Age: 28
Gender: Male
Field of Study: History
Physical Description: Zandah stands at 6'1", and weighs 180 lbs, with a relatively lanky build. He has an oval-shaped face with a strong jawline, a large nose, full lips, and thick eyebrows. His hair is black and curly, and he usually wears it in a ponytail that reaches his shoulders, though it would fall several inches further if straightened and left loose. His eyes are dark brown, and are round. Zandah shaves almost every day, and gets stubble quickly if he misses one. Zandah has no tattoos, piercings, or notable scars. He is severely nearsighted, and corrects this with glasses.
Zandah's clothing style is intentionally nondescript. He prefers dark colors, and refuses to wear anything with prominent brand names or writing on it. He always wears blue jeans, typically paired with a t-shirt and weather-appropriate overwear and accessories. On the day of the expedition, he wore dark blue jeans, a black t-shirt, a thick black pea coat, light grey fingerless gloves, brown hiking boots with black socks, and a dark blue beanie as a concession to the cold. Zandah broke his normal glasses the day before departure, so was forced to rely on his prescription sunglasses for the duration of the trip. These are square-framed, tinted black, and are a slightly outdated prescription.
Background:
- Zandah is the only child born to a couple living in Seattle, Washington. When he was four years old, his parents divorced amicably, having discovered that they were simply fundamentally incompatible as romantic partners. Zandah's father moved to Southern California, and soon fell largely out of the picture, though he kept on top of child support payments and did make periodic calls and visits if he happened to be in the area. Zandah never minded too much, as he grew up with this state of affairs.
- Zandah's childhood was mostly relatively easy, as his mother managed to make ends meet as an accountant with help from her family and his father's child support payments. He learned to entertain himself at a young age, as with no siblings and a single parent he often lacked stimulation.
- When Zandah was eleven, his mother remarried. His stepfather owned his own plumbing business, and his mother became the bookkeeper for it, allowing them a comfortable middle class existence, though never more, as neither had enough of a head for business to achieve grand success or expand beyond a handful of employees. Zandah and his stepfather didn't always get along, as the man was focused on the trades and physical labor, while Zandah had a more intellectual bent, but his mom usually managed to keep the peace.
- Scholastically, Zandah found a strange mix of success and challenge. He took to academics naturally, often landing in advanced classes even in elementary school, but he grew bored easily and hand a strong tendency to slack off, relying on his natural talent to pull him back out of trouble. He often failed to complete homework, but as his grades never dropped below a B, his family more or less let him do what he wanted.
- Socially, Zandah made friends primarily with outcasts, nerds, and those who didn't fit cleanly into the clique structure of school. He tended to drift to some degree, often losing touch with friends or becoming very close very quickly with new people for a short time. Zandah has a measure of charisma that lets him fairly smoothly integrate in many situations, but he also tends to be somewhat passive and non-confrontational, and can be a bit of a doormat for other strong voices.
- After graduation, Zandah intended to take a single gap year before pursuing further education, but the stress of college applications plus a generally poor sense of personal direction instead led him to spend the next eight years working various low-paying jobs, all the while expressing an intention to start college soon. During this time, he has sometimes lived on his own, but more often remained with his parents, which has strained his relationship with his stepfather specifically at various points.
- Finally, in Autumn 2020, Zandah entered the University of Cascadia, with a declared English Literature major. He found himself somewhat out of place among the generally younger student populace, and most of his social life revolves instead around the part-time cafe job he still holds or friends from outside of school. He has since changed his major twice, and is currently a History major, though the bulk of his coursework has been in general requirements. He currently lives in a small apartment that he shares with two roommates, but he rarely interacts with them and spends most of his time in his room.
- Zandah's free time is largely spent online, participating in various communities centered around his hobbies and interests. He has a particular fondness for comics and science fiction. He also plays various online video games, and has on and off participated in roleplaying campaigns both online and in-person though it's been more than six months since the last one concluded.
- Over the years, Zandah has drifted through a vast number of hobbies, generally pursuing them for a few weeks or months before losing interest. He gets discouraged easily if he's not immediately good at something, and tends to set unrealistic expectations for himself. He is currently focused on culinary crafts, and he has found some success cooking his own dinners, though his attempts to home-brew mead have been more hit and miss.
- Zandah's social group skews quite progressive, and he hold these views himself, though he tends to avoid talking politics with others and is much more able to set them aside for the sake of an interaction than many of his friends. He tends to be good at smoothing over ideological differences within his friend group, at least to the point of preventing schisms from disrupting conversation, but has a harder time asserting himself in a one-on-one situation.
- Zandah still works weekends and Fridays at a cafe, and while he has very little personal affection for the job, he's well-liked by his coworkers and regular customers. He's fairly easily able to navigate office politics to the extent that they exist, and is good at disarming tension even with somewhat difficult customers, who he tends to volunteer to deal with instead of more junior staff.
- Throughout his life, Zandah has struggled with gender identity and expression, preferring traditionally feminine things and personally associating with femininity and traditionally feminine traits. He has generally kept this extremely quiet, despite coming from a liberal family and being close friends with a number of individuals in the LGBT+ community, and has more or less talked himself into ignoring the situation, though sometimes doubts resurface.
- Zandah's attitude is largely downbeat and somewhat nihilistic. He is pessimistic about the state of humanity, the trajectory of the world on an environmental level, and his own personal prospects for the future. He doesn't really know what he wants out of life or what makes him happy in more than a transient way, and this tends to lead him to getting stuck in routine, or else to him making scattershot changes to his life without any clear intent behind them in an effort to somehow improve his state of affairs.
- Zandah has briefly dated a few women, but struggles to be emotionally close to others and also struggles to see his own value, traits which have together led to quick terminations of these relationships. Right now, his plan is to set romance aside and focus on school, though part of him suspects he's just making excuses for his own inability to maintain a relationship.
- The study trip presents an interesting opportunity for Zandah, and he is hoping it will shake him out of his recent funk and help him rekindle a passion for history through more direct personal interaction with the subject; he has otherwise been considering returning to English Literature after all, but the credits are good either way. He has some ethical misgivings about the trip's sponsors, but is used to quashing such concerns, among others.
Assets: Zandah has a large but shallow pool of knowledge, having dabbled in many interests and areas of study over the years without ever properly committing; still, the odds are decent some of his generalist knowledge may prove accurate and/or applicable. He is relatively good at defusing conflict and navigating social situations, with practice both from navigating his job and his sometimes-politically-contentious social group.
Limitations: Zandah's worldview is very gloomy, and he often resigns himself to bad situations rather than trying to change or escape them. He can be pushed around by others relatively easily. He stands a little apart from his classmates, having cultivated few social connections in his time at school. Zandah is currently forced to rely on prescription sunglasses several years out of date, limiting his vision.
