It began in Telgar Weyr as an innocent relationship between bronzerider A'dan and Healer Journeyman Rianda.
Well, it seemed innocent enough.
Until Rianda had a child, seven months later.
/That/ is where Adria begins.
Her birth, as it turned out, was rather fatal on Rianda's part, and due to the fact that she was premature, a lot of headaches from the lower caverns staff came about. Fortunately, a kind 'caverns woman took Adria in for suckling, and later the delicate child was reared as 'just another weyrbrat'. A'dan obviously had no qualms about his love's death, and Adria shortly found herself being a half-sister to many other children. /Many/ //many// other children. To this day, Turns later, she's still discovering more.
As a child, she was too serious, planning on becoming the Masterhealer of Pern one day in order to help out people. This dream was killed when she was nine, once she decided that there was no way that she was going to turn out like Rianda. At the age of twelve, she was shocked when her best
friend, Ysabel, was Searched for the eggs at the Weyr. When the Hatching day finally arrived, Adria found herself being ushered out onto the Sands as well, even though she wasn't supposed to be. An error had occured when she and Ysabel were gossiping in the Candidates' Barracks shortly before the eggs began to crack. She stood out there, barely on the edges of the Sands, petrified, and watched as her only friend Impressed to green Morth. Thankfully, she herself was not chosen by a dragonet. And so she retired back to the lower caverns, nursing an aching heart.
A turn later, disaster struck. While Adria was out in the caves around the Telgar area, the one that she was exploring collasped. Although she had friends on the spot ready to take her back to safety, enough damage was done. Always frail at best, now her lower back and left leg were crushed. With Pern's limited surgery, the Healers were able to help the damage, but nothing more could be done. She would be a cripple for the rest of her life.
She spent a Turn in the infirmary as sickness after sickness, infection after infection came on, causing many to doubt her survival. That Turn was not wasted, however, for Adria was constantly watching the Healers, learning. When she was fifteen, she was ready to go back out to the rest of the Weyr.
Things did not go smoothly. Between the cold climate of the Telgar region and the constant rude remarks her father kept tossing her way, she came to the conclusion that she needed to live somewhere else. Immediately, she turned her eyes towards the warm Istan Island, and the wacky Weyr there. After gaining acceptance from the Istan Weyrleaders to move in, she did so, expecting to die within a few months.
Things didn't work out the way that she had planned. One fateful day, Adria met Buroughs, a new Resident to the Weyr like herself. While she remained suspious, he was friendly enough, and even promised to give her a ride if he ever Impressed. From that moment on, their friendship grew, until one would barely see Adria without his presense. When he was Searched, the two became even closer, and she even shared in a few pranks that the Candidates pulled. The real show-stopper came when Bali kidnapped the cripple, Buroughs, and another Candidate, Josen, to help the greenrider oil her proddy lifemate, Uliaryth. While Josen managed to escape early on, Buroughs and Adria were stuck, so they ended up giving Uliaryth a manicure and dressed her in Bali's favorite pink clothes. Their circle of friends grew yo include Molphin, Korrill, Sofina, Rishi, as the two attempted to track down Ista's famous Rainbow Brigand.
The sevendays flew by all too quickly, and soon Buroughs was standing out on Ista's Hatchings Grounds, awaiting the double clutch of Nyssath and Isabeth to hatch. Amazingly enough, the last egg finally revealed a blue who named himself Inigoth, and claimed Buroughs as his own. Adria, while happy enough (all of her favorite Candidates Impressed), was rather sad that she would lose yet another close friend to dragonriding. Still, she was decidedly cheerful, or at least as much as she could be, regarding the situation, and made the best of it. When Bali came back for revenge later that Turn for what they did to her lifemate, Adria realized that she was in love with B'roughs. Well, not quite. It took a long talk with Molphin in order for her to finally admit her feelings.
Unfortunately, she was too late. While B'roughs had hinted his romantic feelings (barely), Adria came down with another sickness that took her up for an extended stay at Healer Hall. After that, family troubles in Telgar caused her to return back to her old home, and quite unhappily. The situation kept on getting worse and worse, and it was a long while before she was able to return to Ista. When she came back, she was told that B'roughs was gone. Rumor has it that he had family problems of his own back in Nerat, or that he had to transfer to a different Weyr for awhile. Even so, Adria was devastated, and moped for months.
Turns passed by as if in seconds. Audria and Dalas became the newest additions to their 'gang' at Ista, but after only a few months, Dalas opted to go north to become a Healer. The infatuated Audria followed close behind his heals, and Molphin went after Audria. Korrill left as well, although no one really knows why. Adria turned back to Sofina and Rishi for support in the trying times ahead. Molphin eventually returned to Ista, but had to return to her old home due to problems there. At Fort, Audria, Korrill and Dalas all were Searched for Katrineth and Thernoth's clutch at Fort Weyr, and later still Audria Impressed to green Orsylth, and Korrill Impressed to bronze Llynth. Dalas walked off the Sands without a lifemate, and went back to the Hall to gain his Journeyman knot. He then got himself posted back to Ista Weyr.
More Turns passed, and before she knew it, Adria was going through her nineteenth Turnday, and was quite obviously not happy about it. Katarra's gold Tajiath rose, Vae retired, and Katarra took up the title of Senior Weyrwoman, and thus another Search began. This time the process was more crushing than ever for Adria. Rishi and Sofina were both snuffled out quickly, as well as Phredrik, the newest member of the tattered band of friends. The situation didn't get any better. The Headwoman just then decided that she didn't want to be a Headwoman anymore, but instead of handing the reins to her assistant Headwoman, Chandelle, she passed them to Adria. It wasn't too long before the eggs finally began to crack, and Sofina walked away with her green lifemate Yebanth. Rishi and Phredrik had no such luck, however.
The, two Turns later, Adria was in for one of the surprises of her life. S'fina's Yebanth was taking to the skies in a mating flight, and only a few minutes later, one of the contenders walked into the living cavern. Even though Turns had passed and he had grown up a bit, B'roughs was back. Forever.
Things stayed normal for one Turn as B'roughs and Adria made cautious and not-so-cautious advances towards one another. At last, things came to a head when Adria's green Angua took to the skies in a mating flight, resulting in B'roughs' Calgary winning, and, well, more interesting situations. A few weeks later, Adria was suffering from massive moodswings - almost to the extreme that they were in when she resorted to alcohol to feel better about her life. Her assistants insisted that she visit a healer, and then the word got out: Adria was pregnant.
Needless to say, pregnancy did not go well for the usually-unstable Headwoman. Nonetheless, she served her time, and no one noticed the abnormal bulge to her belly. It did, however, come as a shock that she delievered twins a mere nine months later, cursing B'roughs' family history all the while. The boy was promptly named Adroughs, and because Adria was rather irritated with the whole mess, she took her anger out on the girl, whom she named Burdria.
Now that she's struggling to be the mother that she never had, the world is her mollusk... OOCly:
Adria was created on Febuary 7th, 1999, as something of a test character. I was curious to see what life was like inside of a Weyr, so I sent her as my 'spy'. Two days after her creation, I decided that I did not want her to be an I'm-So-Sweet-And-Innocent type of girl. Instead, I turned back to my _Dragonlance_ books (which still remain as some of my all-time favorites), and to the character of Raistlin. Raistlin definitely had problems -- he was a cripple in body and health, he was genius, he was ambitious, he was evil, and he was bitter. He also had a really spiffy description along the lines of metallic gold skin color. He became my inspiration for Adria, even though she broke most of these traits not too long ago when B'roughs was still around. She was also my character to prove to myself that life isn't fair on Pern. Not everyone who wants to be a dragonrider can be, due to physical injuries.
As for the name 'Adria', well, I don't remember where I orginally heard it. It sounded beautiful, dark, mysterious, and like a fairy's name to me. So I gave it to my character.
Her history had a lot of Raistlin twists to it. For one thing, Raistlin used to want to be a good mage in order to protect the world from harm. Adria wanted to be Masterhealer to save people. When Raist went through his Test of Sorcery at age twenty-two, his normally frail body, and his health, got shattered. He became a cripple. Many expected him not to survive, but he did. From there, his and Adria's paths parted. While Raistlin did fall in a little bit of love with Crysania later on, it wasn't like what Adria went through with B'roughs.
My first time with B'roughs was only my second time as playing a bitter cripple, and needless to say, things got off to a rocky start. I still had a lot of history and personality to develope, but strangely enough, our two characters were able to get through it. Both of us were completely unaware as to what was going to happen in the future.
The Rainbow Brigand was our creation, our baby. The first time we RP'd, Buroughs had mentioned that some laundry had been dyed purple. A few days later, that came back into play with Adria, only this time she added that a few rainbow colors had been included. And so our Brigand began, with a lot of odd things that "he" did to us. We knew that he couldn't go on forever, and towards the end, he was getting rather old. We had a lot to think about -- who he would really end up being, how we were going to catch him, what the punishment would be, ect. Sadly, in the summer of '99 and shortly before the weyrlings graduated into full wings, B'roughs came on with the news that if his player didn't start doing better in summer school, his player's scholorship -- and the only thing that was keeping his player in college -- would be non-existant. What did that mean? No more DF. A week later, I returned from a three-week favation in England to hear the news. After that, I had to start saying that B'roughs had to transfer out, or that his family was having problems. Adria was supposed to know that stuff; she followed his every move. Shortly before I had left, we reached the mutual conclusion that our characters were in love, and both of us had been looking forward to playing with that.
Now I was back to square one, with a character with a broken heart. I didn't want to let the spirit of B'roughs go, mostly because he claimed that he'd be back around Christmas. When that time of the year rolled around, I nervously kept on checking the @who every fifteen minutes, just to see if he'd come back. And then, not to long ago, he got recycled. It was pretty hard on me, the player, mostly because I was suddenly down on some /really/ good RP. It was a living hell for my character.
Needless to say, I was rather disturbed when Audria, Dalas, Korrill and Molphin moved to Fort. Audria and Dalas I had met briefly, but Sofina had said that both of them were rather nice people. Korrill and Molphin meant a lot to me, and it stung to see them leave Ista. Later, Molphin returned, but by that time I was in England, and later on, we just weren't on at the same time. Around September, Rishi posted a notice that said Molphin was failing trig, and couldn't go online. Her character is still saved, and I look forward to seeing her around again. I was quite happy when both Audria and Korrill Impressed (yay Istans!), but again, I'm rather disappointed that they couldn't have done that at Ista. A'ria still comes around to visit, though, which is awfully nice of her. *snug*
Around February of 2000 I began to notice that our Weyr didn't have a PC Headwoman. We gained a Steward with Fiora's arrival a few months earlier, and then we lost her when she Impressed a few months later, but Payten was there to take over. I put Adria up for the Headwoman task, figuring that while she might not necessarily want it, it'd help get her out of her depression. I'm rather pleasedto say that I was fairly close. My one regret is that all of a sudden, real life seems to be making it hard for me to get on and RP.
On July 3rd, 2000, I was in for a shock. I had just gotten on for a routine mailcheck, checked the WHO, waved at the guests, and got a response. Happy_Guest turned out to be what was left of B'roughs. It took five hours to brief through six months of being absent, and then we all got the pleasure of seeing Uliaryth re-lay Inigoth's egg and view the re-Impression. So B'roughs is back, for a long time, we all hope.
Getting Adria into "trouble" was something that B'roughs and I had teased each other about for a few months, and when Angua went proddy, I finally had an excuse to do so. Both of us look forward to playing this change in our characters' lives.
And, of course, Adria is really deep down a hopeless romantic, no matter what anyone else says. She just doesn't especially like showing it. :) |
