Alyss Mainwaring - Blog Posts

Will: Dumbest scar stories, go! 
Cassandra: I burned my tongue once drinking tea. 
Alyss: I dropped a hair dryer on my leg once and burned it. 
Gilan: I have a piece of graphite in my leg for accidentally stabbing myself with a pencil in the first grade. 
Horace: I was taking a cup of noodles out of the microwave and spilled it on my hand and I got a really bad burn. 
Halt: 
Halt: I have emotional scars.

Bonus:

Will:

Will, concerned: You good dad?

Halt, sobbing on the floor: I don’t know what I’m crying more about, the fact that I’m not ok, the fact that someone finally asked me, or that you just called me dad.

Halt:

Halt: I love you too son.

Heads up, there's going to be quite a few on here, because I have a lot to say on the matter. Mind the tags, there is some potentially triggering stuff here

Halt's back is covered with scars from beatings his father gave him as a child. He also has a nick on his left ear from where a bandit threw a knife that narrowly missed his head. The place where the poisoned arrow hit him in book 9 left a permanent discolored scar that always reminds Will how close he was to losing his teacher. There is a split in his right eyebrow and an accompanying scar that goes all the way up to his hairline from a close call with a bandit that actually knew how to use his sword. Halt has multiple scars on his scalp hidden by his hair from the number of times he's been hit on the head (there are other side effects as well, but I'll make a separate post on that later). The wounds from the Kalkara are still on his leg, and will cause chronic pain when the weather changes, or after a particularly long day riding. There are self-inflicted injuries on his inner thighs, the oldest being from his childhood, and the newest being from after Will was taken. He's not proud of them, but he is proud that he hasn't relapsed since - though he has come close plenty of times.

Will has a couple lash marks from his time as a slave, and the nerves in his fingers and toes are damaged from the exposure he suffered through in the yard. He has exactly one scar on his wrist from an attempt on his own life, but thankfully Halt recognized the signs from his own experiences and put a stop to it before he got worse. The incident was actually what lead to Will learning of Halt's own struggles, though Halt didn't tell him that the issue was right behind him rather than a long time ago.

Alyss has a scar along her palm from a deep cut from when she was first learning to use her dagger. She wasn't being irresponsible or anything, but she had dropped it and reacted on pure instinct by catching it. Unfortunately, while she did catch it, her hand had wrapped around the blade. She's still a bit embarrassed by it, and she learned the number one rule of a falling blade the hard way: let it fall and get clear, DO NOT try to catch it.

Jenny has countless burn scars on her hands and arms from accidents in the kitchen - both as a student to Chubb, and in her own restaurant. There are so many that the nerves in her hands have been damaged to the point where she is completely unable to feel texture.

George is completely content with the only major scar he has being from the arrow he was hit by in Nihon-Ja.

There's more swimming around in my brain, but I'm tired and this post is long enough as is.

This is your invitation to talk about what scars you think the RA characters have and how they got them

Random Ranger's Apprentice Headcanons (mostly Halt tbh)

I might elaborate further on some of these later, and I definitely have more than I'm posting this time around. Let me know what you guys think. I love having conversations about this shit

~ Will has found that the best way to ground himself during panic attacks or hard days since returning from Skandia is to hold a warm hand and a mug of coffee. He wasn't allowed to have coffee as a slave, and while Cassandra (then Evanlyn) held his hand, hers was always cold

~ Halt has a hard time sleeping because he is constantly plagued by nightmares. When Will was taken, he started having them about his death, and how the apprentice would blame Halt for being too slow

~ Halt is actually ambidextrous. He was born left-handed, but his parents forced him to learn to use his right hand due to left-handedness being seen as a sign of the devil. He still prefers to do a lot of things with his left hand though

~ Crowley is an only child. His parents tried for years, and it was only after they had given up that his mom became pregnant with Crowley. He is close with his parents, but he was unable to talk to them at all after Pritchard was banished up until Morgorath was defeated out of fear of putting them in harm's way

~ It was never diagnosed, (because, yk, the middle ages), but Halt actually has POTS syndrome. It wasn't too bad when he was younger, he would get out of bed and black out sometimes, or he would stand up and have to freeze for a moment until his head and vision cleared, and doing extreme exercises was fine, but walking up the castle steps could only be done with controlled deep breathing. However, in the last year of Will's apprenticeship, it seemed to get worse. The first time he full-on passed out in front of someone, he and Will had made camp, Halt had stood up only to collapse back to the ground. Will was frantic, and practically cradled Halt in his lap until he became responsive again about 12 minutes later

>> Will had never been that terrified in his life, because it was the only time that Halt was ever completely unresponsive when it was just him and Will throughout his whole apprenticeship. The guilt of that terror was what convinced Halt to see a healer (though it didn't do any good)

~ Pauline is 100% open to the idea of bringing Crowley into her and Halt's relationship, but they are both too scared to bring it up to her, so she has to do everything herself

~ He would only say this under threat of imminent death, but Arald sees Halt as a younger brother, mind you, a younger brother who constantly causes chaos and deserves to be cuffed around the ear sometimes, but still

~ Alyss once punched someone in the face and threatened their life for insulting Will behind his back

~ Before KoC, Will played a Hibernian ballad at a ranger gathering, but never noticed Halt slipping away with tears in his eyes, as he had picked one of Caitlyn's favorite songs

~ Believe it or not, Halt is actually incredibly ticklish. Will and Gilan learned this after Crowley pinched his sides at a gathering and Halt shrieked and leapt into the air. They will never let him live it down, and Crowley is obsessed with the weakness, finding it absolutely hilarious and adorable

~ Horace cried the first time he held Maddie. Then Will came to meet her, and he cried even more

~ Halt's regular handwriting is a strange mix between cursive and print, but he can copy anyone else's handwriting with little more than a glance. It's a skill that exasperates anyone who has to read his reports, because if they annoy him beforehand, he'll use their own handwriting

~ Before coming to Araluen, Halt had never seen a snake before, and his unfortunate first meeting was with the renegade rangers when a (fortunately non-venomous) snake got tangled in his blankets and he woke everyone else up screaming absolute bloody murder. Since then, he always freezes at the sight of a snake, and Crowley tells the story any time he's reminded of it

I'm back with more drawings!

Some more art because I love these silly little characters too much