Soot

[Soot]

by Kat
Name: Soot (tentative)
Age: 15
Height: 5'10
Weight: Think gangly teenager just starting to develop visible muscle.

Description:

There are hints of manhood within Soot's lanky frame, compounded by a deepening voice that still occasionally cracks and soul-deep brown eyes. He is not particularly handsome in the way of his people, having sharp features and a nose that might seem too big for his face, but his flippant confidence and cheeky charm have earned him his fair share of adolescent admirers. His reddish-brown skin is healthy and clear, and his night black hair is shiny and thick.

Soot is in the middle of a growth spurt, leaving him both bony and occasionally awkward. An advance of body hair has not helped matters, and though his people do not grow much facial hair the few that have poked out from his upper lip and chin are a source of pride in his manly development. The coordination he earned as a young child-hunter alternatively disappears and strengthens in fits as he constantly adapts to his changing body. Despite the awkwardness that might leave another boy-child painfully shy and clumsy, Soot's inner wealth of haughty cockiness tempers what otherwise might leave him with a regrettable young adulthood. Additionally, he is typically the perpetrator of pranks and jokes rather than the victim, though as he grows older and faces down the tragedies of life he has begun to mimic the grave dignity of his father.

As Soot becomes taller, he also becomes stronger. Though his muscular development is still on the string-bean side of things, if his father is any example Soot will have the benefits of masculine physique in a few years. Of course, as with any boy, Soot is constantly testing his own boundaries in the form of showing off to girls and to impress adults -- as well as show up his sister with whom he has an orbiting love-hate relationship. Dares and stunts are nothing to Soot, and he takes on anything with a matter of factness that often has his sister fearing for his mental development.

Powers/Strengths:

Soot houses a nearly unshakable confidence that he is right, lending to a mental fortitude and stability that is not always so common among his peers. Even when he is caught out wrong, Soot has an agility of mind that allows him to move on without much of a fuss. He is self-assured.

The art of hunting is taught to young boys as soon as they are capable of holding toy weapons. Soot has always done well with snaring small animals, and he is the subject of many rumors that he will one day lead fishing expeditions.

Friends are no hard thing to come by for Soot, and he is just enough of an outgoing soul to encourage the fawning regard of his peers and manipulative enough to turn friendship with him into a competition.

Soot is a shapeshifter, turning into a large raven at will.

Though his people are simple in terms of culinary concoctions, Soot has an extraordinarily sensitive palate and can deduce the ingredients of any dish within seconds. As it is a talent not suited for a manly hunter, it is something Soot is highly embarrassed about, and will not share with anyone. It's possible his sister has figured it out.

Soot has a fairly good sense of direction, though it is a common trait among his people.

His one almost healthy relationship is with his sister, Ash. She tempers many of his weaknesses and immaturities.

Weaknesses:

Confidence and ego have lead Soot to think he is the best thing that ever was. He is easily jealous over his limelight, and when someone steps in on his parade he has a tendency to sulk and otherwise act like a bad sport. Though he bounces back from mistakes quickly, when they are pointed out to him before he can acknowledge them there is a high possibility he will go into a foul temper. This leads to wrestling matches around his peers, and extra chores from adults and elders.

Soot does not think highly of other people around him, and oftentimes overlooks the warning signs of someone unhappy with him. He is not deliberately mean, but lacks the sympathetic touch of maturity. He is not above bullying when someone displeases him, and when it comes to people he is too stubborn to learn from his mistakes. He is so focused on winning the love of those around him that he has failed to develop truly meaningful relationships with those around him, leaving him in his basest moments cold, lonely and angry. He doesn't think anyone understands him, but neither does he truly understand anyone else.

Over-confidence can and will lead him to disaster given the right opportunity.

Soot is a picky eater, perhaps due to his sensitive taste buds. He does not eat enough for his rapidly growing body, leaving him more gangly than his growth spurts can account for.

Ember, the third part of his living triplet siblings, is a source of shame, pity and revulsion. Soot doesn't like talking about Ember, or helping Ember, and doesn't know how to properly treat him. He has a protective streak for the handicapped boy, and a small source of familial love that he resents feeling. Given a choice, Soot would ignore Ember and pretend he didn't exist, but the strong family values of his people ensures that he is essentially forced to treat Ember with respect and honor if he wishes to have people continue to treat him like a golden child.

Ash, his favored triplet, is likely his greatest weakness. She is boring and eccentric, but it is her regard he tries hardest to win. Of all the people in his life, she is likely his greatest hope of maturing into a decent adult. He does not realize this, instead taking out his nascent emotions upon her in the form of overbearing protectiveness and teasing, as well as a hefty dose of mockery when no one else is around. Soot would be devastated if anything happened to her, though he'd never admit to it, and so has a tendency of overreacting where she is concerned.

Once walked through a daimon's club bush as a young child. The resulting prickles were not all caught, and have since wormed their way deep into the flesh of his lower left arm, hip, and upper thigh. Occasionally during moments of high stress they will become inflamed and cause a painful weeping rash on his skin that can take days or weeks to go away. The skin itself is more tender than it would otherwise be, so he has to take great pains to both keep it covered and to apply compresses at night and in the morning.

History:

Born to a storyteller, , and his woman, Wren, within the bound of the Kohya Island peoples, Soot was one of six within his mother's clutch. His people, the Hazanyii, have long split from those who populated the coastline of the Ayana Gulf within Ayana, settling on an island whose inherent magics from the Changer's War have come to infuse the Hazanyii people. This has given them a shapeshifting ability that leaves them closely tied to the animal world, so they have endured physical changes that have in turned caused their minds to turn away from their ancient human relatives and towards their own shamanistic causes.

Soot's family are tied to ravens, as inherited from their father's side, and so the women of their particular tribe give birth to eggs. The increasing magical taint as passed from generation to generation has begun to mutate their human bodies beyond a beneficial symbiotic balance, and fewer and fewer children are born healthy (or alive). As a result only three of the clutch were born alive, and of those three one was handicapped both physically and mentally.

Life is revered in their culture, and they lovingly raised the handicapped son along with their healthy and whole son and daughter. Soot felt from an early age that he had to compete with his brother for attention, and so would often drag Ash away from Ember to go do things that Ember could not. Ash's increasing quiet adoration of him as a young child fueled his need for attention, and soon enough Soot was pushing himself in order to gain praise from all quarters. All the while, his own silent resentment of Ember grew like a weed within him, choking out the natural sympathy for an ailing human being and love of family that might otherwise have given him compassion for his handicapped brother.

Growing up brought plenty of pains to underscore the pleasures. The life of a child of the Hazanyii people is an active one. There is much to learn of the natural dangers on the island, as well as the benefits. Soot was always bored of these lessons, imparted both by mother and father and female aunts and elders. Soot was the type of child who would fearlessly trundle around, curious to touch and undaunted by repeated warnings. So it was that he grew up always in the middle of bloodied scrapes, bruises, rashes, and sprains. Ash would always hover about him, worrying in a way both annoying and gratifying. Though it wasn't always positive, it also got attention from the adults away from Ember, and so Soot began exploring the dangers of the world on purpose.

Of course, not everything worked out well. A four year old Soot went off in a sulk, and stumbled through a cluster of daimon's club that he'd been warned often about. The bush was allowed to prosper due to its many medicinal qualities, though it was handled with special equipment and by a medicine woman. As with many of the things that lived on an island soaked with magic, the spines of the daimon's club were more vicious than they otherwise might have been, and caused permanent damage to Soot's subdermal layer. That was his final lesson on daimon's club, though despite the pain he still wouldn't listen about other potentially dangerous plants.

At the age of six, Soot once cracked a badger with his slingshot after setting out to watch Ash gather berries, ignoring her hissed warnings to let it be. The badger was most unimpressed, and chased them both back to their summer camp. Ash had scraped her hands up good enough to earn Soot a scolding, after which he haughtily told Ash that this was why women weren't allowed to hunt. The sheer terror of escaping the badger did give him a lifelong fascination and respect of the badger, however, and for the next few years he would often pester Ash to tell him over and over whatever knowledge and stories of badgers he knew. The boyish enthusiasm would, later in life, bite him in the butt in the form of quietly fond sisterly teasing.

As well, the siblings battled the continued evolution of personality. Ember was self aware enough to realize that he was different from his siblings and peers, but damaged enough to remain unable to contribute to his family or tribe in any significant way. Easily frustrated, but a basically cheerful child, Ember became something of a favorite among his immediate family and the wider tribe. He recognized the negativity in Soot, but had no real way to express the feelings. He tended to shrink away from Soot, which would cause others to wonder why.

Soot became more and more estranged from his brother, striving to be seen in a positive light and to be fawned over as he perceived Ember was. He would talk badly of Ember in front of Ash, secluding her as much as possible from the others in order to become her hero, though he had no conscious understanding of the desire at his young age. He excelled at the duties a young man was taught, and was often allowed along the hunters after he reached age nine and was considered dextrous and big enough to not cause any problems.

By age thirteen the wedge of gender division began inserting itself between Soot and Ash, but as he looked ever forward to greater and greater glory Ash began to cling more and more to him. He was always exasperated by her quiet nature, but at the same time privately pleased with himself for having such a devout follower. Still, he slowly paid less attention to her as they got older, focusing outward on his peers and more lately, other girls and young women and their breasts within the tribe.

Though Soot, as a self absorbed young man, was unaware of the changes happening to the local ecology -- despite Ash's attempts to talk about how things were getting wrong -- there was a steadily worsening stain of death in the water surrounding their little island. Hunts were less effective, and fishing hauls would either have scant returns or go missing. Still, it wasn't drastic enough to cause undue concern, especially to Soot, until his mother went missing.

She'd gone out with the other women to collect the sea's bounty along the shore at tide's ebb, and had separated from the other women as per usual to cover a wider area. While canoes sometimes disappeared, it was an extremely rare circumstance for a woman to vanish. He was mostly through his 14th year when the event occurred, and on the cusp of being declared a man and allowed to truly join a hunt. The revered shaman elders of their island's people were disturbed by the compounding troubles surrounding the island, and there are rumors of an impending summit amongst the shaman to discuss the issues.