ROLE: The Healer
NAME: Ariel LennoxÂ
BIRTH: City of Dust
AGE: 43
GENDER: Cis Male
PRONOUNS: He/Him
OCCUPATION: Medic
SPECIES: Human
ALIGNMENT: Anti - War
FC: Joaquin Phoenix
PROMPT: A Duster suffering from a god complex. Born in the ranks of pirates the only way they could go along with their family was if they made themselves useful. Being a medic was useful.
Written aesthetics: keeping your distance, steady hands, bones aching from age-old injuries, control freak, always knowing best, swallowed the encyclopedia, telling yourself the same lies over and over, insomnia, walks alone at night, starched collars, childhood flashbacks, waking up with a start, heart racing, flirting out of boredom, making lists
Intro: TW Domestic Abuse, Alcohol Abuse, Bullying
Runt of the litter. Ariel was pushed, prodded and mocked by hoards of trigger happy brothers. The teasing later maligned into something less childlike. Black eyes, cigarette burns, bullets skimming kneecaps. Where was mum now? Born into a viscous swathe of pirates, their family culture was far from loving. Loyal and proud, but not loving. The boys were hard on Ariel.Â
His only escape was found by clinging to his sharp wittedness, to study and practice a trade that would make him indispensable. Luckily he found a supply and demand that the city of dust had by the bucket load. Injured bodies to heal. By the time he was a grown man, now capable of defending himself he had long quashed any violent genes with years of silent solitary study. Watching him chat someone up at a bar nowadays, it would be tough to imagine the skinny brow-beaten boy he used to be.Â
Ariel was born into a family of boisterous boys who were all excellent fighters. Ariel on the other hand was a terrible fighter, but quick-witted and sharp. This didn’t stop the rain of violence that burdened Ariel his whole childhood, leaving him with bones that creak and scars littering his body.
Those days leave him with burning caution around those with a penchant for physical violence and keeps himself at a distance from the battles.
 He turned to logic to defend himself, and to become indispensable. He realised quite early that his inability to fight would render him useless in the desert and even at the risk of becoming estranged from his family.Â
When fellow pirates returned wounded, he would exercise his expertise in fixing them up, he even dabbled in cybernetic enhancements. He commanded a new power over the flesh, one he couldn’t muster through fighting, the ability to heal.Â
He holds himself in high regard, and over the years he has convinced himself that he doesn’t fight because he is above such things, but the truth lies in his historic inability to throw a punch. He extends this thinking to his stance on war, he believes such things are a waste of life and are simply games for egotistical men.
He left the pirates after a younger brother returned from siege wounded. Only human, Ariel failed to heal him and he remained permanently wounded. Although his younger brother never blamed him, Ariel couldn’t deal with the grief and took his failure as a signal to move on. His grief arose from an inability to hold onto his precious self-image as the omniscient healer, but also because his younger brother was now vulnerable to the same physical weaknesses that he had been the victim of as a child.
He spent some years in the City of Iron before joining the crew, working as personal physician to many a rich socialite. But the grief about his brother never left him, and he found City of Iron full of too many vices. He had a choice to make, return to Dust and face his demons or stay in Iron and let addiction rot him away.
He has worked loyaly as a crew member for many years now, keeping in touch with his family politely but always making it out as though he is on to bigger and better things. He is a loner at heart, finding some of the crew’s volatile personalities grating, and prefers to spend time alone, although he can’t resist a beer around the fire, it reminds him too much of home.Â
