In my heart, his name is Horse Naruto: Aramaz of Tokhar
My birthday is the last day of March and to honor myself I am posting one of my own favorite OCs every day of March: The OC Jubilee.
Aramaz is a contradiction: an absolutely ideal Tokharika far-rider in some respects and a complete failure in others, a wonderful brother and a terrible son, a stern friend and merciful enemy. Unlike his older half-brothers, he is fully legitimate under rider law, but he ended up being treated as an outcast anyway for reasons no-one could quite ever explain to him. After his own god tried to shoot him, with a gun, Aramaz became the #1 enemy of his own tribe even though still, no-one could tell him what he did wrong in the first place. Oh, and he's the first straight character on this list. He won't be the last, but he is overwhelmingly straight – explicitly and canonically even straighter than his low-key homophobic brother Vanador. He's weird on a different axis.
Aramaz is called to the Aspect of Law sacred to the Tokharika nation, and this confuses him at least as much as it confuses everyone else. Aramaz? The wild, unruly, disobedient Aramaz who shows so much of his father's foolishness and so little of his mother's wisdom? That Aramaz? Yes, that Aramaz, but also the other Aramaz. Because he's plural and extremely in denial about it. He immediately sees what's going on with Houri, but has not seen it in the mirror.
Observing her dismay with a stony face, Aramaz could see that she really, truly could not recall that she had already told him otherwise. “All right,” he relented, “this isn’t gonna get us anywhere. I need to talk to the other one.”
Houri stared at him as though he’d spoken Nordentaal. “Other one? Other one who, Aramaz…?”
Aramaz did not answer aloud, but made a motion with both hands as though casting back the hood of a cloak. Houri stared at him, and to her own apparent puzzlement she slowly lifted her hands to the veil wrapped around her head and did the one thing that no Flametender would ever do willingly before a man. Long strands of blood-red hair fell gleaming in the summer light as she unwound her veil and she began to smile; a tiny little laugh escaped her.
“Oh gods,” said Aramaz, resigned, “here we go.”
Unveiled Houri stood before him, radiant, triumphant, an uncrowned goddess waiting for her rightful star to shine upon her. She threw herself upon her accuser, one soft hand to his firm and and unhappy face. “What an observant young man you are sometimes, Aramaz of Tokhar.”
“Oh yeah,” he said with a roll of his eyes, grabbing her wrist to pull her hand away. “It was SO hard to notice.”
Aramaz may have very fundamental disagreements with the other Tokharika about the nature and purpose of the Law, but he loves horses as much as any of them and treasures his mare Rinni as the one good thing his mother ever gave him. His relationship with her is bitterly cold, but Aramaz is more like his mother Yerahuni than either of them would ever admit:
“No, no, everything has been fine here,” Yasmin warmly assured her, stepping back so that they could come under her roof. “Except this weather, of course! Need anything mended while you’re in town?”
The woman did not move. “Oh, is THAT what you sell here?”
Yasmin blinked. “Um... yes?”
The far-riding woman’s companion looked down, seeming truly surprised at her rudeness. “Yerahuni is newly appointed to this route,” he hastily added to her inquiry. “Unfamiliar with Amam Ri.” At the sound of that name Yasmin was overcome with nausea, and hoped and prayed to any god or ghost who could hear her that it did not show in her eyes. Either way, Yerahuni flared with annoyance at the large man’s attempt to be polite, her hand lashing out to seize the clasp of his cloak under his beard.
“My fist will be newly appointed to your face if you don’t stay out of this,” she hissed, quite loudly enough for Yasmin to hear every word.
“Him?” Aramaz bent down with a scornful scowl to get a better look. “Why the muck are you shooting at people?”
Saltarei glared back as Ismyrn adjusted her grip on her hilt. “Don’t speak much Tarimin, friend.”
“You call me ‘friend’ again,” Aramaz snapped, “and my fist will make friends with your teeth.”
Aramaz's life is shaped on one hand by being the hated outlaw scapegoat of the Tokharika, on another by being the little brother of The King of Birds, and on the third hand by a whirlwind of women vying for the affection of prrrrrobably the singly most sympathetically portrayed straight cis boy in this story. But he never manages to commit to any of them. His heart is too much at conflict with itself. Ladies: I love my son(s) but you deserve better than this.
Everyone who knows Aramaz is surprised when he shows a sincere interest in artificing and proceeds to actually put in real effort to learn about it. It's not entirely clear when or how he even learned to read in the first place, but he reads way more than people think. He has a lot of interests he's too embarrassed to talk to anyone about, even to his first love, Ziazan.
Is Aramaz gonna find a balance within himself? Or will either Aramaz the Outlaw or Aramaz the Artificer have the final say in how he handles the crushing weight of all these responsibilities and obligations others keep thrusting on him?
Vibe music:
Ra Ra Rasputin (violin arrange)
Azk Parabandz
This no-vocals arrangement of Rasputin really resonates with my idea of what music in Tokhar sounds like, and what Aramaz's relationships with women feel like. Azk Parabandz (or however you want to latinize it, I'm not sure it's possible to come up with a wrong answer) is an Armenian patriotic song that I heard a midi of in 2007 and that vibe is what gave me the original idea for Aramaz. (His name ultimately comes from the Iranian god Ahura Mazda as respelled to Aramazd by the ancient Armenians.)
Oh, and his official theme song, that I wrote myself, is my #1 best banger.