Shinlai App - Skjoldur

Basic Stats
Name: Skjöldur Haustgó∂i (Skyull-durr Haowst-gow-thee)
Gender: Male
Age: 23
Birth Season: Autumn
Height: 10’ 7
Weight: 7,300 lbs
Build Type: More Bruce Lee than Schwazernegger!

Father: Water. He didn't speak much but loved Skjöldur deeply. His elemental speciality was manifesting raging torrents of water, a task that required enormous amounts of energy and physical discipline, which is where Skjöldur's passion for exercise stemmed from.
Mother: Light. Protective, encouraging, proactive... She formed the caring shoulder for Skjöldur to cuddle against, although he would protest fiercely against being a 'mummy's boy' (but secretly grow her posies.)
Mate: None but he thinks about it a lot.
Voice: Sindri Sigfússon - [link]

Allegiance: Unknown
Shinlai Classification: Rare, short tailed, short furred male.

Element: Earth.
He specialises in photosynthesis, encouraging plants to grow around him; a very low energy task. However, he spends most of his time exercising and is in the prime of his Elemental life. His daily routine includes basic photosynthesis, speeding up the growth of existing plants from seedling to tree; advanced photosynthesis, encouraging manifestation and growth of specific plants; manifesting or influencing insects to form a swarm; terrain formation - which requires the highest level of energy and taxes the body and mind the most - creating valleys, cliffs, hills and boulders.

Body, Exercise & Diet
Skjöldur is impressively built due to his rigorous Elemental and physical exercise program that he sets himself. He makes sure to run several miles a day, he climbs trees, he swims, he scales cliffs ... He spends a lot of time on his own and he doesn't waste it (although rest is as important to him as activity). Sometimes he pushes himself a little too hard, jumping from a ledge that was too high, getting stuck on a cliff a hundred feet above a river or going too fast downhill, but he learns quickly from his mistakes and injuries and believes that pushing himself to these limits is an important form of progress.

This physical training means that he is very lean and has defined muscles when you run your hands under his fur. In the summer his build is hard to miss as his short, glossy coat highlights the contours, but, while he is defined, he is not a behemoth. His muscles are for a purpose, not for show, so he remains fast, flexible and powerful.

Coupled with his physical exercise he tests his mental ability, a much harder thing to train, but his father taught him a few tricks to centre himself. He meditates and exercises his breathing. It is not strange to come across him balanced in some precarious position seemingly asleep. Being totally immersed in the forest is a very important factor to improving his skill with his Element and he will simply sit in the woods for hours and use all of his senses to learn from it.

Meditating helps him hugely with his Element as to control the earth and plants he has to relax completely. This forms the basis for basic plant manipulation and manifestation and occasionally insect materialisation. Two or three times a week he delves deeper into himself and practices terrain formation, often high on hills or mountains and always somewhere remote. He has to be careful practising this particular strength as if he relaxes too much he could lose control of what he is trying to achieve and either cause massive rends in the landscape around him or accidently cause a mountain to tear through the surface of the ground. He is always careful to repair what he has changed, filling chasms and flattening hills, as seeing how far you can go includes the journey back.

Going hand in hand with exercise and meditation is his diet. He is an omnivore and will tide himself over for days on roots, leaves, shoots, mushrooms, berries, nuts and grass, but his main diet is venison. (This is a grey area in his observation-only rule.) Deer are abundant in the forest and after a while in a particular area he gets to know the characters and can choose which to eat (say if it was suffering or old). He also forages for grubs, will eat insects in a pinch, is very partial to a young rabbit, travels for days for salmon and will put himself in life threatening situations for honey. He doesn't combine ingredients and doesn't cook his meat (he finds he looses nutrients this way and prefers the taste of raw flesh anyway) and some would consider this barbaric, but he thoroughly enjoys what he eats and sees no reason for change.

Religion/Allegiance
Skjöldur generally has a good idea of what is “right” and what is “wrong” but tries to be unbiased in political situations. He finds himself leaning towards Dalian philosophy but this is more due to a hatred of solving problems with aggression rather than actually agreeing with Dalia's word. He can't deny that there is some curiosity behind Balance and Dark Elements appearing but has drawn the conclusion that Dalia essentially set the ball rolling and that nature would take its course.

He has had his share of run ins with both ends of the spectrum regarding Darkbloods and Dalians. While the Darkblood encounter left more of a bitter taste he finds the “blind faith” his parents had in Dalia unsatisfactory to his inquisitive soul. They didn't force their belief on him, merely brought him up with a set of strong morals.

Area
Skjöldur has spent most of his life in the North of Elaisha on the coast, exploring fjords and the coniferous forests that surround them. He is an avid fan of salmon and actively hunts them during spawning season. Climbing the steep cliffs is a particular favourite of his to build his agility.

Here he also regularly visits a family of bears from whom he learnt to catch salmon. He travels South in summer especially for the spawning season, heading up-river to the waterfall he finds it easiest to catch them at. It works well as the bears like the brains specifically but Skjöldur is less picky and will eat the meat almost exclusively.

Mask
Masked at the young age of 15, Sköldur excelled in his studies. His parents were exceptionally proud of him and commissioned a fine maple burl mask from the local artisan. It has been stained with chlorophyll and varnished to a stunning gloss but the pressure of wearing such a high status symbol embarrassed Skjöldur and he began to avoid his peers, further encouraging his inevitable escape to the woods.

It often has leaves and shoots growing from it as a result of his exercises. This does not affect the mask and often he doesn't notice as they tend not to change the weight, but he does care. He will cause the shoots to wither and die when he notices them.

He is still young and wears his mask proudly and as such he hasn't thought about getting a new one yet. However he was masked so long ago this one is starting to pinch a bit...

Personality
Positive Traits: Reserved, forgiving, generous, tolerant, practical, passionate, empathetic, apt
Negative Traits: Insecure, dissatisfied, fleeting, complacent, daring, fidgety, gullible, shy

Skjöldur takes great delight in being included and gains confidence very quickly this way but believes that he prefers to be alone. Being very insecure, he would rather excercise his Elements than engage in social situations and risk making a fool of himself.

He avoids conflict as while he has enormous Elemental ability he doubts its success in practical application and is extremely apprehensive of what could happen if he gets too carried away with himself. Either way arguments bring a bitter taste to his mouth as he sees absolutely no need for settling disputes with violence and would much rather talk it over.

Leading a nomadic lifestyle he travels around Elaisha letting a certain joie de vivre guide him. He sees no wrong in indulging as he often justifies it, generally using his mask as a symbol for all the effort he has put into succeeding.

Settling in one place is not an attractive option for him as he feels there is too much of the world to explore to stay in one place. Because of this he is out of touch with political ructions, further adding to his reluctance to socialise.

He treats other sentient species as he would like to be treated himself but operates on a strict observation-only policy when it comes to nature and animals. He is generous and forgiving but doesn’t realise this very easily opens him up to manipulation.

Despite having many cute and fluffy animal friends and usually being quite upbeat, Skjöldur can at times be quite pessimistic. This is usually symbiotic with the weather, during Winter and the beginning of Autumn it can be hard to get a cheerful word out of him.

While he is tolerant he often neglects to express increasing discomfort and suffers from pent up anger, which results in guilt. He combats this by exercising as he finds challenging himself physically a perfect way to get his mind off things.

Brief History
Skjöldur was born in the autumn of 1847, the year Darius began the Darkblood revolution. His parents were nervous of the changes that were inevitably coming and so pushed their son to excel. They came from a powerful background themselves, both being masked at young ages, so there was more than just self-preservation behind their encouragement. True to form and his lineage, Skjöldur soon showed natural talent at Earth manipulation, demonstrating control and understanding of his element. He was well trained by both parents (although their elements were Light and Water) and was masked at the young age of 15.

Soon after his masking, adolescence kicked in and he began to resent his parents. Training was his life and he was heading toward becoming a powerful Shinlai, so he began to spend more time in the forest and around the coastline. His mother tried to curb this increasingly independent nature but soon realised that it was his way of fledging the nest as it were. His father was always economical with words and refused to interfere. If he needed them they were always there, two strong pillars of safety, but his trips got longer and longer and one night he simply didn't come home.

This new found freedom was exhilarating, without his parents pressuring him to better his peers or the confines of the settlement as his boundary, the world was his to explore and enjoy. He slipped into bad habits, seeing how far he could push his element and staying up all night travelling. He soon fell ill and ran into trouble with a passing Revolution troop, earning him a few scars and permanently damaging his ego.

His brush with death sent him deeper into the wilderness and through his teenage years his lack of contact with other Shinlai, or even sentient species in general, meant he began to become more animal than Shinlai. He learnt a lot from these years in the forest including a few hard lessons equally many joyful ones. This was also the period in his life where he started his strict observation-only policy, following an incident with some goldcrest chicks and family of stoats.

Skjöldur, now a young adult, has made more contact with other Shinlai and even has a few friends in some settlements but still hasn't returned home. His daily routine consists of bathing in the nearest stream, lake, pool or sometimes the sea, foraging for food, practising his Element (including occasional terrain manipulation), going for runs, climbing trees, having dust baths, meditation and simply lying and enjoying nature. Practising insect manifestation often results in flocks of mixed forest birds feasting around him and as such a few constantly follow him through the woods.

In the winter he finds a cave and partially hibernates, drastically loosing weight, snuggled in his thick, warm winter coat. Spring is his favourite season and he spends it mainly encouraging new growth in plants, leaping around and having very confusing feelings towards deer. During the summer he calms down and concentrates on practice, Summer is his main season for improving himself. In Autumn he grows his winter coat and gorges on fruit, mushrooms and other hedgerow delicacies, then finds an area to stick to over winter.

Memories
Happiest childhood memory:
When Skjöldur was a young pup his clan met up for a reunion in the forest to celebrate the birth of relative. He doesn’t remember who or which relatives specifically was there, but he remembers a lot of good-will, positive enthusiasm and pride. His parents didn’t leave his side the whole day and the feeling of warmth and love has never left him. When he thinks of his family he thinks of this scenario.

What frightened him most as a child:
During Winter Skjöldur looses the cocoon of leaves that the forest provides and all that is left is an empty and hostile environment. During a particularly involved adventure in the woods he discovered he was lost in this bleak world. He felt exposed, unwieldy and cold, the warmth and safety of his parents nowhere to be seen and he still occasionally has nightmares of this memory.

Themes
Howl - Jónsi and Alex [link]
Catch the Light - Sing Fang Bous [link]
They Made Frogs Smoke 'Til They Exploded - Múm [link]
The Trees - Rush [link]
Animal Arithmatic - Jónsi [link]

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edit 27/6/11
;O; holy moly I won. I honestly don't know what to say.
edit
Added a load more stuff, most noticeably I got rid of typos and added a huge chunk about his body, exercise and diet. Also added a last name and some more allegiancey things... Interesting stuff!
/edit

:c A while ago *AlanaRoseheart noted me about my requests being open and sent me some of her refs. Her designs were awesome so I poked around in her gallery some more and found out they're called Shinlai, a closed species, but a new adoption round had just been started!

WOOOWW this design is totally my favourite, so natural and earthy and gorgeous, I can just see him trippin' around in woods being all deer-y... But a few other people have entered and I have some serious competition. But I'm entering anyway because while the other designs are super cool I just fell in love with Skjöldur.

I'll probably be picking at this ref up until the 19th which is the deadline.

Shinlai are a closed species copyright to *AlanaRoseheart
Design by *OddOsprey
Writing and ref sheet by meeee