Varanus

[markab]

Name: Varanus
Gender: Male
Age: 57
Species: Monitor Lizard
Occupation: Herbalist

Physical Appearance:

Varanus is pretty much typical as far as monitor lizards go; all varying shades of brown and gray scale-wise, beady dark eyes. The more atypical part of him is his height, as he’s somewhat unnaturally tall even for a monitor lizard, but that’s not often obvious considering he’s almost constantly sitting down whenever anyone runs into him.

It’s very hard to get a read off his expression; it’s not mammalian in any way and most beasts are just going to have to rely on gut instinct to figure out what to do when they encounter him. Even if it was, it’s not helped by his choice of apparel, which more or less obscures his face, to the point where the only thing you can really see of him, ever, is the blunt point of his muzzle and his tongue flicking out. Despite definitely needing the sun to live, being cold-blooded and all, he's only interested in the heat -- not so much the light.

The clothing is what really makes him stand out -- not that monitor lizards are particularly common, but most of him is covered up in a dark green and grey cloak. The thick, unwieldy tail and large, gnarled hands and feet are pretty noticeable, as are the ornate metal gauntlets covering his hands, though in honesty they're not so much to protect them as to fancy up his claws. They're not the prettiest things on their own; with all the swirling iron they're better for both showing off and ripping things apart. He carries along an iron spear usually strapped to his back, and an old piece of wood that he uses as a staff.

He's got strings of fur and feathers and dried flowers wrapped around his ankles and wrists and neck and head, pouches of herbs and stems and plants strung around his waist, and that's to say nothing of the skull fixed atop his head, looming over the cloak and his nose. It looks like it might, at one point, have belonged to something resembling a deer, considering the broken antlers on top. Best not to ask where any of that came from -- it certainly doesn't seem out of the realm of consideration that Varanus killed several beasts specifically for the purpose of the outfit. Kind of intimidating, but also kind of there just to look pretty because he is definitely vain as hell, though he'd never admit it.

Possessions:

+ Cloak
+ Wide variety of plants & herbs
+ Cloth pouches
+ Canteen
+ Iron gauntlets
+ Deer skull
+ Iron spear
+ Wooden staff
+ Metal pot

Personality:

Varanus is very calm, most of the time; collected, quiet, despite any words he might spit he generally shows no indication of wanting to get up and actually make something of them. He generally seems like he'd rather be sleeping than dealing with anything and that's not entirely untrue; he doesn't dislike other beasts but a lot of them tend to get on his nerves, considering his very particular tendencies and personality, and his tendency to change moods on a whim doesn't help with that. He's a bit more like a peacock than an actual predator; all flash and no fury, as it is, just colors and design and display to make him look tougher than he is. He looks the part he's playing, though; weird eccentric sitting in a swamp offering plants to everyone who passes by.

Still, despite his all bark no bite nature, it's not to say he doesn't know how to use his teeth when it comes down to it. His body might be starting to give up on him but his mind certainly isn't -- it's probably sharper than it's ever been, very much calculating and working situations to his advantage. He's willing to steamroll over people to get that advantage. He doesn't have much of a concept of loyalty and generally those close to him know that their friendship -- or alliance, whichever -- only lasts as long as it's beneficial for him. He's very much out to survive, whatever the cost; whether he has to kill, to leave someone to die he might have liked, to inflict pain or lie or completely turn traitor on whoever it might be.

In the same vein he has no respect for authority, at all, because it generally just gets in his way. To be subservient to someone is to be helping them, generally at the cost of his own independence and gain; therefore there's absolutely no point to it, and as mentioned before there's not enough loyalty in him to make any of that stick. He's not nearly polite enough, anyways, to endear himself to any potential leader -- he's all snappy words and bluntly worded comments. He doesn't bother cushioning anything he says and it's immediately very obvious how he feels about you -- or how he wants you to think he feels about you. Up to you to decide whether he's actually telling the truth or not. He's gotten pretty good at manipulating people just when they think he's not.

Even after 57 years he does still have a thread of curiosity. It's enough to get him doing things once in a while, if the beast or situation he comes across is interesting enough, or if his owl friend picks it out for him.

Strengths:

+ After 57 years it’s hard to name a Mossflower plant whose properties Varanus doesn’t know inside and out. He’s excellent at his craft, and what he does; he can identify most things with a glance, and those he can’t only need a few extra tests to puzzle out.
+ He’s definitely old and creaky but he also kind of….knows it? Knows how to use it to his advantage, anyways. He’s got the art of deception down pat; he goes to some lengths to look weaker than he already is despite the pointier parts of his garb and in all honesty that’s not hard; the old hermit appearance goes a long way working for him, and while someone’s laughing at the old lizard in front of them it’s much easier to pull out the spear or reinforced claws.
+ It certainly might not seem like it now, but Varanus was just as used to fighting as any vermin in his younger days, and while he might not retain the same strength he knows the tactics better than ever. He’s got his old spear and his claws, now sheathed in decorative metal that improves their power, if anything, and knows how to use both.
+ He’s got cunning to spare. Much as he has absolutely no sense of social skill, he definitely knows how people work and how to get stuff out of them, and he’s perfectly capable of defusing a situation he decides he can’t fight. Not that he decides he can’t fight very frequently, since he very rarely considers anyone a threat.
+ He can definitely come off as friendly; since he’s not actively off to kill people, just selling things, he doesn’t always seem dangerous. Just as well for him. And he doesn’t always want to antagonize either; sometimes he just likes company.
+ Surprisingly good storyteller, not that he exercises that particular skill very often.
+ As a necessary result of living on his own for so long, he’s become a very good cook, using fish and meat and his knowledge of herbs and plants to make all manner of foods though he’s particularly fond of stews.

Weaknesses:

+ The epitome of lazy. If he doesn’t have to move, he won’t. Finds good spots in the sun and then just sits there for hours on end and nothing short of a forest fire is getting him to move. You could probably attribute most of that to his age, but the truth is that’s just kind of how he is.
+ Has, by all appearances, either no idea how social interaction works or no desire to engage in it properly. He’s one of the most brusque creatures you could run into and it’s likely only by virtue of his knowledge that he’s managed to avoid getting his ass handed to him by someone who he rubbed the wrong way. Charisma is apparently just a word to him.
+ Generally very dismissive of everyone else and considers himself superior to everyone. This of course leads to underestimation, especially when it comes down to fighting. Whether it still works out for him or not is entirely dependent on who he’s having a conflict with and if his friend is around.
+ It might seem like a good idea to recruit this guy for help to some people but he absolutely refuses to take orders in any way, shape, or form, so it’s best not to bother. He has absolutely no respect for authority and even less if it tries to force itself on him.
+ He’s very good with herbs. He’s also untrustworthy as hell, the level of which depends heavily on his mood, so it’s probably worth your time to make sure whatever plant he handed over to you does what it’s meant to; there are more than a few dead who didn’t take the time to check, and it’s not like he doesn’t look like the most suspicious beast ever.
+ Tying into that, capricious is…a good word for him, really. You never really know what kind of a mood he’s going to be in when you run into him, and he changes on a dime. Best to be on your toes. He knows just as much about poison as you’d expect.
+ Varanus is 57, which is to say pretty old. The guy’s very creaky and it shows; there’s a sort of rusty stiffness in his joints noticeable whenever he does so much as shift position and any of his movements are pretty slow, even in the sunlight, and even for a giant lizard. It’s pretty much tamped down all the combat expertise he’s gained from living so long; none of it’s useful if you can’t move, and it’s only somewhat managed by what he’s been able to find as painkiller.
+ A good way to completely hobble him is the cold. Generally that includes water; though he can do a passable job swimming it’s usually chilly enough that, after he drags himself out and the shock has worn off, he’ll be completely useless for a good twenty minutes or so, depending on the current ambient temperature.
+ He's 100% survival-focused and willing to throw anyone under the proverbial bus if it keeps him alive one more day. Not that loyalty is a completely foreign concept to him -- just that it's only useful insofar as it can help him achieve his goals. Don't expect to get a best friend out of him -- or if you do, just be aware that he's very much a fair weather friend.
+ Gets lost in his thoughts a lot. He's a bit of a daydreamer and it tends to get him in trouble when he's on the move -- he's stumbled into a bunch of enemies more than once and has had to make several rather...inelegant...exits.
+ His sense of direction is…sub-par, at best. Possibly it’s why he never moves, who can say.

History:

Varanus is, perhaps surprisingly, Mossflower-born. A lot of monitors tend to come from islands over the sea; he might trace some sort of ancestry back there, but even his parents' parents had long ago relocated and the entire family came up on a small farm near the water's edge. He was the youngest of four, the runt of the group and the only boy born, but like his sisters he'd already had plenty of weapon training by the time he reached his tenth birthday, in addition to everything else they did to survive; fishing, farming, gathering, and occasionally taking what they could from travelers when their supplies got too low, or the growing season was too poor. They were survivalists more than anything else, a worldview that passed itself down to Varanus particularly well.

His father was particularly adept at the use of herbs when any of them got sick, and despite the spear-training and the constant danger of roving vermin or even woodlanders trying to claim revenge for what his family had done to their relatives, herbalism was always his main interest. Kanjira was the only one of his sisters to follow his interest and probably his favorite of his siblings; Tristis and Varius were far more interested in the art of fighting and took up most of the defense when anyone else came around.

But that hardly happened frequently, with so many bigger dangers around in Mossflower and when they were so out of the way. In general his childhood was fairly tame; spent learning, with enough food to survive, not nearly the typical 'vermin' upbringing. He stayed with his parents a little longer than his older siblings, but when he felt he was ready, at just about eighteen years of age, he bade his family goodbye and wandered out into the woodlands to carve a new life for himself as his sisters had done earlier. He wasn't planning to do much, really, except learn; he thought his sisters might find a mercenary band, or another village needing protection, but Varanus was hardly interested in protecting anyone except himself -- not even his blood, which he'd only done out of respect and the fact that he'd needed them to survive.

He never really settled down and stayed in one place for long. Didn't ask to. He got good at taking care of himself and surviving in the wild and refining his trade without a family to help him along, with the knowledge he already had, and -- it was a fairly eventful life he got into, exploring the lands that he'd never been allowed to wander into as a kid. He never came too close to Redwall Abbey or Salamandastron; he'd heard the stories from his parents, had little interest in being chased down by a gang of hares or angry woodlanders, and he'd already had the rivalry between his species and the 'good' ones drilled into him early. His family might have preyed on woodlanders and vermin alike, but he knew what both groups would try and do to him if they had the chance.

With all his knowledge as he got older, though, staying strictly away from them wasn't exactly doable, and as he got more comfortable with what he knew -- he never got close to any big settlements, sure, but he traded with people he passed, occasionally killing when they had something he really needed. He only ever got into a few actual conflicts and that was the way he preferred it.

Meeting Dirge was just as much an accident as most of those conflicts, walking into a camp of rats on accident with a barn owl that they had captured. What they were going to do with the thing he never quite found out, because he had about five seconds before there were a veritable row of swords pointing in his direction. He just about managed to cut his way free, took a few of their old pots as a trophy and cut the owl's wings free as he left, because he had no desire to kill it and if it got free on its own there was the faint thought that it might be just a little irritated. It caught up with him several days later, though, and a sort of mutual alliance developed over time; Dirge could bring food and steal things, and the owl owed a debt to Varanus as well as having a use for his herbalism skills. More an alliance of convenience than anything; while Varanus edges on the side of genuinely liking Dirge, he certainly wouldn't hesitate to dispose of the bird if he needed to, and Urhi is off doing other things more often than not.

At 57 years, though, Varanus has more or less staked a 'home' near the River Moss, wandering to gather plants but largely disinterested in the exploration of his younger years past. Not that he's been put off it completely -- but it would take something pretty damn interesting to get him moving again.

Relationships:

Waran [mother, deceased]
Storr [father, deceased]
Tristis [sister]
Varius [sister]
Kanjira [sister]
Dirge is Varanus' best and probably only friend, and even then 'friend' deserves a hefty set of quotation marks. They help each other and there's certainly nothing to gain by Varanus killing her, so their alliance stays for now; their shared cruelty and less-than-pleasant tendencies help.

Other:
i have no idea if i can get away with a deer skull. or if deer even exist in redwall. 8)
dirge is a barn owl and they're also special permission, so i'm not planning to do anything with her for a while. she probably won't come up much as an npc and i'll wait a while before making another special app for her.