed. Was it an accident? That’s what everyone said. Did then-twelve-Turn-old Riverton believe them? Not in the slightest. M’tem and Perrith were the only betweening casualty of their weyrling group. When the news caught up to Riverton that his brother had vanished between, never to return, he was devastated. Who wouldn’t be? For a while, he wandered around the Weyr in silence, thinking to himself about all the things that could have happened, but never would again. He would never help M’tem attempt to give Perrith a bath while all she wanted to do was play. He’d never get to take a trip around the Weyrbowl on the back of the lithe green dragon. He’d never have the joy of being a dragonrider with his brother.
It took a few months, but eventually Riverton decided he just didn’t want to stay at the Weyr anymore. His one connection to dragons was gone, and he just didn’t want to be a Candidate anymore. He didn’t blame M’tem or Perrith for their deaths. He blamed the Weyrlingmaster for not explaining things properly, and his dragon for the same thing. He hated the other weyrlings and their dragons for learning to between when M’tem and Perrith had failed. He hated all of the other dragons for not being able to save Perrith. If they could fly between, why couldn’t they have gone in there and taken them out? What did those silly dragons know anyway? The only one that had ever mattered to Riverton was dead. He couldn’t feel love for those beasts any longer. They had let Perrith die.
So Riverton went to his mother and begged her to let him go back home. She agreed, but insisted Riverton get a dragonrider to take him. While Riverton refused, his mother (not quite catching on with how her son felt) pressed the matter and ended up convincing one of the riders to take him back to his father. It was the only way left for Riverton to get home, and while it scared him to death, he took it. He greeted his father and eldest brother happily, and began to live with them shortly before he turned thirteen. To crushed to want to do much with his life, Riverton never got involved in any kind of craft. Instead, he stayed at home and helped his father out when there was work to be done, or wandered off when there was nothing to do. Sometimes he walked around the fields, sometimes he walked through the forest. He spent everyday knowing that if it weren’t for those sharding dragons, he’d still have his brother. Yes, he still loved Perrith, and he could never blame her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t blame dragons. There wasn’t even Thread to fight, so what did they need dragons for?
Of course, even these feelings can’t possibly have been enough to throw Riverton over the edge enough to make him abandon the love all Southerners felt for the dragonriders and what they had done for them. Riverton’s father had a fine respect for dragons; even if he didn’t like the idea of them getting to close to his fields, they did help to protect him from all sorts of dangers. Serat, on the other hand, had never been overly fond of dragons. Always having been a bit of a questioner, he’d always wondered what would attack them if there weren’t dragonriders. After all, he’d never seen anything. The news that dragons had, in effect, killed his brother, set him in a bad mood. Serat was a vital part to the way Riverton came out of his childhood Turns. Serat didn’t have the problem of knowing the dragon his brother had Impressed to wear down how he felt. Serat had a negative opinion of dragons from the moment they killed his brother and he let his family know it. Riverton believed his brother, and it didn’t take much for Serat to light the flames inside Riverton, and since the youngster had stacked up the firewood inside him so carefully over time, the flame grew harsh and fierce.
It wasn’t Perrith’s fault that M’tem had died, for she had died too. She hadn’t been taught properly. No one had cared enough about her to teach her properly. They didn’t mind her dying because she had only been a tiny Green dragon, and not important to the Weyr. No one mourned her death, and her rider and she were forgotten soon after the accident occurred. Dragons didn’t care for each other clearly, and they were the root of all problems. They were huge and numerous, eating far greater amounts and taking up far more room than any person. This was what Riverton told himself. This was what his brother and he strongly believed. There was only one difference between them. Serat was not a doer, nor would he ever be. He preferred working out in the fields and silently hating dragons than to actually do anything about it.
Riverton had no such qualms. As he grew older, his hatred never waned. His mind had twisted around enough that it was okay for him to miss Perrith, and know that she was great, but still hate all of dragonkind simply for their being on Pern. After he reached this level of thinking, Riverton was never content enough with letting dragons go on ruling the Southern Continent. They needed to pay for what they had done, and what they would do. If no one did anything, the dragons would continue on as they always had. While he felt no specific hatred for the dragonriders, or at least not as deep, Riverton was angered with them as well; since they would side with the beasts they called their partners. He could no longer stand people that sided with dragonriders in anything, and he grew increasingly distant from his father and his family that still (for whatever reasoning Nobeka had) was living at Haven Weyr. Riverton started to wonder if it was possible to kill a dragon. The easiest way was simply to kill its rider. How silly that dragons were tied to a person, who they simply could not go on without. Why, if someone were to kill every rider in the Weyrs, there would be no more dragons!
But of course, Riverton wasn’t about to go do something so silly. After all, he didn’t even know how to use a knife. But he decided to teach himself. Was his actual plan to go to the Weyr? He might have considered it a few times, but he always figured it would be foolish. There would have to be someone with him, a lot of someones, who all felt the same way and were prepared to risk everything to get rid of dragonriders. Riverton doubted anything like that could ever happen, because he didn’t know of anyone, other than his not initiative-taking brother, who actually had some hatred for dragons or dragonriders. Riverton decided to learn how to handle a sword, and how to survive in a fight, because he wanted to be ready for anything that might happen. And if he ever found someone who felt like he did, well maybe they could find some way to do something, to not let things stay the way they were and to change things for the better. Would he find someone like that? Riverton had no way of knowing.
Nor did he have any way of expecting he would find several someones. By the time he was 25 Turns, Riverton knew several people on the Southern Continent who weren’t happy with dragonriders. He spent over quite a few Turns going across the different places in the Southern Continent, slowly coming to realize that he wasn’t the only one of his kind. Giving up everyone at his home cothold as dragon-loving deadglows, Riverton decided he would rather be deeper in the Southern Continent. But he wasn’t destined to be alone. There were others who felt the same way he did, and soon enough there was a respectable group of Holdless people hiding in the Southern Continent, largely unknown to the rest of Pern, but with terrifying motives. And Riverton was glad to say that they would finally have the chance to rid Pern of dragons and all the terrors they brought with them.
