Image Credits: rinmaru games Spaceboy

Name: Toddek

Gender/Pref: Male, he/him, straight

Age: 16, but was judged for aspirant status at 14

Height/Build: around 5'10" at maturity but he took his sweet time reaching that height, and had been very small as a boy. He is still slender, but muscular enough to work with good tools

Hair: sandy brown, very light and shiny; kept short and is thick enough that he can style or crop it as needed; his eyebrows are similarly thick and he's never quite grown into how huge they are, they've always been bigger than life!

Eyes: dark brown, nearly black, large, very observant

Appearance: very pale slightly-sallow yellowed skin that burns very easily in too much sun, so he keeps long sleeves most of the time. He has a boxy face with a dramatic chin and though he usually does have a smirk on his thin lips he often uses this to distract from his actual mood. He has a somewhat high voice, even as a matured teenager, but he is also able to sing in a very wide range. Not that he will sing for just anyone, but he can often be heard in his workshop singing to himself. He is adept with his tools and has few scars, but he does often have that 'sawdust' smell. He enjoys layering his clothing since the area he comes from is temperate and often snows from mid-fall to mid-spring

Family: Most of Toddek's family members are members of a large sprawling forestry center, which harvests the large, durable trees. The area has a thriving herb collecting and animal trapping community, and there is a trade center that uses the long north-east flowing river system to reach the coasts, and his family has married into several others along that system. He has two older siblings, boy and girl, both of whom work with the harvest and replant teams, and one younger sister who is likely to learn the actual trade portion of this job. He has at least a dozen cousins from his parents siblings, but none of them have been Judged like he has. He does definitely have eyes for the beautiful dark skinned Soom

Aspirant At: Dawn Castle; sent 10.20.26

Skills: Though he's adept enough at, and has a good theoretical knowledge of, almost all aspects of wood gathering, assessment, and felling trees safely, his skills with actual fitting of items together, assembling and even creating new ways of making furnishings or goods. He knows how to fix the saw mill gears and pulleys, and has a good eye for those safety issues that plague other wood shops. He learns from other people's mistakes, in that regard. He is strong enough to help saw down a medium sized tree, or cut smaller more flexible ones himself with an axe gifted to him by his uncle. But it's once all those things are carried or brought down a bit from the hills, into his village workshop, that he can start really showing his skill. He can estimate how much of any given tree trunk or log will be useful, can feel knots and imperfections that may become problems, and can estimate weight of a finished item such as a chair that 'needs to be lifted by one elderly person', or 'that table will never move once we install it'. He loves making functional items but also enjoys seeing what others like Soom might to with the details, so he often leaves her a bit of a blank canvas on larger pieces like chair backs or the edges of thick tables. She has suggested that he could also start making doors, door frames and the like, because she wants to put more filigree than the side of a table might give...

Personality: Though he is able to concentrate firmly on his work, from start to finish he's professional and somewhat chill. He does appear more serious and broody, somewhat secretive when around people he doesn't know well, or even cold to those who have crossed his path in a bad way. But he won't go out of his way to make enemies, he knows how important the economy is between his family's village and those down to the coast. He'd rather have at least 'connections' in those towns, than 'enemies'. Even if he's a reasonably handsome young man, he has never really been interested in anyone but Soom, and thankfully he knows that she feels somewhat similar toward him.

Background: Like most boys of his village, Toddek learned how to handle all the tools of a woodworking community from the moment he was strong enough to stand. It's possible that while he was still small but not as young as he looked, he resented the fact that all the 'big boys' his age could easily seat themselves on the grownups chairs, see over dinner tables, and out windowsills. To him, most of those were at minimum a 'got to hike up it' or grab and pull himself up, he was very small. That did also lend him to being teased frequently by other members of the community, but he always kept his head cool and instead of becoming an angry or abrasive bully like them, he simply would stare coldly and not give them the rise that they wanted out of his temper. That said, he has a temper that will eventually land someone on their ass with a brused face, and him in a bit of trouble...

But as he grew slightly taller each year, long after the other kids in his age group, he also became well known for having a good touch with construction rather than the meaty and sweaty work of felling the trees. He knows that he has artistic limits, he is talented with larger scale things, not fancy carvings or fiddly bits - but he definitely enjoys seeing others with a well-made chair and foot stool, or a crate that will last many trips up and down the river.

As long as he can remember, Soom has been a shining light in his gloomy times. Of the two, she is much more easy to like or get along with, but she's also the one that will come to his defense with her own glare. He has always tried to impress her with his skill, because according to him, 'words usually fail him'. They don't really - he will sing to her if he knows no one else is around, and she keeps his secret. A small young boy grown into a modestly wispy young man, already mocked for being little or unusual, who also sang so beautifully it could move her to tears? Yeah she will keep that to herself, and she seems to be very happy with this arrangement. After all, Toddek's always given her the choicest beams and planks to work on, and when he's found knotty wood that can't really be of use in his professional assembly, they do make beautiful backdrops for her carvings!

When he was 14 and she was 15, they were both Judged by passing Knights from Dun Keiba. They knew that eventually down there all the way north to the coast, along the river that formed where their village sat, they would both have a place with a drak. But then they wouldn't have to wait for the river to swell or the weather to clear to visit!

The Knight pair that brought him up to Dawn Castle was friendly enough, and helped Toddek learn some things about how to ride or situate himself on a drak, and in fact they seemed... rather similar: Makail was more talkative than Toddek, but it turned out they both had their eye on a particular lady and both use their skilled handiwork to woo them! (Toddek didn't prod this information from the knight, it just kind of babbled from his ever-present conversation while they were gearing up and flying over the forest...) Toddek decided that even if he didn't leave on the back of his own Drak paired, he would want to keep a friendly relationship with this tech-head, maybe he could help inscribe instruction pages for people needing to fix their items after delivery!

Lineage

Mates and Descendants