Character Crunch: Riala Goldentail

This month, I’m going to take a look at Riala Goldentail, a female squirrel of “many seasons”. While her exact age is never mentioned, one can infer from her extensive life experience that Riala is probably over forty years old.

Her appearance is as follows:

Riala is of relatively average height for a squirrel. Her fur is a reddish brown and marred by a lattice of pale scars. Like her name indicates, her bushy tail is a rust-gold. Her ears are tufted and her paws are heavily callused. Riala's eyes are gold-brown and shadowed with the darkness of her past. She rarely smiles, and when she does, the scars on her face twist her features into a grotesque expression that looks more like a grimace than a grin. Her voice is rough and somewhat low, indicating that she'd be an alto if she sang, but she's tone deaf and so doesn't sing at all. The squirrel's form is lean, her muscles taut and wiry, her posture suggesting a constant readiness for action, like a tightly wound spring ready to release at any moment. […] Riala typically wears clothing that blends with her surroundings, which usually means a mottled forest green and brown tunic. A rope belt holds her dagger and roce, and a pouch containing flint, a whetstone, and dry tender hangs from the belt as well. Around her neck is a pendant ocarina, round in shape and made of clay, with an abstract design surrounding a polished blue orb. It's a high-pitched, sweet-sounding instrument that she is still learning how to play, yet she almost never plays it around otherbeasts. It was given to her by a young mousemaid named Hope in a slave pit who was later killed in a battle between the creatures of Fort Ruddler and the slavers.

The amount of detail may appear overwhelming—but this is not necessarily the case. The reason it seems so imposing at first glance is because nearly every sentence is similarly constructed: a string of description, the conjunction ‘and,’ and then a second string of description. Also, while there are some instances of good characterization through detail (the most notable being “her posture suggesting a constant readiness for action, like a tightly wound spring…”) most of the listed features are simply that: just physical characteristics. They don’t reveal a lot of her personality, which, as I’ve mentioned previously, is something character description has to do to be effective.

That said, a lot of thought has obviously gone into this paragraph. Riala’s appearance is addressed from head to tail—from her height to the history of her ocarina and everything in between. I particularly liked the description of her little instrument; it’s a nice touch, especially because of the statement made in the middle of that section: “she is still learning how to play”. Yes! Most of the characters on the ROC are either instant masters or completely befuddled when it comes to coaxing a tune from an instrument, so Riala’s gradual but effective learning is the exception. The realism that this conveys gives the author credibility.

Included in the biography is an entire half-page of descriptions of her scars and her weapons. While I won’t quote any of it in particular, I will mention that the mere presence of this much detail about Riala really hammers home the fact that she’s a warrior—and, in some ways, nothing more. That said, I certainly don’t mean to imply that she is one-dimensional. Take a look at her personality profile.

Riala is a veteran warrior of many seasons, with a hardened soul blocked from most emotion. Too many sorrows have scarred her and made her cold, so cold that to some goodbeasts she seems as verminous as any vermin. She has absolutely no pity for vermin, and no mercy when it comes to fighting them. It's hard for her to accept any goodbeasts that are normally vermin, but she can do it - except in the case of wolverines. Riala hates the species, and can never accept that one might be at all good. In battle, Riala tends to let bloodwrath overtake her; in fact, she can hardly keep it from doing so.

Verminous? Is that a word? But besides that, the paragraph reveals the hard heart I mentioned above. While done in a coldly elegant way, this kind of personality is too overdone in the ROC, especially when one considers Riala’s past: both her father and her almost-lover Aeloein were murdered by wolverines. The result? Our squirrel warrior hates every member of said species, to the point that, while she can accept that some vermin have been reformed and even work alongside them, wolverines are beyond redemption in her eyes.

Though there is room for improvement, I don’t suggest a complete change in Riala’s personality and/or history. Why? Because I see potential for incredible development here, and a potential storyline. The premise: a wolverine who is truly good (none of that Veil Sixclaw stuff) meets Riala in a neutral place where she cannot take his life. What happens? Does she accept him for who he is, finally able to look past the barrier that is his species? Or does she pretend to befriend him, awaiting the moment when she can finally slay her unsuspecting, guiltless foe?

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but the most interesting stories—with few exceptions—are those in which a character confronts his or her greatest flaws or fears. Every time I create a character, I am constantly considering the faults I’ve given them and thinking, What story can I create with this? Another way to say “the conflict that comes with battling one’s own shortcomings” is in two simple words—character development. And after all, what’s a story without character development?

Back to Riala. Her (abbreviated) biography reads like so:

She was born in a forest in the Northern Mountains. She never knew her mother, who died in childbirth. It was her warrior father, Rilar Battlecry, who raised her as best he could. […] Yet when Riala was but a few seasons old, a black wolverine named Nightdeath Longclaws came to their drey and challenged Rilar to a duel. They fought, but when Riala's father seemed to be winning, Nightdeath growled three short times - a signal to his weasel archers... and Rilar became riddled with arrows. Riala vowed to take revenge on the wolverine, and tracked him for many seasons. […] She caught up to him near Southsward and finally took her revenge. However, her entire life purpose before then had been to seek vengeance for her father's death, and now that purpose was gone. The feeling of having no purpose in life nearly drove her to suicide, but a northlander squirrel bard named Aeloein stopped her. They became very close and perhaps they would have married if he had not been killed by a wolverine. […] she fell back into her old ways of distrust and being emotionless. She eventually found her way to Fort Ruddler where she was befriended by two hares, Mackbry Taffellappen and Teltoli Riverbuck, who worked at getting her to come out of her shell and open up. She led a patrol from Fort Ruddler but remained behind when the patrol returned to the fort, sending along with them her letter of resignation.

“A few seasons old”—I immediately bristle at that statement. And it doesn’t get too much better for a bit thereafter: “vowed to take revenge” and “finally took her revenge”. This storyline has been used so often in the Redwall fandom that seeing it immediately screams “newbie” at me. I know that’s not fair—that some more experiences members use the basis as well (though they often take a step further). But the cold, revenge-seeking, unbelievably competent warrior is just too overdone.

Nevertheless, the next sentence breathes new life into Riala. Her lack of motivation leaves her faltering, seeking a purpose—and she almost kills herself in the process of discovering why she is alive. Suicide is a touchy subject—with good reason—and is, as a rule, avoided on the ROC except by the most ambitious of writers. Riala’s attempt, however, is foiled by the creature that will become her only loved one besides her family, the squirrelbard Aeloein. While it has become a cliché as well, the story of true love redeeming a seemingly lost life is useful in this situation because it endears the reader to Aeloein right away.

I wish, though, that he hadn’t been killed—a fault of role playing, I think, since it seems like Riala’s author might have intended for there to be something more between those two than what actually transpired. His willingness to take this scarred, battered, no longer beautiful squirrel under his wing and even love her is an intriguing concept, and Riala’s personality would have gained that much more depth through the conflict between her instincts and her heart.

So much care has gone into constructing Riala’s biography (the entirety of which can be found at http://www.snowspine.com/riala/about.html) that I have a hard time imagining that the author would not eagerly alter those few facets of her personality that fall into the cliché category. With time and, believe it or not, more work, Riala Goldentail can become one of those rarities on the ROC—a well-rounded, almost completely developed character whose author knows her reaction to every situation.

-Vitora