Name: Rhys Horsehand of Marlas, specifically, Dragon Horse Farm
Sex: Female
Age: 17
Occupation: I am the oldest of nine daughters. My father is a respected horse breeder and trainer on the outermost outskirts of Marlas, and my mother is, well, a mother. She was once a barmaid, but she isn’t anymore. As my family is lacking a son, I have taken on his role, helping Father with the horses and Mother in the garden. Lately, as my sisters have grown older and better able to help Mother, I’ve spent more time with the horses than with my sisters, and I’ve found I like the change. I’m told I have an eye for good broodmares, a memory for bloodlines, and a knack at training the high-spirited, beautiful horses that are rumored to have migrated south from the Dragon Lands in the north, long ago. Though Father had previously specialized in breeding and training less flashy but more sensible mounts for lower-ranking nobility, merchants, and rich farmers who can afford a mount for riding, my knack with them is good enough so he has recently added a few more Dragon Horses to the stables, hoping the barns will attract attention from the High Houses of Olencia.
Status and Rank: My family is a good, hardworking family, but not at all grand. Horse breeding and training for lesser nobility, merchants, and farmers isn’t the most lucrative business in the realm, but we have enough to pay our grooms, feed our breeding stock, pay for stud fees, and even take a yearly trip into the city proper for the horse fair. I suppose our house would be large for a regular family, but is on the small side for our very big one. Regardless, it is well-kept, furnished handsomely enough to welcome a well-born client without my being ashamed, and happy. I’m not bragging, just being truthful when I say we’re a cheerful family and a likeable one, we always have visitors, and my next-youngest sister, Sian, often has suitors. I have said, we are respected by our colleagues, but our operation has not yet caught the eye of a High House. However, when Father sees my work with the Dragon Horses, he starts saying how our luck may change. I am a good trainer, I know it when I take a raw colt to a fine warhorse in a few years all by myself, and I need no nobleman to tell me so, but it would be such a good happening for my family, I can’t help but hope for it rather desperately. So I train my horses, and exhibit them at the fair, and hope a High House sees my Dragon Horses, and asks where they may be bought.
Roots and Origin: As it was told to me, the Horsehand family has been in Marlas as long as the horses have, and the horses on the Marlas Plains have been there since time began. Our farm has been in the family since Marlas was a quarter day’s ride on a Dragon Horse, and that was a very long time ago. The barns’ founder, whose name is lost to time, optimistically named our farm Dragon Horse Farm, thinking the sought-after breed would flourish in the country, but their location in proximity to the city would allow High Houses to conveniently purchase our stock. Unfortunately, stories say the Dragon Horses proved a little too much for him, as they do for many trainers, and while he was a very good breeder and produced a fine line of them, he resigned himself to training Cobs and other, more useful, less beautiful, and less intelligent and brave horses for less wealthy clients. Time passed, the city crept almost up to our doorstep, and we remained a solid, but not particularly talented, line of horsemen. We were dedicated, methodical, knowledgeable, and fair, we knew our horses’ bloodlines better than our own, and survived comfortably. Father says I’m the first flash of talent we’ve seen in a very, very long time, and I very much hopes so, but am not in much of a position to presume,
Appearance: I, like my forbearers, am a methodical, front-to-back sort of girl. As such, I will start by saying my clothes are well-made and serviceable. This is true, my family is comfortable, and I am the oldest, so I have the advantage of getting suits of clothing and boots before my eight younger sisters. My clothes are made by my mother, Gwyn, she is an accomplished seamstress despite her years bartending. They are not fancy or flashy clothes, even my festival clothes are hardly better than my work clothes, and for good reason. One who lives and works on a horse farm will find their clothes are forever being soiled by their charges, and since the only festival I have time to attend is the horse fair, my festival clothes are worn around the horses I am showing and trying to sell. Even cleaned up and on-their-best-behavior horses are messy, and my clothes mustn’t show dirt at the fair.
I will wear breeches while training and exhibiting the Dragon Horses, as one needs to sit astride to ride out certain warhorse maneuvers, but I do not wear them to make a statement of any sort. I wear dresses in business deals and while showing around potential clients, and I do not mind them while doing light chores. My incongruously small-featured face will close in on itself in concentration while I am training, and when I am entirely caught up in my horse’s movements, my eyes will half-close so I may better feel how my mount is doing. This habit disturbs the stable hands, and they are right, it is a bad one, but I know what I am doing, and my mount and I are safe. My brown eyes match my horse’s, my hair matches her liver chestnut coat, and it has been trimmed to my shoulders to better stay out of the way, and be more easily pinned up so I may pass for a boy at a distance during exhibitions at the fair. My complexion is clear and fair, and I neither tan nor burn, but instead get obnoxious little freckles across my nose and cheekbones in the summer. I have a masculine figure, and though my features are small and feminine and my neck is long and thin, my body is broad without being fat, has wider shoulders than hips, few curves, and muscular legs and arms. I am as tall as most men, and as strong, which helps me train my Dragon Horses and accustom them to the likely height, weight, and balance of their future owners.
I don’t much care for my appearance one way or the other, though I suppose my face is nice enough, and my body does have its uses. When I was younger I would wonder bitterly why I had not been born a boy, after all, I was as big as one, and it would be better for the family, but I have grown to accept my gender. I rather like my eyebrows; they’re thinner and shaped in a fine arch, so I always look skeptical or doubtful. They’re useful when buying new stock, as somewhat reputable horse dealers are unnerved at the girl who knows a lie whenever she hears it. Of course, the somewhat reputable dealers are always lying, and I always looks skeptical, but I’ve purchased a few fine horses off them for better prices because they were caught off guard.
Though the stable hands and even my own family would say I constantly look stoic, my horses know my true face. At night, when I feel restless, I steal out of the house to the barn, and sit down on hay bales near the pastures, resting my head on the fence. Of their own accord, my eyes sparkle, my lips part into a smile, and my mind flies off to adventures in far-off parts of Olencia and beyond. Sometimes, sitting there, staring at the stars, I think I may be happy.
Strengths:
+Besides my talents at horse training, I am a savvy businesswoman, and have been closing important deals for my family since I was fourteen.
+I look old for my age and act maturely, leading many to believe I am an older woman than I truthfully am. Furthermore, my masculine build and short hair allow me to pass for a young man at a distance of about 20 yards, but when I get close, my feminine face betrays me, and one knows I am female.
+I am athletic and strong, and good at learning new things, either physical or mental. My schoolteacher, and yes, we are well enough off that all of us girls went to school, suggested I go on to a women’s college, but it was not convenient, so I did not.
+I have a good memory and a mind for sums and accounts. I pride myself on being organized; it is a virtue I’ve had to cultivate as the oldest child in a large family.
+I am also an expert knitter and a good cook.
Weaknesses:
+ Though I long for adventure, I belong with my family. I have no time to think about such ridiculousness, and I refuse to think I would be happier elsewhere.
+I don’t suffer fools gracefully and I am downright rude to people who treat horses badly, though I think of whatever I say before I say it. This is perhaps my worst attribute: When I say something mean or spiteful, I do it knowingly, and I take no prisoners in wars of words.
+Mother says I am stubborn to the point of self-destructiveness, and I believe her. If I say I will do something, I will do it, no matter what stands in my way, or what it will cost me.
+Though I loathe admitting it, I am confused by flirting, and being the oldest of nine girls, I have no idea how to act around young men who are not my family’s employees or business associates, or whose relationship to me is not strictly defined and limited by social convention. Attractive boys uninterested in my horses steal my tongue, and I sound like a blithering idiot.
+My schoolteacher said I am at times too practical and too methodical, and it is true I have no patience with philosophy or the intangible even though I am educated enough to think on them.
+I have no patience or talent for needlework, like horses more than people, and prefer new tack to new clothes. I have little tolerance for frivolity or stupidity, and I consider embroidery, people, and clothes to contain both flaws.
+I am honest. I do not care if I sound rude or like a braggart, I am honest, and I call you as you are.
(+Rhys does not admit this to herself, but she is a dreamer by nature and wants adventure and excitement. However, such inclinations are inconvenient on a horse farm, and Rhys has suppressed so much of her personality to become what her family needs that she isn’t sure who is really her and who is merely convenient for her to be. )
Magic: Though frequently teased by my family and questioned by my colleagues, I have no magic for horse training or business. I have no secret charms or blessings. I have horse sense and business sense, but there is not a speck of magic about me.
Personality: I am solid, and I am quiet. I have learnt one will learn more being quiet, and if one is quiet long enough, people forget themselves and say things they ought not say around me. I am stubborn; the stable hands secretly bemoan me as frigid and unmoving, and say I have a heart of stone. I do not have a heart of stone; it is simply that it is inconvenient for me to compromise, socialize, or flirt. I know my business, I know my stock, and I know best how to continue from here. Father has more-or-less given me control of the entire operation except the breeding stable, and he holds out there only because he needs to appear in control, and because he wishes to remain occupied during the years prior to his retirement. I do not begrudge him the breeding operation, it is one less item off my plate, and he researches studs and knows bloodlines as well as I. He also has some power in purchasing; after all, he bought the new Dragon Horses, though I wouldn’t have opposed him if he had brought the idea to me.
Father has an artful tongue in his head, and mother teases him he should be a bard or a poet and give up this horse business altogether. One of his more accurate comparisons is I am my horse and my horse is me, and we simply divide our consciousness over two bodies. I agree, Ledra and I are often of one mind, and we know each other so well as to what that the other will do before the other knows it themselves. Ledra is a Dragon Horse, with a dished forehead and long, delicate legs; she is graceful and kind, intelligent and compassionate. She means what she does with every fiber of her being. I admire her certainty, and strive to have what she has: The knowledge that she is right every second, every moment, of every day. Ledra is right because she is right; I will not be any less. I will not be as some businessmen are and trick myself into thinking I know everything, I will be honest with myself, and learn everything, so I may then be right in every aspect of my life and my business.
I must not dream, I must not be distracted. This business is our life, my family knows no other trade, and most of my sisters are too young to survive without a livelihood. And if we attract the attention of a noble house, my family will be happy. And that is all that matters to me.
(As said before, Rhys is a dreamer and an adventurer. In her secret heart of hearts, she wants nothing more than to ride her horse at a full gallop away from Dragon Horse Farm and never return, but she does not allow herself to think such thoughts, and her secret heart of hearts remains hidden even to her. )
History: My life begins and ends with a Dragon Horse. My first memory is watching Ledra’s dam, a mare named Kilka, gallop across the pasture toward my father. Her daughter takes after her, Kilka was liver chestnut, long-legged, and profoundly graceful, with big, sensitive eyes, and an expressive face. She was not yet a broodmare at the time, but an exhibition horse, and was easily the most beautiful on the farm.
Time passed. Mother had Sian and Tancy and Mik, and Father would take me to the stables to get me out of the house. I was not allowed to ride the high-spirited Dragon Horses at first, but I could brush them, and braid their spidersilk-fine manes and tails. Father saw I soothed spooked horses, and made friends with mares and their foals, and gave me a little pony named Fiend. I thought a Fiend was a type of flower, and thought it a lovely name at the time, but a stable hand soon taught me what the word meant, and I realized it suited. Fiend was a fiend in every since of the word, with a stubborn streak to challenge my own, and a hardheadedness to make the most determined blanch. I adored her. We got along famously. By the time Mother had Darcy and Shona, Father was bringing Sian and Tancy and Mik down to the stables, and while they liked riding, they never loved it like I did, and Fiend never liked them one bit.
In time, father let me on the smaller Cobs and some mild-tempered Light Horses, and progressively gave me less and less trained mounts, and would let me exhibit them at the horse fair. By the time I was ten I took a foal from halter breaking to the long line, and a three-year-old from the long line to his first day under saddle and beyond. When I was eleven, Father let me sit on a Dragon Horse, and I fell in love with them all over again. They are not smooth mounts, but they are brave, intelligent, and learn quicker than humans, and the power in their gallop is the strongest force in Olencia. I watched and learned at exhibitions the maneuvers needed for warhorses used in the High Houses, and found I could quickly train our Dragon Horses to them. Most people cannot teach Dragon horses, they are picky about who they choose to listen to, but they chose me. They and I understood each other, I know them, and they know me. Our minds and bodies connect on some level, and I know what they need, and they know what I want, and we do amazing things together.
Just like that.
I said my life ended with a Dragon Horse. It does. When Sian, Tancy, Mik, Darcy, Shona, Yoki, Ninh, and Uris were old enough to look after themselves and help our mother in the house, Father gave me Kilka’s final foal: Ledra. I was there when she was born, I halter broke her, weaned her, and trained her to stand for the Ferrier. I put her on a long line, was the first person to sit on her back, and I trained her more thoroughly than any other horse has ever been trained. She is mine, I am hers, and that is my life, our life, so far.
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Out of Character: Hello, it’s nice to meet you all! To be perfectly honest and up front about my capabilities as an RPer, I haven’t done too terribly much role playing, but that was largely due to the RPGs I ran into being rather simplistic and contrived. I saw this RPG advertised on Sheroes, and thought I’d take a look. I like the emphasis you’ve put on detail and character-building, it looks as though this could be a very interesting community! I like to write, I like detail, and I like RPGs, but I’m not yet considered an advanced player. Regardless, I’ve gotten the hang of things quickly in the past, and I will readily correct any behaviors you all find inappropriate or undesirable. I may ask some questions for the first few days, but I will stop pestering people shortly thereafter!
I understand RPing will be carried out in the third person and past tense, and I can do that (I can submit another sample of writing if you wish), but I rather liked writing Rhys in first person for the initial introduction. It was fun!