(no subject)
Character: Nyx Ro
Series: The Cygnet Duology
Deviance: 1
Age: Mid twenties?
Gender: Female
Species: Human
Canon Used: The books
Appearance: Nyx is pale and thin, with eyes so pale they seem almost colorless, but are in fact very very light lavender. Her hair is long, unruly and black, fine. She often goes barefoot. Her expressions are remote and severe, often unsettling or cold or far too focused and scrutinizing. She's described as looking like a ghost at one point, and her general appearance is a bit wild and fey or eerie. Her eyes can be particularly unnerving when she puts her full attention on someone.
Her fingers are long and slender, elegant but also calloused and blistered from fire and spell work. Her mannerisms tend towards eerie stillness when listening, and picking at things when thinking or reading. She'll nibble her hair or her thumb or pick at threads in her dress or at buttons while her mind is elsewhere.
She pays little mind to what she wears, and until she updates most of her dresses will be whatever is convenient. Old, fraying finery or simple smocks, she tends to not pay heed. Her hair tends to escape whatever confines or pins or clasps she puts it up in.
Psychology: Dispassionate. Removed. Cold. Heartless. Nyx has been called all of these and worse. Nyx has learned all the kinds of magic she can get her hands on--from the nun-like white magic of the desert witches who dedicate themselves to the magic of Time, to the dark blood magic of the swampy delta--if there is power and knowledge she doesn't know, she goes to seek it, drawn by her thirst for knowledge. What form the learning comes in is of little consequence to her. She doesn't care if it is considered good or evil, to her power is power; she describes it like fire, it burns regardless, but what you put into it will change its nature. And she will put anything into it to learn more, heedless of her own personal safety or that of others. Because her need to know is an obsession.
There is no particular reason for her drive for power--not in the sense of a hidden motivation. She quite simply wants to know, and that's all there is to it. Morality and ethics are not a concern, ambition isn't either. She just wants to learn, and she doesn't know the meaning of fear. It is something she does learn later, but at this point in the book she is quite literally without fear. She picks at the bones of the dead, and likely the only reason she doesn't have interest in murder is because murdered bones and corpses are incredibly unhelpful (they do nothing but weep and whine until she buries them) and because her mother would have to do something about it, and that would interrupt Nyx's ability to continue her research. People disapprove of murder, and Nyx isn't one to go stirring up trouble with people--magical trouble is another matter, however.
She neither likes nor hates other people, and she is pitiless. People are simply assigned to certain categories--her family she has an obligation to, and remote affection, even love, for. She respects her mother and cares for her sisters, enough to visit home every handful of years. Her cousin Meguet is the closest creature she holds to what passes for her heart, and Meguet is special in that Nyx actually tends to listen to her as much as she tends to listen to her mother, maybe even a little more. Everyone else is in various positions of useful or useless and she has very little interest in the useless. If someone can provide her with new knowledge or riddles to solve, they'll have her attention, because Nyx is restless and easily bored and frustrated when she is not working on a difficult piece of magic, when she isn't learning or applying her mind to arcane problems and solving them.
Her general demeanor is abrupt and blunt. She can go still and motionless when she's thinking or considering, and she comes across as rather unsettling. She has infinite patience with her studies and an obsession for learning, but no patience for idiocy, and she has a temper when thwarted or annoyed, often expressed by snapping at the object of her annoyance. Rarely does she get truly, deeply angry, and if something does cause such an emotional reaction it's likely she will lash out magically. Otherwise she is generally short with people when impatient and keeps her own counsel when thinking. When curious she will ask a million questions. She will stop and explain most things if asked, if she doesn't see any reason not to, but there's often a slight impatience in it, as if frustrated with other people's inability to keep up.
She has a confidence in herself that borders on arrogance, but is well-founded. She is prideful, but not vain, as her appearance means little to nothing to her. She knows she is powerful and intelligent, and while she doesn't flaunt it haughtily, she isn't modest either. She will calmly call herself powerful and skilled, because that is what she is. Her social skills are not the best, in that she has little patience for the niceties of regular conversation or chitchat, and makes no pretense to be interested when she's not. Since she was raised the daughter of the leader of the holdings, she's well aware of social norms, they don't confuse her, but she sees little point in them. Emotionally she is detached and removed from others. She talks to ghosts, dragons, bones, people, all with no particular prejudice. She lives in a haunted, enchanted house she found in a swamp simply out of convenience, and has no interest in luxuries. She'll sleep on the bare ground and eat only plants if it will teach her something, and she has before.
She is not without friends--her cousin Meguet, her sisters, childhood friend Rush Yarr... She respects her mother, and seems to love her family in a detached and sometimes frustrated way. She cannot resist a challenge, and will get in over her head when presented with something that she can't solve easily, simply because it's interesting. She will help others, if asked or if their problems present an interesting challenge. She collects things of power like a magpie picks up shiny objects, she cannot resist power at all, it draws her.
Other Skills/Abilities: Nyx is a powerful sorceress--perhaps the most powerful in her world since Chrysom, an ancient wizard of legend, from the founding of Ro Hold. The rules of magic in her world are not entirely defined, much of it seems to be about force of personality and a certain way of looking and listening, as much as about spells. Some spells require somatic components, others are powered by sheer will and imagination and force of personality and magical ability. She is intelligent, sharp, and fast to learn. She can talk to bones or the dead in her fire, or travel the paths of time (though she claims not to be as skilled at that she does manage to walk the completely ignorant Corleu through a time spell that is like a teleportation spell). She sees through enchantments, burns the hearts of birds, picks at ancient and powerful riddles, and in the second book bullies dragons.
She is skilled in any number of small and large magics, from listening to the gossip of white crows and tying knots in leather to ensure safe paths through snow, to building silver rings of time and breaking powerful layered enchantments, there's no piece of magic she's against learning how to master.
Other Weaknesses: Meguet.
Her lack of heart and feeling can be rather detrimental to getting close to others. This is actually something that resolves a bit by the end of the first book but until then her remoteness leads her into having no problems getting into things that are quite incredibly dangerous because she simply has no regard for her own recklessness.
She can be difficult to work with and get along with, she is obstinate, and her regard for life, her own or others, is nearly non-existent, a sort of after-thought. She's not suicidal, but other things take priority over mere safety.
Meguet.
Meguet. She does love her cousin, even if it's in an odd detached way. Fucking with Meguet is a good way to get on Nyx's very very bad side. Meguet is her conscience in a way, and while she doesn't feel much need to have a conscience on her own, she listens to Meguet. Sort of.
She is also self-confident to the point of arrogance, and her lack of fear means that she may be prone to over-estimating herself. She's never encountered anyone more gifted in magic or more talented at it than she is, so the powers and gifts of other remarkable people from other universes are not things she's necessarily prepared to be wary of--more likely she'll find them fascinating, to whatever end.
History: The setting is in the kingdom known as Ro Holding. There are various districts held by the Hold Houses, each under the main rule of Ro House, ruled currently by the Holder Lauro Ro. Each Holding has a Hold Sign connected in some way to the constellations of the world (and this is important), either fashioned directly after a constellation (Such as Cygnet for Ro House and Gold King for Hunter Hold) or after an aspect of a story connected to a constellation. For example the Delta Hold's sign is Blood Fox, who is connected by legend/story/myth to the constellation of the Warlock.
The old stories go that when the stars (the constellations or the personifications behind them, it mixes up, after all, it's myth and legend) fought over the Hold Houses, Cygnet tricked and trapped all the others, ending with dominance over the other houses and constellations etc etc, fanciful kingdom origin story. The story lives on in children's rhymes and legends and tales--and in the fact that it's true. Not that anyone knows this by the start of the first book.
The first book really begins when a young Wayfolk (think gypsy) man by the name of Corleu wanders with his caravan into a legend. Trapped in an enchanted version of the Delta, he makes a deal with Gold King to find Cygnet's heart in exchange for the freedom of his people. Tossed into the real Delta, he is almost immediately swept up into the rambling enchanted house of the local bog witch, who happens to by Lauro Ro's daughter, Nyx.
Nyx is a sorceress who has spent the last nine years hungrily thirsting after knowledge, power, any of both. Her desire to learn and know is as insatiable as her general disinterest in people. She left her mother's household for freedom and that power. She takes Corleu in because he brings with him a riddle, something that interests her, something she knows could shake the foundations of Ro Holding. He's looking for a thing of power and she wants it. Around the same time her mother sends Nyx's cousin Meguet to talk her out of the swamp, since having a daughter with a reputation for black magic is kind of embarrassing for a ruler.
Canon Point: Between Chapter 5 and 6, after sending Corleu to meet the Blind Lady, before finding him in the room of mirrors and meeting Meguet again.
Reality Description: Most of the first book takes place in Ro Holding, and in the second book in a dragon-filled desert on another continent. The societal structure is vaguely medieval fantasy with strong women rulers, with no reference to modern technology, and mostly lords owning farmland and hunting land and small private armies. There are cities and towns and roads and gypsies. The main city of Ro Holding is by the sea in the Delta, but there are valleys, icy mountains, bogs and deserts and forests all part of the kingdom.
Magic is part of things as well, and while it may not be what most people can do, there are those with talent for it. Literacy is not wide-spread, but a certain ability for basic reading seems common--books are are less common, more horded by the rich or the eccentric or the magical, but they aren't rare either. High society dresses in silks and fine jewels and velvets, while coarser clothes are the commoner's fare. Labor is manual and there are no machines or engines in the world.
The continents and constellations and oceans of the world are unique to it, but the world is full of plants and animals like those of Earth. Along with that it also has unique/strange animals such as the ancient rock tortoises and cunning blood fox of the delta, griffins, wizards, myths that become real, a desert full of sleeping dragons, and a city with a secret labyrinth beneath.
Of most note to Nyx is the delta swamp she currently lives in, and the rambling, enchanted house she's taken residence in. None of the doors open to the same room twice, the stairs, rooms and everything in it shift and dream and change, though Nyx herself never seems to get lost in the house, it would be easy to wander the shifting halls and changing rooms for days and never encounter the same room. There is also Chrysom's tower and Ro House, her family home.
Important NPCs would be Corleu the Wayfolk man living in her rambling house and caught in a tangle of old, terrible myths. She's helping him because he interests her. Lauro Ro the leader of the kingdom, and her mother. Meguet her cousin and the closest thing she has to a friend and person she loves. The Gatekeeper of Ro holding, Meguet's lover and a man whose eyes see for miles and through almost all illusions and lies. Rush Yarr may also be important as a childhood friend of Nyx's and a man who has been in love with her (very very unrequited) for over nine years, much to her exasperation. Nyx's sisters are also important to her.
First Person Speaking Sample: [A woman steps onto the Plane, barefoot and dressed oddly--a gown that was fine once, until loose threads and jewels were absently picked out of the stitching and cobwebs and dust coated the fabric. The sleeves are spotted with ink and soot and stranger stains. The woman wearing the dress is pale, and her hair is black and unruly, escaping a gold clasp she's pinned it up with. She stands, still and motionless, looking at the stars around and below and above, colorless eyes wide in a pale face. She turns, slowly, and looks up at the stars.]
Constellations and riddles falling into my lap, and now stars in my parlor. [A deep breath and she nibbles on her thumb, eyes narrowing.] I didn't enter a little black house. And I see no tinkers. So which story have I wandered out of time into?
[Her eyes narrow, intent, thoughtful, and she hikes her skirts up, strides towards the kiosk and takes up the brochure, movements abrupt and brusque. She picks at a thread as she reads, then creases the paper into shapes when she finishes, looking again at the stars around her. Not alarmed or confused, but interested, murmuring to herself.]
How strange...
Walking out of a story of stars into a field of stars. One story after another, and in layers together. Connect them to make shapes and eventually make sense of the whole.
How strange.
Series: The Cygnet Duology
Deviance: 1
Age: Mid twenties?
Gender: Female
Species: Human
Canon Used: The books
Appearance: Nyx is pale and thin, with eyes so pale they seem almost colorless, but are in fact very very light lavender. Her hair is long, unruly and black, fine. She often goes barefoot. Her expressions are remote and severe, often unsettling or cold or far too focused and scrutinizing. She's described as looking like a ghost at one point, and her general appearance is a bit wild and fey or eerie. Her eyes can be particularly unnerving when she puts her full attention on someone.
Her fingers are long and slender, elegant but also calloused and blistered from fire and spell work. Her mannerisms tend towards eerie stillness when listening, and picking at things when thinking or reading. She'll nibble her hair or her thumb or pick at threads in her dress or at buttons while her mind is elsewhere.
She pays little mind to what she wears, and until she updates most of her dresses will be whatever is convenient. Old, fraying finery or simple smocks, she tends to not pay heed. Her hair tends to escape whatever confines or pins or clasps she puts it up in.
Psychology: Dispassionate. Removed. Cold. Heartless. Nyx has been called all of these and worse. Nyx has learned all the kinds of magic she can get her hands on--from the nun-like white magic of the desert witches who dedicate themselves to the magic of Time, to the dark blood magic of the swampy delta--if there is power and knowledge she doesn't know, she goes to seek it, drawn by her thirst for knowledge. What form the learning comes in is of little consequence to her. She doesn't care if it is considered good or evil, to her power is power; she describes it like fire, it burns regardless, but what you put into it will change its nature. And she will put anything into it to learn more, heedless of her own personal safety or that of others. Because her need to know is an obsession.
There is no particular reason for her drive for power--not in the sense of a hidden motivation. She quite simply wants to know, and that's all there is to it. Morality and ethics are not a concern, ambition isn't either. She just wants to learn, and she doesn't know the meaning of fear. It is something she does learn later, but at this point in the book she is quite literally without fear. She picks at the bones of the dead, and likely the only reason she doesn't have interest in murder is because murdered bones and corpses are incredibly unhelpful (they do nothing but weep and whine until she buries them) and because her mother would have to do something about it, and that would interrupt Nyx's ability to continue her research. People disapprove of murder, and Nyx isn't one to go stirring up trouble with people--magical trouble is another matter, however.
She neither likes nor hates other people, and she is pitiless. People are simply assigned to certain categories--her family she has an obligation to, and remote affection, even love, for. She respects her mother and cares for her sisters, enough to visit home every handful of years. Her cousin Meguet is the closest creature she holds to what passes for her heart, and Meguet is special in that Nyx actually tends to listen to her as much as she tends to listen to her mother, maybe even a little more. Everyone else is in various positions of useful or useless and she has very little interest in the useless. If someone can provide her with new knowledge or riddles to solve, they'll have her attention, because Nyx is restless and easily bored and frustrated when she is not working on a difficult piece of magic, when she isn't learning or applying her mind to arcane problems and solving them.
Her general demeanor is abrupt and blunt. She can go still and motionless when she's thinking or considering, and she comes across as rather unsettling. She has infinite patience with her studies and an obsession for learning, but no patience for idiocy, and she has a temper when thwarted or annoyed, often expressed by snapping at the object of her annoyance. Rarely does she get truly, deeply angry, and if something does cause such an emotional reaction it's likely she will lash out magically. Otherwise she is generally short with people when impatient and keeps her own counsel when thinking. When curious she will ask a million questions. She will stop and explain most things if asked, if she doesn't see any reason not to, but there's often a slight impatience in it, as if frustrated with other people's inability to keep up.
She has a confidence in herself that borders on arrogance, but is well-founded. She is prideful, but not vain, as her appearance means little to nothing to her. She knows she is powerful and intelligent, and while she doesn't flaunt it haughtily, she isn't modest either. She will calmly call herself powerful and skilled, because that is what she is. Her social skills are not the best, in that she has little patience for the niceties of regular conversation or chitchat, and makes no pretense to be interested when she's not. Since she was raised the daughter of the leader of the holdings, she's well aware of social norms, they don't confuse her, but she sees little point in them. Emotionally she is detached and removed from others. She talks to ghosts, dragons, bones, people, all with no particular prejudice. She lives in a haunted, enchanted house she found in a swamp simply out of convenience, and has no interest in luxuries. She'll sleep on the bare ground and eat only plants if it will teach her something, and she has before.
She is not without friends--her cousin Meguet, her sisters, childhood friend Rush Yarr... She respects her mother, and seems to love her family in a detached and sometimes frustrated way. She cannot resist a challenge, and will get in over her head when presented with something that she can't solve easily, simply because it's interesting. She will help others, if asked or if their problems present an interesting challenge. She collects things of power like a magpie picks up shiny objects, she cannot resist power at all, it draws her.
Other Skills/Abilities: Nyx is a powerful sorceress--perhaps the most powerful in her world since Chrysom, an ancient wizard of legend, from the founding of Ro Hold. The rules of magic in her world are not entirely defined, much of it seems to be about force of personality and a certain way of looking and listening, as much as about spells. Some spells require somatic components, others are powered by sheer will and imagination and force of personality and magical ability. She is intelligent, sharp, and fast to learn. She can talk to bones or the dead in her fire, or travel the paths of time (though she claims not to be as skilled at that she does manage to walk the completely ignorant Corleu through a time spell that is like a teleportation spell). She sees through enchantments, burns the hearts of birds, picks at ancient and powerful riddles, and in the second book bullies dragons.
She is skilled in any number of small and large magics, from listening to the gossip of white crows and tying knots in leather to ensure safe paths through snow, to building silver rings of time and breaking powerful layered enchantments, there's no piece of magic she's against learning how to master.
Other Weaknesses: Meguet.
Her lack of heart and feeling can be rather detrimental to getting close to others. This is actually something that resolves a bit by the end of the first book but until then her remoteness leads her into having no problems getting into things that are quite incredibly dangerous because she simply has no regard for her own recklessness.
She can be difficult to work with and get along with, she is obstinate, and her regard for life, her own or others, is nearly non-existent, a sort of after-thought. She's not suicidal, but other things take priority over mere safety.
Meguet.
Meguet. She does love her cousin, even if it's in an odd detached way. Fucking with Meguet is a good way to get on Nyx's very very bad side. Meguet is her conscience in a way, and while she doesn't feel much need to have a conscience on her own, she listens to Meguet. Sort of.
She is also self-confident to the point of arrogance, and her lack of fear means that she may be prone to over-estimating herself. She's never encountered anyone more gifted in magic or more talented at it than she is, so the powers and gifts of other remarkable people from other universes are not things she's necessarily prepared to be wary of--more likely she'll find them fascinating, to whatever end.
History: The setting is in the kingdom known as Ro Holding. There are various districts held by the Hold Houses, each under the main rule of Ro House, ruled currently by the Holder Lauro Ro. Each Holding has a Hold Sign connected in some way to the constellations of the world (and this is important), either fashioned directly after a constellation (Such as Cygnet for Ro House and Gold King for Hunter Hold) or after an aspect of a story connected to a constellation. For example the Delta Hold's sign is Blood Fox, who is connected by legend/story/myth to the constellation of the Warlock.
The old stories go that when the stars (the constellations or the personifications behind them, it mixes up, after all, it's myth and legend) fought over the Hold Houses, Cygnet tricked and trapped all the others, ending with dominance over the other houses and constellations etc etc, fanciful kingdom origin story. The story lives on in children's rhymes and legends and tales--and in the fact that it's true. Not that anyone knows this by the start of the first book.
The first book really begins when a young Wayfolk (think gypsy) man by the name of Corleu wanders with his caravan into a legend. Trapped in an enchanted version of the Delta, he makes a deal with Gold King to find Cygnet's heart in exchange for the freedom of his people. Tossed into the real Delta, he is almost immediately swept up into the rambling enchanted house of the local bog witch, who happens to by Lauro Ro's daughter, Nyx.
Nyx is a sorceress who has spent the last nine years hungrily thirsting after knowledge, power, any of both. Her desire to learn and know is as insatiable as her general disinterest in people. She left her mother's household for freedom and that power. She takes Corleu in because he brings with him a riddle, something that interests her, something she knows could shake the foundations of Ro Holding. He's looking for a thing of power and she wants it. Around the same time her mother sends Nyx's cousin Meguet to talk her out of the swamp, since having a daughter with a reputation for black magic is kind of embarrassing for a ruler.
Canon Point: Between Chapter 5 and 6, after sending Corleu to meet the Blind Lady, before finding him in the room of mirrors and meeting Meguet again.
Reality Description: Most of the first book takes place in Ro Holding, and in the second book in a dragon-filled desert on another continent. The societal structure is vaguely medieval fantasy with strong women rulers, with no reference to modern technology, and mostly lords owning farmland and hunting land and small private armies. There are cities and towns and roads and gypsies. The main city of Ro Holding is by the sea in the Delta, but there are valleys, icy mountains, bogs and deserts and forests all part of the kingdom.
Magic is part of things as well, and while it may not be what most people can do, there are those with talent for it. Literacy is not wide-spread, but a certain ability for basic reading seems common--books are are less common, more horded by the rich or the eccentric or the magical, but they aren't rare either. High society dresses in silks and fine jewels and velvets, while coarser clothes are the commoner's fare. Labor is manual and there are no machines or engines in the world.
The continents and constellations and oceans of the world are unique to it, but the world is full of plants and animals like those of Earth. Along with that it also has unique/strange animals such as the ancient rock tortoises and cunning blood fox of the delta, griffins, wizards, myths that become real, a desert full of sleeping dragons, and a city with a secret labyrinth beneath.
Of most note to Nyx is the delta swamp she currently lives in, and the rambling, enchanted house she's taken residence in. None of the doors open to the same room twice, the stairs, rooms and everything in it shift and dream and change, though Nyx herself never seems to get lost in the house, it would be easy to wander the shifting halls and changing rooms for days and never encounter the same room. There is also Chrysom's tower and Ro House, her family home.
Important NPCs would be Corleu the Wayfolk man living in her rambling house and caught in a tangle of old, terrible myths. She's helping him because he interests her. Lauro Ro the leader of the kingdom, and her mother. Meguet her cousin and the closest thing she has to a friend and person she loves. The Gatekeeper of Ro holding, Meguet's lover and a man whose eyes see for miles and through almost all illusions and lies. Rush Yarr may also be important as a childhood friend of Nyx's and a man who has been in love with her (very very unrequited) for over nine years, much to her exasperation. Nyx's sisters are also important to her.
First Person Speaking Sample: [A woman steps onto the Plane, barefoot and dressed oddly--a gown that was fine once, until loose threads and jewels were absently picked out of the stitching and cobwebs and dust coated the fabric. The sleeves are spotted with ink and soot and stranger stains. The woman wearing the dress is pale, and her hair is black and unruly, escaping a gold clasp she's pinned it up with. She stands, still and motionless, looking at the stars around and below and above, colorless eyes wide in a pale face. She turns, slowly, and looks up at the stars.]
Constellations and riddles falling into my lap, and now stars in my parlor. [A deep breath and she nibbles on her thumb, eyes narrowing.] I didn't enter a little black house. And I see no tinkers. So which story have I wandered out of time into?
[Her eyes narrow, intent, thoughtful, and she hikes her skirts up, strides towards the kiosk and takes up the brochure, movements abrupt and brusque. She picks at a thread as she reads, then creases the paper into shapes when she finishes, looking again at the stars around her. Not alarmed or confused, but interested, murmuring to herself.]
How strange...
Walking out of a story of stars into a field of stars. One story after another, and in layers together. Connect them to make shapes and eventually make sense of the whole.
How strange.