Arliss Boudreaux [South/Human]

Summary: Arliss Boudreaux, a twenty-four-year-old native of Louisiana spent his life in the company of his one friend, his dragon, protecting merchant vessels in the Gulf of Mexico until her death at the hands of a U.S. Navy frigate, which mistook her for an enemy rogue. Alone and distraught, rifle in hand, the quiet wanderer joined the newly-formed Confederate States Aerial Corps, either unknowing or uncaring about the reasons behind the war, hoping only to assuage his own grief and wreak havoc on the people he blames for the death of his dragon.

 Name: Arliss Boudreaux

Age: 24

Gender: Male

Alliance: South

Rank/Position: Captain

Dragon: Alacris

Appearance: Arliss Boudreaux is about 5'7", thin and wiry, with a tanned, leathery complexion and shoulder-length blond hair bleached almost white from years of sun. His eyes are brown and look huge in his thin face, making him look several years younger than he actually is; he also walks with a noticeable limp. His civillian clothes are strictly serviceable and somewhat worn out-- his income (before his military career) was limited and his philosophy is to wear whatever he owns until it literally falls apart at the seams. Arliss is never without his Springfield Model 1842 rifle slung over his shoulder and Walker Colt revolver at his hip, and also carries in his wallet a tiny albumen print photograph featuring a young dragon and himself as a teenager. When depressed he usually lets his hair hang loose to hide his face and doesn't much care about the state of his clothes, but after joining the Confederate States Aerial Corps (which has a rigid dress code) he began to pay more attention to his personal appearance.

Personality: Arliss' countenance is usually reserved, making it almost impossible to tell what he is thinking; he is also reticient and doesn't speak unless he feels it absolutely necessary, and seems to feel much more comfortable around dragons than fellow humans. However, he exudes a sense of quiet self-assurance, and his unshakeable nerve even in the midst of battle often helps calm others around him; this characteristic also makes him a fearsome sniper, as he can unflinchingly aim a rifle in the midst of a raging aerial battle. Totally self-reliant, his concern for others' welfare is limited, (with the exception of dragons',) as he has no family or close friends, and has never had a romantic attachment.
 
Strengths: Arliss is a deadly marksman both on the ground and on dragonback-- a skill he developed by having to hunt food for himself and a dragonet after being orphaned at the age of ten, and then perfected when he and his dragon were on the job protecting coastal shipping. He has very fast reflexes and can form detailed plans quickly and easily, but is flexible enough to change them on the spur of the moment. He also has an unusual way with feral dragons: feral dragonets implicitly trust him and adults seem more tolerant of him than they are of other humans, and he can both speak and understand the local Louisiana dialect-- a skill the Corps fully intends to exploit.
 
Weaknesses: After the death of his dragon Arliss became severely depressed and an alcoholic; he is still fighting to overcome both the depression and the addiction. His tendency to hide his emotions is often misinterpreted as general coldness and usually leads to him smoldering over incidents for years. He is also extremely stubborn, which probably contributes to his tenacity in battle but makes it very difficult for him to lose an argument gracefully.

History: Arliss comes from Cajun/Irish ancestry and grew up on a homestead northeast of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His father, Jean-Pierre, was killed in a feud between rival ranch families when Arliss was a toddler, leaving his mother, Eileen, to raise him alone. Arliss was a quiet young boy who spent most of his free time in the woods and swamplands near his home, but when he was nine years old he gained the promise of a new friend: a Pascal's Blue living at a neighboring homestead, considering the Boudreauxs good and trustworthy people, decided to give them one of her eggs. Eileen was utterly delighted-- after all, a dragon would be a tremendous help on the farm.

However, that summer Eileen died during a yellow fever epidemic just as the shell began to harden, and soon Arliss was left alone with a newly-hatched (and very hungry) dragonet. He and the young dragon, who turned out to be a courier-weight Pascal's Blue/feral hybrid, had no one to take them in and so, with the clothes on his back and his father's rifle, they began to wander the countryside in search of work. For the next ten years he and Darlin' (the dragon's name was inspired by her sweet disposition) traveled from farm to farm doing odd jobs for very low pay, until they arrived in New Orleans when Arliss was nineteen.

In New Orleans Arliss discovered what he thought was a much better career-- dragons and their handlers were often hired to protect the merchant ships from the pirates that still harassed trade in the Gulf of Mexico, both of the seafaring variety and also rogue dragons and their crews. Darlin' was eager for the job and also perfectly suited to it-- her small size allowed her to travel relatively easily on most merchant vessels, and she had no fear of water; in fact, her feral heritage --local ferals were indigenous to swampland and semi-aquatic-- gave her webbed talons and excellent swimming skills. The two of them worked for hire along the coast for three years until disaster struck-- during a skirmish with a pair of pirate dragons along the Mississippi coast, a U.S. Navy frigate came to the merchant vessel's aid and, mistaking Darlin' for one of the pirates, opened fire on her. Bullets ripped through Darlin's wing membranes and sent them both crashing into the shallows. Arliss survived the impact with his left arm and leg were both badly broken, but Darlin's lower back was shattered and she was bleeding to death from a dozen wounds. There was nothing Arliss could do, and no one was near enough to help them; to his horror, Darlin' begged him to spare her even more agony. Arliss refused, telling her that he could sooner shoot himself, but Darlin' was in so much pain that he finally gave in and, turning his face away, shot his own dragon in the head.

Arliss was eventually rescued and spent months in a charity hospital in Pascagoula, suffering from the pain of his injuries and crushing grief.
His left leg was too damaged to heal properly, and left him with an obvious limp. After leaving the hospital, Arliss wandered from town to town along the coast, living from day to day and squandering what was left of his money on whiskey. When war broke out and all dragons and aviators were called to service, Arliss ignored his summons, determined never to fly with another dragon.

Some weeks later a group of recruiters caught up with him in a tavern in Biloxi, and after sobering him up, i.e. dunking him repeatedly in the nearest horse trough, tried to convince him that his experience as an aviator and his skill with ferals would be invaluable to the desperately undermanned CSA Aerial Corps, and besides, wasn't it the United States Navy that had killed his dragon?

Arliss was still unsure, but he was desperate for work and the recruiters' words were enough to turn his simmering rage into a full-blown, almost irrational hatred for the North. He eventually agreed to join, but on the way to the covert he spent days wrestling with his conscience, as he was sure that flying with another dragon would betray Darlin's memory. At the covert Arliss and a dozen other dragonless recruits were assigned to a hastily-assembled clutch of dragon eggs, and in the weeks that followed, to his own surprise Arliss found himself spending time with the unhatched dragonet, talking to it the way he had once talked to Darlin'. Three months later, when the shell began to harden, Arliss came to a decision: remaining cold and distant would only hurt the dragonet, something he could never bring himself to do. This dragon could never replace Darlin' --no dragon ever could-- but perhaps could be a new companion, and friend.