Islands of Pern

Apprentice Harper Arrow

Name: Arrow
Age: 18
Gender: Male
Rank/Craft: Apprentice Harper
Residence: Ithaca Hold

Description: Arrow is tall, an even six feet. He is muscular but hides it well under his clothes, which never seem to drape well over his long frame. Still, he moves with grace, as though he only needs two steps to go from one side of the room to the other. His shoulder-length hair is pitch black and bone straight, usually kept back in a ponytail because he simply cannot do anything else with it. He has black eyes that never seem to lose a touch of worry, sorrow, and fatigue. In spite of that, he's quick with a shy smile and eventually a laugh.

Personality: Arrow can seem shy and haughty, kind and brutish, in control and on the edge of a breakdown, depending on how things have gone that day. His rare disorder precludes him from ever being normal but he tries hard to be. He's very sensitive to the word "crazy" preferring "ill" if one wanted to describe him. His mindhealing therapy has allowed him to maintain stability and to not let his other personalities take over. He's the strongest of the four.

The second strongest, called Slayer, was born from a ruined life. Slayer looks at the world through a simple and twisted logic. To him, Pern is a place where strength and brutality rule the day, where the weak are crushed unless they bend to the strongest. Thanks to his horrid upbringing, Slayer has an incredible tolerance for pain and ignores the suffering of others. He's the most dangerous. He still seeks control of Arrow's life, always waiting for an opening to continue his mad existance in the physical.

Third is Arun. Arrow calls him his "real self", the person as he was at his birth and early childhood. Arun is forever a little boy, torn from his home and thrown into a cave of horrors with the other holdless. Arun is petulant, crying constantly, wanting to be held. He should have disappeared long ago, but since he is "real" and not contrived he has persisted. He is far to weak to be a threat to Arrow, but in times of great distress, he may appear.

Finally, there is Saylor, designed to navigate society with quiet decorum. He's the weakest of them all as he is only defined by his love for a certain weaver and his hatred for a certain greenrider. As a personality, his prognosis is bleak.

Background: Arrow has little memory of his early self. Arun is too busy wailing miserably to tell him. What he does remember is running so hard that his legs burned but being unable to stop for fear of being dragged or left behind by his father. With him was his younger brother known only as Sayvani, though that wasn't his first name. Together they were holdless, hiding from the Pernese authority with a despicable band of other people, castaways like themselves.

Arrow is not sure when Arun started making alternate selves to cope with everything he saw, heard, and experienced but simply could not handle. Eventually, he landed in the hands of Drekkod, a man who loved little boys in the worst way imaginable. The dual worlds of day, when he was pampered, coddled, dressed like a child's doll, and the night, where he was subjected to absolute torture, split his mind futher.

By the time he violently destroyed his tormentors and escaped that crazy world, he was so messed up that his mind completely broke, his personalities floating about and running into each other, coming together, splitting. Water on a window pane.

His memory was locked away in his other selves. He emerged as Saylor, confused, quiet, unassuming. Thanks to a pushy greenrider who decided to have a little fun, a violent streak emerged. In a cascade of events, his equally insane brother was killed after attempting to murder the rider, and Saylor was forced to run away.

He got in contact with a covert harper who made him nervous. True to the pattern, Arrow was created from Saylor to cope with this new possible threat. Unfortunately, Arrow was just as ignorant of the other selves. Riding through the wilderness to uncertain destinations, Arrow ran into vestiges of his past and memories that were beginning to creep to the surface. Eventually, Slayer returned in a desperate moment, leaving a man dead and the covert harper greatly disturbed.

On a ship to Ithaca, the harper forced Arrow to remember his past. It almost broke him again, but he made it and began to suppress Slayer. The new knowledge was only a momentary setback for the insane alter ego, though. After a few weeks of mindhealing and working at Ithaca's Hall, Arrow began having nightmares of choking only to wake up out of the house, with no memory whatsoever of how he got there. Sometimes he would snap from one place to another in an apparent instant, fatigued, lost, or even injured. Frightened, he finally confessed to a healer about what was happening to him.

Much to his dismay and disappointment, he was sentk to Fort, where a mindhealer who was experienced in tough cases would be his only hope of recovering. With him he learned that he may have had as many as a dozen personalities at the Holdless camp and Drekkod\'s manor. He relearned things most people learned as children: The word "no" as a definition of will, that denying one's feelings was bad, he was worth knowing and he did not need other versions of himself to be accepted. Things so simple and so difficult for someone like him. Arrow is as real a person as Arun ever was. If that makes any sense.

His prospects improved so much that the mindhealer permitted him to have one last chance at a social life on the condition that he would continue his therapy. Arrow promised, and was returned to Ithaca.

Pet Name: Blackie
Pet Species: Dog
Pet Color: Black

Pet Description: He's big, black, and extremely furry. Remarkably, he doesn't shed. He's got a good heart but his size is off-putting to most people. His voice his monstrous. Fortunately, he doesn't bark unless he sees another canine or someone is at the door. His long, straight tail has been known to bruise.

Reserved characters:
Marlis, Senior Journeyman Healer (Mind Studies)
Niimi, Journeywoman Healer (Mind Studies)
Asmaer, Senior Apprentice Harper (Abstract Painting)
Sersee, Journeyman Harper (Children\'s Lessons)

Last Updated: 12/14/2005