FiM Cast A.K. "Daring Do" Yearling (Ready)

[Bellosh]

Roleplay Type: World of Equestria RP

Name: A.K. Yearling (AKA Daring Do)

Sex: Female

Age: Mare

Species: Pegasus

Eye Color: Purplish-red; wears oversized glasses in the public sphere to keep ponies from guessing who her alter-ego is.

Coat: Mustard yellow; wears olive green fatigues on most occasions, which itself is worn under a flowing cloak as a practical disguise.

Mane/Tail: Yearling’s grayscale mane is ragged and unkempt. Her head is nearly always covered by a beige pith helmet, which itself can be covered with a large, floppy cloche hat for “public” appearances.

Physique: Very fit and athletic, built more for sheer endurance than swiftness or strength.

Residence: Rents out isolated cottages near the ends of civilization as need dictates. Also keeps a low-cost townhouse in Canterlot when she needs to come down for business visits.

Occupation: Adventurer/Author

Cutie Mark: Eight-point compass rose superimposed onto a dark-olive green circle. The foreground gold star signifies the four cardinal directions while a light-olive green star shows the four ordinal directions.

Growing up in a travelling circus family, Miss Yearling got the opportunity to visit many destinations in her youth. The pivotal locale for Yearling’s tale of cutie mark acquisition was the Unyasan city of Clawifax; the first time the filly ever ventured outside of Equestria. Having already developed a taste for travel at such a young age, the future bestselling-author naturally found herself immersed with Clawifax’s melting-pot culture.

Miss Yearling had also developed a passion for journal writing at this time in her life, jotting down numerous detailed entries in her diary. But her entries for the Clawifax portion of her family’s international circus tour? They were perhaps the most inspired writing Miss Yearling came up with yet! Page after page described every all the sights. The sounds. The smells! The tastes! The filly realized that she would never be content with circus life like the rest of her family; it would be her destiny to explore the globe for new experiences. Upon making this realization, a compass rose materialized on Yearling’s flank.

History:

The mare who eventually became known to friend and foe alike as Daring Do was born under the name Alakazam “Aly” Yearling; a child of the family-owned Yearling Sisters Circus. Rather than dump her off with non-travelling relatives in a town somewhere, Aly’s circus-performing parents resolved to take their daughter with them on the Circus’s tours. Alakazam’s parents took it upon themselves to educate her in lieu of more standardized education, and to endow her with a strong sense of compassion and justice.

Living with a circus left its mark upon Alakazam Yearling; when she grew old enough, the thrill-seeking girl earned permission to learn some of the more daring acts performed by the idols she lived with and befriended. Among other skills, Aly eventually mastered such amazing arts as taming animals, acrobatics, and perhaps her most favorite stunt of all, sensational escape acts from the most elaborate traps! During downtime, the growing filly often excitedly scribbled logs in her diary or read exciting adventure stories from her favorite pulp magazine; Tales of Derring-Do.

Yet for all her enthusiasm for learning the family trade, something didn’t sit right for Miss Yearling. Compared to the rest of her age group, it took her quite a while for her cutie mark to appear. When it finally did, the maturing filly knew in her heart that she would one day leave her circus home behind to follow her own path. Once she became an adult, Yearling went off to a community college with the blessing of her family, believing that homing in her writing talents and becoming a fiction author would be her new trail to broaden her horizons.

As it turned out, Miss Yearling found herself completely unsuited for higher education. Classes were tedious beyond all belief, and the young mare for the first time in her life found herself completely uninspired to write about anything. Her craving for excitement in life completely unsatisfied, Yearling soon ended up drawn to an adventuring archaeologist named A.B. Ravenhoof. Professor Ravenhoof sought out ponies willing to brave the unexplored jungles of Unyasi to aid him in his quest to find the legendary Sapphire Stone; Yearling swiftly dropped out of college and signed up to join Ravenhoof’s expedition… crafting the identity “Daring Do” in the process, as a tribute for her beloved pulp magazine. It appeared that her dual loves for travel and daredevilry would finally be satisfied!

The newly-christened Daring Do got more than she bargained for on her first trek off of the edges of the map. Learning of Prof. Ravenhoof’s quest for the sapphire statue, the nefarious villain who happened to already possess it schemed to rip the professor’s party apart, and he bribed most of his team to either abandon the expedition or sabotage the efforts of those who remained. By the time Daring Do realized that an evil mastermind conspired against the group, it was too late. Feline predators ambushed the pitiful remnant of the party; Daring Do attempted to escape the trap alone, only to be caught by very fiend responsible for her misfortunes; the legendary creature Ahuizotl!

Daring Do just barely escaped Ahuizotl’s clutches with her life; with only her instincts and her recollections of all those adventure stories she read, the pegasus evaded her pursuers and survived the treacherous Brakenweald for sixty days and sixty nights, knowing full well that letting Ahuizotl keep that sapphire stature could spell grave consequences for the entire region, or perhaps even the world! After a harrowing death-defying journey where she came to accept that only she could stop the evil creature in time, Miss Do outsmarted Ahuizotl’s deathtraps and absconded with the Sapphire Stone, foiling the villain’s dastardly plot! When the heavily-injured Daring Do (or Alakazam Yearling rather) made it safely back to the zebra tree haven of Mti Nguvu, she not only had a new purpose, to make sure that other magical treasures never fall into the wrong hooves, but the pegasus found inspiration for her writing to boot!

Alakazam Yearling technically wrote the story of the final stretch of her odyssey, Quest for the Sapphire Stone, only for her own enjoyment. Upon ascertaining that she wrote enough for fill a dime novel, the author decided on a whim to instead publish her book as a supposedly-fictional story, but not without first following her publisher’s advice by adopting “A.K. Yearling” as her pen name. A.K. Yearling could hardly imagine though that her simple novel would turn into an overnight sensation; Quest for the Sapphire Stone ended up turning into Book One of the Daring Do series, which to this day provides the adventurer with more than enough money to finance her continued exploits, which in turn provide writing material that ends up increasing the net worth of A.K. Yearling.

Character Summary:

It would not be inaccurate to say that Daring Do’s personality heavily resembles the sort of girl who once trained with the Yearling Sisters Circus. In both the written word and in reality, Daring Do is a mare with a cocky attitude, nerves of steel, and the resolve to oppose all foes who dare use powerful artifacts for their twisted ends. The adventurer still gets a little careless at times during her exploration of ancient temples, but there has hardly ever been a situation that Ms. Do couldn’t get out of by using quick thinking and reflexes. Career archaeologists complain that Daring-style antics tend to destroy ancient sites and eliminate valuable sources of historical knowledge, but the mare’s moral code stipulates that the welfare of others comes before the preservation of some measly old pottery pieces.

Ms. Yearling periodically returns to civilization mainly to meet with her publisher and attend special publicity events on her publisher’s request. The Daring Do author deep down immense gratitude for all the fans who love her literary work; if it wasn’t for their support, Daring Do literally could not have existed beyond her first voyage. Unfortunately, the fanatical behavior of a very small but extremely inconsiderate part of the fandom makes Yearling nowadays act extremely reserved towards her admirers, lacking the willingness to waste time with “franchise-loving” complainers or potential stalkers.

The Daring Do series A.K. Yearling penns is renowned for its immersive descriptions, liberal use of cliffhangers, and just about the most ridiculously over-the-top action sequences ever written in literature. By design, her easy-to-read books dish up unprofound, fast paced escapism; just like the sort of pulp fiction the author read in her youth. Due to how Ms. Yearling never starts writing a Daring Do story until concluding a particular affair, her series is also notorious for unreliable release dates. To tide fans over in between releases, A.K. Yearling authorizes her publisher to commission other authors to write all sorts of completely fictional Daring Do spin-off material, in exchange for significant royalties of course.

For all her wealth she’s made off the Daring Do franchise, A.K. Yearling is very frugal with her money. Aside from paying for supplies or taking the occasional peaceful trip to an exotic out-of-the-way vacation spot (Yearling hates tourist traps), the author spends much of her fortune on donating to good causes or endowing educational programs spreading knowledge of world geography. If there’s one piece of advice she gives anyone, it’s to see the world; Yearling believes that nopony should ever be deprived of the chance to experience other cultures.

Very few individuals know so far that Daring Do and A.K. Yearling are one and the same, save for her publisher and a closely-knit group of young mares who accidentally wound up in the adventure depicted in Daring Do and the Ring of Destiny. Despite frequently telling ponies she can’t stand that she only works alone, the adventuring writer highly values the companionship of those she can count on to be dependable, trustworthy, and share the same intolerance of wrongdoing as she does.

[Armony]