Nina Irving
Appearance
Inconspicuous.
That’s what they wanted her for. That’s what made her valuable. It wasn’t necessarily her features – tall, spindly like an overgrown weed – but the way she moved. The way she could be slouching right outside the castle gates, sketching fortifications, and the guards would pay her no mind.
She has large eyes. Afraid, you’d think, if you looked closely. Not that you’d have the occasion, because she never looks in people’s eyes. Brown, with flecks of darkness. Slightly too large, like glass orbs on the point of cracking. Perhaps she’d seen too much?
A straight nose. Plump lips, often curled in a dreamy smile. Her eyebrows are thicker than is fashionable, and her features are sharp. She seems to be made of angles. Her hair, just about brushing her shoulders, is woven in braids and adorned with colorful beads, in the way of her culture. These encode her hopes, an abacus, and a couple of puns.
Her fingers look like spiders, and her joints are too bony. It is a mystery where on her thin frame Nina hides her muscles – or perhaps she is running on willpower alone. Under her dark clothes, in royal purple and gold, one might still see the bruises from her training.
Dark clothes are what she often wears – often with a cape to keep her warm on cold nights. They’re not the shiny dark silks of the sagas, but dusty linens and wools, darned and patched and looking stubborn enough to outlive her. A purple scarf is her main spot of color.
Her left arm is wrapped in bandages. Sometimes they bleed through. That is the stigmata of the Clocktower – on occasion, a message from the Master of the Clocktower will appear, in impeccable calligraphy, scrawled on her skin.
That’s what they wanted her for. That’s what made her valuable. It wasn’t necessarily her features – tall, spindly like an overgrown weed – but the way she moved. The way she could be slouching right outside the castle gates, sketching fortifications, and the guards would pay her no mind.
She has large eyes. Afraid, you’d think, if you looked closely. Not that you’d have the occasion, because she never looks in people’s eyes. Brown, with flecks of darkness. Slightly too large, like glass orbs on the point of cracking. Perhaps she’d seen too much?
A straight nose. Plump lips, often curled in a dreamy smile. Her eyebrows are thicker than is fashionable, and her features are sharp. She seems to be made of angles. Her hair, just about brushing her shoulders, is woven in braids and adorned with colorful beads, in the way of her culture. These encode her hopes, an abacus, and a couple of puns.
Her fingers look like spiders, and her joints are too bony. It is a mystery where on her thin frame Nina hides her muscles – or perhaps she is running on willpower alone. Under her dark clothes, in royal purple and gold, one might still see the bruises from her training.
Dark clothes are what she often wears – often with a cape to keep her warm on cold nights. They’re not the shiny dark silks of the sagas, but dusty linens and wools, darned and patched and looking stubborn enough to outlive her. A purple scarf is her main spot of color.
Her left arm is wrapped in bandages. Sometimes they bleed through. That is the stigmata of the Clocktower – on occasion, a message from the Master of the Clocktower will appear, in impeccable calligraphy, scrawled on her skin.
Skills and Abilities
-Nomad – Although young, Nina has spent much of her life crossing the wilderness. She is not new to sleeping rough, starting a fire or reading tracks. In fact, she feels much more at home in a bed of leaves under the starry sky than in a bustling city.
-Painter – Watercolors are the main splash of civilization which the nomad allows in her life, mainly for the chance of bringing the wild back to civilization. Her landscapes and occasional portraits are a mean of subsistence during long travels, but also carry spiritual significance to Nina, as mirrors of distant lands that she shares with others.
-A touch of magic – Magic has been her curse even since her unfortunate encounter with Gray, the master assassin. While Nina can do next to nothing with it, her awareness of auras since then has been painfully sharp. Focusing too closely on an aura or even spending too much in a busy city can leave her drained.
The little she can actually do predates this awareness. It is the half-remembered hedge magic of her grandparents; cantrips, such as weaving cat’s cradles of string and whatever she may find in her pockets, blades of grass, droplets of water. It is half ritual and half make-believe, but on occasion, flickers of aura in it may hint as something more.
-Unusual education – Several months spent working for the Master of the Clocktower have left the girl’s head spinning with disparate bits of knowledge. From the proper length of sleeves for diplomats in Vel Anir, to the effects of a couple of poisons and the scientific method, the girl can’t help both resent and be fascinated by this largely useless knowledge.
-Misdirection – Nina is a poor combatant, but in exchange for his life, an assassin had taught her basics of the one thing the girl was curious about – the way he would disappear without a trace, or appear by her side without warning.
You see, the art of stealth is not necessarily about not being seen. It is about not being looked at. This difference is subtle, but essential. By ensuring that she remains the least interesting thing in somebody’s field of vision, be it by blending in with her surroundings or through blatant distraction, Nina can become eerily difficult to notice. This is more difficult, though particularly startling, during combat.
*Arsenal and hunting gear: A bolas, a lasso, a swordbreaker, plant seeds resembling caltrops, trapping equipment.
-Painter – Watercolors are the main splash of civilization which the nomad allows in her life, mainly for the chance of bringing the wild back to civilization. Her landscapes and occasional portraits are a mean of subsistence during long travels, but also carry spiritual significance to Nina, as mirrors of distant lands that she shares with others.
-A touch of magic – Magic has been her curse even since her unfortunate encounter with Gray, the master assassin. While Nina can do next to nothing with it, her awareness of auras since then has been painfully sharp. Focusing too closely on an aura or even spending too much in a busy city can leave her drained.
The little she can actually do predates this awareness. It is the half-remembered hedge magic of her grandparents; cantrips, such as weaving cat’s cradles of string and whatever she may find in her pockets, blades of grass, droplets of water. It is half ritual and half make-believe, but on occasion, flickers of aura in it may hint as something more.
-Unusual education – Several months spent working for the Master of the Clocktower have left the girl’s head spinning with disparate bits of knowledge. From the proper length of sleeves for diplomats in Vel Anir, to the effects of a couple of poisons and the scientific method, the girl can’t help both resent and be fascinated by this largely useless knowledge.
-Misdirection – Nina is a poor combatant, but in exchange for his life, an assassin had taught her basics of the one thing the girl was curious about – the way he would disappear without a trace, or appear by her side without warning.
You see, the art of stealth is not necessarily about not being seen. It is about not being looked at. This difference is subtle, but essential. By ensuring that she remains the least interesting thing in somebody’s field of vision, be it by blending in with her surroundings or through blatant distraction, Nina can become eerily difficult to notice. This is more difficult, though particularly startling, during combat.
*Arsenal and hunting gear: A bolas, a lasso, a swordbreaker, plant seeds resembling caltrops, trapping equipment.
Personality
A dreamy girl seeking for her place in life, Nina is normally kind and easy-going. She is content to drift along from place to place, and remaining in one location for too long makes her break into panic. But under this plain exterior, she is someone that could break mountains with her willpower alone. No matter how far they are, she cares deeply for her few friends, and hates her few enemies just as deeply. The recent events in the Clocktower have left her hurt and uncertain. Her goal is to find a way to free herself from that story.
The harsh natural environment which she had grown up in had turned her into a self-reliant teenager, yet eager to help others in need. A traveler lacks the protection of their kin, yet a traveler can afford to say the truths and fight the fights that other cannot. Nina had tried to negotiate a balance between these facts. Crowded cities make her uncomfortable; she is most at peace in the middle of nature, as her paintings would reveal. In particular, she has a soft spot for the sea. Timid around strangers and too-aware of her weakness in combat, she nevertheless does her best to be a person of integrity, someone that others can rely on. As her weapons of choice would reveal (lasso, bolas), even when forced to fight she prefers to incapacitate with minimum harm. She enjoys the occasional book, but is most knowledgeable in reading signs in nature – tracks, weather, water-sources.
Painting is, nevertheless, her bug – a stubborn demon of a bug. When she takes paintbrush to paper, Suzuri puts her soul into it to the exclusion of anything else. She’s a landscape artist, a seeker for moving scenes that she can share with others, one whose eyes see places better than people – who are, when present in her paintings, faceless figurines.
The harsh natural environment which she had grown up in had turned her into a self-reliant teenager, yet eager to help others in need. A traveler lacks the protection of their kin, yet a traveler can afford to say the truths and fight the fights that other cannot. Nina had tried to negotiate a balance between these facts. Crowded cities make her uncomfortable; she is most at peace in the middle of nature, as her paintings would reveal. In particular, she has a soft spot for the sea. Timid around strangers and too-aware of her weakness in combat, she nevertheless does her best to be a person of integrity, someone that others can rely on. As her weapons of choice would reveal (lasso, bolas), even when forced to fight she prefers to incapacitate with minimum harm. She enjoys the occasional book, but is most knowledgeable in reading signs in nature – tracks, weather, water-sources.
Painting is, nevertheless, her bug – a stubborn demon of a bug. When she takes paintbrush to paper, Suzuri puts her soul into it to the exclusion of anything else. She’s a landscape artist, a seeker for moving scenes that she can share with others, one whose eyes see places better than people – who are, when present in her paintings, faceless figurines.
Biography & Lore
She was born among the lullaby of the waves and the drunken rattle of bottles, with the soft blanket of the Northern Lights covering her. The Paper Boat, swinging on the seas, was her home for the next few years. Her mother was the captain: good-humored, tough, fair. Her father was the silent Windmaster with his eyes stuck to the stars. They earned their living from ‘guarding naval travels’ and ‘providing alternative routes for the transportation of high-value goods’ – or, as the less bureaucratic would put it, piracy. Illia Irving, or Capt’n Bell as she was known for the ring of her name, liked to regard her crew as professionals. They didn’t kill upon surrender, and kept unnecessary damage to a minimum. The sea was her reign; it just wouldn’t do to scare the ‘cattle’ away.
It was a strange, but oddly charming place to grow up in. Little Nina learned to climb the ratlines before she could walk. She pitter-patted energetically from bow to stern, eliciting wide grins with her statements of ‘There be good weather tomorrow, I feel it in me bones!’. She loved the ocean and the sky, was charmed by their shifting sounds and colors and scents. Perhaps to try and keep those fleeting moments, she learned to paint, taught by a learned hostage from Liadain. It was the same man that, two years later, would hold a paint-cleaning knife against her throat, forcing her captain to give herself up. The outcome was narrowly avoided by a lightning-fast series of events involving biting, a sizzling frying pan and indoor storms. However, this also meant that Suzuri had to leave.
After weeks of travelling across unfamiliar, solid land, of playing pretend with her guard that they were farmers or merchants, a ten-year old Suzuri understood that they weren’t on holiday. The Paper Boat had left without her. Her parents had left her there, because she was a bother to them. She cried for days. She was like a glass bell that held inside it nothing but sobs. But there is sadness which festers, and sadness which heals. Nina’s sadness was of the latter kind.
In the middle of nowhere, they reached the cold, seaside town of Anchor. Left in the care of two affectionate grandparents, the girl eventually regained her cheerful self and learned to love the scented silence of a pine forest and the burning colors of the flowers almost as much as she loved the sea. She learned how to set traps and write, and would often go exploring from breakfast to dinner.
Anchor was a strange, magical place. For much of the year it would be covered in snow and stars, but in the summer the sun would not set for days, allowing vegetables to swell to fairytale proportions. The land was wild; the water, pristine. In this world, belief in the spirits of nature did not seem out of place. Her grandparents were what others may call ‘shamans’, ensuring that nature and the world of humans remained in harmony. They were also diplomats. It was not uncommon for non-human people to stop by, whether Spelling Bees to negotiate meadow boundaries during the Hive’s swarming season, or a Kiriko bringing a particularly rare fruit in exchange for an old favor.
Years passed, one after another. The girl learned how to weave rope, how to survive on her own. Even though she had started to understand them, she still missed her parents. Eventually, inevitably, she grew restless. The forests and shores that she knew like the back of her hand would not sate the thirst in her heart. She adventured further and further away, until, one day, after long discussions with her grandparents, Nina Irving resolved to go on a journey…
She travelled and painted, painted and travelled, living a life that was poor in material goods and often just a cold away from the grave, but a joyful and fulfilling life nevertheless.
She challenged authority, sometimes. Rarely for herself; mostly for others’ sakes. Because it is in the nature of vagabonds to try to play with fire without getting burned.
Until she got burnt.
It is a long story. It has a mad duke, a traveler friend that was imprisoned. An audience, and an old granny that used to be a pirate lord. A musical instrument crafted of glass, with a song like rain. Then the duke disappeared, and Nina was blamed. She was locked up, yet in her dark dingy cell she found a door, and climbed up a spiral staircase, and found herself in a library permeated by golden light and the ticking of a great clock. In the library, she found white-haired man who was dying. In his hand, a message saying ‘hemlock’.
Nina knew about hemlock. It freezes your muscles until you can breathe no longer. She pressed her hands on his chest, again and again, to keep his blood flowing. She breathed the necessary air into his lungs. Until she fell of exhaustion.
She shouldn’t have rescued him. You understood it, didn’t you?
He is the Master of the Clocktower. Assassin of the Azure Dynasty, executioner, and torturer for those, as he puts it, important enough to waste his time. His name is Gray. The tower with the great clock stands in the middle of the castle courtyard, and extends perhaps just as much underground. It is a symbol of power, in the same way that another castle might have a grand church with stained-glass windows, or military barracks. Some sagely notice that it is taller than the castle. Some go in; few come out, and of those that do, they aren’t the same.
The Master of the Clocktower taught her things. Presumably, it was the alternative to Nina dying. Never against her will. It’s inelegant, Gray says, to force people to do things. It shows that you didn’t understand them well enough to pull their strings. Nina’s main string was her curiosity.
She left, after some point, and no one stopped her. The place was too oppressive. But the Clocktower has marked her. To this day, messages from the assassin appear on the inside of her forearm, along her veins.
‘Apologies for the inconvenience’
It was a strange, but oddly charming place to grow up in. Little Nina learned to climb the ratlines before she could walk. She pitter-patted energetically from bow to stern, eliciting wide grins with her statements of ‘There be good weather tomorrow, I feel it in me bones!’. She loved the ocean and the sky, was charmed by their shifting sounds and colors and scents. Perhaps to try and keep those fleeting moments, she learned to paint, taught by a learned hostage from Liadain. It was the same man that, two years later, would hold a paint-cleaning knife against her throat, forcing her captain to give herself up. The outcome was narrowly avoided by a lightning-fast series of events involving biting, a sizzling frying pan and indoor storms. However, this also meant that Suzuri had to leave.
After weeks of travelling across unfamiliar, solid land, of playing pretend with her guard that they were farmers or merchants, a ten-year old Suzuri understood that they weren’t on holiday. The Paper Boat had left without her. Her parents had left her there, because she was a bother to them. She cried for days. She was like a glass bell that held inside it nothing but sobs. But there is sadness which festers, and sadness which heals. Nina’s sadness was of the latter kind.
In the middle of nowhere, they reached the cold, seaside town of Anchor. Left in the care of two affectionate grandparents, the girl eventually regained her cheerful self and learned to love the scented silence of a pine forest and the burning colors of the flowers almost as much as she loved the sea. She learned how to set traps and write, and would often go exploring from breakfast to dinner.
Anchor was a strange, magical place. For much of the year it would be covered in snow and stars, but in the summer the sun would not set for days, allowing vegetables to swell to fairytale proportions. The land was wild; the water, pristine. In this world, belief in the spirits of nature did not seem out of place. Her grandparents were what others may call ‘shamans’, ensuring that nature and the world of humans remained in harmony. They were also diplomats. It was not uncommon for non-human people to stop by, whether Spelling Bees to negotiate meadow boundaries during the Hive’s swarming season, or a Kiriko bringing a particularly rare fruit in exchange for an old favor.
Years passed, one after another. The girl learned how to weave rope, how to survive on her own. Even though she had started to understand them, she still missed her parents. Eventually, inevitably, she grew restless. The forests and shores that she knew like the back of her hand would not sate the thirst in her heart. She adventured further and further away, until, one day, after long discussions with her grandparents, Nina Irving resolved to go on a journey…
She travelled and painted, painted and travelled, living a life that was poor in material goods and often just a cold away from the grave, but a joyful and fulfilling life nevertheless.
She challenged authority, sometimes. Rarely for herself; mostly for others’ sakes. Because it is in the nature of vagabonds to try to play with fire without getting burned.
Until she got burnt.
It is a long story. It has a mad duke, a traveler friend that was imprisoned. An audience, and an old granny that used to be a pirate lord. A musical instrument crafted of glass, with a song like rain. Then the duke disappeared, and Nina was blamed. She was locked up, yet in her dark dingy cell she found a door, and climbed up a spiral staircase, and found herself in a library permeated by golden light and the ticking of a great clock. In the library, she found white-haired man who was dying. In his hand, a message saying ‘hemlock’.
Nina knew about hemlock. It freezes your muscles until you can breathe no longer. She pressed her hands on his chest, again and again, to keep his blood flowing. She breathed the necessary air into his lungs. Until she fell of exhaustion.
She shouldn’t have rescued him. You understood it, didn’t you?
He is the Master of the Clocktower. Assassin of the Azure Dynasty, executioner, and torturer for those, as he puts it, important enough to waste his time. His name is Gray. The tower with the great clock stands in the middle of the castle courtyard, and extends perhaps just as much underground. It is a symbol of power, in the same way that another castle might have a grand church with stained-glass windows, or military barracks. Some sagely notice that it is taller than the castle. Some go in; few come out, and of those that do, they aren’t the same.
The Master of the Clocktower taught her things. Presumably, it was the alternative to Nina dying. Never against her will. It’s inelegant, Gray says, to force people to do things. It shows that you didn’t understand them well enough to pull their strings. Nina’s main string was her curiosity.
She left, after some point, and no one stopped her. The place was too oppressive. But the Clocktower has marked her. To this day, messages from the assassin appear on the inside of her forearm, along her veins.
‘Apologies for the inconvenience’
