Starcraft Master Kevron

Playername:  ShadowReine
Playeremail: lionors@earthlink.net
PlayerIMs: ShadowReine

Charname: Kevron
Age: 70 (3.6.2354)
Rank: Candidate, Apprentice Healer

Description:
Master Kevron is generally considered to be a crusty old man. Having come to Delandri with the intention of 'semi-retiring and working only on what I want to, shardit', he often seems somewhat obsessed with his own personal projects and observations. He does, however, treat his apprentices, and any journeymen around, with a kind of gruff kindness. He expects a lot, but no more than he expects of himself.

He respects the dragons and their riders in a 'rather you than me' way, not being somebody to appreciate or enjoy personal danger. After all, he's had a long and happy life, and he doesn't plan on going between any time soon! He values his creature comforts, too, and is perhaps a little bit too fond of quikal, especially when there's a party going on.

He insists he's well past being able to appreciate a woman, but can be caught sneaking glances at a pretty girl every so often nonetheless. Ahem. With a veritable tribe of children and grandchildren from two separate marriages, he loves children, his own, other people's, his grandchildren, and his crusty exterior often breaks down in the presence of a little. Others, though, are likely to mostly hear from him his insistence that he needs supplies, equipment, assistance...and that his private research is somehow 'important to Pern'.

Personality:
Old but hale, this man was once a big man, well over six feet tall and built more like a Smith than a Starcrafter. Age has diminished him a little, although he remains in good health and only on rare occasions requires the assistance of a cane. His hair, however, is pure white, showing no hint of whatever color it once was, and the same goes for his neatly-trimmed beard. Eyes are a sharp dark brown, and clearly show intelligence. He speaks a little too loudly, perhaps indicating failing hearing.

Usually, he is to be found wearing practical work clothes, although he has a fondness for fancy belt buckles in the shapes of canines or firelizards.

Gender/Sexual Preference: Male, Heterosexual

History:Kevron was born at a small cothold under the protection of Igen, to a family that eked out a living from the edge of that great desert. The third son of a large family, he rapidly came to realize he had no future as a farmer, at least not here. With three brothers and two sisters, there were simply too many mouths for that land to feed. His parents were farmers born and bred, his mother the kind of woman who was free with love and baked goods, his father the strict disciplinarian who's word was, quite simply, law.

A large child, Kevron was slow, clumsy and often mistaken for being stupid, but a visiting Harper soon saw through that particular facade to the sharp, meticulous mind it concealed. As so many traveling and teaching Harpers, the man possessed a knack for spotting talent and directing it in the way most desirable. After a talk with the boy and his parents, young Kevron was to leave with the Harper...but not as /his/ apprentice. Sharp eyes and a keen attention to detail, in the man's mind, suited the boy to the starcraft, and those desert nights had already instilled him in an interest in the night sky.

Although he suffered from a completely understandable homesickness, he threw himself into life at the Hall, and into learning that allowed his mind to reach its potential. He grew into a big teenager and a big man, often still underestimated in his intelligence, for there was something about his appearance and manners that reminded most of a big, dumb canine. However, with time he got through apprenticeship, made journeyman and was posted to Southern Boll. Where he met Melara.

Melara was one of Southern Boll's nannies...ten months later, she was Kevron's first wife, already pregnant with the first of four children. Three boys and one girl, they followed in quick succession, but it was the last, his favorite, his daughter Velara, who took Melara from him...for she died soon after the birth.

Grief-stricken, he requested a transfer, and took himself and his children back to the hall, where one of the drudges became a wet nurse to the orphaned Velara. He spent as much time with the young ones as his duty allowed, but regretted often that he had to leave them with servants as much as he did. Five years later, he met Tuara, one of the few female Starcraft journeymen. Although she was years younger than he, she became his second wife, stepmother to his children and mother herself to two more.

Three of his brood became starcrafters themselves, one son went south in the hope of finding new land to tend, his youngest daughter married a minor holder. Velara, his favorite, Impressed a blue dragon at Telgar outpost.

As the years passed, Kevron stayed at the Hall, becoming a teacher and eventually achieving his mastery. The children grew up and fled the nest, and he and Tuara only became closer, although he never loved her quite the way he had loved Melara...they had different places in his heart.

Then Velara came home...in the worst imaginary way. Her dragon had collided with another during a mating flight, been thrown into the cliff and killed. Dragonless and pregnant she fled to her father's home and heart, and he gave her everything he could. Three months later, she gave birth to a daughter, Tynara. And a month after the birth, they found Velara's body in the observatory...she had followed her dragon into death, waiting only, it seemed, to be sure her child would be healthy.

Not even knowing who his granddaughter's father was, and bitter with grief for his daughter...children were supposed to outlive his parents, he took Tynara in and doted on her. She eventually helped heal that wound in his heart, but he did not...how could he...fully understand his daughter's suicide, for no non-rider really could.

Time, though, is the greatest of all healers. And as time passed, he remembered Velara...and her dragon...as full of life, not as she had come to him at the end. Tynara did not choose the Starcraft, but she almost married a journeyman...almost, for he left her...and left her with a child, her son Tynran, whom she raised with the help of her parents, having been pretty much put off men for life. Tynran became an apprentice, and his great grandfather was glad to be his mentor, as one of his 'last duties before well-earned retirement'.

Beginning to develop some problems with his joints, he's moved south to Delandri, accompanied by Tynran and, of course, his wife as assisting Journeyman...Tuara never has gained mastery, but seems quite content without it...planning on easing his way slowly towards retirement, finishing his most important personal projects and, he hopes, getting young Tynran to walk the tables. Hopefully he won't be weaned away by the dragons...

Craft Information

Craft: Starcraft
Rank: Master
Specialty: None