Temeraire Application
Mar. 27th, 2012 12:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lungtienxiangMun Information
Player name: Siobhan
Contact: israfel1030@gmail.com
Timezone: Central U.S.
Characters in the Wardrobe Already: None
Character Information
Character Name: Temeraire
Species: Celestial dragon
History:Temeraire had an exciting time as an egg, first transported from China toward France as a gift for the emperor Napoleon, then captured by the British navy. He hatched there on the HMS Reliant and immediately selected her captain, William Laurence, as the most superior human on the ship and, most likely, on the earth. While Temeraire was quite sure about his selection of Laurence for his captain, the opinion was not universally held, and their transition into Britain’s Aerial Corps was a rough one. Laurence, a gentleman’s son and a lifelong naval officer, was not your ordinary airman, and Temeraire, exotic of breed and peculiar of temperament, was not your ordinary dragon.
Despite the reservations of the corp, both man and dragon found their place as warriors and heroes. Temeraire’s cleverness and unusual abilities (Celestials are seldom let go by the Chinese for good reasons) contributed to his rising star, Laurence’s good nature and determination to his. Temeraire had barely reached his full growth when he repelled Napoleon’s first invasion of Britain by means of the Divine Wind--and the company of some very fine, dragons, of course.
Temeraire and Laurence pursued a most erratic and peculiar career together, along with their crew and the rest of Temeraire’s wing. Temeraire’s breed brought them to China to act as diplomats (and visit family). Their return journey carried them over the varied terrain and travails of Eurasia, bringing with them allies and new dragons for the cause (including that irritating Iskierka). A dreadful wasting sickness that swept through Britannia's dragons carried the crew to Africa to seek a cure and encounter some of the worst deprivations inflicted by colonialism. This particular trip, together with Temeraire’s time in China, made a political malcontent of him, and when Laurence was imprisoned for what he felt no very good reason, Temeraire answered by forming the first all-dragon wing of the British military, recovering his captain, and repelling Napoleon once more. Both kingmakers and traitors (a mere technicality, of course), Temeraire and Laurence found themselves conveniently exiled to Australia, but barely had they begun to explore the new land and discover new creatures and new developments in their always complex and warring world when they were again called away, this time to attend Britain’s interests in South America. Which was a complete debaucle by the silly standards of the top brass. Temeraire thought rather little of Britain’s leaders by then, and agreed to a judicious retreat to China. On the voyage, Temeraire went out to stretch his wings and was caught in a dreadful storm that snatched even his huge body straight out of the air. He landed on what he supposed was a small island and thought to wait out the sudden gale there, but when the clouds and torrential rain cleared, he found himself on a large expanse of land not the least like the little islands he’d seen in the Pacific, where everything was profoundly strange and there was no sign of Laurence or Roland or even Iskierka. He was profoundly displeased, though the discovery of a book big enough for him to trace letters with his claws and with a surprising tendency not to slip out of his grip did something to cheer him up.
Why this character: Temeraire’s remarkable personality has always resonated with me. While eminently lovable and endearing, he’s also terrifying and fundamentally alien. As a creature who performs recreational calculus and can’t get his head around the concept of land ownership, whose devotion to his own human (and complement of auxiliary humans) is absolute but who is perfectly willing to strike out on a war that could hardly be said to be interesting to him with the aim of defeating other dragons and taking away their captains, he’s a mess of wonderful contradictions and surprising depth of feeling. And he’s a dragon, which cannot be discounted as motivation.
Canon Point: Directly following the conclusion of Crucible of Gold.
Personality: Temeraire approaches all of life with the intention to be pleased and an openness to amazement. Despite his experience as a warrior, diplomat, and scholar, he’s quite young and always fascinated by the new and exciting. By human terms he can be strikingly naive and easily pleased, and even other dragons find his enthusiasms confusing or trying at times. Nothing about his boundless energy can be called a whim, though; Temeraire holds onto ideas and causes forever and cannot be dissuaded from the path he finds correct without the force of an army, or at least a very disapproving Laurence.
Temeraire can be a touch... tetchy. He’s a dragon after all, and a large, young male at that. Anything that could take him in a fair fight makes him nervous and irritable. Anything he’s sure he can defeat make him condescending, though he usually means well. He’s very possessive of what’s his, be it treasure, humans, or ideas that he finds especially clever. Temeraire’s ego is of a size to match the immense black dragon himself, and he objects very firmly to any blows his self-image takes.
Although reared from the egg as a soldier, Temeraire is very tender-hearted when he remembers to be. Caught up in a tiring battle, he’s as desperate and nasty as anything with several tons and a huge mouthful of teeth would be, but when he takes the time to notice opponents, he tries to avoid hurting them. Temeraire has espoused every radical position he’s stumbled across and even cobbled together a few of his own. He’d be quite the politician if anyone in parliament dared get near him to hear his thoughts on pacifism (he’s not sure about that), slavery (get rid of it immediately, and do apologize), dragon liberation (that too; immediately), women’s rights, empire building...
Whatever can be said of Temeraire, he’s decidedly not a big, scaly human. He’s in turns sweet and savage, intellectual and instinctual, and while he’d never be so uncivilized as to eat anyone or start a fight with anyone small, he’s best not trifled with.
Abilities Temeraire is a Celestial, rarest and most prized of all dragon breeds (if you ask the Chinese, anyway), and it comes with perks. He’s able to summon the Divine Wind, a concussive force unleashed by a roar that can crack stone and wood, and which has effects on flash and bones better left unsaid. Celestials also maintain into adulthood the ability common to all dragons when eggs and newly hatched, learning languages with amazing speed. He requires only a few weeks’ study to be conversant in a new language and has many to his name already. Temeraire is long and tall but lightly built for a dragon, designed for speed and maneuverability rather than brute force, and he has years of military training behind him. Temeraire is also a natural mathematician and a bit of a poet.
Strengths Temeraire is brave, often to the point of foolhardiness, and he’s intensely bright, at least by dragon standards. Tactics, literature, and sciences all come to him naturally.
Weaknesses: Temeraire is stubborn as a mule and a lot harder to move. He is also dependent on Laurence and, to a lesser extent, his crew, both practically and emotionally. He is oddly fastidious for any dragon, especially a soldier, and prefers his food prepared to gourmet standards, his resting place warm and soft, and at least a few ensigns at any given point to attend to giving him baths and reading him interesting books. And being such a large creature, Temeraire needs a lot of resources, whether in food, space, company, or entertainment. Temeraire isn’t very good at figuring out motivations that differ from his own, and he tends to assume anyone who disagrees with him is either misinformed or willfully malicious.
Samples:
First Person Sample:I cannot say I like this at all. Oh, it is a very nice country. It makes me think of Dover, with all the hills and greenery, and I imagine the cows are especially delicious here. It is only that I don’t see how to get back to the ship. Storms at sea are terrible things, of course, but storms are only clouds and rain in the end. Not enough to blow me all the way inland this way, and certainly not to a place where the air smells of mountains and ordinary trees, not those fat, peculiar things we saw in the jungles. Laurence will be dreadfully worried, and Iskierka certainly can’t make up for the lack of me.
Third Person Sample: Temeraire had a strong aversion to storms. He had weathered more than one on the ocean, chained to a dragondeck in the cold and the wild swinging, and while only once had disaster followed misery, that had left an indelible mark of its own. So he didn’t feel like a coward when he gratefully landed and waited out the torrent. He simply felt sensible. Once the clouds had blown away from this little island, he’d simply pick himself up and fly back to the boat. No doubt to endure Iskierka’s witicisms and (almost as irritating) Kulingile’s perfectly honest inquiries. That thought made him a little more content to hunker down.
When the rain finally stopped, Temeraire raised his ruff and shook his head, trying to chase off water that felt like it would linger forever. What a dreadful squall that had been. He’d need to hurry and find the ship as soon as ever he could. He’d taken the heading before he’d left as he always did, but the ocean was a big place and storms could alter plans.
Before the dragon could take off, he looked around a little out of curiosity. He hadn’t liked the islands and jungles he’d spent time in, but he felt that was the fault of circumstances, not the land itself. It would not do to perhaps discover an island, or at least be one of a few visitors, and not carry back word. Sometimes he thought he would ask Roland to write his memoirs for him, and when he did, he would want to be considered an explorer of note. As, of course, he was.
This was not an island unless it was the size of Australia, and the air was cool.
Temeraire’s wings snapped out and he leapt up from the meadow where he’d been resting. It was a pleasant little place, aside from its strangeness, and as he flapped hard in the crisp, sweet-smelling air, he took note of its position between a small stream and a stand of trees that certainly appeared familiar. He regretted that he knew rather little of individual trees, but he thought he could remember the shape of the place. Temeraire immediately pulled skyward to scout further.
Player name: Siobhan
Contact: israfel1030@gmail.com
Timezone: Central U.S.
Characters in the Wardrobe Already: None
Character Information
Character Name: Temeraire
Species: Celestial dragon
History:Temeraire had an exciting time as an egg, first transported from China toward France as a gift for the emperor Napoleon, then captured by the British navy. He hatched there on the HMS Reliant and immediately selected her captain, William Laurence, as the most superior human on the ship and, most likely, on the earth. While Temeraire was quite sure about his selection of Laurence for his captain, the opinion was not universally held, and their transition into Britain’s Aerial Corps was a rough one. Laurence, a gentleman’s son and a lifelong naval officer, was not your ordinary airman, and Temeraire, exotic of breed and peculiar of temperament, was not your ordinary dragon.
Despite the reservations of the corp, both man and dragon found their place as warriors and heroes. Temeraire’s cleverness and unusual abilities (Celestials are seldom let go by the Chinese for good reasons) contributed to his rising star, Laurence’s good nature and determination to his. Temeraire had barely reached his full growth when he repelled Napoleon’s first invasion of Britain by means of the Divine Wind--and the company of some very fine, dragons, of course.
Temeraire and Laurence pursued a most erratic and peculiar career together, along with their crew and the rest of Temeraire’s wing. Temeraire’s breed brought them to China to act as diplomats (and visit family). Their return journey carried them over the varied terrain and travails of Eurasia, bringing with them allies and new dragons for the cause (including that irritating Iskierka). A dreadful wasting sickness that swept through Britannia's dragons carried the crew to Africa to seek a cure and encounter some of the worst deprivations inflicted by colonialism. This particular trip, together with Temeraire’s time in China, made a political malcontent of him, and when Laurence was imprisoned for what he felt no very good reason, Temeraire answered by forming the first all-dragon wing of the British military, recovering his captain, and repelling Napoleon once more. Both kingmakers and traitors (a mere technicality, of course), Temeraire and Laurence found themselves conveniently exiled to Australia, but barely had they begun to explore the new land and discover new creatures and new developments in their always complex and warring world when they were again called away, this time to attend Britain’s interests in South America. Which was a complete debaucle by the silly standards of the top brass. Temeraire thought rather little of Britain’s leaders by then, and agreed to a judicious retreat to China. On the voyage, Temeraire went out to stretch his wings and was caught in a dreadful storm that snatched even his huge body straight out of the air. He landed on what he supposed was a small island and thought to wait out the sudden gale there, but when the clouds and torrential rain cleared, he found himself on a large expanse of land not the least like the little islands he’d seen in the Pacific, where everything was profoundly strange and there was no sign of Laurence or Roland or even Iskierka. He was profoundly displeased, though the discovery of a book big enough for him to trace letters with his claws and with a surprising tendency not to slip out of his grip did something to cheer him up.
Why this character: Temeraire’s remarkable personality has always resonated with me. While eminently lovable and endearing, he’s also terrifying and fundamentally alien. As a creature who performs recreational calculus and can’t get his head around the concept of land ownership, whose devotion to his own human (and complement of auxiliary humans) is absolute but who is perfectly willing to strike out on a war that could hardly be said to be interesting to him with the aim of defeating other dragons and taking away their captains, he’s a mess of wonderful contradictions and surprising depth of feeling. And he’s a dragon, which cannot be discounted as motivation.
Canon Point: Directly following the conclusion of Crucible of Gold.
Personality: Temeraire approaches all of life with the intention to be pleased and an openness to amazement. Despite his experience as a warrior, diplomat, and scholar, he’s quite young and always fascinated by the new and exciting. By human terms he can be strikingly naive and easily pleased, and even other dragons find his enthusiasms confusing or trying at times. Nothing about his boundless energy can be called a whim, though; Temeraire holds onto ideas and causes forever and cannot be dissuaded from the path he finds correct without the force of an army, or at least a very disapproving Laurence.
Temeraire can be a touch... tetchy. He’s a dragon after all, and a large, young male at that. Anything that could take him in a fair fight makes him nervous and irritable. Anything he’s sure he can defeat make him condescending, though he usually means well. He’s very possessive of what’s his, be it treasure, humans, or ideas that he finds especially clever. Temeraire’s ego is of a size to match the immense black dragon himself, and he objects very firmly to any blows his self-image takes.
Although reared from the egg as a soldier, Temeraire is very tender-hearted when he remembers to be. Caught up in a tiring battle, he’s as desperate and nasty as anything with several tons and a huge mouthful of teeth would be, but when he takes the time to notice opponents, he tries to avoid hurting them. Temeraire has espoused every radical position he’s stumbled across and even cobbled together a few of his own. He’d be quite the politician if anyone in parliament dared get near him to hear his thoughts on pacifism (he’s not sure about that), slavery (get rid of it immediately, and do apologize), dragon liberation (that too; immediately), women’s rights, empire building...
Whatever can be said of Temeraire, he’s decidedly not a big, scaly human. He’s in turns sweet and savage, intellectual and instinctual, and while he’d never be so uncivilized as to eat anyone or start a fight with anyone small, he’s best not trifled with.
Abilities Temeraire is a Celestial, rarest and most prized of all dragon breeds (if you ask the Chinese, anyway), and it comes with perks. He’s able to summon the Divine Wind, a concussive force unleashed by a roar that can crack stone and wood, and which has effects on flash and bones better left unsaid. Celestials also maintain into adulthood the ability common to all dragons when eggs and newly hatched, learning languages with amazing speed. He requires only a few weeks’ study to be conversant in a new language and has many to his name already. Temeraire is long and tall but lightly built for a dragon, designed for speed and maneuverability rather than brute force, and he has years of military training behind him. Temeraire is also a natural mathematician and a bit of a poet.
Strengths Temeraire is brave, often to the point of foolhardiness, and he’s intensely bright, at least by dragon standards. Tactics, literature, and sciences all come to him naturally.
Weaknesses: Temeraire is stubborn as a mule and a lot harder to move. He is also dependent on Laurence and, to a lesser extent, his crew, both practically and emotionally. He is oddly fastidious for any dragon, especially a soldier, and prefers his food prepared to gourmet standards, his resting place warm and soft, and at least a few ensigns at any given point to attend to giving him baths and reading him interesting books. And being such a large creature, Temeraire needs a lot of resources, whether in food, space, company, or entertainment. Temeraire isn’t very good at figuring out motivations that differ from his own, and he tends to assume anyone who disagrees with him is either misinformed or willfully malicious.
Samples:
First Person Sample:I cannot say I like this at all. Oh, it is a very nice country. It makes me think of Dover, with all the hills and greenery, and I imagine the cows are especially delicious here. It is only that I don’t see how to get back to the ship. Storms at sea are terrible things, of course, but storms are only clouds and rain in the end. Not enough to blow me all the way inland this way, and certainly not to a place where the air smells of mountains and ordinary trees, not those fat, peculiar things we saw in the jungles. Laurence will be dreadfully worried, and Iskierka certainly can’t make up for the lack of me.
Third Person Sample: Temeraire had a strong aversion to storms. He had weathered more than one on the ocean, chained to a dragondeck in the cold and the wild swinging, and while only once had disaster followed misery, that had left an indelible mark of its own. So he didn’t feel like a coward when he gratefully landed and waited out the torrent. He simply felt sensible. Once the clouds had blown away from this little island, he’d simply pick himself up and fly back to the boat. No doubt to endure Iskierka’s witicisms and (almost as irritating) Kulingile’s perfectly honest inquiries. That thought made him a little more content to hunker down.
When the rain finally stopped, Temeraire raised his ruff and shook his head, trying to chase off water that felt like it would linger forever. What a dreadful squall that had been. He’d need to hurry and find the ship as soon as ever he could. He’d taken the heading before he’d left as he always did, but the ocean was a big place and storms could alter plans.
Before the dragon could take off, he looked around a little out of curiosity. He hadn’t liked the islands and jungles he’d spent time in, but he felt that was the fault of circumstances, not the land itself. It would not do to perhaps discover an island, or at least be one of a few visitors, and not carry back word. Sometimes he thought he would ask Roland to write his memoirs for him, and when he did, he would want to be considered an explorer of note. As, of course, he was.
This was not an island unless it was the size of Australia, and the air was cool.
Temeraire’s wings snapped out and he leapt up from the meadow where he’d been resting. It was a pleasant little place, aside from its strangeness, and as he flapped hard in the crisp, sweet-smelling air, he took note of its position between a small stream and a stand of trees that certainly appeared familiar. He regretted that he knew rather little of individual trees, but he thought he could remember the shape of the place. Temeraire immediately pulled skyward to scout further.
