Renin of the Rangers

27

Tall and reed-like, Renin is as swift as a hawk, with senses nearly as keen, or so it is said. However, like the hollow-boned bird, he is fragile if trouble catches up to him. He relies on his speed, agility and endurance, as well as his sharp scouting skills, to keep him out of trouble. If he does find himself in a physical confrontation, he is overpowered by mostly anything more dangerous than the average human, although he does carry a hunting knife as a last resort. Renin prefers to use his trusty composite bow or a long-range rifle before things can get close enough for that.

Though he would be called beautiful in another place, in another time, in Myar Renin prefers to hide his pristine features beneath his hood--some consider him un-manly, even cowardly, for his ability to keep himself whole and unmarred despite numerous expeditions into the wastes. More than one fellow ranger resents him for the times when they had to confront threats more directly while Renin was able to flee or keep his distance and thus avoid injury. Yet there is also a grudging acknowledgment that he is a solid addition to any ranging party.

Renin is known to be solitary and withdrawn, not necessarily anti-social, but rarely seeking out more company than comes to him by circumstance. He is calm, ruthless, and calculated in the field.... so long as the situation remains under control. The things he has seen in the wastes have stuck with him, and while they remain suppressed normally, extreme scenarios can bring those memories to the fore and cause Renin to panic, which usually results in him fleeing with abandon. Fortunately for him, all such incidents so far have been horror scenes from which none could blame him for escaping from, so he has never been disciplined for merely preserving his own life, but he lives with survivor's guilt all the same.

Renin came to the hermit communities five years ago, remaining tight-lipped about his background other than to simply say that he was "from the wastes," that he had "seen things," and that he "was a survivor." He met and assisted a ranging party who were far from the mountains and running out of food, showing them how to flush out scrabble-legged waste moles to live on until they could make it back home. In exchange for his aid and in recognition of his talents, he was granted entrance and citizenship, upon which he immediately undertook the Path of the Ranger to which he was so clearly suited. Though he is not a great leader or a mighty warrior, Renin has always been a loyal ranger, and none have yet had any reason to doubt him despite his origins as an outsider.

Renin still feels like an outsider to an extent which informs his tendency for social isolation. This was in turn be part of his motivation to volunteer for the mission, as he doesn't have a family or any close relations that he is parting with, and he knows there are some who would be happy to see him gone. Plus there is part of him that would legitimately rather go into space, where he might find something better, than to go into the wastes again.

Corcan of The Caves

42

Corcan is a typical specimen of the mountains; short and broad-shouldered, with ruddy olive skin accentuated by the mauve shades of dirt he is constantly covered in. His eyes and hair are brown, his teeth a dulling yellow-ivory, and his voice a grumbling, hoarse baritone. His features are squat and squareish, from the shape of his frame to the shape of his face, and his eyes are deep-set, as squinted and beady as a mole. He has been bald and bearded for nearly half of his life, preferring to wear a bandana, skullcap, or helmet whenever possible, becoming twice as irate as usual if he is seen as a bald man for more than a few seconds.

His body is a stocky ball of muscle, kept stitched together in an array of scar tissue and furlike hair, with meaty clublike hands almost constantly balled into fists. Corcan does not bear the healed wounds of a soldier or even the cauliflowered ears of a pugilist, though his lifetime of strife is visible in his muscles and the historied industrial accidents Myar's mines have left on his body -- Namely, his missing left pinky finger and missing right leg, which has been replaced just below the knee with a peg leg and rectangular chunk of wood cut vaguely into the shape of a foot. Aside from his lifetime of working in tight conditions, hard-drinking, red meat, and pipe smoking, most would agree it is the peg leg that makes Corcan the slowest member of the team.

Corcan is about as gruff and unfriendly as you'd expect a man repaid for a lifetime of toil with a suicide mission to be. He knows he has been sent out to serve a purpose, and while his temper does not keep him from attempting to fulfill his purpose, it does put him at ends with the crew, who he essentially believes to be young, hesitant, and inexperienced. For all his boasting, the mines scratched out of the mountain caves host some of Myar's most terrifying creatures, which is ostensibly the sole reason he believes himself to be better-suited for the task at hand than the rest of the crew. In spite of this experience, he suffers from violent, bed-wetting nightmares centered around the creatures he has seen and had brief interactions with in the caves, a strong sign of weakness he subconsciously covers with a work ethic, a cruel demeanor, and a demand to sleep separately from the rest of the crew.

Corcan was born in a small community at the base of the Craggog Mountains, to one of the lowest castes of hermit colonies; hamlet dwellers who lived by mountain walls and had the most Wastelander interaction, be it trade or invasion, which led them to gradually intermarry over generations. His father was a stonemason whose name was the Wastelander word for Dusk, while his mother was a cart puller whose name roughly translated to "Mossy Log". Their baby, of course, would be given a name that meant "Silty Mud." Indeed, the wall-hermits were far from the living paragons of Myar's cultural advancements, though their life was a simple, honest life. Few were simpler and more honest than Corcan.

Growing up with relatively few paths to choose from, Corcan chose the most intrepid available path to valley hermits -- The Path of Caves. The miners who studied this path considered themselves the unheard backbone of mountain hermit society, a feature which has undoubtedly affected Corcan's view of himself and the world. Because those who follow the path of caves create caves, it is paramount that they study the way mountains form, how cave-ins occur, and how to strip mine entire mountains for ore without creating a sinkhole beneath the mountaintop civilizations. As Corcan would grow older, he would grow more jaded. The Path of Caves, as he had found, hardly ended at proper excavation techniques.

As Corcan and his fellow miners mined deeper into the planet, they would have increasingly strange experiences with the native lifeforms beneath the caves they called "Scratchers" for the strong nails they used to climb up stalagtites. Sometimes, Corcan would only see them in a flash of movement in the corner of his eye, jumping between cave pillars into far-off caverns. Other times, Corcan would turn on his flashlight to find one yards in front of him, hungrily scooping out the chest cavity of a missing miner like a child hollowing a gourd. Corcan's experiences in the mines haunt him, and in a way, leave him thankful for his random selection. Despite the millions of miles between himself and the Scratchers, they still haunt his memory, having now become a full-fledged phobia for the otherwise stalwart, stone-faced miner.

52

Beyer is some what older noticeably tall when compared to most of the mountain folk, with greying hair that is most noticeable in his beard. His hair is long and his face usually has about a week of stubble. His obsession with fixing the crops and learning what he needs for a trip to the void has left him little time for sleep much less shave. Beyond this he is slightly gaunt, thinner than most men his age. This is largely also to blame on his quest for knowledge, forgetting to eat for a whole day is not uncommon for him. However he does still have the longer bones and healthy physique of the "privlaged" class, his father and himself being a medical doctor for many years granted him a slightly better standard of living than many of the other mountain folk.

Beyer is obsessed, among the other scholars he is viewed as someone lost on the path of the mind. During a regular day he will be awake early, as soon as the first artificial lights kick on for the morning mining shifts and farmers and will spend hours working at the failing crops, testing every variable he can think of before giving up in frustration around dinner time. occasionally he will eat and will then pour over books of xeno-biology, biochemistry, and toxicology. Preparing for his inevitable trip to the void, knowing that he may very well be the only one who stands between a toxic atmosphere, or arsenic laced plant and the mission crew. due to this he seems very distant with others, but those who get to know him realize its the only reason he is still sane, he has given his everything for the good of others and cares deeply for them. However it has also crushed him, the failure to fix the problem and desperately searching for a solution out in the void.

Beyer grew up the son of a doctor in the mountain city district Olympus Mons, his father was one of the few surgeons left. This gave Beyer an easy start to life, he grew stonger and smarter than most of the other children in the mountain who all showed varying signs of malnutrition. Olympus Mons had early and harsh crop failure, even when compared to the other mountain cities whos crops where mostly showing only a few signs of degredation. The district collapsed around the time Beyer came to adulthood and finished his training as a doctor, the rapid and crippling crop failures broke the populace abandoned the tunnels of Olympus mons to other areas, some even left for the wastes. Beyer left with the rest of the population and noticed the same crop failures that plagued Olympus Mons. He worked as a sucessful doctor for several years until he noticed the same children with the same malnutrition that his old home did. He quickly abandoned the medical trade for science, it didn't matter if he set a broken bone if the child starved next week.

He spent most of his life as a scientist desperately trying to halt or reverse the degredation, or the Wither as some other researchers called it. It was slower than it was in Olypus mons, but every year there where a little less food and a little more desperation. Nothing he tried, nothing anyone tried slowed or halted the slow failure of the crops. It was nearly 6 months after the scientists had ran out of tests before they informed those in charge that science had nothing. Beyer looked towards the void, he began devouring any text he could find to ensure the mission survival, he became a skilled biochemist in months. Once the mission to the void was announced he personally volenteered on behalf of those on the path of the Mind.

Loria of the Bound

23

Loria is a slender woman of average height, surprisingly healthy even after the most recent years of personal misfortune. Even though she’s somewhat muscled (compared to her former peers), she’s mostly suited to tasks of speed, agility and dexterity but isn’t particularly strong. She does well in (close quarters) combat due to some skill and a fierce demeanour. Her skin tone is naturally a nice tan, but as she is nowadays usually covered in some sort of dust, dirt and/or grime, coupled with her attire and various visible minor wounds, she has an overall rough appearance.
Those who know what to look for would see long thin spider-like fingers, angular facial features and a seemingly innate grace of movement and confidence of posture, all signs of someone born in one of the high castes, but all most see are the signs of a prisoner – a head shorn almost to the point of baldness, the simple but standardized clothing and perhaps the most damning sign; a brand of a runic letter on her left palm (near the base of the thumb) representing her crime (betrayal). She has black hair (what little there is of it), blue-grey eyes and wears dark grey trousers, sleeveless shirt and has a warm cloak for nights or cold days. After being released from imprisonment (to be sent on the Path of the Void), she was given some basic personal equipment and supplies (knife, dagger, backpack with spare clothes, first aid, water flask and such).

Her rather sheltered and mostly happy childhood has given her a solid foundation for good mental health even in adulthood, though she has long since grown out of her initial naivety. Loria retains some of the adventurous, curious and at times thrill-seeking spirit she had displayed in childhood, but those traits have been heavily tempered by her being disillusioned by reality. Her life experiences have shown her that her early good life was just an illusion her father had tried to maintain for them both. At her very core, Loria is now a determined survivalist.
The event that lead to her imprisonment revealed to her that she is quite temperamental under pressure. She suffers from mild insomnia due to her father, mother and ex-fiancé haunting her dreams in various life states (that is, alive, dead, as ghosts and everything in between). The less sleep she gets the more irritable she becomes and even as she curses this weakness, she can’t help but eventually succumb and resort to some sort of violence (preferably in a controlled manner/environment where it would cause least harm). This frustrates Loria particularly because she deeply believes in cooperation, tolerance and patience as the best basis for relationships with other people. Her time in prison made her much less trusting and she is now willing to only make allies, close acquaintances at best, perhaps tentative friendships in extreme and unlikely cases. She is proud of her heritage, but ashamed of her crime and will tell others that her reason for volunteering for the mission is to be accepted back into society (on the slim chance that she returns successful), however she is in truth on a search for atonement.

Loria was born in the Ar’revik hermit community of the Kraahr Mountains to the two people who were the Hand. Her community has always been led by a married pair who were the Hand together and as such, when Loria’s mother died about 5 years after her birth, her father – now a widower – became one of the Wise (considered an offshoot of the Path of the Hand and as such not a path switch). The Wise is a collective name for people who had either been on the Path of the Hand and hadn’t been chosen or people who had for some reason or another ceased being the Hand. The Wise serve as mentors, elders and advisors to others and are generally considered to be the bridge between the ruling and common folk. A person of the Wise is usually closest to one Path and their people. He or she may also choose to complete some of that Path’s trials if doing so would be more beneficial to cooperation with that specific group and to the whole community.
Even though Loria’s father was no longer the Hand, she was the heiress to one of those families expected to go on the Path of the Hand. Besides being on the Path of Knowledge alongside others, her father also passed down some of his expertise to her, which was culturally expected and more than acceptable. Loria was somewhat sheltered by her father but she gradually learned on her own that everything was nowhere nearly quite so well. She also had a penchant to sneak off with some other children to watch the Rangers, whom she admired (not at all uncommon), go on their missions and return from them.

As she entered her teen years, her father’s health began deteriorating and even though this affected them both negatively, Loria felt that they could get by as long as they had each other. She was eventually introduced to her (at that time) future fiancé, a heir to another prominent family, who would be her partner in their attempts to become the Hand. Loria’s first impressions were that her fiancé (a few years’ older male of the Seroux family) was cold-hearted, stand-offish and almost obsessed with becoming the Hand, but this hadn’t worried her initially.
She eventually completed her coming of age trial and officially got engaged to her fiancé. They began on the Path of the Hand, having to compete against tree other pairs in their generation (there were usually 3 – 8 pairs on this path per generation). However it was also at this time that Loria’s father’s health declined even further and soon after she had started on her Path with her fiancé, her father died. After this, Loria was left with practically no support – her fiancé was indifferent and at times rude and any other people she had been close to were busy with their own paths. The culmination of grief, stress, various rumours, accusation from her fiancé, lack of sleep and an eventual failure in one of their trials resulted in a remarkable argument between Loria and her fiancé in which she somehow or other injured him gravely, nearly causing his death. He did survive, but Loria (from too high a caste to be exiled) was imprisoned indefinitely.

The change from her life as a part one of the high castes in a community where cooperation was a highly practiced ideal, to the life of a prisoner where competition was rife and the culture was more similar to what one would expect of Wastelanders, was tremendous. There was a system in place where prisoners would be able to either return to society through earning trust and reputation of the people by completing various tasks and jobs or eventually be sent to the Wastes (which some found a preferable option). Prisoners competed amongst themselves – most for (better) living arrangements, some to get any job, others for what were considered the “best” tasks, some just because they wanted to be left alone and a few because they wanted in on an expedition to the Wastes. It was here that Loria picked up various skills and combat experiences, though she never became a master of any one particular thing (if she wanted to, she would have to return to society and officially start on a Path). Seeing the mission to the Void as the best available option, she volunteered, and due to the reputation (as being mostly reliable) she has earned during her years taking on various tasks as a prisoner, she was accepted. Even though she's quite experienced considering her age, she's ultimately unprepared for what it means to be in the outside world facing its dangers for any long periods of time.