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At his time of arrival, Athelstan is a monk of Lindisfarne and a devout Christian, although it's debatable how much he truly believes and how much it's because it's all he's ever known. He's a man with a deep love of learning and art, above all, and a great talent for scribing. He can alternate between being subservient (and later speaks of how he found happiness in service when he came to accept his own desires didn't matter) and talking back perhaps a little more than is appropriate in moments of fear or high emotion - which, in fact, saves his life at least once. He's an orphan, as his family all died of some fever after he was sent to the monastery, but he found brotherhood in his fellow monks and a father in God there.

He's highly educated by the standards of the time - not only can he read and write but also he's learned the Wessex dialect (at the time, very different to his own Northumbrian), Latin, Old Norse and presumably Old French (and possibly other languages) to a conversational level. He has a tendency to ask as many questions as he can get away with in any given situation, just because he truly wants to know the answers.

He also has, although he's had no cause to become aware of it yet, what could be described as the survival instincts of a chameleon. This will become clear as he progresses through canon, as he does everything possible to make himself belong in the situations he finds himself in so that the people around him will accept him and let him live. This does not always work out well for him.

I intend to start Athelstan shortly before his first appearance in canon, when he's still a naive young monk at the monastery on Lindisfarne, but I will be progressing him through the events thereafter. My aim in Milliways is to have him make friends - although hopefully without affecting his choices *too* much - and just generally have fun with him.

Athelstan is from "Vikings", and is the property of the History Channel. He appears here solely for the purpose of role-playing in milliways_bar, from which no profit whatsoever is being made.