Post by redwerecat on May 5, 2010 2:49:44 GMT -5
Name: Dr. Sasha Drakov
Age: 37 years
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Disinterested, but decidedly homosexual.
Appearance: Tall, thin, and decidedly serious. Minus the stereotypical lab coat all scientists wear at some point, he is generally seen wearing a yellow-and-orange striped sweater, and a dark green overcoat and matching pants. He has a pair of snazzy shoes, and he never removes his red-tinted glasses or his leather gloves; he's actually slightly paranoid and dislikes contact with others, physically or emotionally. (And...he's something of a germophobe, unless it's something he's studying.)
He has dark brown eyes, but you'll never see them, and his skin is rather pale. Stark black hair is left short because it's easier, though he tends to make it look pretty good. Not unattractive, he's handsome in a sort of distant way, though he doesn't really pay much heed to appearance other than to look professional. He tends to judge people not on their personality at first, but their appearance; you look slovenly, he'll almost instantly rank you low.
He has a terrible love of tea of all sorts, though he prefers black tea prepared with milk and honey, or occasionally, spiked with alcohol depending on the day he's had. He's also a nicotine addict and a chain smoker, something he knows he should stop but that he's never cared enough to give effort to.
Personality-wise, he's cold and distant, at least on the outside. He prefers to keep his personal life and private separate, and though many regard him as cruel or emotionless, he is not. He just sees no use in purposeless whining when there is work to be done. He DOES realize humans have emotions, though, and he's relatively adept at reading people, though he tends to not let on he feels anything like sympathy.
A man who stresses control and orderliness, who's methodical and calculating about approaching an assignment or project. He'll have not only a plan of attack, but multiple contingency plans and fallback scenarios based on his assessment of the junctures in the plan most likely to fail.
He's less good at thinking on his feet, but it would be a mistake to assume this means he goes to pieces if his plans all go wrong. After all, Drakov is all about control, and to break down in the middle of an experiment -- or at any other time, really -- would be an unacceptable loss of control. While Sasha probably wouldn't try to improvise something to completion, he'd never let them see him sweat, and his last-ditch approach would be to keep his head, take in as much information on what went wrong and why as he retreated, and fall back to somewhere to rebuild.
If he has a weakness, it's overconfidence brought on by his certainty that every last detail is accounted for. The one thing that tends to throw a wrench in his carefully-laid plans most consistently? Human emotion. He quite regularly fails to account for the power of anger or love when dealing with others.
Picture: Drakov
((Not entirely accurate, but it will do.))
History: Sasha is a Russian-born man, living and working his entire life there, and not having much of a very interesting past but to state he was in the middle of the Cold War as a child. Really, he was never truly affected, as he wasn't the type to stir up trouble.
But his mind is sharp, and cunning, and he very easily worked his way through school. Barring some trouble with bullies who liked to torment him about an ill-spoken comment about having a crush on another boy in his teens, Sasha was not a troublemaker. (Though the bullies who found dead sparrows nailed to their desks pointed all fingers at Sasha, no one could prove anything, so that incident doesn't technically exist on his record. But no one ever tried to tease him about his preferences for the rest of his school career.)
He always knew what he wanted to do, and it wasn't hard for him to get any job he liked at most of the research facilities in the country. He became somewhat well-known for his research into forced and triggered genetic mutations (he was trying to study evolution, and to predict the next stage of humanity/other species through genetic manipulation, mostly in dogs), though some called his practices inhumane, and he was forced to shut down a certain number of his experiments. (Similar to the heated debate on the humanity of stem-cell research, or many other techniques.) Still, he never truly was the sort to be inhumane to his subjects (mostly animals, and willing and well-informed human volunteers) and he never did anything cruel, to be sure. (At least not that the Russian Government is going to let you know. ._.)
He actually even kept one of the dogs that his laboratory was using, a Malamute named Yanni. Yanni is your standard black-and-white, blue-eyed malamute, though he was from stock being bred to hopefully trigger a mutation allowing the breed to survive extreme conditions, so his fur is thicker and longer than normal, and he's got a thick layer of fat under his skin for the same reason. That, and Sasha spoils him.
A well-off scientist with a strict preference for genetics, biology, and the study of mutations and effects of chemicals and genetic manipulation on organisms. His original reason for making it to Pern was simple, and very much the same as many others. The good doctor found a strange egg near the laboratory he was working at, picked it up, and immediately realized it wasn't anything Terran in origin. A bit of study proved it to be reptilian, so he secreted it away to an incubation tank in his personal lab, and waited to see what would hatch.
A dragon was NOT what he'd expected. But he was delighted to have made a discovery of such magnitude, and though he was prepared to reveal the beast, which he'd rather whimsically named 'Euclid', he found himself stopped by the head of his research facility, and a strange man with an equally strange name. F'lar was... not thrilled with Sasha's attitude, but they worked out an agreement; Sasha would be allowed to go to Pern to study dragons, firelizards, whers, and other Pernese species, and in return, he was to take a position at the newly-established Earth Weyrs with the knowledge he had and his experience, hopefully to help cure/fix the defects affecting the dragons there.
Unfortunately, that didn't go as planned. Sasha managed to get on a lot of people's nerves, and many of the dragons found his insistence on testing them and taking samples annoying and needless; why bother with science when they'd done so well alone in the past? Still, he was given a place with the Dragonhealers at Telgar, and he continued to study the creatures.
His life got really weird when he was invited to observe a Wher's clutch hatching. (There was no dragon clutch at Telgar right then, so he was hoping to study the Whers and then later compare notes if he got a chance to observe a hatching.)
The clutch seemed to hatch fine, with the whermother her typical snappy and judgmental self. Sasha got to see a young man Impress his blue where partner, and see a small girl almost effortlessly bond a gold hatchling. But the oddity was in the one egg left unhatched; it was larger, easily matching that of a gold or bronze egg, though it was pale and sickly-looking. The whermother seemed displeased with it, and all assembled assumed it was a dead egg.
Sasha, being himself, had to go take a look. He was terrified when the shell split into thousands of cracks, and a deep wailing cry emanated from within. The egg shattered, and a huge wher hatchling fell forward, knocking Sasha prone. The beast snarled at him, regarded him for a moment, then so very delicately nipped his neck and lapped away a single drop of blood. Then Sashask was in his mind. Seeming unsure, it cried out for food, a request Sasha was confused on, but more than happy to obey.
Then he noticed the onlookers' pale faces and horrified expressions. Sashask was in no way normal, and even those who had a fondness for whers seemed to turn away in fear and loathing. A rider passing by even suggested killing the wher out of mercy, but the bond was made and Sasha found himself protesting; it wasn't Sashask's fault. The white wher's defects were far beyond the norm, and the Telgar weyrleaders nearly immediately sent him and Sashask away, to Rocky, the only place the pair might be accepted.
Though many are horrified by the sheer wrong-ness of the wher, Sasha himself finds it to be good company, and sees no reason to shun the creature. He knows it wasn't the wher's fault it was created the way it was, and he refuses to think it would have been better to let it die; every creature deserves to chance survival, he thinks.
Wanted Firelizard Color: Blue, since we need plenty more o' them.
Wanted Wher Color: White, if it's still available? (I'm writing for a white, but it can easily be changed.) Otherwise, female?
Wher Defect/Injury: HEH. It's a monstrosity of the highest caliber.
White Sashask:
Technically classified by Sasha as a genetic malformation, the hulking behemoth of a creature is more commonly referred to as a 'maggotlike freak of nature.' A sickly pale white in color, it does indeed resemble a maggot. The wher is easily the size of a gold or a bronze, both in structure and in girth. Similar to Surth, this white was born huge, though while Surth is hale and healthy, this creature is not. Even a healthy white dragon's hide reflects the other colors naturally; the wher's seems dull and ill by comparison.
First, there's it's bulk. It seems obese at first glance, fleshy and bulbous in all areas, with a thick neck and stocky limbs with folds of flesh. It's tail it thick and wide, and it is hard for the wher to move, so it frequently drags along behind. Even it's feet are freakish, stumpy limbs with it's two claws sticking out haphazardly and somewhat pigeon-toed. It's face is bizarre too, with a rounded skull at odds with a wher's normal blocky head, and big pale eyes that are far too large for it's face. It's jaws are deformed, snaggletoothed and hard to close, so the wher drools slightly. It's heavy belly drags along the ground all the time, and it frequently has patches of skin or sores from the rough terrain, though it will eventually build a callus for protection. And yet, under the fat lies thick heavy blocks of muscle; make no mistake, this where can seriously mess you up. Still, the overall effect is that of severe steroid abuse covered by obesity wrapped in a sharpei-dog's skin; a lumpy, misshapen creature, wrinkled and malformed.
Second is the true mutation; the wher has no wings, but instead, a second set of forelimbs almost perfectly built. It hardly looks like a mutation until you see a healthy wher. It's shoulders are lumpy and thick, and it's heavy stomach hangs low between it's four forelegs and it's thick, squat hindlegs. Still, the second set of limbs functions perfectly, and it in no way hampers mobility. But the wher's shoulders are bare, and, other than the folds between the dual pair of shoulder blades, there is no indication that the where was ever developing wings.
Third is the odd mental quirk the creature seems to have, like a very strange form of sociopath, though it's really a sort of defense mehcanism; demand respect from everyone since he won't get affection. Better fear and respect than loathing, apparently... Sashask speaks and acts quite normally, but it has a tendency towards domination, and is smart enough to both understand it's size makes it powerful, and it also seems to insist upon queen-like behavior; it acts as if all should hail it, as if it were a gold. If anyone tries to tell it otherwise, it will thrash them soundly and insist it is a true queen. Still, it insists on being the alpha creature, and it may be possible that if another wher runs, Sashask may try to sabotage the run out of anger and a sense of disrespect directed at it. Still, unlike many whites, it feels a pull when a female runs, though it has no interest in mating. It just tends to suck in the emotion (all emotions, really), and whip it back at Sasha for explanation. (Of which Sasha has none.) It cannot comprehend emotion well, other than it's own affection for Sasha, and the distinct disgust it tends to pick up from people around it.
Wanted Firelizard Name: Euclid (Yay?)
Blue Euclid:
Euclid is a perfectly normal-looking flit, and he's actually rather sane. (Besides being actually rather alright with Sashask, that is.) He's somewhat slow, but not badly. He's just very serious in all the things he does. He loves Sasha, and dotes on Sashask like the ugly white demands, so they don't have a problem with eachother.
However, Euclid really gets along much better with Yanni (the Malamute.) They love eachother, and Euclid tails the dog like a second shadow, and they even sleep in the same bed; dog in a curl of fur, Euclid happily perched on top.
Euclid is a deep, rich, midnight blue, with markings of a lovely pale blue tinting his belly, and a bright star-shape on his muzzle like an eight-pointed star.
Canine Yanni:
Yanni is Sasha's malamute. A big male with the classic fluffy coat in the even more classic Husky/Malamute Black and white, with pale blue eyes. He's roughly five years old, and Yanni is the one thing Sasha begged as a privelege to have around the Weyr after he was stationed at Rocky. Currently, Yanni is a bit leery of Sashask, though the dog doesn't mind his person having brought the strange white thing into their family.
But he LOVES Euclid. They got along like family the moment the flitter hatched, and they still act like best buds.
Firelizard age: 2 years
Wher Age: 2 Months
Canine age: 5 years
((I feel like Sashask is a severe freak. I kinda just wanted to throw in something REALLY wrong here, compared to some of the defects already listed. And play with the hexapede mutation while I was at it.
And I don't know why I keep having the urge to refer to it as a She. I dunno. But Whites are technically Male Neuters, right? Damn.))
Age: 37 years
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Disinterested, but decidedly homosexual.
Appearance: Tall, thin, and decidedly serious. Minus the stereotypical lab coat all scientists wear at some point, he is generally seen wearing a yellow-and-orange striped sweater, and a dark green overcoat and matching pants. He has a pair of snazzy shoes, and he never removes his red-tinted glasses or his leather gloves; he's actually slightly paranoid and dislikes contact with others, physically or emotionally. (And...he's something of a germophobe, unless it's something he's studying.)
He has dark brown eyes, but you'll never see them, and his skin is rather pale. Stark black hair is left short because it's easier, though he tends to make it look pretty good. Not unattractive, he's handsome in a sort of distant way, though he doesn't really pay much heed to appearance other than to look professional. He tends to judge people not on their personality at first, but their appearance; you look slovenly, he'll almost instantly rank you low.
He has a terrible love of tea of all sorts, though he prefers black tea prepared with milk and honey, or occasionally, spiked with alcohol depending on the day he's had. He's also a nicotine addict and a chain smoker, something he knows he should stop but that he's never cared enough to give effort to.
Personality-wise, he's cold and distant, at least on the outside. He prefers to keep his personal life and private separate, and though many regard him as cruel or emotionless, he is not. He just sees no use in purposeless whining when there is work to be done. He DOES realize humans have emotions, though, and he's relatively adept at reading people, though he tends to not let on he feels anything like sympathy.
A man who stresses control and orderliness, who's methodical and calculating about approaching an assignment or project. He'll have not only a plan of attack, but multiple contingency plans and fallback scenarios based on his assessment of the junctures in the plan most likely to fail.
He's less good at thinking on his feet, but it would be a mistake to assume this means he goes to pieces if his plans all go wrong. After all, Drakov is all about control, and to break down in the middle of an experiment -- or at any other time, really -- would be an unacceptable loss of control. While Sasha probably wouldn't try to improvise something to completion, he'd never let them see him sweat, and his last-ditch approach would be to keep his head, take in as much information on what went wrong and why as he retreated, and fall back to somewhere to rebuild.
If he has a weakness, it's overconfidence brought on by his certainty that every last detail is accounted for. The one thing that tends to throw a wrench in his carefully-laid plans most consistently? Human emotion. He quite regularly fails to account for the power of anger or love when dealing with others.
Picture: Drakov
((Not entirely accurate, but it will do.))
History: Sasha is a Russian-born man, living and working his entire life there, and not having much of a very interesting past but to state he was in the middle of the Cold War as a child. Really, he was never truly affected, as he wasn't the type to stir up trouble.
But his mind is sharp, and cunning, and he very easily worked his way through school. Barring some trouble with bullies who liked to torment him about an ill-spoken comment about having a crush on another boy in his teens, Sasha was not a troublemaker. (Though the bullies who found dead sparrows nailed to their desks pointed all fingers at Sasha, no one could prove anything, so that incident doesn't technically exist on his record. But no one ever tried to tease him about his preferences for the rest of his school career.)
He always knew what he wanted to do, and it wasn't hard for him to get any job he liked at most of the research facilities in the country. He became somewhat well-known for his research into forced and triggered genetic mutations (he was trying to study evolution, and to predict the next stage of humanity/other species through genetic manipulation, mostly in dogs), though some called his practices inhumane, and he was forced to shut down a certain number of his experiments. (Similar to the heated debate on the humanity of stem-cell research, or many other techniques.) Still, he never truly was the sort to be inhumane to his subjects (mostly animals, and willing and well-informed human volunteers) and he never did anything cruel, to be sure. (At least not that the Russian Government is going to let you know. ._.)
He actually even kept one of the dogs that his laboratory was using, a Malamute named Yanni. Yanni is your standard black-and-white, blue-eyed malamute, though he was from stock being bred to hopefully trigger a mutation allowing the breed to survive extreme conditions, so his fur is thicker and longer than normal, and he's got a thick layer of fat under his skin for the same reason. That, and Sasha spoils him.
A well-off scientist with a strict preference for genetics, biology, and the study of mutations and effects of chemicals and genetic manipulation on organisms. His original reason for making it to Pern was simple, and very much the same as many others. The good doctor found a strange egg near the laboratory he was working at, picked it up, and immediately realized it wasn't anything Terran in origin. A bit of study proved it to be reptilian, so he secreted it away to an incubation tank in his personal lab, and waited to see what would hatch.
A dragon was NOT what he'd expected. But he was delighted to have made a discovery of such magnitude, and though he was prepared to reveal the beast, which he'd rather whimsically named 'Euclid', he found himself stopped by the head of his research facility, and a strange man with an equally strange name. F'lar was... not thrilled with Sasha's attitude, but they worked out an agreement; Sasha would be allowed to go to Pern to study dragons, firelizards, whers, and other Pernese species, and in return, he was to take a position at the newly-established Earth Weyrs with the knowledge he had and his experience, hopefully to help cure/fix the defects affecting the dragons there.
Unfortunately, that didn't go as planned. Sasha managed to get on a lot of people's nerves, and many of the dragons found his insistence on testing them and taking samples annoying and needless; why bother with science when they'd done so well alone in the past? Still, he was given a place with the Dragonhealers at Telgar, and he continued to study the creatures.
His life got really weird when he was invited to observe a Wher's clutch hatching. (There was no dragon clutch at Telgar right then, so he was hoping to study the Whers and then later compare notes if he got a chance to observe a hatching.)
The clutch seemed to hatch fine, with the whermother her typical snappy and judgmental self. Sasha got to see a young man Impress his blue where partner, and see a small girl almost effortlessly bond a gold hatchling. But the oddity was in the one egg left unhatched; it was larger, easily matching that of a gold or bronze egg, though it was pale and sickly-looking. The whermother seemed displeased with it, and all assembled assumed it was a dead egg.
Sasha, being himself, had to go take a look. He was terrified when the shell split into thousands of cracks, and a deep wailing cry emanated from within. The egg shattered, and a huge wher hatchling fell forward, knocking Sasha prone. The beast snarled at him, regarded him for a moment, then so very delicately nipped his neck and lapped away a single drop of blood. Then Sashask was in his mind. Seeming unsure, it cried out for food, a request Sasha was confused on, but more than happy to obey.
Then he noticed the onlookers' pale faces and horrified expressions. Sashask was in no way normal, and even those who had a fondness for whers seemed to turn away in fear and loathing. A rider passing by even suggested killing the wher out of mercy, but the bond was made and Sasha found himself protesting; it wasn't Sashask's fault. The white wher's defects were far beyond the norm, and the Telgar weyrleaders nearly immediately sent him and Sashask away, to Rocky, the only place the pair might be accepted.
Though many are horrified by the sheer wrong-ness of the wher, Sasha himself finds it to be good company, and sees no reason to shun the creature. He knows it wasn't the wher's fault it was created the way it was, and he refuses to think it would have been better to let it die; every creature deserves to chance survival, he thinks.
Wanted Firelizard Color: Blue, since we need plenty more o' them.
Wanted Wher Color: White, if it's still available? (I'm writing for a white, but it can easily be changed.) Otherwise, female?
Wher Defect/Injury: HEH. It's a monstrosity of the highest caliber.
White Sashask:
Technically classified by Sasha as a genetic malformation, the hulking behemoth of a creature is more commonly referred to as a 'maggotlike freak of nature.' A sickly pale white in color, it does indeed resemble a maggot. The wher is easily the size of a gold or a bronze, both in structure and in girth. Similar to Surth, this white was born huge, though while Surth is hale and healthy, this creature is not. Even a healthy white dragon's hide reflects the other colors naturally; the wher's seems dull and ill by comparison.
First, there's it's bulk. It seems obese at first glance, fleshy and bulbous in all areas, with a thick neck and stocky limbs with folds of flesh. It's tail it thick and wide, and it is hard for the wher to move, so it frequently drags along behind. Even it's feet are freakish, stumpy limbs with it's two claws sticking out haphazardly and somewhat pigeon-toed. It's face is bizarre too, with a rounded skull at odds with a wher's normal blocky head, and big pale eyes that are far too large for it's face. It's jaws are deformed, snaggletoothed and hard to close, so the wher drools slightly. It's heavy belly drags along the ground all the time, and it frequently has patches of skin or sores from the rough terrain, though it will eventually build a callus for protection. And yet, under the fat lies thick heavy blocks of muscle; make no mistake, this where can seriously mess you up. Still, the overall effect is that of severe steroid abuse covered by obesity wrapped in a sharpei-dog's skin; a lumpy, misshapen creature, wrinkled and malformed.
Second is the true mutation; the wher has no wings, but instead, a second set of forelimbs almost perfectly built. It hardly looks like a mutation until you see a healthy wher. It's shoulders are lumpy and thick, and it's heavy stomach hangs low between it's four forelegs and it's thick, squat hindlegs. Still, the second set of limbs functions perfectly, and it in no way hampers mobility. But the wher's shoulders are bare, and, other than the folds between the dual pair of shoulder blades, there is no indication that the where was ever developing wings.
Third is the odd mental quirk the creature seems to have, like a very strange form of sociopath, though it's really a sort of defense mehcanism; demand respect from everyone since he won't get affection. Better fear and respect than loathing, apparently... Sashask speaks and acts quite normally, but it has a tendency towards domination, and is smart enough to both understand it's size makes it powerful, and it also seems to insist upon queen-like behavior; it acts as if all should hail it, as if it were a gold. If anyone tries to tell it otherwise, it will thrash them soundly and insist it is a true queen. Still, it insists on being the alpha creature, and it may be possible that if another wher runs, Sashask may try to sabotage the run out of anger and a sense of disrespect directed at it. Still, unlike many whites, it feels a pull when a female runs, though it has no interest in mating. It just tends to suck in the emotion (all emotions, really), and whip it back at Sasha for explanation. (Of which Sasha has none.) It cannot comprehend emotion well, other than it's own affection for Sasha, and the distinct disgust it tends to pick up from people around it.
Blue Euclid:
Euclid is a perfectly normal-looking flit, and he's actually rather sane. (Besides being actually rather alright with Sashask, that is.) He's somewhat slow, but not badly. He's just very serious in all the things he does. He loves Sasha, and dotes on Sashask like the ugly white demands, so they don't have a problem with eachother.
However, Euclid really gets along much better with Yanni (the Malamute.) They love eachother, and Euclid tails the dog like a second shadow, and they even sleep in the same bed; dog in a curl of fur, Euclid happily perched on top.
Euclid is a deep, rich, midnight blue, with markings of a lovely pale blue tinting his belly, and a bright star-shape on his muzzle like an eight-pointed star.
Canine Yanni:
Yanni is Sasha's malamute. A big male with the classic fluffy coat in the even more classic Husky/Malamute Black and white, with pale blue eyes. He's roughly five years old, and Yanni is the one thing Sasha begged as a privelege to have around the Weyr after he was stationed at Rocky. Currently, Yanni is a bit leery of Sashask, though the dog doesn't mind his person having brought the strange white thing into their family.
But he LOVES Euclid. They got along like family the moment the flitter hatched, and they still act like best buds.
Firelizard age: 2 years
Wher Age: 2 Months
Canine age: 5 years
((I feel like Sashask is a severe freak. I kinda just wanted to throw in something REALLY wrong here, compared to some of the defects already listed. And play with the hexapede mutation while I was at it.
And I don't know why I keep having the urge to refer to it as a She. I dunno. But Whites are technically Male Neuters, right? Damn.))
