Baja has the musculature and presence of something either very capable or just very vain. Sculpted, Spanish head set into his shoulders with a neck like an oversized swan. Although not tall, usually has his head (and eyes) set highly. Reminiscent of a peacock. While most of his coat is dark, dark chocolate – with a smattering of salt and pepper – Baja's right ear is a gilded gold color, along with his front left leg. It's normal hair, albeit bright, but he swears it's incandescent when the light hits just right. Feel free to tilt your head and try to find it as he dangles the leg out, smug, shit-eating grin across his face. His eyes glisten the same sort of hue, intense to match whatever melodramatic expression he sets them into. Thick and rich, his mane cascades from his proud neck like a sash of honor. His tail has the same volume. Clearly, Baja takes pride in preening himself.

If he were any more confident it would be downright confrontational, but luckily he applies his personality like a paste: smiling all the while as he charismatically smears it on. Playful and coltish, Baja approaches conversations with anyone with the same amount of familiarity. He attempts to treat everyone as a friend, brain rapid-firing in first impressions so that he can adapt that in whatever way the other party might deem that to be. See, he's more calculated than he seems at first glance. Growing up fantasizing about the Herculean glory of war, Baja knows it comes from more than just brutality and you should always find a way to keep your foot in the door. In most company he comes across unflappable but on the off chance he doesn't manage to manipulate things his way, he will turn childish and haughty. Baja handles neither embarrassment or rejection with any level of poise. Underneath it all is a need to prove himself, a need to feel worthy. Every aspect of his personality is a reflection of that, refracted by the sharp edges of him. His primal drive in life is to be successful and climb whatever ranks he's able to; in whatever capacity he's able to. Any attempt at forging a relationship with him beyond his superficial charm is met with inflexible resistance. Baja isn't interested in looking inside and seeing if there are any other aspects to himself besides what he's comfortable with. To give someone part of you is to give them power, and Baja cares more about being powerful than being weak.

Now, although he fits in perfectly, Baja wasn't born in Solterra. Expelled from the viscous muck of placenta to the greedy, vacuous mud of Tinea Swamp, Baja was born to a Terrastella mare. Alone to all the world, she licked him clean and raised him with a gentle, steady hand. For the few years of his life, they stayed in the camouflaged canopy of the swamp. His mother, Kallinica, prized secrecy. In their private camp she nursed Baja on stories of distant courts, accounts of honor, chronicles of his father. She said he was a Day Court Sovereign, Perhaps, like a self fulfilling prophecy, these tall tales sparked in Baja a boisterousness that swamped them both. Kindling of a place full of soldiers, tacticians, braggarts surely (undoubtedly, even!) recounting tales of triumph, righteous pillaging, noble spoils. The ideas danced in his amber eyes like reflected firelight. He wielded a flimsy bough of cypress, crying out emphatically as he slashed through the underbrush. Beyond a handful of passing encounters, the two stuck to themselves. Always to his mother's irritation, Baja approached every stranger with unbridled, extroverted glee. He cajoled, he flirted, he came up with childish bets. She always sounded at her wits end when she said it. "You can't trust everyone you meet!" He always scoffed, and often said back "Who decided that means I trust them?" Open sky greeted them when they traveled into Ruris. When they come across another, strung-out string of travelers, Baja tells a group of colts about his father. After telling plenty of glittering stories of heroics, his smug eyes flashed a more youthful, childlike excitement. "But I've never been to Solterra. Could you tell me what he's like?" The embarrassment that followed – when they laughed and cried and did everything short of spit on him – will remain a stain his entire life. In Abigo Cave, Baja and Kallinica face each other with a surprising understanding. His mother would not travel through the caves to the land Baja desperately needed to reach, and he did not want his mother to come with him. The gentle mare kissed his crown, hoping to bless and imbue him so that maybe one day the empathetic tendencies of his birth place, of her blood, will reach him through his thick, coltish and cocksure personality. Well, he certainly had learned something. Under the scorching heat of the desert sun, his heart bakes into cement. The view of the ocean from Elatus Plateu nearly overwhelmed him. Nostrils wrinkled, he could almost smell the salt over the arid sand. Okay, maybe that was wishful thinking, but the feeling it invoked overtook his entire body. When he finally made it to the Day Court, his coat was dull, his throat was cracked, and he was exhausted. For the first time in his life he expressed (momentary, fleeting, temporary, but genuine nonetheless) total loyalty, complete vulnerability. Baja threw himself on the floor of the town and begged the cobbles and sand to accept him.