an old application

[amberdrake]

I'm home again, I won the war, and now I am behind your door
I tried so hard to obey the law, and see the meaning of this all
Remember me? Before the war? I'm the man who lived next door
Long ago...

Player Information

Name: Aro
Age: late 30s
Contact details: aroihkin, Aroihkin#4667

Character Information

Name: Amberdrake k'Leshya
Canon: Heralds of Valdemar
Canon Point: About a year after White Gryphon, the second book.
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: CRAU as fuck
Age: early 40s in canon, older mentally with many many years of CRAU rp time. Due to how well he's taken care of himself and his heritage, most people will probably think he's in his early 30s until they realize how many things he's a legitimate expert in.

World Information:

http://valdemar.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page (Velgarth wiki.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Gryphon (The first book.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Gryphon (The second book.)
I've also put up small samples of the books in this tag and on his profile. Because you can't youtube a book, and the wiki pages are... ehhh, lacking. As they usually are for books.

-----Setting Concepts:

Velgarth is a high fantasy setting and Amberdrake is from the first three books -- chronologically -- in what became a rather long series. The events that happened during his lifetime -- including his own actions -- still shape things in the more recent books.

There is an entire wiki for this series. Terms that will be of most use in this application:

Things Amberdrake is or has:

Kaled'a'in - wiki. His ethnicity.
Kestra'chern - wiki. An extremely holistic therapist. More about it in abilities.
Chirurgeon - an archaic form of surgeon and all that that implies. No magic.
Empathy - wiki. He feels your emotions; he can project his at you. It's not mind-reading, it's more like having an accurate mood ring, with its visibility determined by any shielding or the lack thereof. Drake is one of the strongest Empaths his world has ever seen in any of the books, and 100% trained. More about it in abilities.
Healing - wiki. What it says on the tin. On top of being a trained surgeon through mundane means, Drake can also Heal. More about it in abilities.

The five (in Drake's lifetime) sentient non-human races who were all in the army with him and live in the city-state of White Gryphon:

Gryphons - wiki. Exactly what you'd think. Huge lions with raptor parts. Created whole-cloth by Urtho; often magic users.
Hertasi - wiki. Lizard people; they walk upright and are shorter than humans, but not tiny like IRL lizards. They seem to have their own special magic.
Kyree - wiki. Giant telepathic wolves. And I do mean giant. Pony-sized telepathic wolves. Is Drake's world awesome, or what?
Dyheli - wiki. Telepathic deer!
Tervardi - wiki. Bird people! Like Tengu.

Some of the important people:

Urtho - The Mage of Silence. Leader of the side of the war Drake was on. The greatest Adept Mage the world has ever seen; able to make an entire race and enhance several others. He also happened to be Amberdrake's friend, and his client... and someone he's pretty clearly fallen for. (In the books he goes 'weak in the knees' around Urtho. I mean come on.) Deceased.
Ma'ar - The Adept of Black Flame. He's... magical Hitler. I'm sorry. but that's basically him. The leader of the enemy side of the decade-long war. Deceased, but has a habit of coming back as a reincarnation every few hundred years later to try again. (But then again, so does Amberdrake and company to stop him. Hi, Darkwind! How you doin', totally-not-reincarnated-Amberdrake! Good? Good?)
Skandranon - The Black Gryphon himself. Brother in all but blood to Amberdrake. Takes no shit.
Gesten - Amberdrake's hertasi assistant; snarky, smart, takes no shit. Adore him. You have no choice.
Winterhart - Ex-noble hiding in the army as a healer, eventual lifebond to Amberdrake. Also takes no shit. See a pattern in the people Drake surrounds himself with?

Personal History:

Pre-books backstory taken straight from The Black Gryphon:

He shoved the tent flap aside and tied it closed; clear warning to anyone looking for him that he did not want to be disturbed. Once inside, he took several deep breaths, and considered his next action for a moment, letting the faintly-perfumed "twilight" within the tent walls soothe him.

There were things he could do while he thought; plenty of things he normally left to Gesten. Mending, for one. Gesten would be only too pleased to discover that chore no longer waiting his attention.

Fine. He passed into the inner chamber of the tent where no client ever came, to his own bed and the minor chaos that Gesten had not been able to clean up yet. Clothing needing mending is in the sage hamper. He gathered up a number of articles with popped seams and trim that had parted company with the main body of the garment; fetched the supply of needles and thread out from its hiding place. He settled himself on a pile of cushions where the light was good, and began replacing a sleeve with fine, precise stitches.

The chirurgeons that had been his teachers had admired those stitches, once upon a time.

No one knows hurt and heartache like a kestra'chern, because no one has felt it like a kestra'chern. If he had told the boy that, would the young idiot have believed it?

What if I had told him a story—"Once on a time, there was a Kaled'a'in family, living far from the camps of their kin—"

His family, who, with several others, had accepted the burden of living far from the Clans, in the land once named Tantara and a city called Therium. They had accepted the burden of living so far away, so that the Kaled'a'in would have agents there. His family had become accustomed to the ways of cities after living there for several generations, and had adopted many of the habits and thoughts of those dwelling within them. They became a Kaled'a'in family who had taken on so many of those characteristics that it would have been difficult to tell them from the natives except for their coloring—unmistakably Kaled'a'in, with black hair, deep amber skin, and blue, blue eyes.

Once upon a time, this was a family who had seen the potential for great Empathic and Healing power in one of their youngest sons. And rather than sending him back to the Clans to learn the "old-fashioned" ways of the Kaled'a'in Healers, had instead sent him farther away, to the capital of the neighboring country of Predain, to learn "modern medicine."

He took a sudden sharp breath at the renewed pain of that long-ago separation. It never went away; it simply became duller, a bit easier to endure with passing time.

They thought they were doing the right thing. Everyone told me how important it was to learn the most modern methods.

Everyone told me how important it was to use the Gifts that I had been born with. I was only thirteen, I had to believe them. The only problem was that the College of Chirurgeons was so "modern" it didn't believe in Empathy, Healing, or any other Gift. The chirurgeons only believed in what they could see, weigh, and measure; in what anyone with training could do, and "not just those with some so-called mystical Gifts."

The Predain College of Chirurgeons did provide a good, solid grounding in the kinds of Healing that were performed without any arcane Gifts at all. Amberdrake was taught surgical techniques, the compounding of medicines from herbs and minerals, bone-setting, diagnoses, and more. And if he had been living at home, he might even have come to enjoy it.

But he was not at home. Surrounded by the sick and injured, sent far away from anyone who understood him—in his first year he was the butt of unkind jokes and tricks from his fellow classmates, who called him "barbarian," and he was constantly falling ill. The Gift of Empathy was no Gift at all when there were too many sick and dying people to shut out. And the chirurgeons that were his teachers only made him sicker, misdiagnosing him and dosing him for illnesses he didn't even have.

And on top of it all, he was lonely, with no more than a handful of people his own age willing even to be decent to him. Sick at heart and sick in spirit, little wonder he was sick in body as well.

He had been so sick that he didn't even realize how things had changed outside the College—had no inkling of how a mage named Ma'ar had raised an army of followers and supporters in his quest for mundane, rather than arcane, power. He heard of Ma'ar only in the context of "Ma'ar says" when one of his less-friendly classmates found some way to persecute him and felt the need to justify that persecution.

From those chance-fallen quotes, he knew only that Ma'ar was a would-be warrior and philosopher who had united dozens of warring tribes under his fist, making them part of his "Superior Breed." Proponents of superior-breed theories had come and gone before, attracted a few fanatics, then faded away after breaking a few windows. All the teachers said so when he asked them.

I saw no reason to disbelieve them. Amberdrake took his tiny, careful stitches, concentrating his will on them, as if by mending up his sleeve he could mend up his past.

He had paid no real attention to things happening outside the College. He didn't realize that Ma'ar had been made Prime Minister to the King of Predain. He was too sunk in depression to pay much attention when the King died without an heir, leaving Ma'ar the titular ruler of Predain. King Ma'ar, the warrior-king.

But he certainly noticed the changes that followed.

Kaled'a'in and other "foreigners" throughout Predain were suddenly subject to more and more restrictions: where they could go, what they could do, even what they were permitted to wear. Inside the College or out of it, wherever he went he was the subject of taunts, and once or twice, even physical attacks.

By then, the teachers at the College were apologetic, even fearful of what was going on in the greater world; they protected him in their own way, but the best they could do was to confine him to the College and its grounds. And they were bewildered; they had paid no attention to "Ma'ar and his ruffians" and now it was too late to do anything about them. Intellectual problems they understood, but a problem requiring direct action left them baffled and helpless.

And in that, how unlike Urtho they were!

The restrictions from outside continued, turning him into a prisoner within the walls of the College. He stopped getting letters from his family. He was no longer allowed to send letters to them.

I was only fifteen! How could I know what to do?

Then he heard the rumors from the town, overheard from other students frightened for themselves. Ma'ar's men were "deporting" the "foreigners" and taking them away, and no one knew where. Ill, terrified, and in a panic, he had done the only thing he could think of when the rumors said Ma'ar's men were coming to the College to sift through the ranks of students and teachers alike for more "decadent foreigners."

He ran away that very night with only the clothes on his back, the little money he had with him, and the food he could steal from the College kitchen. In the dead of winter, he fled across country, hiding by day, traveling by night, stealing to eat, all the way back to Therium. He spent almost a week in a fevered delirium, acting more like a crazed animal than the moody but bright young Healer-student he was. He was captured by town police twice, and escaped from them the first time by violence, the second time by trickery.

Before he was halfway home, his shoes, made for town streets, had split apart, leaving his feet frozen and numb while he slogged across the barren countryside. He had stolen new shoes from farmhouse steps, hearing more of the rumors himself as he eavesdropped on conversations in taverns and kitchens. Then, from many of his hiding places, he saw the reality.

Ma'ar was eliminating anyone who opposed his rule—and anyone who might oppose war with the neighboring lands. He had mastered the army, and augmented it with officers chosen from the ranks of his followers. Ma'ar intended to strike before his neighbors had any warning of his intentions.

Ma'ar was making himself an emperor.

And at home, indeed, as the students had said—all the "foreigners" were being rounded up and taken away. Sick with fear and guilt, Amberdrake hid in the daylight hours in an abandoned house with a broken-down door. Ma'ar's troopers had been there first, and when night came, he took whatever food he found there and continued his flight.

Looting the bones of the lost. May they forgive me.

It would have been a difficult journey for an adult with money and some resources, with experience. It was a nightmare for Amberdrake. The bulk of his journey lay across farmlands, forests, grazing lands. Most of the time, he went hungry and slept in ditches and under piles of brush. Small wonder that when he stumbled at last into Therium, he burned with fever again and was weak and nauseous with starvation.

I came home. And I found an empty house, in a city that was in a panic. Ma'ar's troops were a day behind me.

No one knew what had become of his family. No one cared what became of him.

He found the neighbors preparing to evacuate, piling their wagon high with their possessions. They had no time for him, these folk who had called themselves "friends," and who had known him all his life.

I begged them to tell me where my family was. I went to my knees and begged with tears pouring down my face. I knelt there in the mud and horse dung and falling snow and pleaded with them. They called me vile names—and when I got to my feet—

Old sorrow, bitter sorrow, choked him again, blinded his eyes until he had to stop taking his tiny stitches and wait for the tears to clear.

I never knew till then what "alone" truly meant. Father, Mother, Firemare, Starsinger, little Zephyr—gone, all gone—Uncle Silverhorn, Star gem, Windsteed, Brightbird—

He had flung himself at the false neighbors, and they had shoved him away, and then raised the horse whip to him. One blow was all it took, and the world and sky disappeared for Amberdrake. He awoke bleeding, at least a candlemark later, with a welt across his chest as thick as his hand. Half-mad with terror and grief, he staggered on into the snow.

He fell against the side of another wagon full of escapees.

The wagon belonging to the kestra'chern Silver Veil, and her household and apprentices.

He forced his hands to remain steady. This is the past. I cannot change it. I did what I could, I tried my best, and how was I to know what Ma'ar would do when older and wiser folk than I did not?

Silver Veil did not send her servants to drive him away; although by now he hardly knew what was happening to him. In pain, freezing and burning by turns, he barely recalled being taken up into the moving wagon, falling into soft darkness.

In that darkness he had remained for a very long time....

His hands shook, and he put the mending down, closed his eyes, and performed a breathing exercise to calm himself—one that Silver Veil herself had taught him, in fact.

He had heard of her, in rude whispers, before he had been sent away. As little boys on the verge of puberty always did, his gang of friends spoke about her and boasted how they would seek her out when they were older and had money. She was as beautiful as a statue carved by a master sculptor, slim as a boy, graceful as a gazelle. She took her name from her hair, a platinum fall of silk that she had never cut, that trailed on the ground behind her when she let it fall loose. He had always thought she was simply a courtesan, more exotic and expensive than most, but only that.

It took living within her household to learn differently.

She tended him through his illness, she and her household. He posed as one of her apprentices as they made their way to some place safer—and then, after a time, it was no longer a pose.

Silver Veil did her best to shelter her own from the horrors of that flight, but there was no way to shelter them from all of it. She had no Gifts, but she had an uncanny sense for finding safe routes. Unfortunately, many of those lay through places Ma'ar's troops had lately passed.

Ma'ar's forces were not kind to the defeated; they were even less kind to those who had resisted them. Amberdrake still woke in the night, sometimes, shaking and drenched with sweat, from terrible dreams of seeing whole families impaled on stakes to die. Nearly as terrible was the one time they had been forced to hide while Ma'ar's picked men—and his makaar—force marched a seemingly endless column of captives past them. Amberdrake had watched in shock from fear and dread, searching each haggard face for signs of his own kin.

Was it a blessing he had not seen anyone he knew, or a curse?

Silver Veil plied her trade as they fled—sometimes for a fee but just as often for nothing, for the sake of those who needed her. And sometimes, as a bribe, to get her household through one of Ma'ar's checkpoints. The apprentices, Amberdrake among them, tried to spare her that as much as possible, offering themselves in her place. Often as not, the offer was accepted, for there was something about Silver Veil that intimidated many of Ma'ar's officers. She was too serene, too intelligent, too sophisticated for them. It was by no means unusual to find that the man they needed to bribe preferred something less—refined—than anything Silver Veil offered.

And finally, as spring crept cautiously out of hiding, they came out into lands that were in friendly hands. But when Silver Veil reviewed her options, she learned that they were fewer than she had hoped. Soon she knew that she must seek a road that would take her away from the likeliest direction his family had taken—back to Ka'venusho, the land of the Kaled'a'in.

And once again, she provided for young Amberdrake, she found another kestra'chern to take him as an apprentice and be his protector, one who would be willing to go with him to Ka'venusho. This time, the kestra'chern was old, mostly retired—and unlike Silver Veil, Lorshallen shared with Amberdrake the Gifts of Healing and Empathy. Silver Veil took a tear-filled leave of him and his new mentor, and she and her household fled on into the south. One of the apprentices claimed that she had a place waiting for her in the train of one of the Shaman-Kings there, in a land where winter never came. Amberdrake hoped so; he had never heard anything more of her.

The war encroached, as Silver Veil had known it would, and Amberdrake and his new mentor Lorshallen fled before it.

Lorshallen taught him everything he knew about his ancient art; Amberdrake learned it all with a fierce desire to master each and every discipline. All the things that the chirurgeons had not believed in, he mastered under Lorshallen's hands. And he, in his turn, taught Lorshallen the things that they had known. Silver Veil had completed his erotic education and had done her best to heal his body; Lorshallen completed his education as a Healer and had done his best to heal Amberdrake's mind and heart.

Eventually, they came to the Clans, and Amberdrake briefly took his place among his own people, an honored place, for the Kaled'a'in knew the value of a kestra'chern, particularly one as highly trained as Amberdrake, and they respected the pain he had gone through. The Kaled'a'in had a deep belief that no pain was meaningless; something always came of it. He knew that tales of what he had gone through were whispered around cook-fires, although such a thing was never even hinted at to him. Those in pain could look for strength to someone who had suffered more than they.

Always, he searched for word of his family. His people understood, for to a Kaled'a'in, the Clan is all. The Clan he settled among, k'Leshya, did their best, sending out messages to all the rest, looking into every rumor of refugees, searching always for word of Kestra'chern Amberdrake's lost family.

And they never found it. In a nation of close-knit families, I remain alone, always alone.... There will be no brother to share man-talk with, no sister to comfort for her first broken heart. No father to nod with pride at my accomplishment, no mother to come to for advice. No cousins to ask me to stand as kin-next at a naming ceremony for a child. And when I die, it will be to go alone into that last great darkness—

I have lost so much that sometimes I think I am nothing inside but one hollow husk, an emptiness that nothing will ever fill. Still, I try to bail in more and more hope, in hope that the sorrow will seep out.

When the call came for volunteers from the Mage of Silence, Amberdrake answered at once. At least he would no longer be surrounded by Clans and families to which he would never belong, but by others torn from their homes and roots. And he would fight Ma'ar, in his own way, with his own skills.

Eventually, all of the Clans came to settle at the base of Urtho's Tower, but by then, he had already carved his place among the kestra'chern.

He shook his head and bit his lip. Gesten might think he was blind to the workings of his own mind, but he knew why he felt the way he did about Skan. The Black Gryphon and Gesten had become the closest thing he had to a family, now.

And the closest thing I am ever likely to have.

When—best say, if—a kestra'chern ever found a mate, it was nearly always someone from within the ranks of the kestra'chern. No one else would understand; no one else would ever be able to tolerate sharing a mate with others. But for such a pairing to work, it had to be between equals. The altercation between Jaseen and Lily had only shown how easily quarrels could spring up over a client. And if one kestra'chern in a pairing was of a higher rank than another, such quarrels and, even deadlier, jealousy were more than likely, they were inevitable. Beneath the surface of every kestra'chern Amberdrake had ever met was a lurking fear of inadequacy. So unless both in a pairing were equal—

The lesser would eventually come to envy and fear the greater. And fear that his or her own skills would not be enough to hold the partner.

Amberdrake was the equal of no kestra'chern here; that was an established fact. And it meant even temporary liaisons must be approached with great caution.

Which left him even more alone.

Even more alone—no. This is ridiculous. If I were a client, I'd be told to stop feeling sorry for myself and concentrate on something that would make me feel good. Or at least stop me from being engulfed by the past.

The sleeve was done; he picked up a second garment and began sewing a fringe of tiny beads back in place. Thousands of tiny beads had been strung into a heavy, glittering fall of color, in luxurious imitation of a Kaled'a'in dancing costume where the fringe would be made of dyed leather. It was a task exacting enough to require quite a bit of concentration, and with gratitude, he lost himself in it.

The first book, the Black Gryphon, covers the last year or so of the war between Urtho and Ma'ar. Amberdrake worked as a kestra'chern -- the lead kestra'chern, with his client list including Urtho himself -- and also as an emergency Healer, through-out. He watched a lot of people he cared about die, and could often do nothing about it.

“This is too much!” he sobbed bitterly, as whoever was holding him rocked him a little, like a child. “Waiting here, waiting to see who comes back in pieces—who doesn’t come back at all. Not being there when they’re hurt and dying.”

“We know,” Tamsin murmured, a world of sorrow in his own voice. “We know.”

“But you don’t know the rest of it—rewarding the ones who survive, when inside I cry for the ones who didn’t.”

There was nothing they could say to that.

“I’m sick of detaching myself!” he burst out, in another flood of tears. “They come to me to forget their pain, but when am I allowed to mourn?”

The end of the first book marks the end of the War, and Amberdrake goes with his Clan through the Gate that takes them to the setting of the next two books.

There's about ten years between Black Gryphon and White Gryphon. In the second books, the new city-state of White Gryphon is threatened with war again, and Amberdrake is one of the people who goes to stop it. There's a murder mystery and intrigue and a crazy guy who at one point kidnaps and threatens to skin Drake... so, you know. That happens. But in the end everything works out, and in the end Amberdrake ends up accidentally as the Chief of Clan k'Leshya, King of White Gryphon. I'll go into more of the interesting details below.

Personality:

Amberdrake is extremely dedicated, trustworthy, compassionate, and prone to worry about anything and everything that he himself can't fix or prevent with his own two hands. That he physically can't handle violence has had an impact on his personality, too; he shies away from it at any opportunity, and the possibility of a physical confrontation can have him (privately) in a nervous wreck. But this is only physical violence; some people come to kestra'chern for a safe argument, after all.

He tends to overthink his options, but then makes snap decisions that often take others by surprise, and often without consulting others. We see this mostly in White and Silver Gryphon. In White the largest example is his plot to set himself up as a madman and frame himself for murder, and in Silver when he (and Skan) demand to go out with the search party looking for his daughter and Skan's son.

Drake can be quite secretive. You might not think it initially, but then you have to take into account that he spends a lifetime guarding the secrets of others, as well as hiding his own emotions and secrets so that they don't impact others badly. It's a small circle of people who he will voice his worries and concerns to, even if he is always a worrier. He holds his cards close.

     Trust Skan to put the situation into the simplest possible terms! Amberdrake had to smile. “Thank you, Skandranon Rashkae, you’ll make me a perchi yet. Should I simply become a baker, and save myself some worry?”

     “You would find another way to take on the army’s burdens as a baker. Each little slice of bread would have a soldier’s very life and spirits slathered upon it,” Skan snorted.

     He entered the lighted areas of the camp, fixed a frozen, slight smile on his face, and checked his walk to ensure it conveyed the proper confidence and the other more subtle cues of his profession. There were few folk awake at this time of the night—or rather, morning—but those few needed to be reassured if they saw him. A frowning Healer was a bad omen; an unhappy kestra’chern often meant that one of his clients had confided something so grave that it threatened the kestra’chern’s proverbial stability—and since Amberdrake was both those things, anything other than serenity would add fuel to the rumors already flooding the camp. And for Amberdrake to be upset would further inflame the rumors. As long as he was in a public place, he could never forget who and what he was. Even though his face ached and felt stiff from the pleasant expression that he had forced upon it.

Subject to racism all his life, tormented by his own Gifts, with the deaths of his family and the other horrors witnessed in the precursors to the war, and then during the course of the war itself, Amberdrake didn't get the chance until well after the first book to decompress at all. And even in White Gryphon, with everyone looking to him for guidance, he never truly un-clenched.

Characters in Mercedes Lackey books are often criticized for having terrible backgrounds followed by a miraculous fix. They're Chosen to be Heralds, they find true love, etc. Amberdrake remained damaged through-out all of canon, even though a lifebond was thrown his way in the first book. Even in Silver Gryphon, which takes place when he's in his 50s [he's still damaged], still a worrier. He truly can't help it; he remains damaged by his past and all of past canon through-out every book he's in. He still sees the War, thirty years later, lurking hungrily in the shadows.

In essence, Drake lost everything as a kid, became a kestra'chern, and never truly became anything else. He used his job to armor himself at the expense of everything inside--

     I have lost so much that sometimes I think I am nothing inside but one hollow husk, an emptiness that nothing will ever fill. Still, I try to bail in more and more hope, in hope that the sorrow will seep out.

--and doesn't know quite what to do with himself outside of his limited "use". Even Winterhart, though she obviously has helped some with his considerable loneliness, hasn't changed who is at his core.

That isn't to say that the character does nothing but worry and angst, but he fully admits that he finds it easier to forget his own troubles when he's dealing with someone else's. That's one thing that kestra'chern always have in common, no matter their different backgrounds.

He has a curiosity streak a mile wide, and a thirst for knowledge. He knows he can never put all the puzzle pieces together when it comes to his individual clients, and even most people in general, so he strives for context on a larger scale at every opportunity:

     I may never come to truly understand these people, Amberdrake thought with resignation. Winterhart told him that he didn't need to understand them as long as he could follow the logic of their customs, but he had been a kestra'chern for too long to ever be content with anything that superficial.

In part because the information might be useful to protect those he wishes to protect, in the future, and he lacks all conventional means to do so. But also because he has to understand.

There is no Amberdrake more miserable than a hopelessly lost Amberdrake. What good is he without knowledge? Without insight?

And still, there is room aplenty for humor and wit, stuffed into all the cracks in the rest of his personality. What kestra'chern doesn't understand the value of the happier moments in life? Not a very good one. He prefers to surround himself with intelligent, witty people, even when they lack charm and tact. Just about everyone he associates with when off-duty in the books are the smart, snarky types, and it isn't at all odd to find him lounging around with a nice cup of tea while his companions banter back and forth amongst themselves. Skan and Gesten in particular made a tradition of it, often roping in anyone else they could (even Drake himself) into their banter.

The most important thing to remember about Amberdrake is that he is the product of war... and also a veteran of it; a survivor. It has touched every aspect of his life and his personality, deeply, and will continue to impact him for his entire life. But at the same time, he is a survivor, and he will rebuild, and make the most he can of their victory-loss.

But to him, the War lurks in every shadow and in every heartbroken or crippled client. It lurks just behind his eyelids and it waits outside the shining city of White Gryphon for the unwary to venture out into its maw. War is eternally universal; it reaches across time and space, reaching even here among the stars.

As for Drake's leadership arc in the books, it isn't something he seeks and it's something that he seems mostly unaware of for the bulk of canon. He's the head Kestra'chern all through-out the war, he takes charge of Healing the non-humans during emergencies, and he essentially takes over the Haighlei delegation without even meaning to. It isn't until various characters shove it down his throat that he realizes that he's White Gryphon's best shot for the time, and takes up leadership officially.

     Judeth and her Silvers wouldn't be there, either; he'd simply told her not to attend.

     Her reactions had been odd, though, since the time she'd arrived. She'd held herself back from saluting him more than once; he'd seen the little twitch as she restrained the automatic impulse. Judeth hadn't saluted anyone since Urtho died, not even Skan....

     Does this mean she thinks I'm the real leader around here? He wasn't certain he was comfortable with that idea—but he also wasn't comfortable with the notion of Skandranon leading this group in the current circumstances.

     "That's all very well, but a real leader needs to be more than that." Skan sighed as he watched Makke pack away more gifts, this time of priceless fabrics. "I admire those leaders, but I can't emulate them." His nares flushed hot with embarrassment. "I get bored, Drake, handling the day-to-day snarls and messes that people get into. I get bored and I lose track of things. I get bored and I go stale and I get fat. I make up crisis after crisis to solve, when there aren't any. I turn ordinary problems into a crisis, just so I feel as if I'm doing something. You, though—you're good at that kind of thing. I think it's just an extension of what you were trained for."

     "What, as a kestra'chern?" Amberdrake raised an eyebrow. "Well, you may be right. There's a certain amount of organizational skill we have to learn—how to handle people, of course—how to delegate authority and when to take it back. Huh. I hadn't thought of it that way."

Drake's innate leadership and strength are masked by the self-doubt that he's learned from years of discrimination. When he doesn't stop to think about how much of a loser he is, he can be a strong, decisive leader with a keen eye for what needs to be done (and how to get people to do it). His secretiveness is a side effect of being a kestra'chern, and of being a kestra'chern with such a traumatic origin.

CRAU developments:

-----Game Origin:

Multiverse Haven was a Las Vegas-esque city in a pocket multiverse, where 'the Chosen' were left to their devices. Expectations, whether purposefully crafted or born of old fears and worries, manifested in that place.

Baedal was a fantasy city; distrustful of magic-users and ripe with the stirrings of civil war. You can imagine how thrilled Drake was.

Tushanshu was a world on top of a giant turtle, kind of discworld-ish that way. Nothing much happened there, other than the fallout from Sanzo no longer remembering Amberdrake (the first time). See below for more about that.

Genessia was another generic game setting with multiple cities that followed themes. Drake did his best to avoid the spooky vampire-filled city of Everglade, and tried not to set foot in the high-tech Nova City when he could avoid it.

-----CRAU Changes:

Multiverse Haven RPG:

WHAT HAPPENED: One year after Black Gryphon (first book) and the end of The War, Drake was hauled into another panfandom game, Multiverse Haven. He spent two years there, and became romantically involved with another character to the point of a second lifebond being formed toward the end of those two years (Genjyo Sanzo of Saiyuki). Not much else of note happened to him in Haven: he had clients, he tried to help people as much as he could; he was injured by characters and monsters alike due to his non-combatant nature, etc. But he mostly managed to carve a niche of strange happiness out of the place.

And then he was sent back to his world on a routine mission to pick something up for the Powers That Be... and while he was away from Haven, the world came under heavy attack with heavy losses, and Drake was left stranded with his memories intact.

IMPACT: Amberdrake's time spent in Haven actually changed very little about his personality, which is part of why the second book happens exactly as it happens in canon, despite that panfandom intermission. His insecurities nearly got the better of him multiple times in Haven because he was fresh from the war, had never had a chance to decompress, and suddenly found himself less and less useful to others (as the game's population declined). His growing attachment and eventual love for Sanzo was both a blessing and a curse as far as his psyche went; was he really worthy of two people?

Being stranded back on his world would have rendered him worse off, and it did for a long time. But ten years is a long time, and he'd decompressed somewhat from the war by then. He was actually a bit more stable over-all than he was back during his time in Haven, just in time for...

Baedal RPG:

WHAT HAPPENED: One year after White Gryphon, Amberdrake woke up on another game, in the city of Baedal. There was no Sanzo there, at first, but he rolled up his sleeves and got to work, doggedly distracting himself from that lack. Sanzo eventually arrived and the two essentially put their backs against one another to better face a war-torn Baedal. Amberdrake asked for a tattoo of Sanzo's making, in case they were separated again. Months went by; dodging militia, healing people in underground resistance clinics and in the streets alike. The pair bought a run-down old dojo, and Drake took kestra'chern clients. Everything settled into a kind of normalcy, or as normal as it gets in any multiverse world...

And then I literally dropped him onto an actual turtle (another game, Tushanshu).

IMPACT: Not much. The only impact Baedal had was reuniting him with Sanzo just in time to be yanked to another world with a Sanzo who didn't remember him. Whoops. He got another taste of the War, but he always expects the War to be lurking in the shadows.

Tushanshu RPG:

WHAT HAPPENED: Drake wasn't on this game for very long, just a few months. Most of his attention was focused on Healing an extremely wounded Sanzo who no longer remembered their past together (taken from an updated canon point where he'd almost been burned alive), and navigating that whole mess on an emotional level.

IMPACT: By the time the pair vanished from Tushanshu and appeared on the next game together, they were already a tentative couple again. Hard to avoid that sheer chemistry, even when on side's forgotten the other.

Genessia RPG:

WHAT HAPPENED: Amberdrake opened another office to do his kestra'chern work from, and Sanzo did bounties. The pair bought a house. It was adorable. Others from Sanzo's world showed up, both good and bad; an enemy in the form of Ukoku Sanzo, and an ally in the form of Sanzo's long-dead father Koumyou. Drake, of course, had little choice but to be bound up in all of this, for good or bad.

IMPACT: No real impact; Drake's pretty stable at this point.

This Game:

Here he is. Sanzo once again has had his memories of the previous CR/worlds wiped (new player), but Amberdrake once again did not. This has been discussed between us OOCly, and will be the third Sanzo player I've bounced him off of, and the second reset. I'm interested to see if things develop the way they did twice before or not.

Key themes:







&



Main Motivation:

Amberdrake is A Good Boy. He wants to help just about everyone he meets! Both psychologically and physically! For every fuck anyone else on the train is ever lacking, Amberdrake gives two. He cares so deeply for others that it comes at the expense of not caring enough about himself.

Skills:

-------- ARCANE:

Strong Healing Gift and stronger Empathic Gift -- not a rare combination on his world, but it's rare (and detrimental) to have both be so strong. More about that in Weaknesses.

---- Strengths:

The Empathic Gift can theoretically be used as a defense, projecting confusing and conflicting emotions at an attacker in order to escape. The Healing Gift can also be theoretically used as such, because it isn't some blanket "healing" spell that he spams on his target -- Amberdrake is actually able to see into a person's body and manipulate the fluids and energies inside. "Healer's Aftershock" (see below) prevents those with the Healing Gift from abusing this ability, even if they were so inclined. But if you tried to strangle him, for example, he could force the muscles of your arms to suddenly relax. It would take him a moment, however, so it's not as useful against someone leaping out of hiding and trying to stab him in the eye.

On the other hand, he has very fast reflexes and stands a good chance of at least getting out of the way. This is a war medic who had to deal with thrashing gryphons and kyree and kicking dyheli, as well as the occasional too-angry client. He knows how to get out of dodge.

I also go with the idea that he usually needs to touch someone to do things like paralyze a limb. The exception is when he's worked on someone and 'knows' their body well enough to do it at speaking range, but it costs a whole hell of a lot of energy.

He can also project images; sounds; memories, although usually only with skin contact, and usually only when the person involved is another Empath or at least similarly open (by arcane means) to such a connection. I say "usually" because he is able to delve that deep into the non-Gifted, but only by lowering his shields to a dangerous (for his own sanity) level. It's not something he'll generally do unless it's a do-or-die severity situation.

---- Weaknesses:

His Gifts are as much bane as blessing, and often more-so. The Empathic Gift prevents him from being a full-time Healer, because on top of feeling the "Healer's Aftershock" from the Healing Gift -- where he takes on some of the pain of the wounds he heals -- he also feels pain and despair and suffering on an emotional level, and when he's Healing he can't afford to shield harder against his patient. This is why he was an emergency Healer instead of a full-time Healer in the War, and most of his days were spent attending to his duties as a kestra'chern instead.

The combination of Gifts also makes it nigh-impossible for him to ever become a fighter in the conventional sense; he feels everything he inflicts on another. In canon it's not until the third book -- when he's in his fifties -- that he's ever shown actually taking something down, and it was a direct threat against his daughter and his gryphon brother and his son, so Drake was the height of desperation. It still ended with him on his knees on the ground clutching his head and vulnerable, and he'd have been screwed if something else had attacked.

Furthermore, places like hospitals and battlefields have a profound effect on him, the amount of pain and suffering in the air -- physical and emotional -- chews through his shields faster and harder than it chews through those of other Empaths on his world, and he spent many years of his Chirurgeon training bed-bound with imitations of his patients' ailments.

That isn't to say that he doesn't have shields at all, but they have well-documented severe limits that have actually had a profound and permanent effect on him as a character. It seems that the less sources are involved, the better he does, but he also has some psychological weaknesses within them that aren't part of the standard Empath package, due to his background.

It should also be noted that use of the Healing Gift drains both himself and his patient's energy, although he has enough skill and experience and a strong enough Gift that it normally takes either catastrophic injuries or many injured people to actually exhaust him, especially now that he isn't run ragged from a decade of war.

Also, he can't Heal himself, though I've ruled in the past that he's probably harder to scar up. His over-all health levels are higher on this sort of irrelevant level; for example his blood stays untainted in these polluted 'modern' settings, as though he still lived in his own chemical-free world. But it's nothing that would make a lick of difference if he himself wasn't always taking pains to stay in top physical condition the mundane way.

The canon range on his Gifts are roughly as follows:

* Empathic Gift -- Voice range. If, in a quiet setting, he could hear a character's voice, he's also "hearing" more than that (even if they're too far for him to make out words). In a noisy setting, obviously, he'd sense further away than he'd hear. But that seems to be about the rule of thumb. Closer lets him pick up more details, just like picking out more visual details in a person's clothing. If he's deliberately widening his range, with concentration, he can probably pick up a basic feel within shouting-like-you-mean-it range. On Haven, he was able to sense a distressed stranger a block or two away, but Haven was 99% Empathically silent, so his shields were lower.
* Healing Gift -- Requires touch. Almost always requires skin contact with the relevant area, but not always. Sometimes he can work without touch, but he has to be very familiar with the anatomy of who he's dealing with and probably within touching range, and I've ruled in the past that it burns his energy twice as fast as it strains to make the connection. Merely seeing what's wrong with someone doesn't seem to require touch, but definitely requires touching range, and won't be nearly as detailed without touch.

The only way his powers could be widely-catastrophic would be if he dropped his shields and let his considerable Empathic Gift run completely wild... but he would definitely lose his mind if he did that. It's dangerous to his sense of self to even lower them below normal to one person while keeping them normal to everyone else. Even that much could potentially destroy him from the inside out, if the other person was malicious enough or reeled him in too far.

-------- MUNDANE:

Fully-trained Chirurgeon (non-magic surgeon), fully-trained Healer (further general medical knowledge on multiple species), fully-trained Kestra'chern.

Kestra'chern: a holistic therapist dealing with the following (and many other closely-related skills):

* Costume & acting -- he couldn't even let an entire gossipy war-camp know when he was distressed... for a decade. He was considered easily the best kestra'chern and often tended to Urtho himself, as well as his top people; seeing him in any kind of distress would have sent the whole army into a panic. Learning to act is part of training to be a kestra'chern for many reasons from safeguarding your clients' secrets to ensuring the mental well-being of everyone else. This is something he continued for three books -- spanning over 30 years of story. There's also that time he framed himself as a murderer and a lunatic in the eyes of a potential war-enemy nation's Court, in order to then disguise himself as 'Hawkwind', a stern-faced scout put in charge of guarding himself, which allowed him much more freedom to move around to attempt to catch the real killer. He can be a smooth bastard, both in maintaining the "kestra'chern mask" and in more dramatic performances.
* Massage therapy (assisted further by his extensive training in medicine) -- give him time and a massage table and he can turn just about anyone into putty. Even Gods are not immune, or at least they weren't on Multiverse Haven.
* Bodypainting, feather dying, feather repair, general related stuff applying to the various races of his world, which ranges from feathers and fur to scales and skin. He finished his kestra'chern apprenticeship as a feather-painter in particular.
* Psychology -- from the "tell me about your mother" clipboard variety to the sex therapist intimacy issues variety, all depending on the client.
* Escapology and rope/knotwork -- he's kidnapped at one point in White Gryphon and hog-tied by a mad-man, and he remarks while squirming out of the ropes that he's forgotten more about knots than that psycho has ever learned.

Between being a trained Chirurgeon, trained Healer, and trained Kestra'chern, he's actually got quite a bit of herbalistic know-how as well. He mixes many of his medicines and teas and dyes himself.

He's also able to do his own mending with those amazing stitches, and can make his own clothing with sufficient time. (It's not like he knows how to use a sewing machine.) Kestra'chern often design their own clothing.

As a kestra'chern and someone with a multicultural background involving multiple countries, Drake knows most of the languages he was exposed to on his world... at least enough to get by with some creative gesturing.

As a Kaled'a'in, he can stick to a fighting war-horse's saddle like glue, and as the son of scouts and mercenaries, he can move very quietly on foot. And he's a pretty good shot with a bow, but the way it instantly fucks him up to do harm like that makes it very much not viable (as seen in the third book).

Item:

Messenger bird(s)! He's had one in particular on every single game, a little black and gold boy named Garth. If allowed, because they're so tiny and also so social, I'd like to have more than one follow him here from the last two games; he had a little flock of about a dozen tiny birds. But if not, then at least Garth.

Sample:

https://genessia.dreamwidth.org/845276.html

This is my most recent RP for Drake, in which he helps a highly distressed, feather-plucking demon in his office. Because he knows his way around feathery wings, and the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Notes:

-----Appearance (because, book character).

Native American skintone, hair, and bone structure. Strikingly blue eyes. Very muscular, enough to do massage therapy on gryphons and to lift and carry most clients and patients he's ever encountered (other than gryphons, who on his world are huge -- though he can and does lift parts of them at a time ie a wing or leg), but flexible with a trained kestra'chern's ability to relax or tense any muscle as needed. His height is never specified in canon, but going off his diet and his environment when growing up, I've pegged him at 5'8" for the sake of knowing who he has to look up at or down at to speak to.

Because of his past CR, he has a tattoo of a golden lotus, in full color, that covers his entire right palm.

-----That Sanzo Thing:

Sanzo won't remember their past together, but the lifebond will still be there; a lingering, subconscious draw between their souls. (It's also a good way to explain them ending up on so many worlds together.) Amberdrake, who has met every facet of Sanzo, including his past incarnation as Konzen Douji, has his memories intact.

-----Lifebond Info:

What is it:

Lifebonds on Amberdrake's world are rare things generally considered to be bestowed by the Gods. As Sanzo is not from Amberdrake's world, and so his soul is not in the domain of the Velgarthian deities, their bond is a watered down version and doesn't conflict with Drake's bond to Winterhart. It's only half as potent and thus it's quite subtle. Drake didn't even notice it for about six months after it happened.

Canon calls it a lifebond, but it would be more accurate to call it a soulbond. Two people with such a bond are drawn to each other, in some way, and it persists across reincarnations -- something that Amberdrake and Sanzo's worlds both have.

How it happened:

The circumstances behind this particular bond being formed involved being on Drake's world at the time. Sanzo swore to never turn his back on Drake; to never cast him away, and the Star-Eyed Goddess that Amberdrake personally follows decided to seal that deal. She's known for being like that.

Effects:

* It has no effect on Drake's powers or abilities, and adds nothing to their roster.

* Neither of them will be able to bring themselves to intentionally do something devastating to the other. Sanzo could hit him with his fan, or threaten him with his gun, but he couldn't bring himself to aim to actually shoot him. Similarly, Drake could paralyze Sanzo's arm, or drug his tea to make him sleep, but he would never betray the monk's secrets or do something like take the sutra from him.

(These things were already the case, but the lifebond enforces it. Which is especially good when one half of the bond doesn't remember the other half.)

* Additionally, we're using it as the excuse as to why they keep ending up on the same (different) worlds. For Drake, this is the fifth time in a row!

* And because it's a bond between their souls, damage to either soul would have the negative effects on both of them, up to and including death.

-----Soundtrack:

list | youtube playlist