211th Hunger Games

## Taw Hawthorn

**Name**: Taw Hawthorn

**Age**: Eighteen

**District**: Ten

**Gender**: Male

**Personality**: The calm, the clarity, the intelligence, the assured demeanor. The harsh appearance that seemed to be eternally at odds with an innate delicacy that did not mean frailty. One mere glance was enough for one to make note of these features, all of which rippled out of him like an aura. He may not have been the tallest or toughest, but he had a certain quality to him his peers lacked in terms of his appearance and demeanor. Taw was an interesting fellow. As a child, he had been prone to a great deal of mischief. He could not help it, he found too much amusement in causing his own share of trouble, even though he more often than not turned out to receive nothing but more trouble in return for his actions, and two-fold. His penchant for disorder seemed to stem from no place in particular, although truth be told, he had been filled with anger for as long as he could remember. If the ever so dreary world he had been brought into had no use for people like him, if it did not have a better place and higher tasks for him, well, in that case, people like him would go to pot, and the loss would be the world's, but until that were to happen he would make it his mission to raise hell wherever he went.

This suffocating anger had been all he had ever known up until the point in which he annexed himself to the working force of District Ten at the age of fourteen, which was when his choleric disposition left and gave room to a crippling bout of existential dread that filled his mind well past his working hours. Such was his insatisfaction with the powers that be. Truth be told, even though the anger he long harbored had been left behind, the bone had had to pick with the people that ran the country he lived in and enslaved its people ended up staying with him well into his late teens. It took on a new shape, however, and that was one that reeked of revolution. If his anger was once expressed through small acts of mischief that provided him with a wide range of stories to tell once he calmed down at last, it was now what made him into quite the rebel. He was, however, an intelligent and careful young man and did his best to steer clear of any public display of his disapproval towards the system.

**Appearance**: Shrewd working-class youngster who knew where his interests lay, Taw bore a resolute expression of serious resolve at all times. He possessed a pair of glazed over, dark brown eyes that bordered on black and were given a subtle hint of murky green when he stood in the light. These were framed by thick eyebrows and rather long lashes that gave an almost drowsy quality to his gaze if one was to hold it for long enough. His graceful body was usually crammed into the hideous gray uniform he wore to work and he tended to plaster his hair flat with water whenever he was to depart the confines of his home, giving little thought to the maintanance of the dark mane that framed his face. His appearance was sandy and foxlike, and hours spent butchering carcasses under the flickering lights of the slaughterhouse had replaced the sun's caress with quite the lifeless touch to his skin tone. Taw was of tall figure and possessed wide shoulders, although he had little to show in the way of muscle mass, being more agile than strong. His voice was quiet, albeit deep, and his usual nature was brooding and solitary.

**Backstory**:

* The boy was born in a ramshackle town that God himself had forgotten located somewhere near the outskirts of District Ten. His father was a brand applier and his mother had been out of the picture for as long as he could remember, to the point where her existence in the eyes of the young Taw was closer to that of a phantom than a maternal figure.
* He had been prone to rebellious acts starting from a very young age, his streak of mischief further driving him apart from his distant father, who didn't much raise him to begin with, but had never shown himself to be abusive or flippant either.
* In an effort to quiet the antics of his son, Taw's father put him to work at the age of fourteen, when his rebellious streak had reached its peak and he was sure to wind up a juvenile delinquent should no one intervene.
* He was employed in a slaughterhouse, his job consisting chiefly of killing cows swiftly with a bolt gun. He threw up for the first time in years when he came home after his first day. Throughout his first months working there, the slaughterhouse kept coming back to revisit him at night.
* He had also been tasked with working on skinning due to possessing careful, surprisingly delicate hands that could get around all the curves of a cow. A large sum of his waking hours was to be spent splitting carcasses open, relieving them of their body and slipping the skin off.
* Taw was to live out quite the uneventful life. Through working in the slaughterhouse he was able to scrounge up enough coin to leave his father's house and move into a gloomy and drab pension room at the age of seventeen. He would go on to become accustomed to his line of work overtime, becoming quite robotic in the manner in which he took in the gruesome setting around him and carried out the tasks that were expected of him.
* If he was a brooding and quiet fellow on the outside, his inner monologue was one of sheer desperation. He could not bear to live out what he perceived to be such a meaningless life and could not find the means to better his own predicament. It was the Capitol that he resented for his inability to make a change. He was no organizer, however, and he found that it was best to keep thoughts of such revolutionary nature to himself.
* He had an innate aura to him that drew people in, but he had always been one to push them out and never had what one could call a close friend, even though one could always expect to find him in the company of his coworkers down at the pub after a long day of work.
* His days had been merging together for months on end with no new developments taking place when his name was drawn from the Reaping bowl during the last Reaping he was to take part in. He took this turn of events in stride, all things considered. Hell, maybe this was just what he needed to make something out of his life.

**Mannerisms**:

**Height**: 6'1

**Weight**: 157 lbs.

**Dominant Hand**: Right-handed.

**Other Information**: His birthday falls on the 24th of March.

**Weaponry**: Knife, Cleaver.

**Strengths**: Extreme precision with blades, advanced anatomic knowledge, beyond comfortable with blood and murder.

**Weaknesses**: Incapable of swimming, climbing and foraging. Little knowledge in the way of plant identification and living off the wild when it comes to hunting.

**Fears**:

**Alliance**: Loner

**Token**: Taw owns no token.

## Jonnie Winstanley

**Name**: Jonnie Winstanley

**Age**: Seventeen

**District**: Twelve

**Gender**: Female

**Personality**: Jonnie is one to set very high standards for herself and seek to go about things in her own unique way. She is quite the driven individual, although at times, unforeseen circumstances may blow her off course or interrupt her sense of focus and control. This ties into the manner in which she tries to not deviate from her routine, change being something that prevents her from relying on her perfectionism, especially when it comes out of the blue. She has an ingrained way of approaching life that she relies on under pressure or stress, and she possesses an air of calm and serenity to her that cannot seem to be shaken. Her way of coming across is calm and collected, and some may even call her friendly. Her friends know her as a warm and understanding young woman, one to never pass judgment on someone without first knowing where they are coming from. She is one to fall into deep conversation without even thinking too much on it, and has never had difficulty making an acquaintance or striking up a conversation with someone she may find interesting, regardless of the environment she may find herself in. This is something she has consciously striven to tone down following her employment in the Hunger Games, as no good would come from perceiving her competition as anything other than prey in a setting as gnarly as a fight to the death.

In spite of the sense of tranquility that tends to wash over those who indulge Jonnie in a casual conversation, she is not all that serene. Her goals have always been a moving target and rather than devoting herself to just one cause, she may often change her mind, whether that be out of pure will or as a result of erratic events disrupting what she had been trying to accomplish, turning her off from whatever it was she had been working towards. She can sometimes fall short when it comes to meeting the standards she set for herself, which may create a lingering sense of frustration, which could very well dominate her life. There is a catch to such crippling pattern, however. These feelings of frustration are precisely what give Jonnie her drive, as well as her discipline and capacity to work hard. Without them, it would be difficult for Jonnie to deliver on the level at which she is capable; her perfectionism makes her more practical and grounded.

Jonnie also possesses a philosophical side to her, which is one of the very first things one may notice when making her acquaintance. She has long harbored doubts as to the value of her own existence and she continues to ponder over her purpose and place in life amidst the fierce trials and tribulations of being forced into an all-out death match against twenty-seven other teenagers, all of whom will do anything in order to achieve their aim of winning, which is just what Jonnie intends to do.

**Appearance**:

**Backstory**: [WIP] For as long as she could remember, Jonnie has had to deal with the sense that she does not belong. Tossed aside as a babe and placed in the sole community home of District Twelve, she was no stranger to a sense of hopelessness that curled her shoulders forward as a young girl.

* Highlight her thirst for knowledge of languages and civilizations past.
* The aforementioned ties into her rebel nature.
* Resentment towards the powers that be for withholding knowledge from the masses.
* Drawn to the cheerful colors of the Capitol, a pleasure she lacks during her everyday life.
* This contributes to her resentment towards them.
* She craves color and artistic expression and the lack of resources and opportunities for her to tap into this down in Twelve have never failed to anger her.
* She has always been intrigued by the Hunger Games as a statement on human nature but has never actually watched them outside of mandatory viewing, and believes they are barbaric and their abolition is long overdue.
* Her life in the orphanage is also relevant, especially when it comes to how it relates to her way of coming across and the way in which she managed to break out of that rigidness as she came into her own.
* Flesh out some of her friends, as they are her family for all causes and effects.
* Her philosophical side is definitely quite prominent throughout her backstory.
* Her search for purpose should be the main theme here.
* Her backstory should have no conclusion, the Games are where it will continue.

**Mannerisms**:

**Height**: 5'6

**Weight**: 117 lbs.

**Dominant Hand**: Left-handed.

**Other Information**: Her birthday falls on the 15th of April. She has no known living family members.

**Weaponry**:

**Strengths**:

**Weaknesses**:

**Fears**:

**Alliance**: Loner

**Token**:

## Sage Griffith

**Name**: Sage Griffith

**Age**: Eighteen

**District**: Fourteen

**Gender**: Female

**Personality**: [WIP] Insecure, distant, tries to overcompensate

**Backstory**: [WIP] Sage was born to quite the demanding parents, both of which happened to be avid supporters of the Capitol.

* She was encouraged to watch the Hunger Games from a very young age.
* She grew accustomed to the brutality overtime, but never quite cared for the spectacle in the way her parents did.
* Her performance in an academic setting was plain disastrous, which her parents brought up in order to put her down quite often.
* She showed no signs of improvement overtime, which led to a great deal of insecurity with the addition of her parents' vitriol.
* Learned she was dyslexic from one of her teachers, quite possibly the first one to ever care to try and actually help her out in any way.
* Assuming there was no way she would succeed when it came to school, her parents were quick to suggest she veer off her present course and put some thought into becoming part of one of the many training academies scattered around the District.
* Eager to please her parents and believing there was nothing else she could excel at due to the insecurities that had come to plague her during the past years of her life, she agreed without much deliberation and started her journey as a Career at the age of eleven.
* Her first year at the academy was brutal, but she was whipped into prime shape quite quickly and showed a great deal of promise in the eyes of many of her instructors.
* Content with her newfound confidence and the positive feedback she had been receiving for the first time ever in her life, she broke protocol and tried to volunteer at twelve, being passed up by the escort in favor of the academy's pick, an eighteen year old girl.
* Quite content with the newfound confidence the positive feedback had given her, something she was not at all used to, she broke protocol and attempted to volunteer during her first Reaping ceremony, being passed up by the escort in favor of an older girl that had been handpicked by her academy.
* She was beaten up pretty bad by a group of girls the following morning at the academy, they had claimed she had been mistaken for thinking she was special and needed to be taught a lesson so as to learn she's no better than the other trainees.
* Rather than reverting back to her old ways of insecurity following the incident, she used the anger that filled her as motivation and put her all into training. She turned quite obsessive, practicing overtime and even surpassing a bunch of the older kids in ranks. The anger clouded her judgment, however, and she never really lost sight of the beating.
* This proved to be very bad, for during a fit of rage, she accidentally murdered one of the girls that had jumped her during a culling match.
* Accidents of this nature were not uncommon at the academy, and she got away without any consequences more grave than the vitriol of some of the kids the girl had been friends with in life. Nonetheless, the toll the incident took on her was far more severe than any of the words directed at her, and for the first time she was truly faced with what awaited her should she keep walking down this path.
* This troubled her to an alarming degree, but alas she could not bring herself to quit as she cared too much about the approval of her parents and the possible repercussions of her stepping down. At the end of the day, no amount of praise could convince her that she was good for anything other than killing, if anything the compliments she received at the academy just reinforced this belief. In line with this, she continued training as though nothing had happened, though she was deeply regretful of what she had done.
* Turned quite robotic when it came to the fashion in which she trained, trying to distance herself as far as she could from her own emotions in order to achieve good results. She maintained a record winning streak in her next culling matches, growing to be the star pupil of the academy and pegged as an emotionless killing machine, something that was not completely true.
* Nonetheless, she mastered all one possibly could with the limited resources of the academy throughout the seven years she spent there, and ranked first within the females by the time she was sixteen.
* She was able to defend her position at the top for the following two years, being picked by the academy to volunteer at the age of eighteen, which she did along with a couple of girls from other academies. In the end, she was the one picked.
* Looking forward to winning and proving that she is indeed good for something, she will stop at nothing in order to emerge from the arena victorious, although her newfound distance from her parents and the expectations that weighed down on her at the academy could influence quite the eventful journey of growth for Sage as she comes into her own and realizes that her real desires and aspirations may not exactly line up with the expectations of those she had been mindlessly trying to please, all with the Hunger Games as backdrop for her internal turmoil.

**Mannerisms**: Beneath her inexpressive exterior, Sage is quite an intricate individual. Truth to be told, when she is not pushing herself to the limit at the academy, she rather enjoys poetry. Being unable to read and write, she has one of her few friends recite off a book for her, something that seems to calm her more than anything else. She can even be heard mumbling some of her own creations to herself when unable to fall asleep, and should she emerge as the winner during the Games, one of her first investments would be private tutoring tailored to her dyslexia, which would hopefully allow her to overcome her illiteracy, which is not only a source of embarrassment for her but also keeps her from documenting her own craft and seeking out the works of other poets. One of the biggest sources of fear for Sage is that, even though she has all her treasured works memorized, her inability to lay them down on paper and reluctance to relay them to her friends due to a deep-rooted fear of criticism means that all her creations die with her in the arena. Her passion of poetry is one very few people know about, however. True to character, Sage perceives it as another thing to be embarrassed over.

When it comes to her habitual gestures or way of speaking and behaving, Sage has been known to trail off from time to time, not being quite certain of what words she should choose to express herself. Furthermore, she is not at all expressive. When she is to react to something, there is a high probability of there being a two second delay, as she would be merely mimicking those around her in order to blend in. While she does feel things very intensely, the criticism she received from her parents as a child motivated her to bottle up her emotions at all times, and even though she has long since relegated those harsh words to the back of her mind, they still dictate her behavior more than she would care to admit, one of these ways manifesting as the way in which she has grown accustomed to not allowing others to catch a glimpse at how she is truly feeling.

**Height**: 5'8

**Weight**: 128 lbs.

**Dominant Hand**: Right-handed.

**Other Information**: Her birthday falls on the 10th of March.

**Weaponry**: Bare hands, dagger [EXPAND]

**Strengths**: Savagery, determination, physical strength.

**Weaknesses**: Incapable of swimming even short distances. Struggles greatly when it comes to social situations, whether that be trying to build up trust or simply striking up a casual conversation.

**Fears**: Sage is terrified of failure, a fear that would manifest in a very desperate manner should she come close to losing the Games somewhere down the line.

**Alliance**: Careers

**Token**: Sage owns no token.