Thar Shaddin

Ryan, son of Relin

Code:
Name: Ryan Relinson
Age: 17
Race: Human

Physical Description: Ryan is a very stocky character, being a huge, hulking figure, and he stands at 6' 1".

Ryan's skin is very white, but it's covered in a mixture of sweat, dirt, and a farmer's tan.

The hair is quite messy, unkempt, and red-orange. There are absolutely no other bits of hair on his face save for the hair in his eyebrows, and the entire face itself has a triangular-oval blend. It could be best described as a triangular structure, but the triangles' "sides" are curved enough to give the illusion of it actually being an oval, and his chin and jaw are wider than most triangular faced individuals.

He has big, rough working hands. They're covered in scabs, scars, and scrapes, and a few burning incidents in the past have killed most of the nerve endings in his fingers. They have built calyces, these fingers, due to his practice at playing the lute in his free time.

Ryan's voice is surprisingly quiet, since one would expect more from an almost hulking figure such as him. It sounds almost as if he's trying to keep his voice down so people don't notice Something off about it.

Possessions: In addition to his lute, Ryan also owns a flute.

Due to being on a farm, Ryan owns all sorts of tools, such as a few rakes, shovels, and so on. However, he doesn't carry these around with him all the time. If he carries anything with him, it'll probably be one of his instruments or his shovel, along with some rope. Ryan never leaves the farm without his 20 feet of rope.

Lastly, Ryan owns a horse. His horse's name is Jubilee, and he cares for it like its his own child. Jubilee is just a worker horse though, and Ryan has never ridden it before.

Powers or Strengths: Ryan is very built and strong. While undernourished due to poor health practices, Ryan still boasts a healthy physique and could probably punch through a wooden 4x4 if he was allowed to try multiple times.

Ryan also is very patient and durable, causing his foster father to call him a Walking Tree teasingly due to his giantness and patience. This lets Ryan endure some rather uncomfortable conditions, brush off sore body parts from extremely awkward sleeping positions, and win many staring contests.

Obviously, Ryan knows how to farm, and therefore is able to operate farm-related tools and complete farm-related tasks.

Ryan can play a mean lute and flute tune to boot. While untrained, he can still play some folk tunes he's learned to play by ear. His sound isn't anything that impressive, but he definitely is able to capture the feel of a song and get the beat to become stuck in everyone's head for the next week and a half.

Ryan is also very dedicated, and supririsingly doesn't forget things that often. He's surprisingly been able to remember how many crops have wilted for weeks on end (as long as he has enough fingers to count the number of crops). This also could explain how he's been able to play songs on instruments he's never been told how to play.

Weaknesses and Flaws:

Ryan is outrageously stupid, innocent, and therefore, gullible. Definitely a gentle giant, Ryan's lack of knowledge isn't just from not being educated. He is genuinely stupid, and has a hard time grasping abstract thoughts and ideas, as well as complicated concrete ones. When asked a question Ryan doesn't know the answer to, or whenever he needs to think hard about something, his eyebrows furrow and his eyes cross, looking up at his furrowed brow. Combined with his patience, Ryan may end up staying like this for hours on end, not letting up if a meteor were to come crashing down right in front of him.

This stupidity is complimented with a sheltered life style, meaning he was never educated in the naughty bits and related subjects, creating a rather adorable innocence about him. He knows girls are cute-looking and all, but he doesn't know anything about why, or where babies come from, or anything like that. This is most likely because Ryan never thinks to ask these questions.

Now Ryan realizes that he "dun know much about nuthin," so he will often ask others for advice, preferably without explanation or words with more than three syllables, and then act on it without question. Due to this, his stupidity, and his innocence, he's become quite gullible, and will probably believe anything told to him. This can prove to be very beneficial to manipulators. (The exception to this is if he is told to kill or maim- see History)

Other: Ryan is very shy. It's not that he doesn't open up to others or express himself in public, he's only is soft spoken- not using three words when one would suffice. In conversations, he will mostly just nod or make a confused face when he doesn't understand something. If need be, to respond to another, he may make a statement, but only if he feels the need to say something or if he doesn't want to answer since he thinks its impossible. For example, when asked if it was going to rain one day, Ryan replied, "I dunno if it'll rain. The clouds are there, but I've seen clouds that don't rain before."

History: Ryan has lived a rather quiet and peaceful life. However, he is no stranger to tragic events, such as the famine when he was 12: It lasted for a number of years, and was specific to Ryan's farmland, in addition to about five to seven other peasants' farms in the area. It was not Shim-wide.

During this famine, many a farm's vegetable crops were failing. Starving was rampant throughout these select few farmlands, and Ryan was dumbfounded to find that crops were just failing left and right. Much livestock was starving to death, and Ryan learned a lot about taking things for granted during this time. He learned that all life is precious and must be protected at all costs.

During the famine, as food became more and more scarce, Ryan saw the other farmers nearby in Shim begin to eat their own horses- very unsettling, and Ryan began to talk about something he finally felt strongly about- his horse. This love for his horse spread to all other horses, and then to the lives of all farm animals (ones for food should die happy, not violently), and then to bugs, and then to all forms of life, big and small.

The farmers gave all they had left to a suspiciously-acting wizard to fix their situation. After collecting a pile of gold, this wizard ended their famine with an incantation of sorts, and then began taking some of their harvests each year for the next three years as payment for his services. The wizard threatened that his share of the harvests were to "ensure the permanency of the famine removal- if you don't give me anything, the famine could come right back."

When Ryan was fifteen, rumors began to spread that the wizard had actually used his black arts to cause the famine in the first place, causing much heat and tension between the farmers and the mysterious wizard. Of course, they went to the authorities, and then this wizard just mysteriously vanished. {Edited out the bit about the friend bursting into flame.}

Ryan fears and despises all magic (since he believes the wizard caused that terrible famine), and follows the laws of Thar Shaddin with respect and undoubting faith. They protect as much of precious life as they can from the evils of magic, which may be the best combination of Ryan's only opinions he has ever seen. Due to this, Ryan's secret dream is to become a city guard member one day and help out everyone fight against magic, but he's just too stupid to ever fulfill that desire.

In the meantime, he plans to stick with farming and supply purchasing.

Edited.

Heyo!

Africa does not exist. http://www.tharshaddin.com/wiki/Map_of_Pal_Tahrenor
http://www.tharshaddin.com/wiki/Map_of_ ... _Provinces

Not all dark-skinned folks from Africa even in the real world have the same shade. Some are relatively pale. Just give a color to it, and say he's from whatever province or whatnot. No different from saying someone is swarthy or .......yeah, you get the picture.

Did you want sickle cell or not? I think perhaps with all of the major problems with it you could either choose another disease or go with something else. As is the sickle cell does kinda feel shoehorned in and doesn't necessarily make sense. Try to perhaps focus on more normal strengths and weaknesses that make sense for the character and don't put him on the brink of death every day.

If you want him to be a farmer I think you need to perhaps majorly mellow out these weaknesses. Farming is tough work, and these would make him all but useless out on the field every day. You could always make him something else besides a farmer that doesn't require hard labor, or just make it work another way. You know. Try to start over again with a bit of less contradictions that make it difficult to get right, and I think you'll have a much easier time. I have faith in you!

Go for strengths and weaknesses that speak to personality and life experiences. Look at any normal person -- most of them have both physical and mental weaknesses that make them a whole. I mean, if you want a crippled dude who isn't very good at what he does, that's totally cool -- we have those sorts of characters and they have their place. But try to make it make sense. A weak person is not going to do well on a farm, not without a lot of help.

The history feels like you just sorta slapped something together as fast as you could to make it work. It's fine to have a short history, but you leave a lot in there that doesn't really make sense. Sometimes simplicity is key. Too, Shim is protected by Marn so it's unlikely there'd be a lot of raiding going on -- Marn is essentially a city state, and the leadership takes protection against outside threats pretty damn seriously. If you want to go for mystery that's perfectly cool, but think of other ways to go about it.

Too, try to include something in the history that speaks to who he is as a person. Right now, I know some of the what -- you want him to be a tragic character, is what I'm getting -- but I don't know how it's affected him. How does he react to people? Is he social? I know he's melancholy, but what does he think of his own history? How does he interact with other townspeople? What are his likes/dislikes? The bits after the history show that you have thought about who he is as a person -- let's see some of that in his strengths/weaknesses and history! As long as you show some of that thought in his history, strengths and weaknesses, the rest will follow during the rp itself no problem.

Part of the reason we ask for this stuff is that people will look to your character app to figure out whether or not they want to rp with you. Right now, it'd be difficult for other players to judge who the character is and whether or not they'd want to rp with you. I understand it can be difficult to get acclimated to a new community, but I think you're mostly there -- I get the feeling that this new version of the app was in part a reaction to some of the prior suggestions, rather than an unbiased try at sorta doing things our way. It's a drawback of established settings that you wind up having to kowtow to others' ways of doing things, I know, but in the end it does help to keep things stable!

Thanks for all your hard work, ducky! I think maybe there was just some miscommunication, which does happen from time to time.

If you have any questions or want to discuss something, please leave a reply here or catch me in chat.

Cool! Thanks for the suggestions, but I decided that, since I misunderstood the first instructions for change, I decided to try to do what I now understand what I was supposed to do- just expand on my character more, and make people understand what an RP with this character will be like. So I did that, and then I came on here and saw your message XD it was thoughtful and all and I thank you for it, but I already had my own changes to make anyway. Not that that means I "bypass" mod review or anything, it's just that I changed up the character too much this time for some of your things to- okay I'm just going to assume you get it and I'll go on the chat when I get home from this car ride

Okay, I'm ready for another review ^.^

being built like a real farmer and standing at 5' 11", which was considered quite tall in the medieval ages.

Yes, calling you ducky is being flippant, but we've all been genuinely trying to help you. I have only met you yesterday. I tend to spend a good chunk of time -- voluntarily! -- to read through apps and try to get them approved. I could be doing many other things, but I don't. I'm here, trying to help you, instead.

Cut out the snark until I know you well enough to be able to tell it's done in jest and not in an attempt to subtly flip me off. Doing little ^.^ faces and returning silly pet names in chat is perfectly okay, as is some sass (as long as you're not coming across as angry). Keep it out of the app, please. Especially because I'm taking my lunch break to try to get you approved as fast as possible.

Let me know when you've done so.

I had no idea my app was so snarky- I apologize deeply for that, and I will try to adopt a more mild-natured writing style for future writing.

As far as I can tell (I honestly didnt intend for anything to come off as snarky XD) I have removed all snarky-ness from the app.

Wow, that's dedication! I'd definitely never give up my lunch just to approve some kid's app, and I'm not sure if I should be thankful or guilty that you're taking meals out of your day just to help me out. I hope you get to eat soon tho!

Okidokes, here we go.

The strengths are a good mix of mental and physical. This is exactly the sort of stuff we look for. Just so ya know, a treant wouldn't be common in shim/marn, so if he himself uses the word, he might get a bunch of blank stares.

Same with weaknesses, while there's no physical ones, you don't need any physical weaknesses since he's not combat focused, and the mental ones make sense for who he is and how he's grown up.



History:

You probably didn't know this page existed, so I'll link it here for your rp purposes:

http://www.tharshaddin.com/wiki/Shim_Agriculture

With Thar Shaddin being where it is located, Meesh (Niabi) did a bunch of research so we could figure out what would grow in that specific area and what was likely to be grown (while accounting for the whole earth-tipping and weather changes, as much as a bunch of amateur science geeks can, anyways). Potatoes isn't on the list; Meesh would probably be able to give you the reason on why she didn't include it, if you're curious.

Buuut, that's just a nitpicky thing. Replace potatoes with something else and it still works.

Keep in mind that magic is prohibited in Shim and Marn. A wizard fixing several farms worth of issues would likely be noticed by the Puradynes in the area (the majority of people in Shim/Marn are Puradyne) and reported to the guard. A similar sort of situation would be having a problem and having a gnome create some weird device to fix it, and then people thinking that he'd used magic in the device -- which would bring the wrath of Marn down upon them. Rather than bursting into flame, the girl could just. . .mysteriously die. And then the gnome would never be seen again. Because that's what usually tends to happen to people who are persona non grata in Marn -- they just vanish.

So, you're definitely on the right track! A few things to fix and you'll be golden.

Note: The changes I made to the app since you last read it are now written in Bold.

Thank you! Both for your time and well-written replies XD. Okay, I changed "potatoes" to "vegetables," and I completely took out the bit with the friend telling the authorities. That was replaced with the farmers telling the authorities on their own of their suspicions, and then the wizard mysteriously vanishing.

And yeah, I can see why this would be the stuff you'd look for! This character definitely feels more like an actual character that people would want to RP with.

Approved.

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Good luck and happy rping!