. . . I almost never do guy characters so what the hay?
Name: Solin Petran*
(This was assigned to him when the maga Ophelie picked him up and . . . it's explained in the history)
Stage Name: The Human Bull
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Occupation: Entertainer
Personality: Mysterious and menacing, nobody knows much of anything about him, not even what his face actually looks like. He is a man of few words, only talking or feigning excitement if it is absolutely necessary to a given task. He has an almost unnatural control over his emotions, making it extremely hard to anger or excite him. The downside of this is that in the few instances he does experience a strong emotion he has to keep it to himself; he can't tell anyone, so it will stay with him for awhile like a private monster gnawing away at his thoughts. However, people who are particularly sensitive to people's mannerisms may notice him make nervous ticks or shake ever so slightly when he's extremely nervous. Thus, people from the outside see a silent, intimidating giant while on the inside he is an intelligent odd-ball who wants to be left alone when not performing.
History: He was born in a village near a large castle located on the banks of an oasis near the deserts of the eastern reaches of the Kingdom of Arxa. His father was a cousin of the king in power at the time. However, his mother . . . well, it certainly wasn't his father's wife. The fact that his mother was a poor peasant raped by the man would be quite unpleasant for him to hear if he remembered any of it. She never gave her son a name in the few days preceding her trek out into the desert one fateful night, leaving her son with nothing but a couple blankets and a basket for him to sleep in. She might not have done it, if Solin's father hadn't privately threatened to hang the poor woman and then feed the child to the palace wolves.
Then came Ophelie. An thirty-something maga travelling the desert with some sylphs on a research expedition in Calropa's desert, the sight of the baby stranded terrified her. She couldn't possibly let the poor thing burn to death in the rising heat before the morning was even through. So she took him up and traveled into the town near the castle, asking whose child it was. The king's threat still lingered for Solin's mother, so she kept quiet, even as Ophelie directly asked her.
Giving up, Ophelie tried to take care of Solin for several months as she traveled, carting the child around. Wanting to keep him safe, she used some of her own life force to bless the child, ensuring that he would become quite strong by the time he became an adult. After some thought she settled upon naming the poor thing Solin, a Sylph name based off of their word for "Sun," due to the circumstances of how she encountered him and his yellow-orange eyes. Unfortunately, though, the neighboring government of Tropos, which Ophelie worked for, grew aware of the presence of the child . They were not willing to fund her expeditions unless she left the child to be taken care of at an orphanage facility run by elderly Sylphs in the deserts of Tropos. After arguing with herself over her career and this child she had become terribly attached to, she came to a grim realization: that she wouldn't have any money to support him if she gave up her job for him. Filled with self-loathing but aware that she would be as useless as the biological mother in either case, she sent him to the orphanage. He was almost two.
Needless to say, the first few months at the orphanage were traumatizing for him. It wasn't so much the care-takers, who were actually quite calm and nice to him, but just the separation from somebody he had recognized as his mother. He generally stayed in his shell from the other kids for the next several years, only talking to the caretakers. Caretakers noted during his semiannual evaluations that he was growing quite quickly and did well above average on intelligence tests. In spite of these successes, they noted serious issues with socializing and expressing emotions.
These characteristics stayed with him into puberty, preventing him from being adopted. At age 15, he was the oldest kid in his orphanage. If he wasn't helping the caretakers with the toddlers, he would be on his own exercising or reading books and doing school work. Soon he was quite bulky and muscular, making him look almost as intimidating as he is today. This obviously didn't help with getting friends, now that he was attending an academy outside of the orphanage in the nearby city due to his promising intelligence. He managed to graduate the academy a year early at 17 without making friends with anybody, most people only knowing him for being, "some quiet guy whose uniform looks two sizes too small," he overheard one of the popular kids say at the academy one day.
At 18, he reached the legal age for a human to be considered an adult. He wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do, considering he only had thirty days to decide where he was going to go. The students at the academy and the way they acted made him have no interest in post-secondary schooling, but an interest in law did tug the back of his mind. Having not decided in time, he was forced to leave into the city with only a small pension check from the government to get him a place to stay for month or so.
With some luck and a bit of desperate enthusiasm (Solin was, in reality, afraid that he would have to live on the streets with no house, but the man offering the job only noted a slightly nervous smile and quick speech, if anything), he managed to land a job with a construction company. The work was rough but paid well enough for him to get a better place to stay, so he wasn't complaining. One day he was passing by and noticed a sign for a travelling circus of supposed "freaks." Seeing as he had the day off, he decided to go and see it, only to be somewhat dazzled. He had never seen magic so flashy from magi or acrobatics so spectacular from his own kind. The thought of performing interested him, so he contacted a recruiting agent after the show ended. The agent could initially not think of much until he asked Solin to lift a very heavy barrel that probably weighed at least 175 pounds (about 79 kilograms). Solin smirked and did so with ease. He then was asked to lift heavier things until he, with a struggle, lifted a 300 pound (136 kilogram) rock.
Impressed, the agent requested that he join. After some hesitation and the offer of more than what he was making at his construction job, he joined the group. A few tailors and armor crafters that traveled with the group assembled his costume. They created the mask and horns that he always has on when on stage.
His roles in the travelling performers include acting as supports or stepping stools for the acrobats, lifting (and sometimes juggling) heavy objects, and helping with the stage set up and props when not performing. His presence has increased the press about the group because of his mysterious nature, even his fellow circus members not knowing anything other than his name and that he used to work in construction.
Like the orphanage, he keeps to himself, reading books and exercising when not performing, donning very plain clothing and a head covering made of silk typical of desert people that only shows his eyes to try and not stand out too much for his size. He hates drawing attention to himself offstage, so he always uses a spell from one of the many books he's read to temporarily render his eyes a dull or dark color instead of their normal yellow-orange, the one feature that people near the stage might have been able to discern from the openings for his eyes on his mask.
Current Goal: Reading to try and find out what makes his strength superhuman. Also to try and figure out who his biological mother and father are since he currently cannot recall anything before his time at the orphanage.
