DORIAN MARIS, merperson

MERPERSON

MALE - 22 - HETEROSEXUAL - JULY 21

• unaccustomed to living on land, dorian frequently experiences vertigo and is prone to collapse, particularly after making sudden movements. it will lessen as he adjusts.

• wrapped around the right side of his lower torso is a scar from a particularly severe jellyfish sting he suffered as a child. it is entirely healed, but the pain still revisits him occasionally.

+ determined
+ reasonable
+ resilient
+ sympathetic
+ loyal

- inhibited
- self-critical
- blunt
- quick tempered
- show-off

dorian was born in a small, isolated community of merpeople. he was raised primarily by his mother, as his father was frequently away finding food and other goods.

his body was never the strongest and he came to wear a quiet and slight disposition. with few options when it came to friends, he played with the same group as everyone else, but wasn't necessarily liked by them. he was at the bottom of their social foodchain and the other kids rarely tried to hide it. he did eventually make one close friend; nea, a girl not much younger than himself. she had a certain contagious energy about her, though she did have a tendency to go off on her own and cause trouble. his own complaisant attitude got him involved more than once, sometimes against his better judgment.

one occasion in particular has stuck with him. at one point, she overstepped her bounds with the rest of the group somehow, maybe without realizing it. having been on the receiving end of the group's hostility, he panicked seeing it directed at her; without thinking about it, he grabbed her by the arm and they took off.

trying to lose the group, they were chased rather far into an area they had scarcely explored. advancing over a shelf, the two of them were met with a situation they couldn't have anticipated. faced with a bloom of jellyfish, they could turn back and face the trouble they were hiding from, or they would need to find a way to keep moving forward somehow.

the choice to move through the group wasn't a wise one; in making sure nea got through safely, he wound up stung quite badly in her place, and if she hadn't assisted him in getting out, he may not have made it out at all. once they found somewhere to rest, the pain hindered his movements for several hours. the two of them were left vulnerable until the group eventually caught up, willing to set aside their frustration in favor of getting him home and attended to.

for a while he thought the experience had made the two of them closer, but as they grew older, even she started picking on him eventually. that wasn't to say that they stopped interacting, but the nature of their relationship changed. she easily overpowered him physically, and for a number of years he would have bites and claw marks to show for it. while his weakness had been exploited by others all of his life, it was especially bad coming from her, though his head was too clouded with shame and embarrassment at the time to understand why.

it was, however, the final push he needed to start changing that fact. determined to become strong, he sought training elsewhere when he was barely fifteen. the journey took him farther from home than he had ever been, and in the end, he ended up enlisting in a sort of war effort. the group wasn't very large, but they took themselves as seriously, and from what he could tell, they were exceptionally respected, at least in the surrounding area.

aside from his small community, he had been so cut off from the rest of the world that he wondered what they were even preparing to defend against. pirates was a word he had only heard a few times up until that point in his life; he barely understood the threat, but still dove into his training with all that he had. his start was slow; he didn't know how to hold a weapon when he got there, and the physical training proved exhausting at best, excruciating at worst. at times, he considered turning around and going home, but a number of things stopped him: shame, stubbornness, fear. the memory of god damn nea effortlessly pinning his arms to his sides. the image of confused, urgent despair on his mother's face upon learning his plan to depart.

this sense of obligation kept him pinned in place for nearly six years. over this span of time, he could count on two hands how many times he was in actual combat situations, but that never kept him off-edge. usually it was as simple as not getting too close to the water's surface, or deflecting a harpoon now and again, but the few occasions he did see someone whisked away are things he wishes he could forget.

news of his father's death was the thing that brought him home in the end. apparently he had been away from home for almost a week longer than usual before anyone had the idea to look for him. the way it looked, he had been caught out on his own and struck by a harpoon to be pulled in, but managed to struggle off the barb. bled to death on a shelf of rocks several kilometers off his original path. it wasn't good news—far from it—but he was grateful to have reason to come home again, if only for a few days.

the first person he sought out was his grieving mother. it was his responsibility, his intention in coming home, to become the new head of the household, but things didn't go quite as planned.

he would try to seek out nea, too, of course. what was the point of leaving at all in the first place, if not to come back and show her who she had been messing with? to show her what was what? the idea of her not being around when he got back wasn't one he had taken into consideration. it shouldn't have been hard to figure out where she had gotten to, people don't just disappear, but no matter who he asked, people seemed to be holding back. it was finally his mother who gave in and told him about the shadows that passed over their hamlet, and the trail of blood leading to the north-west. it had been about a month ago, apparently.

he had responsibilities here, he needed to stay, he needed to make sure his mother would be okay, but his restlessness was apparent to everyone around him. it wasn't more than a few days before she cut him loose, and not more than a few days after that that he was gone again, with nothing to go on but luck and a trail of blood he hadn't even seen.

if he hadn't been miserably lost, he might have even turn around and gone home empty handed, but after more than two months of searching and finding nothing, he finally hit shore. sepalum peninsula can be seen carved into a wooden sign off the water's edge. he had no reason to believe he would have any more luck here than he had anywhere else, but if he didn't cover his ground, he would never know. if only he could figure out how to make his legs work.