“Science is in the real world, you brainless maggot!”
Name: Hartley Russell Barn
Nickname: Hart
Age: 15
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Birthday: May 23
Appearance:
Hart owns a pair of gentle brown eyes that look like dark, rich, honey in the sunlight. They are wide but downturned. He has a large, but proportioned nose, the ridge being thick and the apex well-rounded. He has open nostrils that usually have clusters of nose hairs that poke their heads out. His actual face shape is triangular, his chin being the peak. He does not have prominent cheekbones, but they are existent. He does have large ears that poke out of his head like a bald chihuahua’s. His lips are thin and rather non-existent and his brown eyebrows are very expressive and often leap up and down at different comments.
He has a mesomorphic body type which would give him an athletic advantage if he was interested in sports. His body is still fit as he lives in a world that requires students to be able to take care of dragons. He weighs 141 lb and stands about five feet and eight inches. He's still got a couple of inches to finish growing, however. If he had to choose between inside or outside, he would choose the indoors. Mainly because libraries are inside. In his free time, his nose—and sometimes his entire face—is usually stuffed in a book so that only his ears can identify him, which they undoubtedly do.
His hair can be described as a home-baked, fresh-out-of-the-oven gingersnap cookie. The wonderful, warm brown is his late spring to early autumn hair color. Then the slightly-burnt-but-still-edible ones are what his locks look like when the months grow cooler. Even the light sprinkling of sugar is accurate, except it is dandruff instead of sugar. He has horrible dandruff problems and there are always chunks of it somewhere in the thick bundle of knots. Knots, yes, his hair is very thick, and not often enough does his wild mane get groomed thus resulting in many tangles. Although he is a stickler for spelling and rules, he is not one for personal hygiene. He might take his nickname of ‘Hart’ too personally, as he often smells like one. If he was properly groomed, his hair would be shoulder length and glossy like a bratty dog’s coat.
He wears rather average clothing. Y’know, off-white, long-sleeved shirts with a leather jerkin over them, stained pants, and good leather shoes. He carries around a satchel with him, too. It is filled with books and snacks. He has a gittern with him also, because, why not?
Personality:
•Snobbish •Petty •Practical •Rule-keeper •Trustworthy •Self-Righteous •Loyal •Hardworking •Prideful •Secretive •Pessimistic •Realistic •Brutally Candid•Not-A-Morning-Person •Introvert •Intelligent •Values Education •Choco-holic •Protective of Food/Books/Gittern/Friends •Secretly Wants Attention •Hypocrite •”Boring” •Educated •Thoughtless
Hart could be called snobbish and it wouldn’t be a lie. He is certainly a stickler for the rules and orders. Whoever doesn’t follow them are completely ignorant stupid-heads who’re going to lose their jobs, or in some cases, their heads. He is petty. For example, if you sit in his seat, he will certainly not share a couch with you and will spread his body as far as it could go to keep you off the sofa. It gets ridiculous at times, but it isn’t beneath him. Other than him just being petty, he is usually practical. He is not a tattle-tale, however, despite most people’s expectations. Hart will instead wait until you or anyone inside the party cracks and give away the secret. There is always a weak one. He will never give away a secret, that is something he swore from his single-digit years.
He is certainly an unliked figure in most communities because of his stuck-up behavior and self-righteousness. He is a trustworthy and loyal-to-the-end character, although his motives and actions can seem questionable at times. When he swears, he swears on his dear mother’s grave (she's not dead yet, but she's gonna get there eventually). When he promises, he does so on his life. He hides his fears underneath bravado and sneering. He likes making up insults, although sometimes they don’t make quite a lot of sense. He has pieces of creativity in him and likes to draw whenever he can. He also has come up with little ditties, too. He spends most of his free-time inside of books or playing a gittern. He is still perfecting his ability at the string instrument. He will not play it in public because he is prideful and refuses not to show off his “poor" skills at it to an audience.
He is hardworking. He is usually at work for his master and tries to take care of them as best as he can. He isn’t the best at making them smile or raise their morals because he isn’t exactly an optimist. He might crack a sarcastic joke, however, but they usually aren’t very good. He is a realist and doesn’t like it when people sugarcoat the truth. Facts are facts and anyone who is snowflake enough to cry at the truth should stay out of affairs of war. A world-changing event should not involve pansies who’ll bawl their eyes out if you tell them that Santa Clause ain’t real. Thus he is thoughtless at times. He can be socially unaware and awkward at times because he usually doesn’t practice that skill set in his free time. If it was up to him, he be a hermit who lives in a library in the woods. His grouchiness in the morning does nothing to aid his unfavorable popularity.
He is intelligent and educated. He might not be the smartest of the smart, but he is certainly not an idiot. He values education and learning. Most of the books he owns are about science or math, but he will read a fictional book whenever he is mentally exhausted or just in the mood. He will scoff at people who ridicule him for spending his time in books rather than hanging out in “the real world” (see quote). People have called him boring before and the fact is is that that adjective scares him. Sure, he’d love to live and be alone most of the time, but he doesn’t want to be friendless. He secretly craves communication, acknowledgment, and praise from other human beings. However, he won’t accept this as a truth because he likes to think he is completely independent from human affections (his reason is his own). This makes him very much a hypocrite (see the last paragraph).
He has a serious sweet tooth and will eat any type of chocolate dessert that you put before him. He will rarely eat any other dessert, although he does favor strawberry tarts. He likes most fruits and prefers them over vegetables since the green edibles are usually bland. He will happily eat green peas, however, as long as they aren’t mushed up into mash. He is protective over his food, books, and gittern. He also favors potatoes because they are versatile. Can he cook? Sort of, he can make the basic breakfast of eggs and sausage. He can cook a simple potato soup and anyone can make a sandwich. However, this is about his limit.
Alone, he allows himself to goof off some and he prefers to do this in the woods where he is usually always alone. He finds the trees comforting. This is where he teaches himself how to play his instrument and where he practices drawing. He does like to read there, too. He will occasionally dance and/or sing if he is happy and he always talks to himself. He makes jokes too. With strangers, he is reserved and skeptical. With a group he recognizes, he will usually stay reserved unless he feels comfortable enough to be otherwise. He might try to interact with them because he’ll submit to his craving for human socialization. Once you are his friend, he will slowly express more of himself to you. Like his immature side that gets drunk on chocolate and normal cranberry juice. He’ll play jokes with you and maybe even pull a prank. He cares very deeply for these friends and would fight anyone who messes with them.
Dragon: Aeolus (pg 4, air dragon, Spellbound)
Strengths:
Educated—He reads up on his “modern” science and the newest mathematic discoveries. He tries to be well-rounded by being able to play an instrument and he knows how to draw decently. He does this for fun.
Intelligent—He’s not yet the brainiest one of the group, but certainly not the dumbest. A main base of his intelligence relies heavily on common sense and logic.
Trustworthy—You can tell him a secret and he won’t give it away. He’s like a safe and it takes time and energy to get him to crack.
Loyal—He is loyal to the end of the line. When he chooses a side, he keeps it, despite any underdog situation against his favor.
Weaknesses:
Prideful—He is very prideful and it is a shame because he could be a decent person if he wasn’t. He can’t be wrong and he can’t make many mistakes in public. If he hasn’t mastered something, he feels very exposed to show his skill at it.
Snobbish—He is quite the snob and this is a large factor that goes into the pile of why he is rather friendless. He has also been described as a killjoy because he is a rather serious person who doesn’t like to participate in after-dark swims or underage drinking or disobedient, immature parties for that matter.
Thoughtless—He doesn’t know when he should stop talking if what he says hurts someone's feelings. He won’t straightforwardly insult them, but he might say something very frank that could upset a tender person.
Self-Righteous—With most people his age behaving recklessly, he is different. He sees it as a good difference because he is more mature and compares them. He watches the other do stupid stuff and agrees with himself that he’d never do that. This comparison causes him to be unjustly judgmental of others and it makes him look down his nose at them even more.
Likes:
-Reading
-Drawing
-Chocolate
-Strawberry Tarts
-Fruits
-Potatoes
-Learning
-Sleep
Dislikes:
-Morning Wake-up Calls
-Annoying Cry Babies
-Most Vegetables
-Reckless Behavior
-Idiots
-Worms (don’t ask, it’s a thing)
-Salty foods
-Swimming
Fear: He’s scared of drowning and of worms. The worm part was because of a stupid dream. Drowning is because he’s scared of water. He’s scared of being friendless because he might be boring. Being judged by others and being called out for being a fraud.
Affiliations:
Mircea Cryolar | Cousins from Mother's Side | on pg2
Hart won't admit it, but he likes that his family is there. He appreciates Cea and their brotherly relationship. He's not so friendless as he thought he was after all. Cea actually lived with him and his family before going to the academy, so they have a close relationship already. He knows about the worm dream and is one of the rare people who he'll perform his gittern in front of. They like to have sugar and book parties and hairdo sessions. Hart considers Cea his personal tailor and fashionist, yet likes to go around looking like trash just to get on his nerves. Cea is also teaching Hart how to bake.
Roxanne Monroe | Childhood Friend | on pg2
Hart has another friend. This one is an old one back a long time ago. They used to be friends when they were both still children. They'd play together and Hart found himself with two close friends for three years. Then, of course, things went down the drain when Roxanne's parents died. She was sent to an orphanage/distant family when she was 14. Hart was only 11 years at the time. He hasn't seen her since that day...until now. They recognized each other at a tournament and it's been a, perhaps a slightly awkward, reconnecting since then. He remembers her being the clever tomboy who always had her knees scruffed up and her eyes were full of spunk. Not a seemingly lazy individual who is expressionless and cold. In the past, he introduced her to books that she occasionally read. They'd go through the woods where Hart would point out several species of mushroom.
Love Interest: TBD, open
Voice: He has an averagely loud voice that becomes sharp when he is annoyed, disapproving of others, or whenever he is in a verbal war. He originally spoke with the vocabulary of his origins—the southern country. Whenever he becomes angry, defensive, or irritated, it returns to him. He tries not to use it because he considers that part in his life a very unmannerly, improper section. So he tries to speak in good, proper English that reflects the good breeding he tries to assume. Oh, yes, it sounds British, usually, but his country slang is total southern country American—y’alls, an’ everything.
Reputation:
He can be interesting to watch because he's socially unaware at times. Some people might not even notice him since he is usually quiet. He is a stick-in-the-mud, too, because he usually won't join in on the fun, but he won't leave either. He just likes to watch people do the activity, but not actually participate. However, if you find him by himself in the woods...you'll see him as a weirdo who sings and dances to his own music.
Background:
He grew up in the south. His educated mother taught both him and his younger brother, Rolland, how to read and write before going back to her dragon research. Her husband stayed home to hold down the fort. Hart had a particular love for it rather than his brother, so their mother focused on him mainly and was satisfied as long as Rolland could read and write a little. They weren’t rich enough to buy several textbooks, but there was a library in a town nearby that Hart would practically live in. He worked there for a little bit. He would take home with him at least two of the books, whether it was educational or fictional. He would mainly read them in the woods where he felt the safest.
As a younger boy, he was the weird, big-nosed, big-eared nerd who didn’t like sports. Other children bullied him for his love for learning and his nose always was in a book. So he ran to the woods to hide from them and found it quite comfortable. He then came up with a tall tale about the forest to scare the others away, which it did successfully.
He wasn't a completely friendless boy. He had a neighbor, Roxanne, who he'd play with. They met when he was 8. She was three years older, but that was okay. She only lived there for three years, however, due to the death of her parents. She moved when she was 14. His cousin, Mircea, and his aunt moved in with them after her husband died. They moved in when Hart was 9-10 years old. Although Cea was two years older, the boys became good friends as they both admired books and candies.
By the age of fourteen, he had read all of the books in the library multiple times and was quite frankly bored. His parents had the bright idea to send their child with the most potential for greatness to a great uncle up north. This relative, Taylor Gibstone, was academically inclined and was known as the scholar of the family. He worked as a professor at a decent university that Hart was both too young and too poor to attend. Given that he was family, Professor Gibstone agreed to house and tutor Hart privately in the evenings as long as the boy got himself a job.
The first notable thing that changed was Hart’s voice. He found that they had a different accent than the south. All the interviewers were prejudiced against his southern drawl, so he remained jobless for a while to his great uncle’s impatience. They even doubted his capabilities even after he proved to them that he could read and write. So he learned how to speak like them, their accent, and their lingo. He finally was hired as an assistant at a small grocery shop. All he did was restock the shelves, write down their costs and aid anyone who needed help. In the afternoons and most of his spare time, he studied hard to please Gibstone. However, their relationship only lasted for half of the year, January to July; his fifteenth birthday is included in this period.
Then he got picked by a dragon.
Other:
My Father’s Dragon, one of my favorite children’s books
(I can edit the parts about his voice and background if you’d rather me not meddle with your world’s structure. Hart was also originally made for a different role-play that didn’t pick up off the ground. I tried to edit those parts out, but if anything wonky is left, you know why.)
Spring 
Night Weather: 
Heavy Rain Moon: 
