[ you could change the world || Andrei Demarra ]

( basics )

Andrei Demarra, thirty five years old and born November Nineteen, in what used to be a fief of the same name that no longer exists. Called Andrei by almost everyone, except his younger sister, Shana, who often uses an affectionate derivitive of his name, Andryusha, most often when they're alone, though occasionally amongst close friends. He's currently technically homeless, living in the house his sister shares with her fiancé and her troublesome cat, having agreed to mind both the property and the pet while they were away. Now that they're back, he's looking for an apartment he can purchse, before Shana gets annoyed and kicks him out.

He is, for all intents and purposes, entirely without magic, though his daughter is a powerful mage in her own right, so it runs in the family and basically just... didn't manifest in him at all. He doesn't have any particularly strong feelings about it, either, though for a while he was incredibly resentful of Gifted mages, particularly healers, something that can be attributed to the death of his wife, but he's long let that go.

( livelihood )

fighting Unsurprisingly, the boy knows how to fight. Growing up, he learned how to scrap, first other boys his own age around the family holding, and then during lessons with the guards at the direction of his father. When he was old enough, he was packed off to the capital to join the program to train as a knight, and through that he spent a large portion of his early youth learning the fighting arts and the use of a sword, and though he didn't see the program through, choosing to abandon it in his fifth year, he came away with a sound knowledge of swordplay, jousting, archery hand to hand and all the things they generally teach pages and squires, an education he built on extensively after he quit the family and left to travel. These days he carries a knife, because you'd be insane not to, but he far prefers hand to hand; in a fight he's something of a brawler, and he packs a wicked punch when he wants to, though he generally avoids physical conflict, if he can.

occupation He's been turning his hand at a number of things all his life, never finding an occupation that's entirely legal to also be enjoyable. He's run the gamut of possible occupations and without quite realising how, he's fallen into being something of a career criminal, quite unintentionally. He gambles, steals, and willingly gets into any con that looks interesting to him, occasionally choosing "interesting" over a higher payout. He works card games most often, because it's easy to get in, make money quickly, and get out; there's rarely any long term investment involved, which is nice for him. He's talented with cards because numbers make sense to him, but he rarely leaves things up to chance; if he runs a game, chances are he's going in with a cold deck rather than a clean one. Less anonymous but usually just as rewarding are any of the number of cons he's involved himself in, actively participating in or running unseen, and then there's plain old theft, whether it's something small, like a house, or a larger job with a crew.

( people )

wife ( deceased ) Chayla Ruthmony of the K'miri Sovann was, once upon a time, his wife. Then she died. It wasn't any particular tragedy, just that she became injured at the wrong time, came down with an infection and died before they could reach a healer. He loved her very much and was distraught when she passed, but he's long over her, and she only bodes mentioning because she's the mother of his daughter.

daughter Katarzyna ( commonly, Zyn ), his only child, who currently lives in Corus. She's a space cadet who may or may not live on some other planet ninety percent of the time, which he's mostly used to by this point in their lives. She undeniably loves him and he loves her a great deal in his own quiet manner, but there's more of her mother in her than anything she got from him, and sometimes it honestly just throws him a little. Most recently they spend quiet time together just talking, and he finds her peculiar attempts to take care of him both amusing and exceptionally endearing. He wishes she would stop stealing his coats all the time, though.

sister Shana is nine years his junior, and pretty much the only member of his immediate family he's ever kept in contact with or really actually loved. And he does love her, intensely and protectively, for all that their relationship is damaged and exceptionally strange. They... manage, at this point, admirably with less and less violence.

sister Adia, older than he is, married, boring ( to him ) and somewhere in Galla with her husband and their children. Or, most of them. Only worth mentioning because two of her children, Kitson and Callette, are at large in Corus.

niece and nephew Callette and Kitson respectively, twins, both young, arrogant, troublesome and dangerous in their own rights. Andrei knows that they exist in theory, but he doesn't know who they actually are or what they look like, or even their names. They've recently appeared in areas Andrei frequents, and a run in is... probably inevitable.

nina Originally someone he met because of his sister, he's since become friends with Menina Maderas on his own. It's a quiet, adorable sort of friendship, and she makes him laugh, which, while not usually difficult, isn't something he's done a lot recently. So it's nice.

stella Stella and Andrei had a drunken one night stand! Which might not be worth mentioning, except for the fact that she outranks him within the Rogue which is one thing, and for another he's not... really all that awkward about them having slept together. He actually thinks she's pretty adorable, basically, and wants to work towards some sort of real friendship with her. Because... I mean. It's Stella.

&etc. He has a smattering of friends in the area, and still more business contacts, except... he cares less for those. He had a long and very involved relationship with a young woman named Jazmin Baird; things between them we're serious and very close to becoming permanent until a strong and unchangable difference in choices they might make pushed them apart, and his persisting anger following the split smothered any chances they might've had after that. It's taken him a long time, but he's managed to let go and move past it all.

( appearance )

hair He... has gorgeous hair. Seriously. A warm, dark brown that looks very nearly black when the sun doesn't strike it, his hair is soft and floppy and enviously easy to care for, with a soft sort of curl to it that that relaxes easily, though it tends to show more prominently at the ends no matter what he does; freshly washed and left to its own devices, it actually curls and fluffs up, something that's unspeakably adorable. If he leaves it long enough with washing, the curl gradually straightens out, but always comes back. He doesn't really do much with it most days, and wears it simply pushed back off his face, a motion that he practices habitually and, by this point, almost unconciously.

features his face is an elegant sort of mixture of a strong and aristocratic bone structure, with distinct high cheekbones and a strong jaw with a rounded, very slightly squared chin. His skin is something of a midtone, not as pale as his sister, but not dark, and faintly golden as well as lightly freckled, moreso in the warmer months when he's more inclined to spend more time outdoors. He's occasionally inclined to let shaving go for a few days at a time, aware that he wears three day old scruff well. His eyes are actually fairly big in his face, but it's not exactly noticeable at first glance because they're fairly deep set and under straight, strong brows. in color they're a warm sort of grey that occasionally borders on a brown, framed by unexceptional eyelashes. His nose is mostly straight, with a slight bump to the bridge of it, getting fractionally wider at the tip without being rounded. His mouth is actually really nice, well formed without either lip being thicker than the other. Both lips have a slight bow shape ( and a faint dusting of freckles ), his upper lip moreso than the lower, with his entire mouth lifting slightly at both corners.

body he's pretty tall, coming in at 6'2", with broad shoulders, narrow hips and strong arms. he's fairly muscled, but leanly so and is much stronger than you'd think he'd be. He's not fond of physical labour but that doesn't mean he doesn't like to keep in shape.

clothing Pretty much all of his current clothing is really, really well made, and most of it was made to fit him. He used to be something of a ridiculous snob about clothes, but he's since mellowed about it, thakfully. Most of what he owns is fairly simple, well cut but not conspicuous, all of it made to last. He's generally a fan of warm tones and light shirts; a slight vanity on his part, because he thinks that the pale, warm colour of undyed cloth looks good against his skin, and he's not wrong.

scars in his youth he tarted the Gallan training to become a knight, which, while drumming some pretty strong physical disciplines into him, also left him with a patchwork of scars. None of them are particularly interesting, but they're noteworthy because they're just there. His nose has been broken at least once, but it was tended to quickly, and by professionals, so there's not much of anything to mark it by.

( personality )

Andrei's a great many things. For all that he appears to be on the surface, there's a depth to him that few people realise exists. It used to be that he was, by and large, incredibly, exceptionally arrogant and almost always without cause; it used to stem from several things, but the main reasons were the fact that he was born into nobility and raised in an incredibly hostile, dog-eat-dog sort of enviroment where pride and arrogance and subtle, devious competition was constantly encouraged. More recently, he's... changed, a little, for lack of a better word. It can't be assigned to any one thing, but rather just a string of events in his life that shifted the way he looks at certain things and and events and people more than a little. In a way, it's good for him because it's given him a deeper, wider understanding of things he didn't grasp properly before, but it's also leant him a wearied edge. He might still seem like this reckless person who doesn't care, but he's actually a lot more careful than he used to be. That said, in no way has he been entirely humbled, because he really is kind of arrogant by nature; it's not something he can change, or help, even if he wanted to. It's just that he's more tempered, these days. Despite his arrogance, he's a fairly astute and quiet judge of people, who they are and what they're up to and what they want, a naturally keen sense of observation honed by time spend with less lenient men and women who weren't so tolerant of the mistakes of strangers. Beyond that, there's a fairly charismatic man who's undeniably intelligent, with a sharp and educated mind; he enjoys arithmetic and has an innate understanding of it, the theory and the way it works, though he's actually... fairly bad with money, something he counters with some fairly meticulous bookkeeping. He's mostly fairly laid-back and calm, which isn't to say that he's unflappable, but it's more that he's possessed of the ablity to handle things that startle or upset him well, rather than flying of the handle.

Though he generally comes across as relaxed and fairly easy-going, Andrei actually does have a temper; deeply buried but undeniably well-developed, ( and if you guessed that it's something that runs in the family you're not at all wrong ). It's rarely seen, something that so seldom surfaces that it's a shock for people to see and it's not that he's completely even keeled and unphased, he's just so, /so/ slow to anger, to /really/ anger that when most people see him getting irate, they just assume that oh, this is him when he's angry, but he rarely is. Certainly he gets agitated and irate fairly easily when things rub him the wrong way and when he does he raises his voice and generally just /looks/ upset; he's not particularly good at remaining stoic when he's bothered, but he'll mostly be able to keep his head and isn't quick to launch into any sort of physical confrontation unless he's really and truly pushed. But that has little to do with him actually really losing his temper. It takes a great deal to anger him to the point where he actually snaps; it requires a lot of pushing, people continuing on past "too far" and beyond or one, large and shocking catalyst, at which point he'll just lose it. Beyond that breaking point he has very little control and things tend to take a turn toward an "all bets are off" sort of situation, but I cannot stress enough how incredibly rare it is for him to get to that point. He's slow to severely anger and fairly quick to calm down and though he'll hold the occasional grudge, they're the exception to the rule.

I'd be lying if I said that Andrei doesn't actually enjoy the way that people commonly perceive him, which is to say, as an ass, and I'd also be lying if I said that he wasn't, but strictly speaking, that's not all there is to it. He's alright with being viewed this way because it almost automatically lowers the expectations of people, strangers, around him. He can give voice to things he wants to say but wouldn't be able to if he'd set himself up to appear as a nicer person, and all around it's just easier for him, but his attitude doesn't stem from this basic, two dimensional need to be a jerk for no real reason. He doesn't well with common social nicety; conforming to some aesthetic standard of correctness or propriety instilled in people to spare one anothers feelings is something he just... doesn't see as necessary. He'd rather call a spade a spade than lie to make someone feel better, and he doesn't do all that well with pandering to people and telling them what they want to hear, so the way in which people generally view him suits him, even though it's not always in line with his natural response. He's a great deal nicer, and gentler than he intitally seems, and while he's not the kind of person you would go running to for reassuring lies, he really isn't a heartless bastard and when you get down to it, he really is a fundamentally good, if moderately cynical person. His cynicism stems from his finding continual disappointment to be incredibly bleak, and so he actively chooses not to look for the good in people at large anymore. That said, sometimes he finds good things when he's not looking for them, and is pleasantly surprised.

You might look at him and his actions and assume that he's selfish, but you'd be wrong to. It's not that he doesn't put himself first, because he does, absolutely, entirely, one hundred and ten percent of the time, in every way. But you couldn't really call him selfish; self-serving would be a better term for it. Most of the time when he does something that falls into this category it's not even a concious decision for him; initially, it was the sort of thing that was impressed on him during his upbringing, especially by his mother, and later on it became apparent that it was something that's inherently a part of him and would've outed on its own as he grew up, only this way he feels less societally imposed guilt over it than he would if he grew up in a normal family. It's extremely rare for him to, in weighing probable outcomes of a situation in which he needs to make a decision, pick the option that will benefit him less or even not at all. Bottom line, he's just incredibly interested and motivated by personal gain, but he's not the kind of man who'll strive to achieve it at the expense of others.That said, he does have it in him to be altruistic, and even enjoys surprising people by being giving, but he's just not a selfless person, any which way you try to slice it. Despite this very prominent part of his nature, or perhaps balanced against it, you'll find that his capacity to care for other people is actually fairly developed, moreso than it might have ordinarily been if he were more typical of the Demarra family mould. He actually feels a certain sense of responsibility toward those around him who come across like they need something, and more often than not he'll make some attempt to help them out. His ability to care is tempered, though, but a tiredness, a sort of hopelessness that stems from a time when everything he did in an attempt to care for someone he felt incredibly responsible for what continually and increasingly violently rejected, until he reached a point where he just chose to give up. He can get a little fatalistic about some things in this fashion, but it's less him being dramatic and more that he just gets tired of beating his head against the wall trying to get something done, so he walks away.

Something that rarely comes up but is almost always present is Andrei's sense of self-worth and how incredibly diminished it truly is. The way he regards himself is something that carries over from the way he was raised, a view that spoke quietly but almost constantly about how lacking he really was and how little good he ever managed to do, something started by his parents and reinforced during the time he spent in Cria, training as a knight. When he quit the training program and left home to travel it was something that he took out into the world with him, and during the time it grew into this incredibly self-deprecatory thing that fed off of all his early problems as young adult ( of which he had many ), so by this stage of his life it's evolved into this sense, a feeling where he's constantly aware of his own shortcomings, but ( and this is more due to his inherent nature rather than any part of this problem in and of itself ) not in a crippling fashion. Rather than being destroyed by it, it's more that he's resigned to only ever being what he is, and nothing better, and he has this view that a great deal of what he touches will fall apart for his having handled it, so when it comes to things that actually matter he tends to hang back, to preserve the integrity rather than destroy it by involving himself.

His method of dealing with this problem ties in heavily with his own sense of fatalism; he's accepted by now that this is how things are and it's how they'll always be and it simply isn't something that he chooses to dwell on, because he's not so self destructive that he obsesses over things he's done, mistakes he's made. That's not to say that he hasn't ever, but he's gotten a lot better at making peace with things that that have passed and he lacks the ability to change so he can move beyond them and actually have a life, rather than letting things just eat him alive. Despite this part of him, he's actually not an unreliable sort of person; more often than not he's on time and backs up his words with actions and doesn't leave people hanging if he can avoid it, and the fact that he's made a sort of peace with what he views as wrongs within himself allows him to function better and be what he can within the confines of what he feels he's limited to. There may eventually come a time when he's persuaded to see that he's a better person than he realises he is, but it's no small thing to change.

( history )

Watch this space :D