Aetharan's Log

[Aetharan 0]

Profile
Username: Aetharan
Real name: Aaron Smith
Age: 30
Gender: Male
Height: 5'8"

About:

Physical Parameters:

Aaron is of roughly average, if not slightly below-average height, and has always been thin.  At the time that he put on his VR gear to enter SAO, he weighed 115 lbs, so it's difficult to find fat anywhere on his body.  He has sharply-defined, slightly angular features, with a strong nose and chin.  Eyes have always been listed as 'hazel' on official forms, but a close enough inspection reveals the iris to be effectively a dark brown disc with the outer half of its radius irregularly covered over by a lighter greyish-green.  He has thick but fine medium-brown hair, which if worn free hangs to about an inch above his waist.  Facial hair, at the time of scan, was a square-cut goatee, with two-day sideburn stubble (but a properly clean neckline.)  Eyebrows are perhaps a bit bushier than he should have allowed, and they (along with his goatee) are several shades darker than the long hair growing from his scalp, although the stubble is almost blond.

Where racial phenotypes are concerned, he appears primarily Caucasian.  There are some hints in his bone structure that his ancestry isn't entirely European, but it would take somebody who's put some study into the topic of racial morphological differences to figure out that his family has remaining traces of Native American heritage.  He attributes his stronger-than-average (at least, for the area he lives in) jawline and nose to that side of his family's history.  It also takes the blame for his inability to grow a proper "wizard's beard."

History / Personality:

Aaron was born in a small town in Arkansas, and raised in the relative comfort of a lower-middle-class family.  This is to say that, while far from wealthy, he has no memories of his family ever having to struggle to keep food on the table, even with as many mouths as his parents had to feed.  He was the third-born of four children, with one older brother, one older sister, and a twin sister that he alternately doted on and had a rivalry with.  Life through school was pretty much typical, with the exception that he and all of his siblings were registered into the school system's "gifted and talented" program.  There was a short time before that registration during which he was considered a "problem child" by his teachers, but a part of that came from his tendency to finish his school work far more quickly than his peers, leaving him bored.  Another came with his inability to accept the little lies told by teachers who believed that the truth would be too difficult for their students to understand.  (First Grader: "How do you know which number to subtract from the other number?"  Teacher: "You always take the little number from the big one.  Big numbers can't be taken from little numbers."  Six-year-old Aaron: "Yes they can!  You just get a negative number!")

The school district had a policy of putting their gifted students through a college entrance exam in the seventh grade.  On a scale for which 36 was a perfect score, Aaron's older brother (who later graduated valedictorian of his class) scored a 21 as a seventh-grader, while both sisters scored at 19.  Aaron managed a 25.  In other words, all four could technically have entered college instead of proceeding to junior high.  None skipped ahead, however, and by the time they took the exam again as high school seniors, those scores had improved to a 32 for all but his twin, who only achieved a 27 (and, despite this being ten points higher than needed to get into college, Aaron found himself consoling a crying sister when those scores came in.)  For the older brother, that scholarship-winning score had come after weeks of study.  For the older sister, those same weeks plus an extra, month-long prep course.  For Aaron?  Slightly hung-over and severely sleep-deprived, with no study beyond what he usually gave for his classes.  Aaron had already ceased to care.  His brother had, six years before him, done the "academic achievement" thing.  To him, there was no point.

After graduation, he started college but never finished.  Thus began his bouncing from one job to the next.  He waited tables-- loved it, and was good at it too, often bringing in a fifth of his sales as tips when many of his co-workers struggled for half that number.  Still, that job provided no room to rise, no future, and so he moved on.  He got a job as a security guard, where the training only reinforced his instinctive protection of others.  Sitting at the front desk of a call center in which some five hundred women were working on any given day, he considered every last one of them a baby sister in need of sheltering, and if anybody hurt one of his protectorates, it was going to be over his dead body.  Two years into that job, he tried to take another semester of classes as well.

It was during this time that he regained contact with his high-school sweetheart, who'd also been his first lover.  At the age of 24, having moved to night-watch and taking classes in the afternoon, he married her.  Her three daughters, products of a previous marriage, were welcomed into his home as his own.  Unfortunately for him, all good things must come to an end.  The stress of effectively having three full-time jobs (his actual work, the raising of a trio of children, and taking full classes for the semester) got to him, and his immune system crumbled.  By Halloween of that year, he was forced to withdraw from school, and his boss had cut his hours back by a quarter.  That Christmas, he handed in a resignation letter, and by New Years was starting his next job: retail.

That job, like the one in security, managed to last two years, and like his previous job he worked nights.  Over those two years, his relationship began to fade.  On his 26th birthday, in early October, he found when his boss told him to take a half-day off that his wife was cheating on him in his own bed.  By the next day, she was out from under his roof, and he had divorce papers drawn up.  He had to miss two nights of work in early January for the actual proceedings in court, and he was fired for those missed days because his boss wouldn't allow him to use vacation days for it.  Just to add insult to injury, that weekend in his depressed state, he tried to drive home drunk and totaled his car.  He'd hit rock bottom.

The next four years saw some small recovery for him.  Jobs lasted less time, and paid less, but at least he worked.  It ultimately came full circle, with Aaron finding himself once again waiting tables, a decade after he'd last done so.  The industry had changed, but he could still keep up, as long as he had a knee brace to help hold him steady.  At least the tips were enough for him to buy that nifty VR rig and this awesome new game.  He couldn't believe that he was one of the lucky ones to get a hard copy on the first day!  After all, as that old grey tee of his said, it was going to be his perfect day: "Wake up.  Play video games.  Eat breakfast.  Play video games.  Eat lunch.  Play video games.  Eat dinner.  Play video games.  Go to sleep."

His free time (what he had of it) before joining SAO was largely spent either playing various video games (especially RPGs), reading fantasy novels, or going on long wiki-walks.  The last of these is responsible for a greater-than-expected knowledge of different kinds of pole-arm, along with a decent understanding of both just how big and just how tiny the real world is, when compared to a single person or the whole universe, respectively.  He actually takes comfort in that mental image painted by Douglas Adams of an infinitely tiny dot that reads "You are Here", showing off one's place in the universe.  After all...  no matter how much humanity screws itself up, with all that space, all those worlds out there, surely somebody has got it right, even if we haven't yet.  Right?

Virtues:
Karmic Ledger:  "Remember ye the rule of three: what ye send out comes back to thee."  Some parts of the faith he found in his youth hold strong in him, even if he never was a seriously practicing member.  He doesn't just believe in the 'golden rule', as it were, but that the sum of his good and bad deeds in the world will be something to which he is held accountable by his own conscience when he passes over to the other side, before he can reincarnate.  No excuses, no justifications, and no forgetfulness.  As a result, he honestly strives to keep that ledger in the black.

Gregarious:  In beautiful disharmony with himself and his fear of attachment, he is genuinely fond of being with others.  Although somewhat inept socially, he is never intentionally rude or insulting, instead preferring to try to make others smile.  He may not be able to hold onto these acquaintances (or even force himself to try to), but while they're near, he hopes that he can help make sure that they smile.  It helps that the above 'karmic ledger' provides a feedback loop here, as he considers making others happy to be a good deed.

Hyperactive 'Big Brother' Instinct:  The third-born of four, Aaron has two sisters (one older than him, one younger by less than an hour.)  His upbringing occurred in an area where social norms place the brother in the role of protector, and in his younger years he was quoted several times with lines to the effect of "For every tear you make one of my sisters cry, I'll make you cry ten."  Those who harm somebody he has deemed under his protection quickly learn that 'disproportionate retribution' is his MO.  Perhaps most important is the fact that over the years, as his sisters grew into strong, independent women, the umbrella of this protection has grown to encompass every female he meets who registers to him as being younger than himself.

Flaws:
Disability Bleedover:  In real life, Aaron is blind in one eye and has been for his entire life.  Aside from minor problems with depth perception, it had no real effect on him in the real world, because he never knew what it was like to be fully sighted.  You can't miss what you never had, can you?  When he first put on the VR gear, that changed.  His brain is now processing signals that he never had to before, and that leads to some confusion.  Ultimately, he processes this as a kind of phantom headache that begins about halfway through the day.  He is also easily dazzled by bright lights, and reacts erratically to stimuli originating on that side-- often in the form of a paranoid jerkiness.  He is extremely uncomfortable with having anybody that he does not implicitly trust standing on his right side, as a hold-over from the real world, where it was to him just as vulnerable a position as at his back.

Ennui:  Another holdover from the waking world, Aaron / Aetharan spent much of his life seemingly drifting aimlessly from one low-paying job to another, never finding anything that brought him a sense of passion or drive.  Without such a driving force, he is prone to bouts of depression that can sometimes extend as far as sitting alone in silence somewhere for up to an entire day.  On up-swings, however, he temporarily makes seeking purpose into that driving force, which can lead to week- or month-long bouts of tilting at windmills before he swings back down into depression again at the pointlessness of it all.

Abandonment Issues:  Everybody and everything that he has ever grown attached to has gone, in one way or another.  Familial relationships are distant at best, though few are actually bitter.  He had a number of friends in high school and college, but never really kept in touch and let them slip away.  Pets eventually die, no matter how much love and care is given.  Marriage was a beautiful dream, but one which ended after only two years in a divorce.  There hasn't been a single, grand trauma (although the divorce comes close to being one), but myriad little things have added up to a distrust and outright fear of growing attached to people.  The moment he catches himself starting to trust somebody, red flags go up in his mind.  "If I start to rely on them," he thinks, "they'll leave me high and dry when I most need them.  No.  Never again."

Profession:

Beginner Blacksmith (18/20 Exp)

Skills

Unspent Points: 1
Non-combat:
»

Passive:
» Search and Detect: Rank 1 (2 SP) (+1 to LD)
» Heavy Armor: Rank 1 (2 SP) (+1 Mitigation while wearing heavy armor.)
» Battle Healing: Rank 2 (6 SP) (In battle, gain 2 HP passively on rounds when CD is at least 10.)
» Night Vision (Ignore questions of light.)

Combat:
» Concentration (+1 to battle die, once per 5 rounds.  Free-action activated skill.) [Extra Skill]
» Meditation: Rank 1 (Takes an action, chance to cure negative status effects, chance to heal.) [Extra Skill]

Weapon skills:
» 2-Handed Assault Spear: Rank 1 (2 SP) (+1 damage with 2-handed spears.)


Inventory

Col: 3,130.
Weapons/Tools:
» Jagged Half-Pike (2h Assault Spear, Rare, +2 Damage)
» Basic mining pick.

Clothing/Armor:
» Cloth outfit (Standard-issue, favoring darker shades.)
» Fur-Lined Breastplate (Uncommon Armor, +1 Mitigation)

Other:
» 1x <<The Matriarch's Stinger>>
» 1x <<Snowfrost>>
» 3x Wolf Fur
» 1x Grilled Wolf Steak (good meal)
» 1x Boar Meat
» 1x Peach
» 5x Iron Ingot
» 2x Steel Ingot
» Basic forge, smelter, and anvil for shop.

Roleplays
» Coming Up for Air  [Benchmark!]
» <<Earning a Living>> The Warmth of a Forge
» <<The Gemini>> In a Mirror, Darkly
» <<Long Live the Queen>> Regicide
» <<Calming the Soul>> Knocking on the Sky
» <<Avalanche>> Clearing the Back Yard


Relationships
» (None so far.)

Edited September 1, 2015 by Aetharan

[Tristan Delaney 0]

Approved, welcome to Aincrad!