Journeyman Healer Decadre

Player: T'star

Name: Decadre (3.13) 
Age: 30 (12.13.4645)
Rank: Journeyman Healer 

Physical Description: A shaggy mop of black hair falls haphazardly over his head, defying all order. Two or three locks persistently fall into his autumn blue eyes. His finely boned features vault up into high cheekbones and trace down in a long, Romanesque nose. His jaw line is strong, but his mouth is just a trifle too long. He is tall, standing just over 6 feet, but his spare, lean frame makes him seem taller, though he's bulked out enough to look finished, finally. 

Personality: The over eager puppy dog has muted quite a bit into something far more controlled. Decadre is usually in motion, though again this has mellowed from the perpetual motion machine he was when he was younger. He has a vivid, active imagination that he rarely displays fully to anyone but his child patients, though it insterts itself at the oddest moments. He can be serious and somber when the situation calls for it, and periodically when it doesn't though this is a much rarer occurrence. He has an easy mental balance that most of the time penetrates his personality very deeply, but that balance has its focal points, and they are deeply hidden but thinly protected. 

Gender and sexual preference: Male, heterosexual 

Persona's History: Decadre was born oldest of 10 in a fringe holding on the southern continent. His mother was a journeyman healer, his father the senior beastcrafter at the hold. As eldest he was given responsibility at a young age. Watching his siblings, and helping his mother with her duties when she was less than mobile. Their position on the fringes gave him early exposure to the most basic, immediate forms of healing and first aid. The Big Cats in the south saw domesticated herds as easy pickings, and the holding was small enough they were not scared off by the sheer press of *people*.

While not common place, people getting scratched up by the great felines was enough that by age 10 Decadre had the basics of patching them up down quite firmly. Broken bones was another common ailment he rapidly earned how to handle, with the occasional threadscore, when a scout or hunter roamed too far afield and wasn't watching their back or their schedules.

At age 12 his parents sent him north to Healer Hall. For the next 5 years he studied both the mundane, and the immediate uses of healing, specializing in treating those wounds caused suddenly, and often accompanied by mental and/or physical shock.

After walking the tables he was permitted to go home for an extended period of time, to help his mother with her most recent child, as the pregnancy wasn't going well. By the time his youngest brother was born. After he was certain that his mother would be fine, he put in for a transfer. Orders came for him to go to Southern Weyr, ostensibly because they were short handed.

Decadre was mostly happy there, his ever cheerful attitude was dampened a time or two and he learned to temper it with the situations of his patients. He was slowly maturing into a very good healer. The process was much quickened by the arrival of someone he thought long gone. When he was 16 and still at the hall he had had a brief romance with a vintner by the name of Calondra, only to have her wooed away from him. While he was at southern she was transferred there briefly to help out, with a 3 year old, Caldre, that looked uncannily like him, and even had some of the same childhood allergies. They resumed their romance. Or at least he thought it was romance.

At turns end of the year she arrived, he proposed. She laughed at him, quite literally, and proceeded to tear his heart apart, along with completely shattering both his cheerfulness and his self-confidence. She left taking the boy he'd come to believe was his son. Morgenna sent him home a few weeks after the incident. He recognized the symptoms of trauma in himself, but at that point didn't much care. He crawled into a bottle and didn't come back out for just over two turns.

The turning point was actually presented to him by his youngest sister, who'd somehow managed to finagle a wher's egg. She didn't think twice just scurried on down to her brother and presented it to him. The gifting alone got through the alcohol induced haze he'd resorted to even around family. The hatching about 15 min. later of a gregarious brown wher widened the crack. It took a lot of work, mostly done by his sister, to get him permanently away from the bottle. It was another full turn before he was stable enough for reassignment.

He was assigned to Crom where cave-ins along with threadfall and other hazards gave him many opportunities to practice his specialty. He had been there for almost six turns when he received orders to go to Mountain Song Weyr in the south. Slightly nervous at the associations with the south, he went obediently; after all it was long past right? And he wasn't likely to run into anyone there.

He was all right, at first, then a healer's apprentice named Caldre joined the Weyr. Decadre kept his mouth shut. It might be the same Caldre it might not. When Caldre's mother, Calondra, showed up it became painfully clear that it was.

Decadre dealt with it reasonably well, and slowly he and Calondra started over, for the woman had changed a lot. Marriage and 5 pregnancies in 5 turns had mellowed her a great deal, as had getting played by someone better in the game than she.

Then came disastrous accusations in the Infirmary. Caldre's girlfriend turned up pregnant. First it was just a teenage intercession but when the charges turned to rape... Still Decadre managed to deal reasonably well on the surface, though it brought back old memories he'd thought long buried and dealt with. The changing stories, the potential for loosing a grandchild in the same way he lost Caldre the first time, ate at him in ways even he didn't realize until it was all over and things seemed to return to normal. It should have been a time of relief. Caldre was cleared, and the real culprit was sent to the mines. Decadre decided it was safe to have a drink. Just one... He didn't stop. It didn't help that things in the infirmary were even more hectic than usual. A mining accident and a very nasty threadfall... combined in a very short period of time, left little time for thinking and Decadre found himself drinking himself to sleep regularly. It didn't help when Caldre caught him at it. The ensuing argument left father and son at worse straights than they had ever been.

It came to a head when he lost a patient on the operating table, who had been flown in by dragon from one of the neighboring cots. She died during surgery, and while no one else seemed to think it was his fault, Decadre had to wonder if he'd been completely together if he might not have saved her. He requested two sevendays off to deal with it and is still trying to cope, though this time his family is actually /helping/ him through it. With the notable exception of his mother who only thinks she's helping.

Pets:

Name: Harlequin 
Species: Wher 
Color: Brown
Age: 9
Description: Harlequin is a rather eclectically colored brown wher, bulky in the extreme, the size of a large bronze, his muscular bulk has been splashed liberally with cream and chocolate over his head. Mud and dry dust are added to the mix down his neck, with a hint of green in the deep rich soil shades across his shoulders and down his ridges. The mottling holds to no pattern and covers his heavy haunches and thick tail in a haphazard fashion. 

Personality: Harlequin is a malleable personality, very much like his namesake. He can be energetic or melancholy and has an uncanny knack for guessing which is appropriate with the people he's dealing with. Bright for a wher, he rarely shows it. He more often finds himself acting as Decadre's fleeing-patient stop than anything else. 

Craft: Healer
Rank: Journeyman
Specialties: Trauma