Sinuvarakoon Tasza

[Sinuvarakoon Tasza]

(kat)
Sinuvarakoon Tasza

Species: Human
Age: 26
Height: 6'1"

Description

For his race of humanity, Tasza is tall. He topped his father by five inches, and his mother by a foot. He is taller than his brother and sister, and is matched mostly only by people born from other regions. As a person from southeastern Tian Xia he has dark skin, curly black hair and eyes a dark brown near enough to be black. He is a decently good looking fellow, having no obvious irregularities about his person to either distinguish him or make him noticeably unattractive.

When he is not wearing his uniform and accompanying armor, Tasza prefers broken in leather with woolens underneath unless the temperatures get too hot. He carries his mace with him always, as well as one knife on his hip as a general use tool, and one in his boot to discourage hooligans should he somehow be disarmed.

Tasza is a quiet man who wears his worries in the faded creases around his eyes and between his brows. It is quite possible his hairline is receding, though truth be told no one has told him so and he does not look often enough into the mirror to notice for himself. He is a tidy person, and keeps himself perfectly groomed. There is not an ounce of rakishness within his bearing. Some might even call him stuffy.

Ideally Tasza would spend most of his time alone or with a few trusted, beloved friends, but he does not often get that time due to his occupation as a guard. As a result, he is nearly always preoccupied and in some measure of unhappiness. Being that he tries to act within a high moral standard, being around the corrupted or criminal makes him uncomfortable and resentful. But, he has chosen that path, and he sticks to it no matter how it drives him towards the grave one reluctant day at a time.

Possessions

Tasza rents a cramped room. In that room he keeps the reasonable accoutrements of someone on a budget who must make a daily living within a city. He does not have much of worth. The most high-value objects he owns would be his uniform and regulation sword. His one conceit is his daily use knife, for which he paid a great sum of money.

He does not own anything else of note.

Strengths

Tasza is an honorable man. His infrequent temper and various circumstances can make it very difficult to act honorably, but he does his very best.

He is fluent in the common Greek, as well as two minor languages from his parents' homeland. He learned all three together growing up.

With firm convictions and a keen mind, Tasza is suited to performing duties as a guard. His loyalty and ability to be exact makes him reliable and trustworthy. In this way he exemplifies what it means to be a guardsman, and is definitely on the good side of the Captain. He has earned himself extra responsibilities this way, and his pride and confidence in himself for his ability shows in his bearing.

Having dear mentors within the Puradyne religion, Tasza can take some strength from those supporters, as well as call upon those of the local temple should he ever fall upon hard times. Though he questions the religion, and indeed any religion, he still finds much peace within the temple walls and finds self-worth in his defense of its purity.

Tasza is a trained guard. With his personality being what it is, Tasza took that training most seriously. He is very skilled with the mace, able to hold his own against all but the most skilled (or faster/longer weapons, against which he'd have to rely mostly on luck); a little less so with his sword, here he is competant but average and he knows it; and least so with his fists, only relying upon them during brawls or when he is completely unarmed.

Tasza, being a perfectionist, does not often make mistakes.

Time spent at the temple and with the Guard has given Tasza a fine element of control. He is capable of controlling his expression, his bearing, some of his body language, the way he speaks, and to a lesser extent how he reacts to pain and discomfort.

Time spent with the Guard has given Tasza a greater-than-normal capability to read peoples' body language. Of course, if someone is skilled at hiding their emotions and intentions, he will have a difficult time reading them. For the average person, if he is paying attention he will know a great deal about their emotional state by body language.

Weaknesses

Magic, and the thought of using the stuff, chills Tasza down to his core. Though he has never experienced any negative use of magic, listening to the stories of the Puradyne monks has closed his mind to reason. He is very afraid of magic, and those who use it. Battlemages hold a particular horror for him.

Tasza is plagued by acid reflux and hives when under high levels of stress. Due to his job, he is often stressed; he has a difficult time relaxing when he knows anything is wrong, even when he cannot do anything about it. Sweat exacerbates the hives, and nervousness causes him to sweat.

Though it is something he has learned to live with, Tasza has a very difficult time confronting anyone. Even when it is his job, the thought of delivering bad news or bad orders to anyone causes him to squirm inside. It does not often interfere with his job, but it does contribute to his overall stress.

Cleanliness, orderliness and neatness, while all well and good alone, are Tasza's nervous habits. Before taking a job as a guard Tasza was simply a very well groomed man, but since then it has become one thing he can have some control over. As a result he obsesses over his personal appearance, possessions, and home. He takes out his anxiety in this way, and over time it has become another measure of worry and source of discomfort when he is unable (due to time or other circumstances) to keep everything just so.

Tasza is a lonely man. His diligence towards his job, his troubles over his family, and a compounding disdain towards women has left him a bachelor. Though he desires to have a companionable wife, he cannot help but treat them as objects of lust for his use. He is attracted to beautiful women who are vain butterflies, even as he complains to his friends that he is unable to find a good woman with wifely qualities. He sees them subconsciously as vapid and useless, and the women he seeks out only serve to underscore this assumption. As a result, he tends to not register women as people, directly, and in his off hours he treats them instead with a sort of fond, patronizing indulgence. He is a flirt, and would definitely underestimate any woman on a personal level. His only saving grace in this matter is his professional demeanor while working, though it is possible that being familiar with a woman over time would crack that demeanor and leave him easily manipulated.

Being that Tasza is a high strung individual and a perfectionist besides, making a serious mistake can often put him in a bad place mentally. It does not happen often, but when it does he might either immediately overload (hyperventilation has happened once) and be unable to perform basic tasks, or go into a weeks long funk that will have negative consequences for his health.

Though he has a fine control over how he acts, Tasza still feels. He is the proverbial pot under pressure, ready to boil over. Though it is rare for him to have an outburst in front of another person, he is prone to self destructive acts, such as alcoholism and other addictions. This could eventually have a profound impact on his career and future.

History

Sinuvarakoon Hamil was a skilled potter in a long line of potters in a small Kavas village along the coast of south-eastern Tian Xia. His village, Puhala, was well established but limited by both geography and trade routes. While traders did visit the village, the harbor was not deep enough and the village not near enough to bigger, more important metropolitan hubs to become anything more than a stop-over for an exchange of goods.

Hamil, however, was both skilled and aggressive in his ambition. Wed at age twenty to a seventeen year old woman within the village, he shortly thereafter packed up and headed west to extend both the family name and the family wealth. Though there was some disgruntlement within the family about such an unheard-of pursuit, it was true that there often existed more mouths than food within the village, and so in its own way his ambition was a blessing. The Sinuvarakoon clan would stick together, and patch holes made of anger with time.

Hamil was a hard worker, and his wife Rijit was a source of strength. He made a name for himself quickly with his exotic Tian Xia pottery that did not often make it far out of Tian Xia. He and his wife had a girl child, Bantola, and quickly became entrenched within the Puradyne's small-wealth community.

However, while Marn and the traders passing through from Eyropa were entranced with Hamil's exotic pottery, he was in turn ensnared by the different races meshed together in Marn. Puhala was a strictly human community, and not many traders who passed through were comparable to human beauty (he was familiar with the vodyani, but they were altogether strange and unfathomable). So it was that he became obsessed with the small cluster of fae women who lived somewhat uneasily within Marn. The fae were inherently magical, and thus anathema to the Puradyne community and largely tolerated only by a hair.

Tasza had been born not six months when a female fae servant was taken into their home. For almost a year not servant nor Rijit were seen outside of the home, and very few visitors were allowed in. None at all went into the womens' rooms at the back of the flat save the family and servant. Rumors were inevitable. Whispers were passed behind hands, and the disturbance was not unnoticed by any of the moneyed Puradynes who lined the streets of the neighborhood in their prim homes.

Surely enough, a baby -- named Ahu -- was seen the next year, and the rumors exploded into hot gossip. Someone, an unverified someone, claimed to have seen the servant with a distended belly. It was claimed Rajit was held hostage in her own home to prevent her from speaking the truth. Hamil was tight lipped. Tension mounted until, three months later, news of Rijit's death spread like wildfire. The servant did it, some said. Hamil did it, said others. Officially Rijit died of internal complications, but under all of it ran the word that she had taken her own life via cold metal.

Bantola was sent back to Puhala. The servant was said to have fled Marn shortly after Rijit's death, though there were no real sources to confirm that. There was nothing that could officially be claimed against Hamil, but the disapproval of the community was felt when sales slowly began to fall. Time passed, but no one forgot the scandal.

Tasza, at three, was aware of the tension. At five he realized that though plenty of disdain was leveled at him, the majority of it was aimed at his brother. By then a paternal great aunt had been sent to Marn to serve as both chaperone and positive influence, and a male tutor hired. Tasza reacted to the teasing of the other children, and the stiffness of the adults with sullenness and anger. At six he proved with fists that no one could talk about his brother like that. Though he was chastised by his father, aunt and tutor, he persisted with the belief stuck firmly in his little six-year-old mind that what he was doing was right.

When Tasza was eight Bantola, herself twelve, was brought back to Marn along with a new wife for Hamil, named Esira. Ahu took to Esira immediately, but both Bantola and Tasza had difficulty with their new mother. The family's time together passed with uneasiness, as no one could forget the social difficulties they had within the Puradyne community. But where Ahu took it with a grace and poise that belied his age, and Bantola worked with a studious fervor to make something of herself, Tasza got in all the more scrapes and fights. It was all done, he thought, for Ahu and the Sinuvarakoon clan.

Two years passed with the children each differentiating themselves. Ahu was a miniature gentleman, quickly becoming versed with Marnian and Kavasi society; Bantola was diligent and apprenticed to a scribe while undertaking training to become a prized wife; and Tasza was intelligent in his studies but raucous and unkempt. Ahu told Tasza with the most cruel childhood honesty that he found Tasza to be disgustingly uncouth. Not those same words, perhaps, but the intent was there and the effect it had upon Tasza was immediate.

He was alone after all, wasn't he? There would be no one to support him. No one to see that what he was doing was the only way to make sure the dirty accusations against his family stopped. But, in the end, it didn't matter. Tasza drew into himself, becoming ever more quiet and withdrawn. He accepted the many rebukes from the adults around him, and became a troublesome child socially, as his temper would occasionally erupt to disastrous results.

Bantola, too late, tried to reach out to her brother. In the end, she plied him with soft words and desperate pleas, but at the age of thirteen Tasza had closed his mind to those he viewed as adults, and at the age of seventeen and ready for marriage, Bantola was firmly an adult. Though she was married off to one of the declining Eyropan merchants who still bought Hamil's wares, the family's situation went from bad to worse when their monetary downfall forced them to move into one of the poor quarters at the edge of the historical district.

Tasza took the brunt of anger from Esira, whose disappointment with husband and family only mounted as the years went on. To escape that scalding heat, Tasza took to hiding in the Puradyne temple. He took what comfort he could from the monks who lived there, and they in turn focused his violent nature into something both more honed and controlled. Those monks took a young man who might have turned into someone loathsome and ugly into a thoughtful, if still angry, boy with enough moral coaching to keep his back upright and his path straight. He began to look outside of the family and the constant disappointment, and decided at age 15 that he wanted to join the guard.

Hamil was infuriated. So, to varying degrees, was the rest of the family. They were artisans, skilled craftsmen with pride in the clan trade. To seek a position that was, at its core, base and crude use of physical violence was anathema to their long history and family pride. Esira loudly declaimed Tasza's welcome in the family, and Hamil followed her advice. Tasza was disowned.

Though Tasza had long been the black sheep, his family was still his family. He still sought their approval, and still tried to show them that he was worth a damn. He was stubborn and prideful enough to not beg for forgiveness, and so he went straight into the Guard, vowing to himself that he would prove his worth.

Tasza served as something similar to a squire to one of the older guards for his first two years, focused wholly on perfection. His no-nonsense attitude and surliness was not conducive to making friends, and for those two years he existed largely as a loner, taking a bunk in the barracks and spending many long hours meditating in the temple when he wasn't training. He learned slowly of the underbelly of honor, and promised himself to never stoop so low as his family had.

His father died of a fever that passed through the city in his sixteenth year. They had never reconciled, and it was a strike to Tasza. His great-aunt, a source of respect if not love, also passed. Tasza yearned for his family, and though he went to them to share grief, Esira turned him away from the door, furious with him for not even attempting to reclaim the family name. Ahu was no different, and Bantola was traveling with her merchant husband. He had two half brothers, both too young to understand truly who Tasza was. He was alone.

Women became a source of pain for him. Birthed at the brunt of a scandal involving two women, raised without a loving mother, and a keen hatred for a second mother who never acted so influenced his interactions with the young women he dallied with. His disdain of them only grew as time went on. He spent most of his time with two older monks at the temple, Brothers Metrel and Puj. He did have one female friend: his guard mentor Qe. The only companion Tasza had near his own age was a young man who was also something of an outcast: Rudrey, a young clerk in training at the Justice Hall whose youth made him a target for bullying. Tasza cleared up the bullying, and for the first time in his life someone was grateful to him for it. The two became nigh inseparable.

So went Tasza's young adulthood. He became a full fledged guard at age nineteen. His dedication and forthright honesty both helped his career and hindered his social life. He was not well loved. He constantly had to watch his own back, even with Qe's solid friendship. The years marked him harshly, and though he showed a tough exterior he continued to pine for the acceptance and openness that everyone but him seemed to have.

He still holds some faint hope for reconciliation with his family, as well as a naive yearning for a woman to call his own. When it comes to the more delicate of emotions he has much growing up to do, still, and only time will tell if he will overcome that hurdle.