Persona Profile: A'garyn

Writer: Iluva

Name: A'garyn
Pronunciation: Eh - ga - RIN
Age: 21
Birthday: m10 d2
Birthplace: Opal Cove Hold
Rank: Junior Weyrling
Location: Dragonsfall Weyr

Physical Description of Persona:
Tall, with a lean build honed by hard necessity, A'garyn carries himself with precision. There’s a coiled tension in him, something unspoken and unfinished in his movements. Broad shouldered and densely muscled, he doesn’t move like a man afraid of conflict. Each step - fluid, each motion - purposeful, as if always trying to stay attuned to the earth beneath him. He doesn’t posture or threaten without cause, nor does he reveal the depth of his hand or skillset any more than necessary. A'garyn’s power lies in the quiet kind, the dangerous kind; the kind that makes others second-guess their intentions when his eyes linger a moment too long, the kind that comes from fighting, from never shying away, never backing down. Calculation lives in him, a language spoken in the inbetween, in silence and glances, a measurement constantly monitored.

His features are sharp, but often unreadable. His hazel eyes flicker with amusement or warning, depending on the shift in the light - sometimes looking a very soft green, others a distinctly ominous brown. His angular face sports a strong jaw and the blades of his teeth are rarely shown in a genuine smile, but a sneer, a snarl, a smirk - that’s easy enough. Thick, curling brown-black hair falls to the nape of A'garyn’s neck, better maintained in recent months since its cut.

A neat, dark beard conveniently masks an alarming scatter of scars peppering his jaw, but it can’t hide the rest. There's more damage mapped out on him than he can or has ever bothered to count. It’s obvious, if anything about him can be obvious, that he's lived his life in close connection to the land. Everything from scrapes and mementos of minor incidents to the unmistakable evidence of violence and struggle, the desperate clawing for survival. The most striking trace along his shoulders and chest, jagged lines cresting on the upper part of his neck, an altercation he’ll not soon forget, not as long as he breathes.

A'garyn’s clothing is entirely practical, every piece serving their purpose. Yet, even now, with a half decade’s distance from his former life, there’s still a shadow of the Hold in him. The Blood runs deep, so to speak, and helps its scars run deeper: it’s there, in the way he observes protocols without deference, in the flicker of command that flares when he speaks plainly. His voice is low, edged with a quiet authority that makes people stop speaking when he begins. But his bearing is no longer fine, it’s something feral, hammered and smoothed just enough to look like something else, something almost familiar.

Emotional Description of Persona:
Clever, calculating, and deceptively calm, A'garyn burns wild beneath the surface - a rampant forest fire of need and hunger. Unchecked, it once ruled him: unquenched, always searching for the next kill, or thrill. He’s learned, slowly and costly, how to control it, to shape it into something that fits his purposes. He always has a goal, follows his current agenda - and there is one, always one. He views the world through the lens of survival: kill-or-be-killed, survive-or-surrender, and he’s yet to concede to the latter.

To him information is a commodity as much as a weapon, and knowledge, power. He’s chameleonic in his interactions with people; a holdless life holds little space for fairness or justice. He utilizes his discretion - and conscience - as he sees fit. He let go of the teachings of civilized society long ago, but he forgets nothing, even the things he would like to. Nowadays intellect shifts into slyness, creativity into manipulation. Many muddle A'garyn’s instinct for subterfuge, which holds the world at arm's length, and his desire, which - right now, anyway- is to take what he can and let the rest burn.

With a mind constantly at work, constantly assessing, and scanning for oddities, weaknesses, the unique tells in a person’s posture, gaze, tone, or diction, A'garyn is an astute observer. The limitations of the world merely need conquering, manipulating, circumventing. He’s developed a quiet proficiency for it. At the same time, he’s hyper-aware of his own tells. A'garyn’s passionate by nature, with a temper that runs deep. He works hard to conceal, to channel, to _use_ rather than allow it to inhibit or betray him. And, although most days he succeeds, even he has trouble calming it on occasion. An undercurrent of quiet fury veins Aegaryn’s psyche, part of his very lifeblood, and although he keeps it in check, the cracks are there, waiting - and he knows it.

Survival demands a tight grip and a firm hold over himself, over kindness, over the luxuries of genuine empathy and compassion that can easily become liabilities. And yet it is the raw source of his fire, and somehow it tends to bleed out into all he does. The same fire that fuels his wrath also fuels his loyalty, his love, his capacity for intensity. However, trust is rare, the truth always harder, and once trust has been lost it is never given again. It can be bought, of course, borrowed, bartered, feigned, but never free and never with the same brutal intensity of heart and soul as before.

Although exile didn’t break him, it carved him down to his essentials; learning to survive in the fringe spaces of Pern - unwanted, unworthy, scrounging for shelter, a dry place to rest, enough food to dull the hunger - they’ll all do that to a person. A'garyn works to keep a separation between himself and the world, a buffer, so much so it barely requires effort these days. It’s automatic, and he’s become incredibly slow to warm to others. He’s nervous to form bonds, despite knowing their importance, even when sometimes craves that connection above all else. But it’s the potential to hurt that worries him, and it’s not always himself he worries about.

History of Persona:
Aegaryn doesn’t speak about what he did to lose his hold. He knows the truth like he knows how to bend it, and the truth is quieter, heavier. He doesn’t speak of his family, or the death of his brother, Drenorik - but it reshaped him entirely, carrying its weight in the way he watches people, calculating what they’ll do before they’re fully aware themselves.

His family’s roots stretch deep into the Southern Continent woven with the fabric of the land composing Opal Cove’s Hold since the end of the ninth Pass. He was born in the Lord Holder’s apartments, the fourth son and eighth child of Lord Alendren and Lady Tegaryni. He grew up in the regimented comfort and ease of circumstances few could properly fathom. Reared in strict expectations, he was schooled by the finest Harpers, guarded like something unique, precious.

With little chance and even less interest in inheriting the Hold, land, rank, or title, more often Aegaryn fought with his own energy, his fire, and passion to explore. But unsure of how to tame it, and often not in keeping with the expectations of the family, he struggled to find his place in their world. More than his fair share of trouble followed, nothing major, but it was conduct unbecoming of the Lord’s son, and they in turn struggled to decide what to do with him. Eventually put with the Hold guard, he finally found a niche that he excelled in as much as his harper lessons, and it was here he managed to keep relatively out of trouble - for a while.

Although technically being punished for an altercation gone wrong with another young guard that left them badly scarred, Aegaryn still managed to push the boundaries. With the unexpected news of his elder brother Drenorik’s Search, Aegaryn managed to convince a trusted guardsman to let them sneak out for a few candlemarks to celebrate.

Later, when Drenorik was found dead, and fifteen Turn old Aegaryn had a broken arm, lost two runnerbeasts and all trust of those he loved, he and the complicit guard, Petraf, were expelled.

Overwrought with grief, with the weakness, the degradation, scandal, and failure, the lack of judgment was an offense to the very values and position his family held. It was unforgiveable, preventable, and entirely reckless. Aegaryn was no longer a son, and he was nobody’s brother. For fifteen Turns he was expected to at least conduct himself with the dignity of the hold in mind. He failed. More than that, he became something else: a stain on the family tapestry. A scourge, a dark mark on the bloodline they just had to try and blot out and forget.

It was then, beyond the familiar bounds of Opal Cove he so often tried to escape, that Aegaryn’s real education began.

Terrified, confused, desperately repentant, the only reason he survived was that he wasn’t alone. The guard, Petraf, with his gruffness and known soft spot for Aegaryn, took pity, showed mercy to someone still a scared child in so many ways. From him, Aegaryn learned how to mend with numb fingers and sleep with an empty stomach, how to trade silence for a night’s shelter, how to read danger in a crowd before it arrived. He learned more in that turn than just how to survive - he learned how to handle himself, and for the first time how to thrive in conditions tied to choices _he_ made. He learned how to forge his own path.

They made it almost a Turn together. Quickly coming to rely on each other and developing a partnership that, ironically, was what he’d always craved with his real father, in Petraf he found safety in the wilds.

Until the bandits came. They escaped with their lives, just barely. But a few days later and Petraf’s was being drained by infection. In the final week of his sixteenth turn, despite all attempts to ensure otherwise, Aegaryn watched him sweat his blood out into the earth, his eyes turned up to the sky. He was gone.

Then, for the first time in his life, he was very much alone.

For a few months he did whatever he had to do, just trying to get from one day to the next. Then, by chance, he met Kavalas. Their first meeting was tense, the other man tried to rob him, of all things, and, although ragged by circumstances and hardened by strife, Aegaryn felt he wasn’t like the others. He was, in some way, more familiar than unfamiliar, not soft but not cruel either. They found something missing - in each other. After that they became inseparable, forming one bond he’s determined to never break. For the next number of Turns it was just them and whatever the wilds of Pern could throw their way.

But if blood binds, then water divides. The rain came. Pouring endlessly from the heavens, drowning the earth. Storms seemingly determined to punish the land and all those on it, falling without mercy or end. It drove Kavalas and Aegaryn into an encampment deep in Dragonsfall territory in Turn 12, and when those tunnels flooded, and its inhabitants evacuated to the Weyr, Aegaryn found himself back behind walls again for the first time in Turns. There’s shelter, there’s warmth, there’s food that existed only in his dreams - and as this man finds himself coming up for air again in civilized society, it’s through the lens of the last five turns emblazoned on his corneas.

Amongst his fellow Holdless, their futures uncertain, his is the look of a man who doesn’t apologize for what he is, nor does he expect to be forgiven.

He and Kavalas were both unexpectedly Searched a few months into their stay. They accepted, mostly keen on keeping their claim on the place until the spring thaw. But Galgaith's first Hatching in late Turn 12 yielded consequences neither of them could have foreseen: Kav Impressed green Sazikoth, and the change rocked Aegaryn to his core, at times past his point of comprehension. It was not their plan. It was not what he had envisioned. The forced separation weighed heavily on him. The fractures in their future together pressing in at every turn.

Then, just a few months later, Aegaryn's future took on a new course of its own: he Impressed bronze Talarcheth at the next Hatching, reshaping him once more.

Family and Friends
K'valas, 22, Senior Weyrling, Dragonsfall Weyr (partner)
Alendren, 51, Lord Holder of Opal Cove Hold (father)
Tegaral, 14, Lord's son (brother)
Alaryn, 15, Lord's daughter (sister)
Rydric, 17, Lord's son (brother)
Drenorik, 23, Lord's son - deceased (brother)
Alenni, 25, Lord's daughter (sister)
Alengar, 25, Lord's son (brother)
Rylendren, 28, Lord's son (brother)
Mahrkin, 28, Lord's son (half-brother)
Tegaryni, 49, Lady Holder (mother)
Petraf, 62, Guardsman - deceased (mentor)

Dragon's Name: Talarcheth
Dragon's Age: 0
Dragon's Hatching Date: m2 d1
Dragon's Hatching Place: Dragonsfall Weyr
Dragon's Colour: Bronze
Description of Dragon:
His hide is a deep burnished bronze, forged in the sleek, unerring flow of polished metal so dark it’s difficult to tell where one part of him ends and another begins. He overwhelms: not merely a marvel of masculine beauty, but a gathering force, the sense of standing at the edge of something immense and tidal. Fully grown, his presence strikes like a spear - an imposition of will that sears the air without smoke or spark. This is a dragon of might and purpose, of contained, unmetered power. He knows it.

Long and angular, though large for his color, Talarcheth is built with the canny balance more common to chromatics. On land and in the air alike, his movements carry a sharpened grace - clean, deliberate, and cutting. He moves like fast water over stone: darting, decisive, relentless. There is nothing lumbering in him, nothing hesitant. His shoulders are thick with muscle, his tail exceptionally long, tapering with sleek precision to a balanced fork. In flight he wields it like the crack of a whip, using it to pivot, snap, surge forward with greater agility than his size suggests. His wings unfurl like sheets of darkened glass, glittering as though sunlight has been strained through deep water, brilliance caught just beneath shadow.

The quick whirl of his eyes glows fiercely against the depth of his hide. There is no softness there, either, no mottling to break his silhouette, no speckling or variation to ease the eye. Full sunlight may awaken hints of old gold or copper, but they bend to the dominance of his bronze, melting into a single, seamless current - uniform, and unstoppable.

His temperament mirrors his form.

Throughout weyrling training, whether acknowledged or not, Talarcheth will measure himself against every dragon in his class - not out of rivalry, but out of something older and more exacting. Excellence is not an ambition for him. It is simply the only way he knows how to exist. He can’t help but notice the gap between what others are and what they could become, and the noticing is never comfortable. Patience is not among his strengths. Mastery comes easily to him, and he struggles to comprehend why others falter where he does not. His irritation sharpens quickly into frustration, and frustration into anger, and that edge doesn’t soften with time. He is not one to lecture. Rather, he asks. He _provokes_. A look held a beat too long, a question returned wherever an answer’s expected, }:Why did you choose that approach?:{ }:What would happen if you did not…:{. He prefers to draw truth outward rather than chasing it inward - and he is persistent. He will circle the same ground a hundred times if the quarry is worth the pursuit. But what he cannot abide is waste. Wasted ability. Wasted time.

He demands perfection - not out of cruelty, but conviction. He pushes. He hones, refines. He takes to lessons as water finds its course, instinctively and inevitably, and Faranth help A’garyn if he hesitates to keep pace. Talarcheth sees the strength buried beneath his rider’s past and will not allow it to remain dormant. He is the fierce task-master. He sets the pace. He sets the standard. He will not rest until they rise to meet it.

He knows what he is capable of and he expects the same certainty from his rider.

Some might say he chose A’garyn because he is malleable, someone to shape into the man he already sees within. Others might recognize the truth: it is the resistance that draws him. The battle of wills. He has little interest in the already-formed, the ones who arrive with their conclusions intact. It is the ones who argue back, who carry heat beneath the surface and don’t yet know what to do with it - that is well worth the effort in Talarcheth’s mind. Anger, after all, summons a current of energy that sweet words of encouragement never could. He fully intends to draw it out - not to let it burn uncontrolled, but to channel it, to give it force and direction.

Age, size, and bluster do not impress him. His certainty is not performance - it is the product of long, unflinching scrutiny. He does have the annoying susceptibility to boasting, as many over-confident bronzes often do, but he has looked at himself without flattery, and without apology, and he knows what he found. He expects his rider to do the same. Truth, in his mind, should be spoken plainly. Excellence deserves witness. If his confidence unsettles others, then they should rise to meet it. The tide does not apologize for coming in.

Ambition is neither fantasy nor game to Talarcheth. He doesn’t hunger prematurely for rank or title, nor does he chafe at waiting his turn. But whatever role he occupies, he will excel. Whatever path A’garyn takes, Talarcheth will ensure it becomes a channel carved clean and undeniable.

He has already decided it.

Pets

Zolta, Gold Firelizard: aged 9, hatched m10 d9
Next Mating Flight: m4 d20 of turn 13
The color of a sandstorm lit from within, of golden-rays on molten dunes, Zolta is a large, balanced lizard, and as keen an observer as her master. A'garyn has few problems admitting that her resourcefulness, dedication, and keen adaptability have saved his skin more than a few times. Turns of exposure and hostility have left her glimmering hide broken with battlescars, most of them fairly minor, ribboning her body like shattered glass. They’ve also imbued her with a beleaguered sense of maternal protection for Aegaryn, and by extension the people he cares about. Zolta has all the regal authority of her color, well-aware of her place in the world, wherever she happens to be at the time. She is, at her core, rather soft-natured and playful, though when threatened her aggression is nothing short of terrifying, a queen’s sense of unrivalled power quite alive and burning bright within her. She’s fearless in the face of danger and gentle, nurturing to the weak, the little, the tired and overwrought. Her egg was a gift from his parents on A'garyn's twelfth birthingday, and perhaps because they grew up together, she has a distinct soft spot for youngsters.

Once at Dragonsfall, Zolta took an immediate liking to one of their dishes - dragontails. Delicious little slivers of meat that she insists on getting one way or another, and whether they like it or not she’s constantly trying to feed them to the people she likes.

Approved: June 10th 2025
Last updated: March 10th 2026

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Persona Profile: A'garyn

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