Aras Emox

34

Male enough.

Aras is a copper-skinned humanish person who looks male enough by most cultural standards.

Aras is fit, but thin, finding it hard to build any real kind of muscle mass without dedicated exercise. Weavers always seem a bit caught between this world and the next, and his slight form doesn’t help that appearance much. With the dark circles under his eyes and tendency to feel chill, he perpetually looks like he might be coming down with a mild death.

Aras dresses plainly, but practically, favoring sturdy fabrics and layers that allow him to vent or hoard heat, clothed in natural hues of greens, browns, and greys. Given his neutral palette and his narrow frame and quiet demeanor, it isn’t uncommon for Aras to simply go unnoticed, and generally, that's the way he prefers it. It's safer.

Aras fluctuates around 160 pounds, generally.

6'2"

Glossy Black

His long black hair is usually gathered back in a simple, low ponytail, or in a neat braid. Still, by the end of the day, there’s bound to be a few loose strands brushing against the sharp cheekbones or hanging in his grey eyes.

Aras is not so much clean-shaven by choice, as he is seemingly incapable of growing a beard. His facial hair, when it comes in, is sparse and thin stubble.

Aras feels that he has enough stereotyping working against him without looking unkempt, so he shaves regularly.

Grey, though the brightness of it seems to shift.

Aras is Cargandian, of the Unitary. He looks humanish enough, if a bit thinly.

Lawful Neutral, give or take.

In crowds, Aras is quiet. It’s not that he doesn’t have anything to say, but he prefers to observe the social dynamics and see where the threads lie. Some stretch here, others are tied there, still others hang cut and left loose; it’s fascinating. And the way he stares when he’s fascinated? It can be off-putting. He’s just…so intense sometimes.

His eyes tend to slide to the side when speaking, looking for something no one else quite sees. It’s hard to keep his attention. But for those who manage, there’s humor there, and the kind of kindness that can only come from someone who has seen terrible things ordered done to undeserving people.

Those terrible things…so there’s also the kind of gaze that you wear like a sheathed knife, the one that is hard-edged and contained, where the smile that glints wryly is just light catching on exposed metal, ready to slide. Aras sits and remembers, and he thinks of the Third Hill, and his fingers tighten on that hilt.

Conflict has been a major theme in Aras' life, and even now, he's still conflicted. On one hand, he doesn't want to get involved in the lives of others; his is supposed to be a solitary role, whose usefulness was spent ending the War, and closeness is compromise.

On the other hand, Aras doesn't like to be alone. Loneliness is a wide door to the past, and it does him no good to dwell there. Better to stay in the moment, mind busy with fixing this or Weaving that. People are a good source of distraction. Someone always needs something fixed.

Weaving takes its toll. Reaching into the fabric of things makes the Weaver vulnerable in all kinds of ways: to physical harm in one realm, and to mental harm in the other. People say that Weavers weren’t meant to be, and their sickly countenance is the price they pay for inflicting change in the bonds of the world. Aras isn’t sure that he disagrees: when you peer deeply into the abyss, sometimes the abyss offers you a spot of tea and a warm place to sit, and you realize you have a lot more in common than you think.

He’s taken to finding he’s been talking to himself at times, and he’s not always sure if the things he sees are actually there or just remnants of threads long snipped and clipped and sewn away. He doesn’t sleep well. And sometimes when he does sleep he just…gets up and walks. And the Sway…well. Anyone who has ever had a Weave unravel knows that it takes a little bit of you with it when it goes, and that loss leaves you a little off-balance: leaves you Swaying. And practically everyone knows that when something as big as the Covenant broke, it broke a lot of Weavers with it. Aras is wracked with the vertigo of that breaking. His Veteran’s Care buys some of his medication, and when the tinkering is plentiful, that revenue buys the rest. And the rest of the time, well. Life is hard for everyone, especially those who broke the rules.

Despite the Unitary's attitude to their former troops, Aras still holds belief in the Empire. He knows that peace can only be bought at a price, and it was a soldier's honor to be chosen to carry that debt; somewhere in his heart, he knew the world he helped craft would have no place for him in it.

He honors The Unitary even as it shuns him, and its traditions are his, even if there is no place for him anymore within them.

And, he is a soldier. Try as he might, those years of battle at such a young age have tempered his habits into something different, something sharper. A soldier knows that even an open palm is a weapon, and Aras can't help but see the world accordingly.

Aras is a Weaver. Like others of his kind, Aras can see and sort the miniscule interconnections between things, pulling strands together to manipulate objects, catalyst interactions, or connect skeins. The talent gives him the ability to “magically” alter reality, but like any craft, the skill takes time, concentration, and practice. Given a long enough timeline, Aras can move mountains…or at least deconstruct them to their component parts.

Since actually Weaving anything useful takes time, as part of his practice, Aras spends at least a little bit every day honing his abilities by preparing complex combinations in advance, influencing small changes in his environment, or taking things apart and repairing them again. And, because it isn’t an ability he can always count on in the moment, Aras has learned to get by in many ways without it. He’s learned to survive just fine on his own, alone, and as a traveling Fixyman, he has a fair amount of repair and tinkering skills under his belt… especially those which he can influence with a Weave or a Pluck here and there.

After the War, The Unitary didn't need men like Aras in the way they used to. And after the accident, the Machination Factories didn't need him, either.

But Aras had learned something from his time at the assemblies, at least: though he'd been unparalleled at taking things apart, he truly enjoyed putting something together. With his experience at the Factories aiding him, he spent his off-time fixing the dilapidated buildings of the Veteran's Rest, and the minor objects he came across that needed repair. After the accident, his hobby for fixing things became something more.

Regardless of whether or not one knows the history of the Weavers, and despite the hammered bonds of peace, Cargandians are not especially well-liked...and being a Weaver only makes that worse. His own people have not been kind to Aras and his ilk, and as a result, he's not keen to strangers either, preferring to keep others at a safe distance.

Experience has taught Aras that preparing for the worst is the only way to come out ahead. Beneath the cautious exterior, though, is a man whose innate desire is to know how the world around him works, and people are just as much part of that equation. No one asks for this lonely of a life, not even a Weaver.

In whatever he does, Aras is a Weaver at the core of his being. He will always be attuned to the strings, regardless of how that talent manifests.

Aras doesn't carry much more than knives these days. That being said, his collection of tinkerer's tools serve many purposes, and anything, used properly and quickly, is a weapon.

Aras prefers to use Weavings if he has the time, to create traps, machinations, and dissolutions.

Aras is a Fixyman. He moves from town to town, repairing objects or working on structures as the need calls. People know he's a Weaver, and where he's found some acceptance, Aras will also set up minor Weaves for the townsfolk: a ward here, an alarm there, the occasional clearing of some rootrot or watersickness. He never stays long, though. He might be tolerated, but Aras knows the difference between a useful Weaver and a threatening one, and in most folks eyes, that difference is usually is just a matter of time.

From time to time, Aras will lean back onto his soldier's skills to gain extra revenue. As a mercenary, his skills as a Weaver come in handy, as does his combat and tactical experience. It's not a long-term solution, though: mercenaries are just as likely to have enemies within once the external threats are dealt with, and an exhausted Weaver makes an easy target. No. Better to get paid and get gone.

Aras follows the practices of The Unitary.

Aras still stands with The Unitary.

Befitting his status as a Weaver - and despite the War cutting his academic career short - Aras is well-educated. Prior to the War, he'd been on track to a Korcept Statuship. Even after the War, when Weavers were stripped of opportunity and rank under the terms of the New Peace, that means something. At least, it means something to him, and even if he enjoys the work of labor, Aras will always chafe a little bit under the authoritarian's collar.

Aras was young, and talented, and rising through the Academy like a hawk with the wind with all the smiles of Fortune favored.

And then the War.

Weavers found themselves in the trenches: you can’t Weave from a distance, and the Unitary couldn’t win a war without their Deconstructors and Machinators. Aras didn’t really know what he’d been conscripted into…but it knew him, and what his talent was capable of.

The Unitary wielded its Weavers deftly, ruthlessly, and without mercy. The Golems took the sanctuary at Third Hill…and then the Weavers took it apart.

After the Covenant broke, the war was over. Peace, however awkward, had been fused together by the alliance of the Unitary. The Weavers, on the other hand, were shattered by the effort. Simultaneously viewed with equal measures of awe, fear, and disgust, Veteran Weavers found themselves as the visible reminder of a war everyone wanted to forget. Better to pay them the Veteran’s Care, and offer them jobs to quietly hide them away.

But, Weaving takes its toll. Aras didn’t last more than a few months before the accident. Everyone agreed that it was only an accident, bad luck converging where the emotional ripples of his time in service disrupted the wake stresses of Machination. Still, after the dust settled and the bodies were cleared, he was given his walking notice…and he hadn’t really stopped walking since.

Being a Fixyman is easier. No one’s lives really hinge on the replacement of a wagon wheel, or the clearing of a disease thread from the weave of a field, or the sewing of buttons on the shirt of a doll. And his customers are always glad to let him sit and work as long as he needs to in order to create the change they desire. Aras can take the time he needs to repair something…and the tasks, however mundane, give him time to repair himself.