[b]Name:[/b] R'tul (born Alleron, he introduced himself to Phalarth as R'tul because he thought it sounded cool)
[b]Age:[/b] 25
[b]Profession:[/b] Dragon Rider
[b]Physical Appearance:[/b] R'tul is a large and muscular man measuring 5'10" in height and weighing in at 178 lbs.  His arms are well muscled from working in the Smith Craft Hall practically from birth.  His hands are callused from long hours at such tasks as working the bellows of the forge.  His skin is tanned with a slightly red tint to it from spending so much time around forges and fire.  The activity has also made him a bit more resistant to fire and heat than the average person.  He keeps his coal black hair short on top of his head and refuses to grow any sort of facial hair despite his friends constantly telling him that it would make him look like a man instead of a boy who grew too much for his own good.
[b]Personality:[/b]
[b]History:[/b] Alleron was born in the Smith Craft Hall of Telgar Hold to two skilled smiths.  From an early age, his parents taught him his way around a forge and the craft of smithing, often having him handle various assistive tasks for them while they worked.  His parents were sometimes hard and often demanding, but never cruel to Alleron, and growing up under them gave Alleron a strong work ethic as well as strong muscles.
By age ten, Alleron was officially apprenticed to a Master Smith and began to actually forge tools by himself rather than merely help his parents with their projects.  This continued for a little more than two years before people from Southern Weyr came to search for prospective riders.  Alleron was chosen along with two other boys and one girl.  Alleron was filled with excitement at the prospect of impressing a dragon.  He had already impressed two fire lizards, a gold and a bronze, but the idea of being bonded with an actual dragon was so much more prestigious.  After all, anyone could impress a fire lizard, or even more than one, but it took a very special someone to impress a dragon.  Alleron proved lucky enough to be such a special someone three days later when the clutch finally hatched.  One by one, dragons broke free of their eggs and made their way to their chosen riders.  After about five hatchings, a brown broke free of his shell and made a bee line for Alleron, slamming into the boy excitedly.  Alleron happily greeted Phalarth and took for his Rider name R'tul.
For the next roughly eight years, R'tul and Phalarth became close friends and learned together what was expected of them as dragon and rider.  With no threats incoming, R'tul and Phalarth often took to exploring as much of Pern as they could in their free time.  They also practiced going [i]between[/i] places, and even, when R'tul was feeling adventurous, [i]between[/i] times, though R'tul was never adventurous enough to risk more than two weeks of time, though Phalarth has insisted that he could easily go back two months without any problems, maybe even two years.  Still R'tul has insisted on caution.  After all, there should be no need for him to even go back two weeks at any time in the foreseeable future.
Over the last five years, R'tul has become concerned, seeing the larger clutches of eggs and more frequent mating flights.  Phalarth has continually insisted that it's nothing for R'tul to worry about, but R'tul has remained convinced that the dragons can sense something that the people can't, even with all the new technology they've developed since the rediscovery of AIVAS.  He has gone to AIVAS and looked at all the data their early-warning systems are sending out, and while none of the data suggests any imminent danger, R'tul is unconvinced that there is no need to worry.  If only he knew what was wrong and had the data to back it up.



[b]Name:[/b] Phalarth
[b]Rider:[/b] R'tul
[b]Color:[/b] Brown
[b]Physical Description:[/b] Phalarth is on the small side for a brown, measuring only 48 feet in length rather than the more common 50-60 feet of other browns, but neither he nor R'tul is concerned about this.  His hide is a rich chocolate brown color which R'tul is almost obsessive-compulsive about keeping clean to numerous "mother cat" analogies from Phalarth.  Despite his slightly smaller size, Phalarth has just as much strength and stamina as any other brown, though he sometimes boasts that he is actually stronger and has more stamina than other browns, and he would prove it too if R'tul wouldn't mother him so much.  Yet despite his occasional complaints about R'tul's alleged mothering tendencies, Phalarth and R'tul are closer than the closest of friends and are nearly inseparable.