Meme from Erin, because if there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s talking about my damned characters. (And reading about other people’s, in many cases.)

1. Choose up to five of your own characters.
2. Make them answer the following questions.

I chickened out and chose the popular ones (which makes sense, since I haven’t written much stuff recently with others.)

A. How old are you?
[These characters inhabit a single continuity and universe and we follow some of them almost from birth to death, so I’ve given these ages at the (involved cultures’ initial estimate of the) start of the worldgate events preceding the Great (Worlds) War, i.e. several years before fighting kicked off. One post-War calendar places year zero at this time, so it makes sort of sense.]

Tortile: Three quarters [of a year]. In human equivalency I look fourteen and have been alive 22 or 23 years.
Ferrl: 23. Nice hasty decision there, Mutt; I don’t think anyone noticed.
Weft: Not quite one and three quarters. In human terms I look 35 [and slightly battered, though smooth-skinned where not scarred] and have been alive for almost 50 years.
Basaltine: Threeeeee! :D I think. Or four. Or two. Time’s a bit funny where I was borned. Look at me with my big scaffy paws; I am so cute.
Iceheart: Fifteen, and bearing in mind I’ve a young lady to impress, I advise against being the first one to make a witty remark about my lack of years.
Weft: Hmm. How sweet. I wish I’d known you at this age. I wish I’d killed you at this age.
Iceheart: Try it, lackey, do try it.

B. Height?
[And these are adult heights.]

Iceheart: Around six feet.
Basaltine: It varies. No, really. Take about mastiff at the shoulder as a rough thing, though I’ve been Dane sized.
Weft: Five feet four inches, meaning I’m within accepted standards.
Tortile: My author thinks “somewhere in the region of five ten”. I apologise. For more useful context, I am unusually tall and my height lies outside our accepted range of masculine beauty.
Ferrl: Mutt hates weights and measurements. Around seven feet. Want my bust size too?

C. Got any bad habits?

Tortile: Gracious, yes. I am a horribly inadequate sinner.
Iceheart: Probably, yes. Irreverence would be a significant one, and susceptibility to puzzles, and a tendency to escape my bodyguards when they get too fussy.
Ferrl: *knowing wince*
Weft: Yeah, I’m a horribly inadequate sinner.
Iceheart: *raised eyebrow…* How surprising. Because, you know, you’re pleasant enough to be around when you aren’t in a howling temper.
Weft: No, I’m not. Add “telling flattering lies” to your list.
Iceheart: Just why would I bother flattering you?
Weft: …*shrinks slightly*
Ferrl: Tons. I pick my teeth, swear, spit, dress like a man even while out of uniform just because it’s easier, bah. All sorts.
Basaltine: Also tons. I’m a dog, what do you expect?
Iceheart: Not to mention a certain weakness for pyrotechnics…
Basaltine: That’s not a BAD habit! I think it’s a great one.

D. You a virgin?

Iceheart: *bored* I don’t kiss and tell, if that’s what you’re after.
Ferrl: Haha no.
Tortile: I’m celibate.
Weft: I’m celibate.
Basaltine: Does your mom’s leg count? Anyways, no. Plenty of lady dogs will testify. And I think there was once a goat… we were both really drunk.

E. Who is your mate/spouse?

Ferrl: …nobody right now and I don’t want to talk about that.
Tortile: I’m married to my job.
Iceheart: I have been seeing a pleasant young lady recently.
Weft: *snorts* Pleasant! Young! She barely acts like a woman, let alone ‘ladylike’—
Iceheart: One more word from you and you’ll find yourself exiled for a week.
Weft: I’d finished talking anyway. *runs hand through hair angrily* Oh, and I don’t have a romantic partner of any sort. I’m married to my job.

F. Have any kids?

Iceheart: Shush. Later in continuity.
Ferrl: I’d like some at some point in the distant hypothetical.
Basaltine: There’s a chance. I don’t know.
Tortile: *laughs* Grace, no.
Weft: Someone protect me from sticky, virulent brats.

G. Favourite food?

Basaltine: Pork satay, various disgusting peanut butter sarnie recipes, anything with huge amounts of sugar.
Iceheart: Eh, I don’t know.
Ferrl: Candied violets will get you a long way.
Weft: Shortbait like we prepare it back home.
Tortile: And we do a wonderful cured jay dish.

H. Favorite ice cream flavour?

Tortile: This is not a foodstuff with which I can claim familiarity.
Basaltine: Required ingredients include chocolate sauce, caramel, chocolate chunks, marshmallows, those little silver balls, fudge chunks…
Iceheart: Prefer sorbet, actually. Lemon or bitter apple.
Ferrl: Banana, pecan and caramel. It’s good comfort food.
Weft: What makes you think I like cream?? As it happens, plain milk flavour is quite… oh, next question.

I. Killed anyone?

Weft: Hah.
Tortile: Indirectly.
Iceheart: Directly and indirectly.
Basaltine: When I’ve had to.
Ferrl: I was the family knacker until I packed it in and became a merc. You do the maths.

J. Hate anyone?

Ferrl: I suppose.
Iceheart: More abstracts than individuals, really…
Weft: Everyone. I hate you. I hate your characters, unless they’re called Sebastian. But I especially hate him and him *points*.
Iceheart: *modest grin at that*
Basaltine: *seems proud to be Weft-hated* Nobody still living. It takes something major.
Tortile: Gracious, hate is such a strong word!
Iceheart: And?
Tortile: I couldn’t say I hate anyone.
Ferrl: The ones you killed indirectly?
Tortile: Not for anything personal. I fulfil my function and sometimes people die. I am not, of course, as honourable as a warlord or a career soldier, whose purposes in life are much more… straightforward.
Iceheart: You abstract yourself admirably. *will not kill him, will not kill him, willnotkill*
Tortile: Thank you.

K. Any secrets?

Weft: Not from my order. And I don’t think I have the imagination anyway.
Iceheart: They are one of those annoying things of which even letting slip the very existence is half the disclosure. Secrets are… unavoidable. I could not tell anyone everything I have in mind, nor would I.
Basaltine: I blurt out everything that goes through my head.
Tortile: My dear disembodied questioner, I deal in secrets; whispered, snatched, stolen, bought and sold. They’re air to me.
Basaltine: Truly cheesy, mate.
Tortile: It was, wasn’t it?
Ferrl: Secrets? Only the boring kind. Where I hid the bangle I stole as a child, my first kiss, that sort of thing.
Basaltine: What was your first kiss?
Ferrl: A boy from one of the nearby great families, who had come with his parents to sell — either cheeses or nails, I think. Terwin or Tritch or something he was called. I quite fancied him at the time, so we slipped off for a few minutes… He was an awful kisser. There, now I’ve got to think up a new secret.
Tortile: Why did you steal the bangle?
Ferrl: Piss off, you!
Tortile: Ah. Do forgive me.

L. Love anyone?

Basaltine: A few people. Your mum. My boss.
Iceheart: Ah, pooch.
Ferrl: My family and… yeah.
Weft: Where to start?
Tortile: Reader, imagine asking an Inuit if he’s seen snow.
Weft: Yes, or a tailor for “some cloth”. We have a lot of words for “love”, I’m not even going to list them all. There’s… I’m not infatuated with anyone, obviously. Religiously, by definition I am required to love everyone with a soul, which means *spiteful tone* that mercifully I do not have to love Iceheart. I have familial love for my family…
Ferrl: Your cult.
Weft: My family who raised me and love me. Dependents, don’t have any of those. Soulmate… and a lot of other categories that don’t apply.
Tortile: As Weft says, except that I myself have nothing in particular against Lord Applestone.

Hmm. Shame there weren’t any more inspiring questions. If anyone wants to make up one with a more interesting set, I’ll redo this.