Post by Meriadeg Meri Rivallon on Nov 29, 2011 19:34:11 GMT
Account E-Mail: The account's name is 'corentin'.
Name: Meriadeg 'Meri' Rivallon
Nationality:
- French (Breton)
What Army will Your Character Serve Beneath?
UK
Character History:
Meri’s ancestors fled the British kingdom of Ceredigion in the early sixth century, operating on the fairly reasonable basis that getting one’s head chopped off by the increasingly vicious English invaders might just be bad for their health. They landed on the Breton peninsula, and were just celebrating their escape from violent, degenerate Germanic pirates when the Franks invaded.
It wasn’t until nine hundred years that the Bretons were finally analgamated into the Kingdom of France, by which time Meri’s ancestors had become respected members of the local nobility. They remained at the forefront of French and Breton society throughout the middle ages and early modern period and grew in power and authority as the centuries rolled by. The Rivallons had an uncanny knack of knowing which side to support in various wars, one year fervent monarchists, the next apologetically sticking old friends under the guillotine.
Meriadeg Rivallon was born in 1919 and enjoyed a highly priveleged upbringing. He was a precocious child who made people feel uncomfortable by asking too many questions and paying too much attention to the answers. He was given a first-class education, and grew up speaking fluent Breton, French, English and German. He decided, with a great deal of solemnity, to become a romantic at the age of six and a half. A law in 1803 obliged French parents to choose children's' names from one of several authorized calendars of names of Catholic saints, revolutionary heroes and figures from the proud French past – giving your child a Breton name was illegal. His name on official documents was Christophe, but he was always Meri to his parents, named after Conan Meriadoc, the pseudo-historical leader of the British refugees.
He was something of a rebel as a teenager, although not strictly speaking a very impressive one. He studied English at the University of Paris in the late thirties but dropped out after a couple of years upon hearing of the forthcoming German invasion. Like many idealistic young Bretons he was convinced that the Nazis were liberators, come to free the Bretons and the Flems from French tyranny, and he returned home in 1939 where he joined a covert cell of German sympathisers. Within a few short months however, it became clear that the Germans were a worse scourge than the French had ever been and, hopelessly disillusionised, he attempted to leave the cell. His comrades had a very dim view of that sort of thing and rather inconveniently shot him in the back.
He was found bleeding in the street a few hours later and received immediate medical attention; miraculously he survived his injuries. He hot-headedly joined the remnants of the French army in a desperate bid to quell the terrifying flow of the Wehmart and took part in the action at Dunkirk where he fought with the utmost bravery. Following the Allies’ horrific defeat, he was one of the countless soldiers evacuated to England. Grim-faced and determined to reclaim the country he loved and the family lost to him, he enlisted in the British army and vowed one day to sail home.
It wasn’t quite as easy as that.
Meri, who was keen on launching a massive naval invasion to Normandy as soon as possible, was sent instead to deepest Africa where he very quickly discovered that the enemy were just as terrifying wearing yellow shorts. It was during the battle of Bardia that he earned his promotion, partly due to his courageous actions on the battlefield, holding his ground under heavy fire and saving the life of his commanding officer in the process, but mainly because of a clerical error. He was promoted again, to Sergeant, in 1942, which he found mildly irritating because it meant he had to do rather more shouting than he was entirely comfortable with.
We find him on his Exodus across the barren deserts, burned, bloody and beaten, and, frankly, having the time of his life.
Military Rank:
- Sergeant
Writing Sample:
Meri Rivallon was having a bit of an off day. People kept trying to kill him.
He kneeled, struggled with clumsy fingers to get a decent grip on his rifle, and sent a view blind shots towards the enemy. There was a pained yell in German. Meri came to the rather optimistic conclusion that the bullet had found its mark, although he conceded that he could well have missed; the enemy yelled all the time. They were good at it.
There were eight of them, taking cover behind the dilaptidated farmhouse, with a couple of marksmen giving covering fire from the second floor window. Meri felt like he was going to be sick. There were at least two dozen of the enemy. It didn’t seem fair and Meri had a good mind to complain.
‘We demand that you surrender!’
‘Oh, piss off,’ grumbled Captain Vaughan who was in no mood for this sort of nonsense. He was propped up against the farmhouse wall with a bullet lodged in his gut. From what Meri could gather he was trying to numb the pain by grunting at it. The sergeant watched him miserably. There’d always been something fundamentally bulletproof about Captain Vaughan. You got the impression that any sensible Grim Reaper would regard fetching him as being rather too much of a hassle.
But there was blood on his collar and sweat on his brow and Meri didn’t know what to do and…
‘Stop firing,’ he said.
The men gave him a Look.
‘I mean it,’ said Meri simply. ‘We surrender.’
Meri stepped out from behind the cover and threw his rifle aside. ‘We surrender!’ he shouted, and hoped that he looked sufficiently sincere. The firing stopped, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Three German soldiers advanced with understandable caution. The body of one of the marksmen lay twitching nearby; a well-placed bullet had punched into his intestine like a knife through butter, but it was the fall from the second storey that had killed him. Meri looked away, white-faced.
The enemy drew nearer. A huge man, a sergeant with dirty blond hair and an ugly scar splitting his mouth in two, grinned disconcertedly. ‘You fight bravely,’ he said in clumsy English, and offered him a strip of gum. Meri shook his head numbly. The sergeant shrugged, clapped him absent-mindedly on the back, and led a small squad to apprehend the rest of the soldiers.
And then the air was full of noise and bullets and the stink of warm blood…
It was a miracle, that was what they said later. The Indian detatchement had just been passing through, split off from the rest of the division. They’d seen the skirmish from afar and had advanced at full force to investigate. The Germans hadn’t stood a chance. Most of them had already put down their weapons…
Meri dived to the floor, panting heavily, as hell broke loose all around him. He saw the dirty-blond sergeant take a bullet in the throat and fall to his knees, clutching at his neck as blood spurted out between his fingers. His eyes rolled backwards in his skull and he keeled over, face-first in the sand. Meri crawled over to the twitching soldier, turned him over onto his back, and held his hand as he died. He never knew why.
A few feet away a blood-sodden ball of gum glistened briefly in the summer sun.
Name: Meriadeg 'Meri' Rivallon
Nationality:
- French (Breton)
What Army will Your Character Serve Beneath?
UK
Character History:
Meri’s ancestors fled the British kingdom of Ceredigion in the early sixth century, operating on the fairly reasonable basis that getting one’s head chopped off by the increasingly vicious English invaders might just be bad for their health. They landed on the Breton peninsula, and were just celebrating their escape from violent, degenerate Germanic pirates when the Franks invaded.
It wasn’t until nine hundred years that the Bretons were finally analgamated into the Kingdom of France, by which time Meri’s ancestors had become respected members of the local nobility. They remained at the forefront of French and Breton society throughout the middle ages and early modern period and grew in power and authority as the centuries rolled by. The Rivallons had an uncanny knack of knowing which side to support in various wars, one year fervent monarchists, the next apologetically sticking old friends under the guillotine.
Meriadeg Rivallon was born in 1919 and enjoyed a highly priveleged upbringing. He was a precocious child who made people feel uncomfortable by asking too many questions and paying too much attention to the answers. He was given a first-class education, and grew up speaking fluent Breton, French, English and German. He decided, with a great deal of solemnity, to become a romantic at the age of six and a half. A law in 1803 obliged French parents to choose children's' names from one of several authorized calendars of names of Catholic saints, revolutionary heroes and figures from the proud French past – giving your child a Breton name was illegal. His name on official documents was Christophe, but he was always Meri to his parents, named after Conan Meriadoc, the pseudo-historical leader of the British refugees.
He was something of a rebel as a teenager, although not strictly speaking a very impressive one. He studied English at the University of Paris in the late thirties but dropped out after a couple of years upon hearing of the forthcoming German invasion. Like many idealistic young Bretons he was convinced that the Nazis were liberators, come to free the Bretons and the Flems from French tyranny, and he returned home in 1939 where he joined a covert cell of German sympathisers. Within a few short months however, it became clear that the Germans were a worse scourge than the French had ever been and, hopelessly disillusionised, he attempted to leave the cell. His comrades had a very dim view of that sort of thing and rather inconveniently shot him in the back.
He was found bleeding in the street a few hours later and received immediate medical attention; miraculously he survived his injuries. He hot-headedly joined the remnants of the French army in a desperate bid to quell the terrifying flow of the Wehmart and took part in the action at Dunkirk where he fought with the utmost bravery. Following the Allies’ horrific defeat, he was one of the countless soldiers evacuated to England. Grim-faced and determined to reclaim the country he loved and the family lost to him, he enlisted in the British army and vowed one day to sail home.
It wasn’t quite as easy as that.
Meri, who was keen on launching a massive naval invasion to Normandy as soon as possible, was sent instead to deepest Africa where he very quickly discovered that the enemy were just as terrifying wearing yellow shorts. It was during the battle of Bardia that he earned his promotion, partly due to his courageous actions on the battlefield, holding his ground under heavy fire and saving the life of his commanding officer in the process, but mainly because of a clerical error. He was promoted again, to Sergeant, in 1942, which he found mildly irritating because it meant he had to do rather more shouting than he was entirely comfortable with.
We find him on his Exodus across the barren deserts, burned, bloody and beaten, and, frankly, having the time of his life.
Military Rank:
- Sergeant
Writing Sample:
Meri Rivallon was having a bit of an off day. People kept trying to kill him.
He kneeled, struggled with clumsy fingers to get a decent grip on his rifle, and sent a view blind shots towards the enemy. There was a pained yell in German. Meri came to the rather optimistic conclusion that the bullet had found its mark, although he conceded that he could well have missed; the enemy yelled all the time. They were good at it.
There were eight of them, taking cover behind the dilaptidated farmhouse, with a couple of marksmen giving covering fire from the second floor window. Meri felt like he was going to be sick. There were at least two dozen of the enemy. It didn’t seem fair and Meri had a good mind to complain.
‘We demand that you surrender!’
‘Oh, piss off,’ grumbled Captain Vaughan who was in no mood for this sort of nonsense. He was propped up against the farmhouse wall with a bullet lodged in his gut. From what Meri could gather he was trying to numb the pain by grunting at it. The sergeant watched him miserably. There’d always been something fundamentally bulletproof about Captain Vaughan. You got the impression that any sensible Grim Reaper would regard fetching him as being rather too much of a hassle.
But there was blood on his collar and sweat on his brow and Meri didn’t know what to do and…
‘Stop firing,’ he said.
The men gave him a Look.
‘I mean it,’ said Meri simply. ‘We surrender.’
Meri stepped out from behind the cover and threw his rifle aside. ‘We surrender!’ he shouted, and hoped that he looked sufficiently sincere. The firing stopped, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Three German soldiers advanced with understandable caution. The body of one of the marksmen lay twitching nearby; a well-placed bullet had punched into his intestine like a knife through butter, but it was the fall from the second storey that had killed him. Meri looked away, white-faced.
The enemy drew nearer. A huge man, a sergeant with dirty blond hair and an ugly scar splitting his mouth in two, grinned disconcertedly. ‘You fight bravely,’ he said in clumsy English, and offered him a strip of gum. Meri shook his head numbly. The sergeant shrugged, clapped him absent-mindedly on the back, and led a small squad to apprehend the rest of the soldiers.
And then the air was full of noise and bullets and the stink of warm blood…
It was a miracle, that was what they said later. The Indian detatchement had just been passing through, split off from the rest of the division. They’d seen the skirmish from afar and had advanced at full force to investigate. The Germans hadn’t stood a chance. Most of them had already put down their weapons…
Meri dived to the floor, panting heavily, as hell broke loose all around him. He saw the dirty-blond sergeant take a bullet in the throat and fall to his knees, clutching at his neck as blood spurted out between his fingers. His eyes rolled backwards in his skull and he keeled over, face-first in the sand. Meri crawled over to the twitching soldier, turned him over onto his back, and held his hand as he died. He never knew why.
A few feet away a blood-sodden ball of gum glistened briefly in the summer sun.
