Dmitri Prochazka, Avian, Advanced. (Approved)

[Dmitri]

Name: Dmitri Prochazka
Species: Avian
Gender: Male
Age: 20

Dmitri Prochazka

Physical Description: Dmitri is an avian but... different. He is rather small and compact, standing just 5'6" and slim. There's not a patch of soft padding on him; he's all muscle and bone and sinew, sleek and strong. He can't afford extra fat or flesh if he wants to fly. And fly he will, one day. He's determined. He is built quite differently from most avians, and is proud of it. His legs are articulated like a bird's, with long thighs, short calves, and long, long feet ending broad-set talons. Most avians have humanoid arms and lack wings; here again Dmitri is different. Instead, he has wings, but no arms. The limbs are set in his chest where humanoids have arms, but are feathered and quite elongated. At the 'wrist' joint of each wing, he has one small, underdeveloped talon, which, while not terribly dexterous, take the place of hands on some occasions. In other situations, he uses his feet, or sometimes his mouth, to manipulate objects and his surroundings.

Dmitri's skin is uniformly swarthy; he finds shirts complicated and generally unnecessary, and thus refuses to wear them. He is sparsely feathered down his flanks to his hips, growing progressively thicker across his thighs, where all the flesh is covered. Where a mammal might have a trail of hair down the abdomen, he instead has a thin line of fluffy down from naval to groin. His chest is naked of hair or feather, save for the barest dusting of down centered on his sternum, and his back is smoothly feathered, from shoulders on down. At the small of his back, just above his tailbone, the feathers lengthen into a somewhat stunted forked tail, similar in style to that of a swallow. His feathers range in color from the palest, softest white of fluffy down, to the steely, stormy grey-blue of his longest, strongest remiges and rectrices, covering every shade of grey in between.

As far as looks go, Dmitri's fairly average. He's not ugly, but he's no great beauty, either. His face is square and masculine, with a long, straight, prominent nose. His lips are thin, his cheekbones are high, and his jaw is square. His eyes are dark, stormy grey, with the beginnings of crinkly wrinkles at the outside corners from squinting against the sun. His hair is fine, straight, chin-length light sandy brown. It tends to fluff up and fly in odd directions at the slightest provocation. His eyebrows are thick and somewhat darker brown, mobile and quick to fly up and quirk expressively.

Dmitri would much prefer to never wear clothes at all. Clothes pull and pinch at his feathers, and are hard to put on without hands, anyway. Plus, it's difficult to find pants that accommodate his tail. Still, Mamma always taught him that it was rude to run around without pants on, so for the most part he stays covered up (even though the down totally hides the dangly bits). Most of the time he wears short pants his brother Radek designed especially to accommodate tails and be easy to put on with talons. They're tough homespun cloth, blues and browns, with brass fasteners and zippers. Sometimes, mostly when he's alone, he'll wear a loincloth similar in style to a modified fundoshi.

Mental and/or Social Description: Dmitri is, by and large, a happy-go-lucky guy. He's extremely outgoing and very friendly, and is almost relentlessly optimistic. He is, above all else, an artist. He finds people of all kinds completely fascinating, and is always on the lookout for interesting things and people to draw. That's why he traveled out to the Labs; interesting subjects abound there.

Dmitri has another, deeply cherished love: flight. His greatest goal is to one day take to they skies like his not-so distant ancestors. He, above anyone else in his family is most physically capable of it, though he cannot now fly. He can glide, however, and does so with great gusto. He cannot remain airborne for very long; it takes far too much strength and energy, and his wings and tail just aren't well developed enough to hold himself aloft for very long. He is fully as obsessed with the possibility of flight as he is with his art, shaping much of his daily life around preparing for it. He 'practices gliding' every day, by jumping off of cliffs and buildings and trees, ending up bruised, battered, and occasionally, seriously injured. He's become borderline anorexic, for though he knows he cannot afford to loose muscle mass, neither can he have any extraneous weight whatsoever if he intends to one day lift himself into the air.

His dual obsessions have shaped his personality, in some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse. He's determined, and focused when he needs to be. He doesn't sweat the little stuff, and most insults and setbacks just roll off him like the proverbial rain on a duck's back. However, he has a sense of general species superiority that has, in some ways, been fed to him from an early age by his father and is in other ways, inspired by his pity for those who will never taste the glory of flight. He doesn't dislike other species, he just comes off as irritatingly smug at times.

History: Dmitri comes from a very, very large family. His extended family would practically make up a small village, were it not all housed under the same roof. He has many, many brothers and sisters, as well as a handful of aunts and uncles, and their various broods, and his paternal grandparents. All live in a sprawling, ramshackle house deep in an otherwise uninhabited forest. Dmitri's siblings are all, to one extent or another, similar, physically, to him, though the rest of the extended family more closely resemble standard avians. Dmitri was close with his family, especially his mother and his brother Radek, but being one of many middle children, and an artist besides, he felt the need to strike out on his own. He wondered through the wilderness, eventually hearing rumor of a strange, magical city and the monsters that it produced. He knew he had to go there, if only to see and draw these marvelous creatures and the people who would bring them to life.

*Note: Dmitri's native tongue is Avik, a gutteral, clicking sort of language with lots of consonants and rolled 'R's. Avik is an uncommon dialect of the more common Avian language, and is not just different enough for there to be a language barrier. For the purpose of roleplay, I use Czech to represent his native language. Anything Dmitri says in italics can be run through an online translator from Czech to English. Beware: Dmitri has a dirty mouth, and tends to swear in Avik. He has recently learned Common, and can converse in it well enough, but he does use oddly arrainged syntax that, while technically correct, are used in ways a native speaker never would. Dmitri cannot (yet) speak in the more widely used Avian tongue, though he would like to learn. Though he can read and write in Avik, he is illiterate (so far) in Common.

Goals: Dmitri has two, and only two goals in his life. He is an artist, and wishes to see and create fantastic things. But. He is also (as his father says), a Skybird. To fly would be the culmination and full realization of his life. These two goals and loves are what he holds dear, closer to his heart than any one person, location, or ideal.

Stats:

Stamina: 3
Strength: 1
Resistance: 3
Dexterity: 6
Mentality: 3

Attribute: Instinct

Traits:
Magnetism
Off in Space
Really Short
Speech Impediment
Imagination
Falcon's Grace


Skill Groups:
Survival, Artisan, Charisma, Markmanship

Skills:

Artisan:
(1 pt) Artist
(2 pt) Painter
(1 pt) Tribal Dancing
Survival:
(1 pt) Climb
(2 pt) Inner Compass
(1 pt) Build Fire
Charisma:
(4 pt) Barter (2 ranks - 10% discount)

[Dmitri]

CURRENT LEVEL - 4.2
CURRENT POINT BANK - 0
Must be level 50 before he gains the necesary skills to leave the City

Skills to-do list:
(* - to gain before leaving the City)

Academics

[ ] Foreign Script (Common)..............2 ranks (4 points) *
[x] Foreign Language (Common)...........1 rank (2 points)*
[x] Local Lore (Prochazka Mountain)..1 rank (2 points)
[ ] Mythology ..........................5 ranks (10 points) *

Artisan

[ ] Storytelling..........................1 rank (4 points)
[ ] Play Instrument (clawharp).........1 rank (3 points)
[ ] Formal Dancing......................1 rank (2 points)
[ ] Rave Dancing........................1 rank (1 point)
[x] Tribal Dancing......................1 rank (1 point)
[x] Artist................................1 rank (1 point)
[x] Painter..............................1 rank (2 points)
[ ] Leatherworker.......................1 rank (5 points)*
[ ] Tailor................................1 rank (3 points)*


Botany

[ ] Plant Lore..........................1 rank (2 points)
[ ] Berry Picking ----------------------1 rank (2 points)
[ ] Toxin Wise .........................1 rank (2 points)

Charisma

[x] Barter..............................2 ranks (4 points)
[ ] Diplomat ...........................1 rank (3 points)
[ ] Rogue...............................1 rank (3 points)
[ ] Morale ..............................1 rank (4 points)

Combat

[ ] Dodge...............................1 rank (2 points)*
[ ] Kick.................................1 rank (2 poings)*
[ ] Hard-Headed.......................1 rank (2 points)*

Husbandry

[ ] Ride Mount (Chiryma).............1 rank (2 points) *

Marksmanship

[ ] First Projectile (smallbow)........1 rank (2 points)*
[ ] Second Projectile (footbow) ......1 rank (2 points)
[ ] Aim .................................1 rank (10 points)
[ ] Sniper...............................1 rank (20 points)
[ ] Swell Shot...........................1 rank (8 points)
[ ] Perfect Shot ........................1 rank (16 points)
[ ] Rapid Fire...........................1 rank (12 points)

Seamanship

[ ] Navigator............................1 rank (4 points)*
[ ] Homeward Bound...................1 rank (8 points)*

Survival

[x] Build Fire.............................1 rank (1 point)*
[x] Clense Water..........................1 rank (1 point)*
[x] Inner Compass........................1 rank (2 points)*
[x] Climb..................................1 rank (1 point)*
[ ] Cartography...........................1 rank (2 points)*
[ ] First Aid...............................1 rank (1 point)*
[ ] CPR....................................1 rank (2 points)
[ ] Wilderness First Aid..................1 rank (4 points)
[ ] Suck Poison............................1 rank (2 points)
[ ] Wild Speak............................1 rank (3 points)

[Dmitri]

People Dmitri Knows:
Silver (has met, sketched his Paogon, Quintessence (Kvinchek))
Pre (has met)
Jacob (has met, talked about gliding together)

People Dmitri Knows Biblically:
Vixen