----------Basic Info
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*My Username: Rondell
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*Jauplin's Name: Thuban Nahoru
*Nicknames:
'Thu' - a simple, friendly abbreviation of his name
Nut - What his mom used to call him, because of his fur-color
Stick-man - On account of the umbrella he uses as a cane
Kid - Mainly used by the old Jaupie he works for
Sniffer - What the gem wholesalers call him; he can 'sniff out' a fake
*Age: 26
*Gender: Male
*Birthday: February 15th
*Dominant Hand: Both; he's ambidextrous
*Physicality/Build: Of average height, Thuban has a delicate build overall, right down to his long, thin fingers. Most would describe him as 'wiry'. His movements can be somewhat jerky at times, and are frequently interspersed with pauses. He walks with a slight limp.
o__________________________o
Personality:
*Likes:
Cheese of all kinds
Rosemary tea
Fresh mint
Board games
When a plan comes together
Birdsong
Wind-chimes
Conversation
The circus
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*Dislikes:
Interruptions
Messing up
People mistaking him for a girl
Haggling
Physical exertion
Getting dirty
Having to repeat himself
Rainy days
Waste
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*Skills:
Cooking
Shaping gems
Tooling leather
Sewing
Being tidy
Sketching
Math
Being consistent
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*Not-skills:
Being loud
Making paper
Doing things halfway
Rushing
Flirting
Driving a cart
~~~~AMBITIOUS~~~~
- Ever since he was a child, Thu has displayed a definite streak of inflated-head syndrome - he thinks he's destined for bigger and better things. No... he knows he's destined for bigger and better things. He can feel it in his bones! Correspondingly, he's always had a bit of a problem with authority, and only begrudgingly follows instructions from superiors who haven't done a darned thing to earn his respect. If he thought he could get away with it without damaging his position, he'd probably flat refuse to do a lot of things on a daily basis.
~~~~SEDULOUS~~~~
Sedulous - ADJECTIVE;
(of a person or action) showing
dedication and diligence;
synonyms: diligent · careful ·
meticulous · thorough · assiduous
~~~~SENTIMENTAL~~~~
- Being one of the neatest Jaupies you'll probably ever meet, few would guess that Thuban is also a bit of a pack-rat, especially when it comes to items that he deems to be of sentimental value. That hair-ribbon his eldest sister gave him to remember her by before she left for her apprenticeship? He still has it. And uses it. The invitations to his brother's wedding? Has those too, in an album. The cloth napkin his childhood crush used when he finally talked her into going on a date with him? Check. It's folded up neatly in a drawer in the kitchen. A feather from a seagull he and his friends caught more than a decade ago? Uses it as a bookmark. Even the umbrella he totes around on a daily basis - he uses it as a cane when his leg acts up, as a fashion statement, and to stay dry in wet weather - is a memento: his father gave it to him on his sixth birthday. In fact, so many of the items Thuban keeps in his home are irreplaceable because of sentimental value that he sometimes has nightmares about his house burning down when he's not there to try and save some of it. But his house is as spic and span as ever, because everything has its place.
~~~~WHIMSICAL~~~~
- Mostly communicated through his work whenever he's given the chance to design a cover himself instead of replicating the work of someone else, Thuban is actually quite imaginative. One notable example was the time he was tasked with coming up with possible designs for the cover of a nautically themed work. Having spent so much time down by the docks, Thuban had heard his fair share of fish stories, so immediately sketched out a grand sea-monster,akin to the sort you'd see on old sailing charts, surfacing in a great spray of water. Needless to say, he was quite disappointed when someone else's design was chosen - it was a simple geometric pattern with tiny fish at all fur corners.
~~~~METICULOUS~~~~
- Teeny-tiny details that border on microscopic are not imposing for Thuban. Nor are massive projects that will require him to stay up all night if he has any hope of getting them done on time. Quite the contrary, actually. He finds it quite easy to get sucked into a project that requires him to wear jeweler's eyeglasses. And while he doesn't really relish the idea of getting no sleep, he finds that time passes pretty quickly once he gets going. Furthermore, where some would rush through such a project simply to get it done, Thuban always takes things extremely slow - using every last moment of his time to maximum effect.
o__________________________o
What do they make as an artisan?
Thuban's a bookbinder by trade, specializing in the creation and repair of books with intricately jeweled, inlaid and gilded covers. He's only recently completed his apprenticeship to the satisfaction of his master though, and hasn't yet made a name for himself. He doesn't even have his own shop. In fact, he's still working in the very same back room he's been stuck in since he was fifteen. Although now he gets a wage for his trouble. Nevertheless, while he continues to do his utmost for his boss, he dreams of one day perfecting his craft to the point where he can attract a finer class of clientele and open his own business on the other side of town. In other words, he dreams of upward mobility: Thuban wants to be middle class. It's not that far-fetched of a dream either, as his natural talent for working gemstones has served very him well over the years. It allows him to easily set an infinite variety of stones in an equally endless number of shapes, sizes and cuts, much finer and smoother than the ones which have been hand-cut by his fellows. With enough patience, he can even work a stone to the point where its flaws are made less noticeable - if not removed altogether - without having to cut an otherwise sizable gem into tiny pieces. He thereby saves a lot of time, material and funds. It also allows him to start with a lower-quality gem, knowing full-well he can buy cheap and sell high. Although he keeps this little nugget of information away from the wholesalers that the shop deals with. Some of them already resent him somewhat because his magic prevents them from slipping a synthetic gem in when he's not looking. He can tell the difference quite easily!
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History:
The youngest of four children, Thuban was born into a fairly typical lower-class family which lived so close to the docks that it was possible to get there in eight minutes at a brisk walk. As such, he and his siblings spent much of their free time down by the water, betting on which ships would come in on time, pitching rocks at seagulls, and generally getting underfoot. His mother had a background in herbalism, having inherited the knowledge from her mother before her, and worked as a chef in a local cafe where her fire magic could come in useful when preparing more finicky dishes. His father, on the other hand, was frequently away for long periods of time - he was a navigator who found employment aboard various merchant vessels, although the cargo they carried was never valuable. When times were tough, he'd even hire himself out to garbage scows that would go up and down the coast. Nevertheless, Thuban thought of his father as a grand adventurer. And as he was always sure to bring back interesting things for his family - including the vulture-headed umbrella which Thuban uses to this day - the grandiose childhood illusion thrived for a good, long while.
When he was five years old his eldest sibling, a brother named Corcoran, left home to begin an apprenticeship with a merchant captain their father had built up an acquaintance with over the years. Thus Thuban was left to hold down the fort as 'head man' whenever his father was away on a voyage. And the boy took his new role to heart. He always spent a couple of days after his father departed strutting about the house like a puffed-up rooster and trying to order his older sisters around. When he was seven, his eldest sister left to begin working at a millinery shop across town. His other sister, only a year and a half older than he, had already begun to help their mother out on a regular basis, and was beginning to show quite an aptitude for the culinary arts. And so he was more or less left to his own devices during the day. Although he was still the boss in his own mind, and took the fact that the house was running smoothly to be a sign of his own job-well-done, even though he hadn't actually... done anything.
The month before his 12th birthday, the day his father had scheduled him to begin working as an errand boy for a distant relative who kept a bookshop further uptown, Thuban did something stupid which caused his own illusions of self-importance to come crashing down around him. While down at the docks with his friends, whom he supposedly led, the young Jaupie accepted a dare to sneak through a hole in the fence surrounding a storage yard and climb up a pile of crates. This in an of itself was nothing unusual - he'd climbed on plenty of things he probably shouldn't have over the years. But this particular yard was owned by a very wealthy merchant who didn't much like trespassers. Nevertheless, Thuban managed to make it halfway up the pile of crates before he was spotted a pair of watch-beasts, who quickly raised the alarm and sent many of his 'friends' scrambling for cover. In his own haste to escape, he lost his footing. The force of the fall knocked Thuban unconscious, and left him with a badly broken right leg in addition to a couple of cracked ribs and any number of scrapes and bruises, although it could have been worse if a couple of the boys he'd been with hadn't had the wherewithal to go through the fence themselves and drag him away before the jaupies who minded the beasts came to see what the racket was about.
It took many months for Thuban to recover fully from his physical injuries, which his friends had tried to explain away by spinning some story about his getting run over by a cart - a fiction that didn't last long under the intense scrutiny of Thuban's father - but it took a lot longer for him to recover from the wounds to his ego. Naturally, his parents were quite disappointed in him, and resolved to delay his apprenticeship until he had done a bit more growing up. The distant relative was contacted, and he agreed. Thuban would not be going out on his own until he was fourteen.
It was this harsh verdict more than his injuries which jolted him out of his adolescent revere and set him on the path which he now walks - albeit it with a limp, as his leg never really did heal properly. He had thought himself to be the 'man' of the house since he was five, and had always taken the fact for granted. But he had never really earned the title. Instead, he had acted like a stupid child. Thuban has since resolved to never make the same mistake again, and indeed, spent his two years of shame fruitfully by throwing himself into his studies and actually helping around the house.
o__________________________o
Random Facts
* He owes his name to his father the navigator, whose love for astronomy led him to look skyward when coming up with names for his children - 'Thuban' is actually a star which appeared on his charts. It was all Thuban's mother could do to keep all her kids from being named after stars!
* OOC moment - 'Nahoru', his surname, is Czech for 'upward', and was chosen by me specifically because of his dreams to advance his social class. He reaches upward, for the stars.
* Thuban's favorite gem to work is Labradorite as it just seems to respond to his magic, much more so than any other stone he's had the chance to work with. He's not really sure why.
* His 'mental alarm-clock' is fully functional - if he knows he has to wake up at a certain time to do a certain thing, Thuban can fall asleep and, without having to be poked, wake up at that time.
* He has a pet bird. It's a male canary (or the in-world equivalent thereof) named Sunny, and it lives in a fancy cage by the largest window in his home. Thuban probably spends more money on Sunny than he spends on himself.
* While hanging around in the kitchen with his mother, Thuban picked up quite a bit. All his friends will unanimously agree that he makes the best chicken-pot-pie you've ever tasted. EVER. And his casseroles aren't anything to shake a stick at either!
* Thuban's long-distance vision is beginning to get a little fuzzy, although he doesn't want to admit it. He'll probably end up needing glasses at some point in the not-so-distant future.
* Even though he spends all day working on books, he's really not that big of a reader.
* His handwriting is some odd combination of 'messy' and 'fancy'. Maybe it's so messy that it's fancy? Or it could just be so fancy that it's messy. It's hard to tell. Either way though - Thuban's handwriting is very thin, spidery, and hard to read, being as full of unnecessary flourishes as it is!
* His favorite thing to do in the shop is work with leather - staining, embossing, softening, burnishing - you name it, he enjoys it. He even loves the smell of the stuff.
(Pose Reference - X)
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((I'm so sorry none of my art is colored and that my formatting isn't too great - I only found this four days before the deadline, so I didn't have time to do much! I'll finish the art up ASAP for whomever wins though, if they'd like to use it.))
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