Echo Riverhunt

[Wren]

Watch the red sun rise, feel the cool wind in your face. Stay on your toes, watch your step. Your next one might take you over the edge.

-Above the Surface-
Name: Echo Riverhunt
Species: River Otter—specifically he’s a Eurasian otter
Age: 36 seasons

Birth Date: July 18

Gender: Male
Occupation and Home: He’s in Skipper’s crew, lives in Redwall for the most part.
Alignment: Goodbeast

Appearance:

He’s large and muscular, as is typical of an otter. He has a heavy rudder, perhaps slightly longer than average. Despite his large size, he is agile and highly flexible. His head is narrow, his tiny ears pulled back against his skull. His whiskers are generally perked and he has a large nose and cheerful but hard black eyes. His fur is long and sleek, typical cinnamon brown with a pale underside. But he does have one unusual feature. On his neck, mostly under his chin and trailing down to his chest, his fur is slightly spotted with golden fur.

Clothing: Like anyone else, he has a varied wardrobe, but he does have a few favorites.

• Most commonly, he’ll wear his dark red cotton shirt, collared and open halfway down his chest to show off some of his muscles. The sleeves are long but he rolls them up to his elbows. Just black pants with that, thank you, and a black leather belt. No shoes. Oddly enough, he never wears shoes.
  
• He wears a leather jerkin on occasion, it’s sort of his light armor or it’s something to keep him warm during brisker weather. Again, black pants. Though on occasion he likes to wear a cavalier hat with a long red plume with this particular outfit.
  
• White long-sleeved shirt, nothing special, with a dark brown hooded cloak over top though he never wears the hood even if its raining.

- Face-to-Face -
Weapon(s):

Echo is familiar with the sling and carries one but rarely uses it. His main weapons are his javelins. He has several but generally only carries one around because to bring more would be inconvenient and probably unnecessary. His javelins are long—about his own height—yet simple, with redwood shafts and sleek two-edge spearheads. Like all otter javelins, his have two spearheads, one on each end, but he’s considering taking one end off simply because he’d rather like to start using them for walking staffs or something to that effect. You just can’t do that properly if one end of the staff keeps sticking into the earth.

-Below the Surface-
Personality:
He’s definitely a child at heart. He’s seen his share of hard times, but it’s never slowed him down. He’s never been bitter, never been one to mourn. He’s constantly cheerful and playful, like other otters, but Echo often doesn’t know when to quit. He’s a joker, loves nothing more than to make someone laugh. Which can be a problem when he’s supposed to be serious. Some his own age find him irritating, others amusing, but Echo enjoys playing with the dibbuns as though he were one.

Still, don’t let his playful nature fool you. Admittedly, Echo hasn’t been in too many real fights with too many real enemies. Maybe the occasional lone weasel needs to be chased off or maybe some strange river creature is swimming too close for comfort. Echo can handle these things, but who couldn’t? Still, even if he hasn’t had a lot of experience, he has a lot of potential, even in his ripe age. He can handle a javelin like no other and he’s got the determination to defend what he cares about, even to the death.

He’s not a fool, he’ll give up if he thinks giving up will allow him to get out of whatever bad situation in the future. But if he sees no hope down the road, he’ll keep fighting until there’s nothing left of him or his enemy.

Likes:

• Fish! And shrimp and hotroot soup.
  
• He enjoys playing with dibbuns or telling them stories, though in truth despite his age Echo is practically still a dibbun himself.
  
• He enjoys a fight when he can actually get into one, but this has been rare thus far in his life.

Dislikes:

• Uptight old sisters at the abbey.
  
• October Ale. That’s right, he hates the stuff.
  
• Serious moments. He doesn’t really know how to react to them.

-Digging Deeper-
Strengths:

• Well…he’s a born fisherman. You want him around when you’re in need of a quick meal.
  
• He’s good with the javelin, both with just using it to block and attack and with throwing it. Don’t ask exactly how he’s good at it, suffice to know he could probably kick your tail with this weapon.
  
• Cheerful, optimistic, it’s hard to bring him down.
  
• Highly outgoing and friendly, always willing to help. Though if its help in the kitchen you need he might snag a few pawfuls of whatever you’re making.

Weaknesses:

• He’s seen little real action, as far as battles go.
  
• He’s reasonable with the sling but it is far from being a strong point. He only hits his target about 65% of the time.
  
• Some might consider his constantly bright and optimistic personality an annoyance.
  
• He’s quick to attack but slow to kill. Which can be considered a weakness because this hesitation could easily allow his enemies time to recover and retaliate.

History:
Watch the red sun rise, feel the cool wind in your face. Stay on your toes, watch your step. Your next one might take you over the edge.

Echo’s parents both died when he was very young, at the hands of a small band of vermin. Typical sad beginning, right? But he was never bitter about it. He never used it as an excuse or as leverage. He’s a cheerful beast, always has been. Though in retrospect he never really knew his parents, seeing as how he was scarcely two seasons old at the time. He was adopted by his uncle, whose true name was something Echo could never pronounce, even now. Echo just called him Uncle Sprint.

Sprint was a jolly otter, rather fat though a skilled fisher. He wasn’t a warrior, but he taught Echo the use of a javelin. ‘Course…Sprint really only used the javelin for spiking fish on. Echo always envied the otters of the Skipper’s crew. Whenever they’d gather for the Hullaballoo, Echo immediately gathered with the other young otters to hear the stories of Redwall Abbey and the warrior who carried Martin’s sword at the time.

At 13 seasons, a sickness struck Echo and Sprint. A sickening, lung-wrenching cough that made breathing almost impossible. Echo was young, he eventually was able to recover, but Sprint was old. At 64 seasons, the elder otter’s hour glass had run out. Echo stayed in the house for days with him even after Sprint breathed his last. It was Echo’s first real brush with the harsh reality of the world.

But Sprint’s typical pick-me-up, get moving attitude had worn off on Echo. The otter performed the burial service with himself as the lone attendant. Sprint and Echo had always lived away from other otters, and it would take too long for Echo to meet up with others and give them the news. Sprint deserved to finally be buried.

Echo didn’t drop his head or drag his feet, not for a moment. At first the smiles were painful, the laughter forced. But eventually he got over it on the inside as well as the outside, and, well…Echo grew up.

The next few years passed quickly. He tried to “court” several girls (he’s an amusingly proper guy around the females of his species) but he has never married. He joined Skipper’s crew at age 19 and has stuck with it ever since, though mostly he’s in it for the chance to stay at Redwall often and eat the wonderful food. Truth be told though he’d never been in much of a real battle. He helped the crew take on a river eel, but beyond that he’d seen very little real action. He’s been living this way for the past 27 seasons and still going strong. But time will tell if he’s ready to fight in a real battle, face-to-face with the species that took away his mother and father.