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icefire_147@yahoo.com

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Back to Wyn:

So, why write an inspiration for Wyn?  Well, for one thing, if Vorkoroth gets one, then shouldn't his rider get one too?  For another thing, Wyn's the character that's probably the most unlike her player in several important areas, so therefore I've had to put some serious thinking into what, exactly, makes her tick.  And for a third and final reason... well, it's my website, and I can waste quota how I see fit, right!  But, on with the insp.

Family:

Father: M'ral, Benden Weyr Wingleader, rider of brown Bneth, former Healer, weyrmated to Eidwyn.
Mother: Eidwyn:  Benden Weyr Resident, weyrmated to M'ral.
Full Siblings: Older brother Morallen (PC) and younger twin sisters, (NPC)
Half-Siblings: Kerf, Adelheid and Xelsey (PC), 17 others (NPC) 

Description:

Thick brown hair frames a heart-shaped face, falling in a gentle wave to just brush her shoulders. Grey eyes appraise the world calmly, although a dry humour often lurks in their depths. The young woman is slim and petite, height rising to a mere 5' 4, with a smooth complexion of olive skin, for the most part free of the lumps and bumps present in many of her age. While delicate in form, she is possessed of a quiet strength, which manifests itself in every movement, although she rarely raises her voice above a low and mellow alto, and travels with sure grace on silent feet.   

Name Inspiration:

Miralwyn...  First off, I tend to unconsciously give my characters names with three syllables.  Lie-san-a, A-lo-ree, Mor-a-llen.  Like that.   Secondly, I wanted a name that would suit the character I had in mind.  Miralwyn, to my ears is a beautiful name, but one that's calm and quiet as well.  'Wyn' comes from the Welsh term for 'white', if I recall correctly.  White being a symbol of mercy, as well as purity, I thought it apt for a Healer character, who I initially wasn't planning to have Searched at all.

Description Inspiration:

Wyn is a little bit of me, I'll freely admit it.  She's shorter than I am, and our eyes are different colours, but build, skin tone, hair... that's definitely me.  I wanted a description for her that fit her mental qualities of calm, quiet, and a deep strength.  I also wanted a description that would work well for a bookworm.

Mental Qualities:

Wyn obviously not being possessed of such a nifty thing as a mindvoice, I thought I'd scare you all with a look into what her mind would be like.  It's... an interesting place, Wyn's head is.  She's highly intelligent, probably Liesana's rival for the smartest one of my characters.  And like all my characters, no matter their actual brain power, she's got a quick mind.  I've tried playing thick-as-mud characters, and it just doesn't work for me, for anything more than NPC's.    Vorkoroth, being able to tap into her thoughts as he wills, is treated to a mindscape akin to an interstate highway, with piles and piles of thoughts buzzing along at a good 90 to 100, barring any sleep-induced traffic jams.   She's keenly analytical: the old nickname of The Vulcan Healer is spot on there.  But she's really not as emotionless as she'd like everyone to think.  No, inside that skull is a bright and lively person with a taste for pranks, puns, limericks, and other horrible things, as well as a capacity to be vulnerable that she keeps hidden at almost any cost.

Scent:

Well, clearly after she's been flying Fall, you don't want to be smelling my girl Wyn.  But if she's in her natural state of immaculately clean, she carries the faint scent of redwort and a slight, natural aroma of citrus and sun-warmed skin.  Wyn never wears perfumes.

Physicalities:

Wyn is petite.  She probably weighs about 100 pounds soaking wet, and as such, she's never going to be winning any weight lifting competitions.  But she's as fit as only 2 full turns with a dragon can leave one, and is comfortable with tossing around fully loaded bags of firestone, even if she'd likely be pulled from her seat by the weight, if it weren't for her riding harness.  She's always been in good shape, even while at Healer Hall, simply because she takes the very sensible, and typically Wynnish attitude of 'This is the only body I've got, and I'm stuck with the damn thing for the next 70 turns'.

She's also quite well coordinated, and is a surprisingly good dancer.  Surprising because, with her mannerisms, it would take a brave man indeed to ask her out on the floor.   Her hands are quite deft, as befits an ex-Healer, and she gives an excellent backrub.

Personality:

She can kill with a smile,
She can wound with her eyes.
And she can ruin your faith with her casual lies.
And she only reveals what she wants you to see.
Yeah, she hides like a child
But she's always a woman to me.

She can lead you to love
She can take you or leave you
She can ask for the truth, but she'll never believe you
And she'll take what you give her, as long as it's free.
Yeah, she steals like a thief
But she's always a woman to me.


Oh, she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time.
Oh, and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind.

And she'll promise you more 
Than the Garden of Eden
And she'll carelessly cut you and laugh while you're bleedin'
But she'll bring out the best and the worst you can be.
Blame it all on yourself, 
'Cause she's always a woman to me.

Oh, she takes care of herself,
She can wait if she wants.
She's ahead of her time.
Oh, and she never gives out
And she never gives in.
She just changes her mind.

She is frequently kind
And she's suddenly cruel
But she can do as she pleases; she's nobody's fool.
And she can't be convicted, she's earned her reprieve
And the most she will do is throw shadows at you,
But she's always a woman to me.

-Billy Joel, 'She's Always A Woman (To me)'

Now here's where it gets interesting.  Wyn is far too sane to have split personalities, but the Outer Wyn, that the world sees, and the Inner Wyn, that only her close friends and family know, are almost two different people.

Outwardly, she's cool, intelligent, impervious to insult or anger, and generally possessed of a calm dispassion that a Vulcan or a Jedi Master would sell their mother for.  She's almost appallingly confident in knowledge of her strengths and weaknesses, and the addition of a Mindhealer trainee's knowledge of the human psyche has really only helped to increase her rather-frightening-at-times reserve.  She's not given to displaying excess emotion of any sort, although she does permit a bit of her warped sense of humour out to play.  Wyn is not a robot, after all.

Inwardly, however, while still striving towards logic and reason, we have a Wyn who's much more hot blooded then you'd think.  She's rather Jedi, in her moral codes, seeking to serve others as best she can, and almost religiously trying to stick to her Healer's Oath, even though she no longer officially has to keep it.   She's a perfectionist, and has a tendency to become angry with herself if she somehow fails to measure up to the standards she sets for herself.   Should she fail in some endeavour or another, she'll be one to beat herself up far more than any outsider could ever manage.  She might expect a lot from others, but she expects the most from herself.

Honour is a real watchword for her, and should someone attempt to get her to break her word, or try to get her involved in something not honourable, they'll get to see the side of Wyn that very rarely comes out to play: Anger.  But even when red hot mad, Wyn never completely loses her ability to think, to plot, or to plan.   But perhaps what's frightening about an angered Wyn is the suddenness with which she can snap from bland to blazing.  There's not many warning signs given off before she blows. 

She also expects others to act with honour, especially those in positions of power or respect.  One particularly quick trigger for her wrath is if she catches some hapless lecher like N'sync attempting to seduce young girls.  Or boys, for that matter.  Because Wyn herself was introduced to sex at such a young age, and the fallout of that liaison was what triggered her to develop her shell to hide behind, it's a sensitive subject.  She survived, but she knows she lost a lot of her ability to trust and she'd rather not see anyone else go through that.   

Another watchword for her is Duty.  To Wyn, life as a Healer was, and life as a Dragonrider is about service to others.  She considers that ideal to be as close to sacred as a Pernese can get.  Wyn might be labled a workaholic, or someone unable to ever take a break, but that's only because she takes her job so seriously, and perhaps has a little trouble letting others take her share of responsibility at times.   Heaven help her should she have to recover from a serious scoring some time.  And here we find the second trigger for Wyn:  Willfully slacking off.   Should she catch someone in her wing slacking, she'll no doubt report them to their wingleader or wingseconds straight off... after tearing them a new asshole herself, and chain of command be damned. 

What else about Wyn?  Well, she's a bit anal-retentive.  

'A place for everything, and everything in it's place' 

could well be found engraved on the back of her brain.  Along with other aphorisms like 

'Anything worth doing is worth doing well'. 

Finally,  Wyn knows her limits... and enjoys pushing them.  There's a carefully hidden adrenaline junkie in there somewhere, and that person come out to play when there's snow on the ground and the time is right for some Extreme Sledding on the local mountainsides.  I also have a feeling that Mudslide Wing's passion for surfing will suit her admirably.

Flights (Wink wink, nudge nudge):

Ah, now here's where we come to the part where Wyn most wildly diverges from her player.  Her sexual mores.  About the only thing we have in common is that we're both heterosexual. Oh, don't worry, I'll keep the juicy details to myself.

Well, first off, let's get actual mating flights out of the way.  Wyn's weyrbred.  She's the daughter of a brownrider.  Wyn, on her own time, is straight, but she's been immersed in the idea that mating flights are the dragons, not their riders, from the time she could toddle, so she's never going to be the sort to spazz out at the sight of who she wakes up beside, or worry about fallout from the flight.  This may occasionally get her labeled as heartless or cold, but really it's just a safety mechanism for her sanity.

Now, as for the rest of the time...  I created Wyn with the idea of a weyrbred character that was neither a traumatized virgin 'nor a whore, to put it bluntly. ;-)  Those seem to to be popular stereotypes, and I enjoy turning them on their ear.  I also had the phrase 'Sex is not love, and love is not sex' occur to me.  But I decided to look at it from another angle than the one it usually defines. (The idiocy of folks using 'love' simply to justify having  sex.  I happen to agree with that interpretation, m'self.)  Instead, I thought: "What about a character who can see that they are separate, but is still perfectly happy with flings and one night stands?"  But I didn't want a shallow character.  So I tried to give Wyn a history that would justify those views.  I think she might be deluding herself a little bit, but she doesn't know that yet! 

So we have Wyn.  Her take on love is that it's too dangerous an emotion for her, and she'll just stick to casual flings.  To that end, Wyn's strategies are almost stereotypical-male.  She's predator rather than prey, will take looks and skill over personality (After all, she's just going to give them their walking papers in the morning.), and isn't the least troubled by feelings of guilt for abandoning the traditional, virginal role for young women.   Perhaps unconsciously, she tends to seek out men that she wouldn't want to have a relationship with, either out of some warped desire to show Lothario-types that she can do the leaving, or to further insulate herself from falling in love.

On the other hand, should Wyn actually fall for someone again, you can be pretty sure that it'll be the real thing, and not just a passing fancy 'cause they're good in bed, a la Harlequin Romance.

So, there you have Wyn, probably way more than you ever wanted to know about her.  Enjoy.