Name: Ciarran Ackerly
Gender: Male
Age: 21
Birthday: 12/05
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Special Characteristics:
Personality: Ciarran, like all people, has been shaped by the things he has experienced in his relatively short life. While he has seen quite a few deeply upsetting things happen to those around him, they have not broken him. Ever the optimist in a family of cynics, Ciarran has always acted with kind intentions, aiming to help others in whatever way he can. Unfortunately, he is just as stubborn as the rest of his family. This tends to leave him in a bit of a rough spot when people insistently deny his attempts to assist them.
More often than not, he continues to try even as he becomes more and more irritated, his language often slipping into somewhat harsher words in the process. However, if you were to look for someone who stood more firmly to their beliefs, you might be hard pressed to find them. Ciarran can certainly be described as perhaps a bit too idealistic for his own good, but he is always one to try his best. This shows most clearly when he is working with others. Where most people let their pride get in the way, Ciarran seems to deeply value the concept of teamwork, doing what he can to get a group of people to work together--for better or worse. So far, his insistent, stubborn nature has kept his attempts successful.
Of course, some people have described him as far too talkative, while others have simply chalked his chatty tendencies up to the attitude of a conversationalist. But while he does enjoy conversation, he'll often wind up accidentally steamrolling over what the other person is trying to say. Thankfully his time in the military has started to make his tendency to steamroll a bit less prevalent than it used to be. For the most part, Ciarran seems to be a bit more of an earnest person who falls more on the personable side than your average soldier, much to the chagrin of those who were determined to break him into a more deeply serious and stoic individual.
Likes:
- History (Local): Most people have varying degrees of interest in history, depending on how much they find themselves wondering about the past. For Ciarran, trying to follow massive empires on a grand scale is a difficult prospect. After all, what really is an empire? Most wind up quite 'faceless' in the records of history. For Ciar's money, Local History is his favored subject. Stories of brave individuals or small groups doing things so important that they are remembered decades--even centuries later. He has a particularly deep affinity for things like Local Legends.
- The Rune Knights (Concept): Every group, every organization. They all have one thing in common: They started as a concept. While not entirely sure how to feel about the organization as a whole sometimes--mostly thanks to the current ongoing war forcing people to make difficult decisions--Ciar has taken note of one thing: The concept of what the Rune Knights are supposed to be. All of the well known positives of Knights from the stories of old, couched in the more modern idea of protecting the people instead of serving some singular lord. In other words, an ideal to aspire to. And aspire to it he does. Ciar pushes himself to be a good example of a Rune Knight, not because he's a kiss ass. But because--like many a child growing up--he learned about the Knights of old, and still finds inspiration in their actions to this day.
- Protecting The "Weak": There are some ideals that are respected nigh universally. Protecting those who are considered 'weak' in one way or another is one such ideal. However, the phrasing has always come off as somewhat..condescending to Ciarran. As a result, he often replaces the word "Weak" with other phrases. The most common of which tends to be "Civilians", due to the Military Nature of the Rune Knights as an organization.
- Knights (Historical): Many adults outgrow the fascinations they had when they were younger. But this is not the case universally. In some individuals, that fascination grows alongside the person, becoming more refined and mature over time. When he was younger, Ciarran loved the stories of Knights because they always seemed quite "cool" as he put it. As he has grown older however, there are things he has come to identify with. The most defining trait of which is their desire to protect something. While the Knights of old were mainly told in stories of protecting kings and lords of nations, there were also an equal number of stories regarding Knights 'of the people'. These characters have come to be a major part in shaping Ciarran and his ideals into what they have become today.
Dislikes:
- Wizard Guilds: While they are indeed a fact of life, that doesn't mean that Ciarran has to agree with everyone on the seemingly omnipresent positive attitude towards Wizard Guilds. While some have certainly shown to be steadfast and out for more than just money--and the rumored tax exemptions that come from a building becoming declared the property of a legal guild--others have become shining examples of just how easily the moral compass of it's members shift and sway with the 'breeze' of money. At best, he believes they need more oversight and moderation, perhaps even some middle management from a third party. This attitude hasn't prevented him from working with the more cooperative ones. Though it does make him a bit less..polite when doing so.
- Machismo: As stereotypes go, there are many that are hated. However, there are some that are not only socially accepted, but even expected in some walks of life. In the military, this extends to hypermasculine traits. This fact has never truly sat well with Ciarran. He has little patience for people who feel the need to goosestep their way down the exactly defined lines of a stereotype, and often brushes off any claims of others that he isn't 'enough' of a man.
- Smoking: One of the many vices of the world, and a vice Ciarran actively avoids partaking in. He claims that smoking just looks dumb.
- Smoke: Ciarran has shown active disdain for most types of smoke, claiming that there is a smell to the substance that he's not entirely able to place. When pressed however, his response is just that it smells 'foul'. This has even been claimed to be the case with recreational sources of fire such as camp and bonfires.
Motivations:
- Self Improvement: Ciarran's motivations tend towards being intrinsic, rather than extrinsic. Perhaps the largest of these motivations is his desire to bring as much of his idealized version of the self to life as is possible. The reasons for this desire are unknown. Perhaps, at the end of the day, it is as simple as him being the kind of person who cannot be satisfied with a stagnant routine.
- Helping Others: If he wasn't raised to have disdain for them, Ciarran would be the very picture of the type of wizard one would expect to join a legal guild. Ever the patient soul, he seems to always be willing to offer a hand to those in need--no matter how much it would seem like 'grunt work' to others .
- 'Making His Mark': Ciarran's interest in history has led him to see just how easily the sands of time can shift and sway, eroding even the most kind hearted of individuals into nameless, faceless figures in a crowd. The idea of his name and actions being lost to time brings forth a fair bit of existential dread in the young man. And yet, this same dread also seems to drive him to push himself that much harder.
Fears:
- Being Forgotten: For some reason, the idea of no longer being remembered triggers a sort of primal fear response for Ciarran. Perhaps this is the result of his fascination with the past. Perhaps it is a manifestation of a potential fear of death. Or perhaps, not even the man himself is sure what spawned this fear..
- Ocean Creatures (Large): While not afraid of the ocean, Ciarran has been witness firsthand to just how monstrously large and unfathomably alien deep sea creatures can look. Of course, witnessing them has always made his skin crawl. When he was younger, this resulted in a noticable flight response from any water that was 'too deep'. Nowadays, seeing a Large ocean creature will more often than not throw Ciarran into a panic induced 'Fight' state. On very rare occasions, witnessing a particularly large creature come up from the ocean will override his instincts entirely and lead to quite rapid flight.
- Losing Control: Almost every single one of his extended family members--at least on his mother's side--have developed an unhealthy attachment to one vice or another in their lives. Addiction quite literally runs through his veins. Having witnessed the obscene lengths that his family has been willing to go to in the name of feeding their vices has developed an equally unhealthy obsession with self control and temperance. He hopes to never see the day where he turns on those closest to him in the name of some outside or even chemical influence.
General Appearance
Height: 5'11"
Weight: 170 Pounds
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Blue
Skin Tone: Fair Skinned
Appearance:
- Spoiler:
Guild: None
Tattoo: N/A
Tattoo Color: N/A
Faction: Rune Knights
Faction Chapter: Fiore
