A Bit About You
Your Name ∙ Amity.
Chatango Username ∙ Yammity.
Contact Information ∙ AIM - JuxtaposedMinds@gmail.com
Time Zone ∙ UTC/GMT +11
How You Found Us ∙ Word of mouth
Introductions
Character’s Name ∙ Naylan Fray. Fray for short
Age ∙ 32
Birthdate ∙ 24th April
Gender ∙ Male
Residing ∙ He has a home in the High fields district, Corus. It is certainly not luxurious, but it has the necessary things that make it a home – kitchen and sitting room for example. He doesn’t spend a lot of time there. He’s pretty much there only to sleep. He chooses not to live at the Palace; instead he walks to work from Highfields every day.
Character Type ∙ Palace staff
Occupation ∙ Master Falconer, at the Palace. He’s responsible for the care and training of the hawks and the birds that some Knights, members of the guard and members of the army use. He is also responsible for the hunting birds, and the birds of prey that are part of the Palace’s menagerie. Twice a year Naylan spends a week in the forest catching birds. It will then take him weeks, even months to train the birds to be handled by humans, and yet still keep their predatory instincts. It’s also his job to oversee the other falconers who work at the palace.
Mindset
Sexual Orientation ∙ Hetrosexual
Overall Personality ∙ Naylan takes pride in the fact that he is very much his own man. He’s independent, and able to make his own decision regarding his own life. He wouldn’t allow it to be any other way. He loves the fact that he is so free to do what he wants, and to do what makes him happy. He does not take it for granted, but makes the most of it. He is content with his lot in life. At the moment, it is just him, his job and his birds. He loves children, especially small children. Though, the only children he really gets to spend time with are pages, squires and curious children from noble families. His love of children coupled with sporadic bouts of intense loneliness; sometimes make him wish that he had a wife and family.
He is so self-aware, confident and comfortable in whom he is that he is able to mix with anyone, of any gender, of any race. He doesn’t feel belittled when talking to nobleman, and he doesn’t feel superior when talking to the palace slaves. While he is not necessarily a social butterfly, he is able to start and maintain a conversation with just about anybody. He is one of those strong, quiet types, who are not necessarily in tune with their own feelings, let alone other people’s feelings. Naylan is generally uncomfortable expressing his own emotions, and unsure of how to express or convey affection to humans beings. But, he cares deeply for those close to him. He is more likely to express himself through action, rather than words.
Naylan is methodical and motivated when it comes to his work. He’s a firm believer in the adage of why give a job to someone else, when you are able to do it yourself. He is more comfortable working alone, but is also able to participate as a fully functioning member of a team. He works long hours and expends huge amounts of energy and passion in his work, but it is what he considers to be rewarding work. Because of this, he doesn’t often acknowledge his contribution or successes. He sees them as part of the natural fulfilment of his work.
He’s a perfectionist, he’s passionate and he’s driven and he expects that from those who work with him or underneath him. He has a habit of bringing his work home with him. He’ll often bring home an injured fledgling that needs twenty four hour care, and he has a pet bird which he hand reared from a fledgling. People outside of the palace tend to fear a bird of that size, so she doesn’t often accompany him on his wanderings around the city.
Given his job, Naylan loves anything to do with the outdoors. He has a particular affection for birds, and an attraction to the kind of freedom that a bird represents. He does not see training the birds as stripping them of their freedom, but simply utilizing their abilities and allying birds and humans for a justifiable purpose. When not working, Naylan spends his free time wandering the city and experiencing and exploring the different districts. He only returns to his home in the Highfields district to sleep.
Naylan is generally a serious person when it comes to his job. While he has a tendency to take his work seriously, he also has an off-beat, wacky sense of humour, and he can be a lot of fun when the situation calls for it. He is not comfortable in breaking the established rules or laws, but he is not inflexible. He will break the rules and laws if he is able to see a very good reason for stepping outside of them. He is not a fighter, it does not mean that he’s a coward or incapable of or unwilling to protect himself. It’s just that he prefers to live a peaceful life. He also prefers to live a simple life. He doesn’t like pomp and splendour, which is why he refuses to officially live at the palace.
Reflection
Height ∙ He stands at around 5’10.
Overall Appearance ∙ Naylan’s hair is a light brown in colour and styled into long dreadlocks, which he will never be rid of. They reach down to the middle of his back. In a way, they are similar to tree roots in appearance. He does care for them. He washes his hair meticulously once a week at the very least, and frequently oils his dreadlocks. His eyes are deep set and hazel in colour, with flecks of gold. When he needs to keep dread locks out of the way, he ties them up and binds them into a beanie-like hat. They are framed in medium length eye lashes. His eyes have a tendency of betraying his emotions. They’re not unlike a window to his soul.
He has a long oval shaped face, with heavy set cheek bones that add shape to his features. He has a long forehead, though this is due to his dreadlocks. His nose, while being straight, borders on being large, but it does not look out of place with his facial features. His lips are thin and wide, with his bottom lip fuller than the top. When he smiles, his smile lines that start from his eyes and spread across his cheeks down to his mouth, appear. He really does have a great smile.
He is fit looking in the body. While he is not overly muscley, he is strong. Naylan has a lot of upper body strength, which comes from his work. To handle big birds he needs to be strong in the upper body. In his lower body he lacks hips. His body shape seems to be straight lines, there’s very little definition at his hips. His legs are strong, and fit, all muscle and no fat. He walks a lot, which keeps him in shape. He has several beak and claw shaped scars on his hands, wrists and arms from accidents at work.
Clothing wise, whether it be summer or winter, he lives in long cotton pants with a belt to hold them on his hips and shirts. In winter he’ll wear an undershirt, but it has to be freezing for him to wear a coat. On his feet, during summer he’ll wear sandals and during winter he’ll wear boots. Often Naylan will wear wrist and arms guards to protect his wrists and arms from the birds that he works with.
Backstory
Family History ∙ The Fray’s do not have a lot of family history. The family are renowned for having strong, independent men and very few women. When the Fray’s have children they’re almost always sons, and rarely daughters. Falconry is also something that runs in the family. Naylan’s grandfather was Head Falconer for the royal family, and his father followed suit.
Family ∙ Naylan has no family left. His mother, Peg, died from complications, three months after he was born. She was a woman of constant ill health, and she never recovered her strength after the birth. While his father, Michael, died from a rampant fever, when Naylan was around twenty five years of age.
Birthplace ∙ Upmarket, Corus. His mother had lived with her father in Upmarket for most of her life. When he passed on from old age, Michael and Peg moved in. Upmarket seemed the best place to live given Peg's fragile health.
Background ∙ Peg was a woman of constant ill health, while Michael was a strong, virulent, independent young man. There’s no secret that there was little real love between the two. They had little in common, with lust as the exception, and only actually married because she fell pregnant with Naylan and had little prospects of making enough money on her own to support herself and a baby. Hence, Naylan was born into a family with little love between his parents. However, they both loved him enormously, which actually made them a family for the short time that they were together.
Peg did not recover from the birth, and she died three months later. From then on, Naylan was raised by his father. He had a good, normal childhood. He was educated in a fashion, by his father, he made friends, and he lived life like the regular boy that he was. From about the age of five he started going to work with his father every now and then. He fell in love with the job and with the birds. His father recognised his love for them and started teaching him the craft. He started small, by encouraging and helping Naylan hand rear fledgling crows, starlings and little birds. And, by teaching Naylan how to read and write with the help of the other falconers.
At twelve, Naylan started working as an apprentice falconer at the Palace, under the guidance of his father. Still, he was not allowed to work with the larger birds until he was fourteen years of age. He absorbed everything that his father had to teach him, and learned by watching the Palace falconers simply do their jobs. There was a certain thrill and sense of freedom from training birds of prey, and he took to it like a fish to water. When Naylan finished his apprenticeship he stayed on as a falconer for the palace. He worked hard, working long hours and soon gained not only the respect of the falconers, but also the respect of the people he trained the birds for.
When Naylan was twenty five years of age his father fell ill with a rampant fever. Despite the healers best efforts it completely wracked his body, and after a week he succumbed to it. Michael’s death hit Naylan hard. It had always been Naylan and his father, and now it was only Naylan. Initially, he threw himself completely into his work; working when he should have been sleeping, and eating. Eventually, the falconers forced him to take some time off. So he packed a bag and left for the forest. He spent weeks camped out in the forest. Luckily, it gave him time to grieve and heal, and emerged in a better frame of mind than he had been when he went in.
He sold their house in Prettybone, as it held too many memories for him to live comfortably in, and with the profits, he brought himself a small house in Highfields. He went back to work and while his father had passed on his tools of the trade, Naylan begun to form his own way of doing things. He set an example for the other palace falconers. Birds trained by Naylan Fray were the best trained birds in Tortal. At thirty years of age, he was promoted to Head Falconer. A position that was well deserved.
Sample
Kika, as Naylan had affectionately named her, was a haggard, which meant that she had been captured as an adult by an inexperienced falconer who now lay in the infirmary with claw marks on his face.
He’s lucky to have kept his eye, Naylan thought. He was disappointed in the young falconer. It was a rule in the palace mews that only master falconers were allowed to even attempt capturing haggards. It existed for a reason; to avoid this kind of accident. He would not be without reproof, but Naylan would wait until the lad was on his feet again.
Peering through the cage, Naylan noted the challenge in the gyrfalcon’s huge brown eyes. She had struck before, and she would do it again, of that he had no doubt. She was wild; on top of that, she was enraged. He could understand why. Only a few nights ago she had been free, and now she was behind bars. Naylan couldn’t blame her for lashing out at the human who had taken away her freedom. He set the quill that he carried in his hand to the parchment in order to record Kika’s characteristics. He kept a daily progress journal for all of the birds in his care. She was around twenty four inches in size, which meant that she would have a whopping wingspan of 46 inches. Kika was now the biggest bird in Naylan’s care, and at the moment, the most dangerous. She had a pure white breast and belly, while the rest of her body was white, mottled with brown.
Naylan did not doubt her beauty, but he doubted that he would be able to train her. It would take him months, perhaps even a year to train her. Though, he didn’t balk at the length of time or the difficulty of the task. He had to train her to fly free, to hunt for her handler, and then accept a return to captivity.
The last would be the most difficult, he mused. It was fine to train a haggard to accept captivity, but then to taunt them with a glimpse of the freedom that they once tasted, only to snatch it away from them again, was almost a form of cruelty. For that reason, Naylan did not like training birds caught as adults. But, he would try, it was his job.
The first step was to get her comfortable with humans. Naylan set the parchment and quill aside, and pulled on a pair of thick, leather handler gloves. The gloves would protect his hands from her deadly beak and claws if she chose to lash out at him. The key was to approach as if he was not afraid of her. He bent down and drew a small, dead rabbit out of the hessian bag at his feet. He unlatched the cage door, and swung it open towards him. Kika watched him, her eyes fixed on his every movement. His movements were slow and deliberate as he sat the rabbit on the floor of her cage and drew his hand back, not even flinching or quickening the pace as she snapped at his retreating fingers. As he shut the door of the cage and relatched it, she gave him a look of contempt. He replied with a smile that made his smile lines crinkle.
“Now that wasn’t so bad was it? Next time will be easier.” Naylan tucked the gloves in his pocket, and moved back to sit at the stool opposite the gyrfalcon.
Contract
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Amity This post has been edited by Naylan Fray on Feb 18 2009, 05:47 PM
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