Valan/Scholar/Erpheronian

Hi Valan!

I'm here with some comments for you to think about. My comments will be in pink.

Name: Valan Nonesuch

Gender: Male

Age: 43

Race: Human

Tribe: Erpheronian

Occupation: Scholar-for-Hire

Title: Collector of Lore

Overview
A short, owlish man with ruddy brown hair, a stick and a large coat with several dozen bulging pockets, Valan appears to be lost in thought much of the time.

Appearance

Height
1 Ped, 2 Fores, 1 Palmspan

Hair Colour
Ruddy brown, beginning to gray

Eye Colour
Brown

Physical Appearance
Valan is short and owlish. Of rather insignificant height, he possess a pair of dark bags under his eyes regardless of the amount of sleep he has recently managed, and a slight stoop, with lends to the illusion of being examined by an owl. His eyes are rather large, a dark brown in colour, and seem to blink uncommonly infrequently.

"Owlish" seems like an odd word to use when you are describing him. You have mentioned that he is short, but how does "owlish" describe his appearance? What are you trying to describe as "owlish?" Perhaps use a different adjective, or explain what you mean.

He walks with a limp and has little physical strength to speak of, owing to a lifetime spent in libraries and an overall slender build. He has a slight goatee, which grows and shortens depending on how much time he spends doing anything of particular interest, instead of remembering to shave.
Space
Valan's face is high and round and his nose is slightly crooked and hooked, one or the other < I don't think "one or the other" is the right term. Maybe "either of which?" often ends with ink or charcoal stains on it. His fingers and hands are thin and beginning to wrinkle, and the fingers on the right hand are often ink-stained to one degree or another.

Clothing
Valan's face is almost permanently topped by a brown hat with a pair of tufted feathers stuck into a brim on either side, a good, stout, brown cotton coat. It is waterproofed with oil, and bulges with pockets inside and out. This lends a rather unexpected weight to it.
Space
Valan prefers to wear dark brown or black clothing to avoid showing any ink stains. He is often poorly dressed for whatever occasion may present itself, since many of the types of clothing he prefers are workmanlike and easily repaired. Many of Valan's clothes are well patched around the wrists, ankle, elbows and knees, giving him more semblance to an impoverished farmer than to a scholar of any sort.

Personality
Valan is absent-minded in the extreme.< “in the extreme” sounds a little wrong. Perhaps “to the extreme?” or “Valan is extremely absent-minded?” He lacks a certain focus on what happens around him much of the time, only furthering his owlish appearance. When focusing on something interesting (say... books for instance) he becomes oddly intense as focused completely on whatever it is he is doing < This sounds a bit odd. It’s a bit hard to read. , much to the delight of others. Some find it amusing to frighten Valan while he is deep in concentration, including several colleagues of his (who shall remain nameless) <This part isn’t really necessary. If they are not mentioned in his history or have no significance elsewhere in your CD, then they don’t need to be named anyway.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths
Valan is a consummate polymath when it comes to intellectual pursuits. He knows quite a bit about history, geography (though directions when traveling continue to elude him.), lore and minor bits of philosophy. Much of Valan's knowledge is focused on the historical information of the obscure variety.

While not much of a teller of tales, Valan has collected quite a few folk-stories and legends, and enjoys hearing the differences in things like songs and tales as they change over distance. This is not quite strength, but more of a personality trait. How does this help him?

Because things like histories and similar are often more precise in their native languages, Valan has learned passable Styrash, though his speech leaves something to be desired.

Valan has an excellent memory for things like dates and other such things, including whatever arcane and obscure method of storing books the librarians at the Lorehold used, increasing his usefulness to those who attempted to find things among the massive colleciton.

Weaknesses
Valan has difficulty focusing on that which he does not find interesting. He might, for instance, trail off in the middle of a conversation if something catches his attention, or begin a completely different train of thought in the middle of an unfinished one, and his explanations can endure for hours.

Valan is not a strong person by any definition of the word, and actually finds most types of lifting exhaustive. His build is poorly suited to lifting anything heavier than a large book and Valan actively avoids having to move the same thing more than twice (once from the shelf, once back) if he can, which is sometimes mistaken for laziness.

Due to a variety of circumstances (involving horses, and other things that one would never find in a library) Valan walks with a limp in his right leg, and lives in mortal fear of most horses. This bothers him particularly badly in inclement weather and usually leads to a great deal of grumbling.

Valan has very little luck with things such as sea travel (which makes him violently ill despite whatever medicines he tries) coaches, horses(which he lives in fear of as a result of the incident which gave him his limp) and similar conveyances. His misfortunes with anything more complicated than foot-slogging are enough to form a rather long and distinguished list of failures.

Valan has a terrible sense of direction when it comes to being outdoors. In cities or things such as libraries, Valan has no problem, but something about the distinct lack of anything resembling a worked stone seems to throw him off balance and has even led to him confusing east and west. … I thought he had great geographical skills…

I haven’t got that much time left before I get kicked off the computer, so I can’t get to your history, but I do like what you have written so far. There were a few things I picked up, sorry for being so nitpicky by the way, but I really like your character. You are very descriptive and show so much effort when you can put your mind to it. Keep it up, I look forward to seeing your posts in one of the stories here.

Hope this gives you something to work with.

Good luck.