Thorondor “Ian” Caladharas is the 18 year old heir to one of the first of the Merchant Houses. An intelligent, independent teenager; Ian has a tendency towards irreverence and and frustration. In all honesty, he doesn’t care what his grandfather says he is heir to, he just wants to have a normal life. Or at least as normal a one as possible. (As my skills improved I made some revamps to this characters appearance to reflect aging and such as well. The top picture is how he is currently modeled. )
Reid Wallace is a saddleman and businessman in the City of River Crossing. He is also the father of Darnell Wallace. A former gunfighter who made good…Reid is beginning to think that he is a little too old to take up his revolvers again;)
This lady (who chooses to remain nameless) is professional assassin who hails from the city of Naglorond. She does most of her work for private citizens since the end of the House Wars, where she was responsible for the deaths of a number of House personnel.
The handle she is currently using is “Targeter” All that is known about her so far is that she was a child prostitute in Naglorond who killed her way out of the business , and decided to never put her fate in the hands of another ever again.
I’ve noticed that many people in the US put a lot of trust in being stupid, and a lot of distrust in being intelligent. I’ve never managed to figure out how they justify this to themselves.
When you spend twelve years in grade school thru high school, four years as an under-graduate and another two to four years- or more – gaining a post graduate degree…you don’t have a lot of real world experience to draw on. Yet, many people with graduate degrees, let alone doctorates, think they know all there is to know about all there is to know. When operating within the constraints of their own specialities, they are well worth your time. When opining about things outside of their specialities? Their opinions are worth as much or as little as that of any other human being. College professors and graduates often believe that because they are proficient in one specialty that they are automatically proficient in all areas. Call it hubris, if you will.
There is a substantial difference between life as experienced within the social, political, cultural and economic environs of a college campus – or laboratory – and life outside of that cocoon. New graduates – even college professors – are often unable to discern the difference. iow, While they give their own opinions more weight, in reality, their judgment wrt issues outside of their own narrow specialties is highly questionable.
That still doesn’t explain that same instinctive distrust applied when a scientist is talking about things that are in their actual field — as evidenced by the depressingly large demographic that puts more faith in the economic predictions of, say, Rush Limbaugh than those of multiple award-winning, peer-reviewed and highly respected actual economists…
There is a substantial difference between life as experienced within the social, political, cultural and economic environs of a college campus – or laboratory – and life outside of that cocoon. New graduates – even college professors – are often unable to discern the difference. iow, While they give their own opinions more weight, in reality, their judgment wrt issues outside of their own narrow specialties is highly questionable.