Post by bryna on Aug 10, 2008 19:48:39 GMT -5
Name: Dafydd Owain Heilyn
Nicknames: Dai (usually), Davy, David (he hates that), Hay, Welsh, Welshie, Heilyn.
Age: 13
Gender: Male
Clique: Nomads (had to get in there XD)
Clique Status: Newbie
Picture:
Play by: Some random kid off DeviantART (again)
Appearance: Dafydd Heilyn - absolutely, definitely not David - is... Welsh. Very, very Welsh. Dark hair, green eyes, small and wiry, with a complexion that tans rather than freckling or burning, he is the sort of boy who would find it very hard either to stand out or to fade into the background. His eyes shine very, very brightly when he is excited or angry, and they're the colour of grass.
He's very active, so it's hardly surprising that his skinny frame is almost entirely muscle. There's not a spare pound on him; although he's far from starving, he looks light enough to fly away. But his diminutive size doesn't make him look any younger than his thirteen years; if anything, he looks older. He's run wild for much of his young life, and his skin is as brown and as thick as a labourer's, his hands as calloused and rough.
He's used to running barefoot, and he still does when he can get away with it. When he does wear shoes, they're generally pretty battered and scuffed, and never polished. The rest of his clothes, as well, no matter how well-tailored and well-made, tend to aquire rents and tears and little patches of ground-in dirt. And they generally are pretty well-tailored and well-made, because his parents aren't exactly poor.
His hair is about the only part of him that stays neat for any prolonged length of time, and that's mostly because it's cropped too short to get tangled or messy. It's dark, dark brown, like old oak, coarse and thick. It could be quite nice, if he ever bothered to do more than cut it every so often. Still, it's quite possibly his best feature.
He carries a little cross around his neck, made out of some sort of wood, blackened by time; a family heirloom, far too old to tell what sort of wood it is, or what the little marks on the back read. The family legend is that it's been in the family since the time of Queen Victoria, but most people don't believe that - after all, that's over a thousand years, and wood wouldn't last that long, surely. Dai would like to think it's true, though. He rather likes the idea of having something that links him to a different age.
Even if it is something that's a little annoying to carry around all the time.
Personality: Dai is almost militantly Welsh, and will defend his country against any perceived slight with words, or, if that fails, with fists. If both methods fail to make an impression (as they are quite likely to; he is, after all, thirteen and quite weedy for his age), he will wander off, muttering darkly in Welsh, and harbour a grudge against that person for all of half an hour. When he's the one being insulted, he won't even hold a grudge for that long; insults and criticisms seem to slide off him like water off a duck's back.
He smiles easily, if a little crookedly, and will very rarely be seen angry or upset, even in the worst situations. While this is generally an asset, it can be quite galling at times; nothing seems to make a permanent impression on him at all. Unfortunately for him, this includes lessons; being cooped up in a classroom is good for neither him nor the teacher, who will have to struggle to maintain his interest. Most don't even bother, and those who know him have given up punishing him, too; it isn't that he doesn't try to keep up, it's just that what he does learn tends to be half-forgotten by the next day.
This is hindered still further by the fact that English is not, in fact, his first language; he speaks it perfectly fluently but, as he often reminds people, he thinks in Welsh, and, if he's distracted, will answer questions in it as well. It isn't his fault, but there is something very offputting about asking him what two and two is and getting the answer pedwar.
He's artistic, though; he says that painting a landscape is the next best thing to running through it, and accordingly puts in every detail he can think of, with surprising accuracy. When he's sitting alone and he can't go outside, he carves, a skill he was taught by one of the farmers on his father's land. The carvings aren't perfect, but he's proud of them, and they're all ranged out beside his bed, in a collection that's growing all the time. When he doesn't have any materials to hand, he plays with words in his head; Welsh and English. He's no Taliesin, but he's learning. Slowly.
Of course, the arts aren't his first love. He was brought up more by his parents' tenants than by his parents themselves, and as a result, he's rather more au fait with the subtleties of sheep farming than with anything more gentlemanly. He can talk for literally hours about lambing season - in Welsh, of course, since he thinks it loses something in translation. His favourite thing to do, when he's back in Wales, is run around and try to call the sheepdogs to him. He's never been all that good at commanding the dogs, of course; he's not their master and they know it. Still, he enjoys it, and he considers it hugely unfair that he has to spend so much of his year in England, a long way from Gwilym Rhys and his flocks.
He's a sociable boy, though, and generally willing to shoehorn his way into most conversations - whether or not they're his business. He might be annoying at times, but it's hard not to admire his confidence.
History: Dai is the youngest of four children; his sisters Gwenhwyfar, Eurolwyn, and Siwan have all spent their time at Florence, then moved on; all three are now married. Siwan, the youngest of his sisters, is eight years his senior, and Gwenhwyfar, the eldest, is now thirty. His father, Blaise Heilyn, owns most of the island of Aberwyth, where Dai was born and brought up, but much of the land was brought to the family by Dai's mother, Rhiannon, an important heiress in her own right, and a strong-willed lady with it. The lands surrounding Heilyn Faenor, their house, are rented out to sheep farmers, and have been for hundreds of years, but the house itself retains a large proportion of what is, after all, not a large island. Therefore, the grounds are hardly huge compared to some grand country estates, but for Dai and his family, they are plenty big enough - and most of their tenants will raise no objection if one of the Heilyns wishes to come and help on the farm.
When Dai grew up, both his parents were busy with their estates almost all the time. With all of his sisters away at school, it was inevitable that he should grow bored and lonely, and begin to seek out other ways of entertaining himself. He found himself spending more and more time at the farms on the island - especially on Gwilym Rhys' land. It wasn't that he particularly like the farmer - although he did - that attracted him to the place so much as the fact that the Rhys family had a son, Llyr, who was within a week of his age, and who shared much the same love of exploring the wild places.
Mostly, it was from Gwilym that Dai learnt about farming, but from Llyr that he learnt the wild places of the island; all the places along the cliffs best to climb, the caves, the birds' nests. Llyr, although only a few days older than Dai, proved to be much better at scouting out new places, and there was hardly a spot of the island that they didn't know by the time they were eight or nine, and none they couldn't reach. Inevitably, this led to a few near-catastrophes; Rhiannon has said many, many times that her son must have a charmed life, from all the times he has escaped certain death. Neither Dai nor Llyr could ever bring themselves to care, even after one memorable night in a blustery autumn, when they were caught in a wild wind halfway up a cliff and trapped there overnight. They were just boys, and like so many young boys, they craved adventure.
Meanwhile, the Heilyns had hired a tutor for Dai, an arrangement to suit everyone involved; they got teaching that would actually stick in the boy's mind, the tutor got bed and board, Llyr got a free education - Dai wouldn't hear of lessons where the older boy wasn't allowed - and Dai, of course, got free time to roam around Anglesey with Llyr. It was a good arrangement. It suited everyone.
But it couldn't last forever. He might have managed to hold out until now, but it was hopeless to expect that Dafydd Heilyn, a landowner's son and heir to a good-sized estate, would be able to go his whole life without proper schooling. Under protest, he was uprooted from Anglesey - and, indeed, from Wales altogether - and packed off to Florence in short order, two years late and only slightly behind the other students. His mother Rhiannon gave him the cross at that point, so that he would have something to remind him of Wales and of his family. At the time, in a temper, he shoved it to the bottom of his suitcase and tried to forget about it. It didn't take long, though, before his anger burnt out and he realised what it was worth - both to him and to Rhiannon.
Since his arrival, he's been slipping back in the classes, without the one-on-one tution he's been used to. His best subject, besides art, has always been Welsh, which isn't taught here, and mostly the subjects that they do teach bore him witless.
That isn't to say he's unhappy here. There's lots of space - the school has much larger grounds than Heilyn Faenor - and he's made plenty of friends. None as good as Llyr Rhys, of course.
He writes to his parents once a month and to Llyr and Gwilym at least twice in the same time.
And always, always, he writes in Welsh.
Fears:
- Failing all his exams
- Forgetting how to speak Welsh
- Not being able to get back to some of the places he remembers
- Being cooped in
- Losing friends
- Rhiannon in a temper
- Losing the cross (that would put Rhiannon in the temper to end all tempers)
Likes:
- Llyr, Gwilym, and the whole Rhys family
- Running
- Climbing
- Dogs
- Birds-nesting
- Sheep
- Summer
- The sea
- Clear nights
- Art
- Carving
Dislikes:
- Lessons - especially Maths
- Anyone who insults Wales, even by accident
- Being away from home
- Gwenhwyfar
- The idea of romance
- People taking life too seriously
Dreams:
- Inheriting his father's land
- Managing to scrape a pass in his exams
- Being tall
Anything you'd like to add? I don't know if he's okay - he might be a bit difficult to work into things with the age gap? It just came to my attention that nobody else seems to have Welsh characters, and I couldn't let that disgraceful state of affairs continue! So I made the Welshest Welsh kid possible XD
I promise I'll stick around to play him this time ^-^'
You would not believe how hard I had to fight the urge to call him Ianto... XD
And Dydyw pellennig dana Cymru just means 'It's a long way from Wales' ^-^
Nicknames: Dai (usually), Davy, David (he hates that), Hay, Welsh, Welshie, Heilyn.
Age: 13
Gender: Male
Clique: Nomads (had to get in there XD)
Clique Status: Newbie
Picture:
Play by: Some random kid off DeviantART (again)
Appearance: Dafydd Heilyn - absolutely, definitely not David - is... Welsh. Very, very Welsh. Dark hair, green eyes, small and wiry, with a complexion that tans rather than freckling or burning, he is the sort of boy who would find it very hard either to stand out or to fade into the background. His eyes shine very, very brightly when he is excited or angry, and they're the colour of grass.
He's very active, so it's hardly surprising that his skinny frame is almost entirely muscle. There's not a spare pound on him; although he's far from starving, he looks light enough to fly away. But his diminutive size doesn't make him look any younger than his thirteen years; if anything, he looks older. He's run wild for much of his young life, and his skin is as brown and as thick as a labourer's, his hands as calloused and rough.
He's used to running barefoot, and he still does when he can get away with it. When he does wear shoes, they're generally pretty battered and scuffed, and never polished. The rest of his clothes, as well, no matter how well-tailored and well-made, tend to aquire rents and tears and little patches of ground-in dirt. And they generally are pretty well-tailored and well-made, because his parents aren't exactly poor.
His hair is about the only part of him that stays neat for any prolonged length of time, and that's mostly because it's cropped too short to get tangled or messy. It's dark, dark brown, like old oak, coarse and thick. It could be quite nice, if he ever bothered to do more than cut it every so often. Still, it's quite possibly his best feature.
He carries a little cross around his neck, made out of some sort of wood, blackened by time; a family heirloom, far too old to tell what sort of wood it is, or what the little marks on the back read. The family legend is that it's been in the family since the time of Queen Victoria, but most people don't believe that - after all, that's over a thousand years, and wood wouldn't last that long, surely. Dai would like to think it's true, though. He rather likes the idea of having something that links him to a different age.
Even if it is something that's a little annoying to carry around all the time.
Personality: Dai is almost militantly Welsh, and will defend his country against any perceived slight with words, or, if that fails, with fists. If both methods fail to make an impression (as they are quite likely to; he is, after all, thirteen and quite weedy for his age), he will wander off, muttering darkly in Welsh, and harbour a grudge against that person for all of half an hour. When he's the one being insulted, he won't even hold a grudge for that long; insults and criticisms seem to slide off him like water off a duck's back.
He smiles easily, if a little crookedly, and will very rarely be seen angry or upset, even in the worst situations. While this is generally an asset, it can be quite galling at times; nothing seems to make a permanent impression on him at all. Unfortunately for him, this includes lessons; being cooped up in a classroom is good for neither him nor the teacher, who will have to struggle to maintain his interest. Most don't even bother, and those who know him have given up punishing him, too; it isn't that he doesn't try to keep up, it's just that what he does learn tends to be half-forgotten by the next day.
This is hindered still further by the fact that English is not, in fact, his first language; he speaks it perfectly fluently but, as he often reminds people, he thinks in Welsh, and, if he's distracted, will answer questions in it as well. It isn't his fault, but there is something very offputting about asking him what two and two is and getting the answer pedwar.
He's artistic, though; he says that painting a landscape is the next best thing to running through it, and accordingly puts in every detail he can think of, with surprising accuracy. When he's sitting alone and he can't go outside, he carves, a skill he was taught by one of the farmers on his father's land. The carvings aren't perfect, but he's proud of them, and they're all ranged out beside his bed, in a collection that's growing all the time. When he doesn't have any materials to hand, he plays with words in his head; Welsh and English. He's no Taliesin, but he's learning. Slowly.
Of course, the arts aren't his first love. He was brought up more by his parents' tenants than by his parents themselves, and as a result, he's rather more au fait with the subtleties of sheep farming than with anything more gentlemanly. He can talk for literally hours about lambing season - in Welsh, of course, since he thinks it loses something in translation. His favourite thing to do, when he's back in Wales, is run around and try to call the sheepdogs to him. He's never been all that good at commanding the dogs, of course; he's not their master and they know it. Still, he enjoys it, and he considers it hugely unfair that he has to spend so much of his year in England, a long way from Gwilym Rhys and his flocks.
He's a sociable boy, though, and generally willing to shoehorn his way into most conversations - whether or not they're his business. He might be annoying at times, but it's hard not to admire his confidence.
History: Dai is the youngest of four children; his sisters Gwenhwyfar, Eurolwyn, and Siwan have all spent their time at Florence, then moved on; all three are now married. Siwan, the youngest of his sisters, is eight years his senior, and Gwenhwyfar, the eldest, is now thirty. His father, Blaise Heilyn, owns most of the island of Aberwyth, where Dai was born and brought up, but much of the land was brought to the family by Dai's mother, Rhiannon, an important heiress in her own right, and a strong-willed lady with it. The lands surrounding Heilyn Faenor, their house, are rented out to sheep farmers, and have been for hundreds of years, but the house itself retains a large proportion of what is, after all, not a large island. Therefore, the grounds are hardly huge compared to some grand country estates, but for Dai and his family, they are plenty big enough - and most of their tenants will raise no objection if one of the Heilyns wishes to come and help on the farm.
When Dai grew up, both his parents were busy with their estates almost all the time. With all of his sisters away at school, it was inevitable that he should grow bored and lonely, and begin to seek out other ways of entertaining himself. He found himself spending more and more time at the farms on the island - especially on Gwilym Rhys' land. It wasn't that he particularly like the farmer - although he did - that attracted him to the place so much as the fact that the Rhys family had a son, Llyr, who was within a week of his age, and who shared much the same love of exploring the wild places.
Mostly, it was from Gwilym that Dai learnt about farming, but from Llyr that he learnt the wild places of the island; all the places along the cliffs best to climb, the caves, the birds' nests. Llyr, although only a few days older than Dai, proved to be much better at scouting out new places, and there was hardly a spot of the island that they didn't know by the time they were eight or nine, and none they couldn't reach. Inevitably, this led to a few near-catastrophes; Rhiannon has said many, many times that her son must have a charmed life, from all the times he has escaped certain death. Neither Dai nor Llyr could ever bring themselves to care, even after one memorable night in a blustery autumn, when they were caught in a wild wind halfway up a cliff and trapped there overnight. They were just boys, and like so many young boys, they craved adventure.
Meanwhile, the Heilyns had hired a tutor for Dai, an arrangement to suit everyone involved; they got teaching that would actually stick in the boy's mind, the tutor got bed and board, Llyr got a free education - Dai wouldn't hear of lessons where the older boy wasn't allowed - and Dai, of course, got free time to roam around Anglesey with Llyr. It was a good arrangement. It suited everyone.
But it couldn't last forever. He might have managed to hold out until now, but it was hopeless to expect that Dafydd Heilyn, a landowner's son and heir to a good-sized estate, would be able to go his whole life without proper schooling. Under protest, he was uprooted from Anglesey - and, indeed, from Wales altogether - and packed off to Florence in short order, two years late and only slightly behind the other students. His mother Rhiannon gave him the cross at that point, so that he would have something to remind him of Wales and of his family. At the time, in a temper, he shoved it to the bottom of his suitcase and tried to forget about it. It didn't take long, though, before his anger burnt out and he realised what it was worth - both to him and to Rhiannon.
Since his arrival, he's been slipping back in the classes, without the one-on-one tution he's been used to. His best subject, besides art, has always been Welsh, which isn't taught here, and mostly the subjects that they do teach bore him witless.
That isn't to say he's unhappy here. There's lots of space - the school has much larger grounds than Heilyn Faenor - and he's made plenty of friends. None as good as Llyr Rhys, of course.
He writes to his parents once a month and to Llyr and Gwilym at least twice in the same time.
And always, always, he writes in Welsh.
Fears:
- Failing all his exams
- Forgetting how to speak Welsh
- Not being able to get back to some of the places he remembers
- Being cooped in
- Losing friends
- Rhiannon in a temper
- Losing the cross (that would put Rhiannon in the temper to end all tempers)
Likes:
- Llyr, Gwilym, and the whole Rhys family
- Running
- Climbing
- Dogs
- Birds-nesting
- Sheep
- Summer
- The sea
- Clear nights
- Art
- Carving
Dislikes:
- Lessons - especially Maths
- Anyone who insults Wales, even by accident
- Being away from home
- Gwenhwyfar
- The idea of romance
- People taking life too seriously
Dreams:
- Inheriting his father's land
- Managing to scrape a pass in his exams
- Being tall
Anything you'd like to add? I don't know if he's okay - he might be a bit difficult to work into things with the age gap? It just came to my attention that nobody else seems to have Welsh characters, and I couldn't let that disgraceful state of affairs continue! So I made the Welshest Welsh kid possible XD
I promise I'll stick around to play him this time ^-^'
You would not believe how hard I had to fight the urge to call him Ianto... XD
And Dydyw pellennig dana Cymru just means 'It's a long way from Wales' ^-^
