Name: Chiana
Age: 33
Sex: Female
Sexual Orientation: Big shruuuug
Weyr: Nabol
Rider Rank: Journeyman Courtesan
Previous Rank/Craft: N/A
Physical Description: She of the sultry brown eyes, curly brown hair, and delightfully dusky skin. Chiana is … a vixen. Pretty and petite, and curvy. Somewhere along the way, Chiana figured out that being female could give her a distinct advantage, and that was the end of that. Everything about Chiana is polished, is honed. Chiana can almost always be seen wearing a pair of lapis lazuli earrings. Her movements are almost feline in nature, graceful and slinky, and sure. Her success as a courtesan can be seen from the lavish clothes that she wears, although it should be noted that many of her beautiful garments are carefully patched and sewn back together. Her hair falls in an elaborate spill of curls and braids down her back, where her gowns gather just below her waist.
Personality: Think of just about every Popular girl that you hated in High School. Yeah, that’s Chiana. Pretty, put together, and always grasping for power or position. She’s manipulative and conniving, and deceptively intelligent. She’s not the kind of woman who likes getting her own hands dirty, and would far rather be the one pulling strings. If it comes down to it, she can defend herself, and shells, she can even go one further, and take whatever happens to be standing in her way down, but she’d rather things didn’t progress to that point.
She is wonderfully good at fooling her clients, and nearly all that she encounters. However, no one can fool everyone. Therefore, it is important to have strong, dangerous people standing between her and those who oppose her. The face that she presents to the world is considerably softer, and if it works to her advantage to occasionally seem the helpless damsel, so be it. Beneath that soft shell, Chiana is chock full of ambition, determination, and a drive to get what she wants. She started out with very little, and she’ll never forget that, never forget where she came from.
Being a fairly untrustworthy person herself, Chiana is slow to trust. She’ll believe those around her to be just as ready and able to back stab her as she is them. While she does have true friends, they are fewer in number than the people she is ‘friends’ with because they are convenient, suited to her purposes. What few ties of loyalty she does have run deep, and it would only be with great regret that she would sever them or put them aside.
She likes the idea of Western, likes their message, because it means that anyone with talent will be able to open doors that would otherwise be closed to them. The usual roles of Lady Holder and Weyrwoman are... very, very difficult to obtain. There are far too many able people for the available titles. While she does believe that she, Chiana, is superior, her own ambitions are... somewhat more modest. After all, such a position of power would require real effort, would require dipping her hands into excessive responsibility, and that’s not something she wants.
What she wants, though, is to be able to whisper into someone’s ear, and have that whisper listened to. She wants to be able to pull the strings from the shadows, where she will undoubtedly be safe. She’s not a coward, really, but she does have a healthy respect for the dangers of the world. Being safely ensconced at Nabol suits her quite well, thank you very much. Although many riders from outside of Nabol have attempted to convince her of their noble cause, it might has well have fallen on deaf ears. Chiana is out for herself, and for Nufuith. Period.
She’s entitled. She’s arrogant, and self important, and absolutely blind to her own (considerable) flaws. All that said, however, there is a certain vulnerability in never quite trusting. Her own self esteem, like that of any number of teenagers, can be chipped away at, and if she does not feel suitably admired, she will wilt, somewhat. She can be insulted and humiliated as the next woman, and it’s definitely happened. She can and has felt alienated. That tends to embitter and harden her, make her determined to bring whoever has wronged her to heel.
In her softer moments, Chiana can be very caring. Surprisingly so. Often, however, these emotions are turned onto those she deems useful to her, and not much farther. She can be solicitous to her friends, and where she does place her trust, she is subject to a myriad of confusing (often unwelcome) emotions. Behaving unselfishly is out of keeping with her normal behavior, and it goes without saying that if she is doing that, there is either something to be gained that is not immediately apparent, or s**t has really hit the fan. That, or that her emotions run deeper for the person in question than she is currently comfortable dealing with or even admitting to.
Positive Trait List Brilliant, confident, ambitious, caring
Negative Trait List Deceptive, scheming, vain, manipulative
History: Chiana had a rough start, to say the least. Growing up without parents, Nabol was to her the only teacher that she ever needed. What might have broken a lesser girl only strengthened her resolve, and though she does not speak of those early, harrowing Turns, there is no doubt that they shaped her into what she is today. How or why she was targeted is unknown, but was clear to her that her parents certainly were. They fell to an assassin's blade, and in an instant she lost everything. The assassin? A friend of her father's. From that moment forward, Chiana swore never to trust again.
However, she did convince the man to spare her life, through means that are most unseemly. That dark chapter of her life taught her something invaluable: men will do anything, give anything, to get what they need. And Chiana represented a need. A pretty young girl who would soon grow to be a beautiful young woman, she found her craft on that day, and never looked back. He was the first man that she fooled. And she never stopped. As a courtesan, Chiana was hungry for knowledge, ready to learn anything and everything that she could to rise up in the ranks.
The day that she plunged that same dagger into the b*****d's heart was her first true victory, and she savored it. To this day, she keeps the dagger locked away in an enameled box. The last thing she has to remember her parents by, which drank deeply of the blood of the man who killed them. Since that day she has avoided killing where possible, preferring not to get her soft hands dirty in such an act. She has others who will kill or die for her, and she is not afraid to sway that to that very deed.
She has long since learned that words whispered in the dark of night, after passion has played its siren song for those who listen, have great power. Chiana, in turn, holds that power. She wields it as the weapon that it is, boldly unafraid to take what she wants. What she needs. She has very few scruples, and almost no mercy - for indeed, was she given any mercy? No.
Of all of her lovers, there is only one whom she was never able to fool. A woman by the name of Is'men, whose stubborn nature she found... frustratingly endearing. Although Is'men has never been fooled by her, she keeps coming back, which at first confused Chiana. Then, at last, she realized that the mercenary was fond of her true nature, however bloody and dark it might be. It is, perhaps, because of Is'men that she decided to stand for one of Nabol's clutches, and became a rider in her own right. Nufuinth and Chiana are one and the same, never to be parted... rather like a certain Bluerider.
Other: Currently working in The Ardent Rose, a brothel owned by rider E'ros of Amoranth.
DRAGON
Name: Nufuinth
Age: 9 [3564.10.05
Sharath x Efraath (brown)]
Color: Green
Size: 25'
Physical Description: Lean and slender, she looks a bit less than average for a green due to the way she twines and coils up on herself all the time. Her limbs, tail, and neck are all long and snaky, and when she stretches out she proves to be well longer than the average green, though certainly not broader. She is an uncannily quick (and quiet) creature, both on the ground and in the air. Quite fond of twisting and turning, often coiling her body around itself, she is a master of sharp turns. Just watch out that her whip-like tail doesn’t catch your snout if you’re too close.
Personality: A lean and slender green, her body is long and snaky, though she does not often look as long as she is due to her tendency to curl and twine around on herself. Her posture is hunched and slinking, and she seems to have a penchant for sitting in dark places from which only her slowly whirling eyes gleam. As she gets older, and larger, it will be a little trickier to stay in the shadows, but she is not the sort to leap into the light by any stretch. At least...not until she is good and ready with every piece of every plan carefully and calculatingly set out into place.
She is sly, cunning, and ambitious, but not one to openly strike for a goal or at an enemy. Instead, she keeps to the edges, always watching, always aware of more than is expected. This green is a backstabber, and prefers to be her own ally rather than tossing in her lot with someone else. She’ll manipulate someone if she can, but is too evasive to be a leader. Nufuinth likes to watch from the shadows rather than being involved herself, the better to avoid blame and revenge. If she can play both sides against each other, so much the better for her, but if it comes down to it she’s more likely to align herself to the side with more power rather than the side with nobler ideals. If the two coincide, great, if they don’t, she doesn’t care.
Without a doubt, she is looking after number one, and by that she means, of course, herself. She will rise to power, just you wait and see, but then again, maybe you won’t. She is ever the shadow-queen, and will shy away from the spotlight if possible. After all, if she has a figurehead, then they will be the ones to take the blame and fall should things go awry. Better to have a loyal pawn than risk herself. And all such pawns are utterly expendable, she is the important one, they are just so much rubbish on the roadside, good so long as they can be used and then discarded without a second thought.
Being 'just a green' is ever so useful. Underestimating her is a grave mistake, but she will do her best to make sure you never realize as much. Or, if you do, the realization will only come too late for you to save yourself. She is confident and arrogant sure, and anyone who fails to appreciate her, as all must if she is to succeed as she will, is simply another fool begging to be used.
Strengths: Cunning, ambitious, clever, manipulative, perceptive
Weaknesses: Underhanded, selfish, backstabber, secretive, pitiless
Dragon Art or Proof of Obtainment: Here
Green Nufuinth
Inspiration:
"Stick to the forest-track, keep your spirits up, hope for the best, and with a tremendous slice of luck you may come out one day..."
Mirkwood dates back to the earliest days of Middle-earth and the Elves passed through it on their Great Journey from Cuiviénen into the Far West, and where they made their first long-term stop at before continuing onward. From then on Mirkwood had been the dwelling of the Wood-elves for many thousands of years Nandor elves descending from the wandering Teleri elf Lenwë had begun living there. The Sindarin elf Oropher, the great grand father of Legolas established the Woodland realm proper, which had become the primary settlement of the elves from the Second Age onward. It was around this time that Men, possibly ancestors of the Northmen began making permanent settlements in and around the forest. When Oropher was killed in the War of the Last Alliance, the kingship passed to his son Thranduil and he ruled there every since.
It had been called Greenwood the Great until around the year TA 1050 of the Years of the Sun, when a shadow of the Dark Lord Sauron fell upon it, and men began to call it Mirkwood, or Taur-nu-Fuin and Taur-e-Ndaedelos in the Sindarin tongue. From then onward, Mirkwood had become a haunted place inhabited with many dark and savage things. Sauron established himself at the hill-fortress of Dol Guldur on Amon Lanc, and drove Thranduil and his people ever northward, so that by the end of the Third Age they were a diminished and wary people, who had entrenched themselves beyond the Mountains of Mirkwood The Old forest road or Old Dwarf Road crossed the forest east to west, but because it was so close to Dol Guldur the road was mostly unusable. The elves made a path farther to the north, which ended somewhere in the marshes south of the Long Lake of Esgaroth or Laketown.
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Bilbo Baggins, along with Thorin Oakenshield and his band of dwarves, ventured into Mirkwood during their quest to regain the Lonely Mountain or Erebor from the dragon Smaug. There, the Dwarf Bombur fell into the Enchanted river. Later, they came across many great Giant Spiders, the breed of Shelob. Shortly after this escape they were captured by the elves. After or during these events the White Council attacked Dol Guldur, and Sauron fled to Mordor, and his influence in Mirkwood diminished for a while. Though initially they prospered as the darkness was lifted, the elves of the Wood of Greenleaves were eventually destined either to depart for Valinor or fade into rustic forest spirits.
Origin of Name:
In The Silmarillion, the highlands of Dorthonion north of Beleriand eventually fell under Morgoth's control and was subjugated by creatures of Sauron, then Lord of Werewolves. It was renamed Taur-nu-Fuin in Sindarin, the "Forest under Deadly Nightshade".
Personality:
A lean and slender green, her body is long and snaky, though she does not often look as long as she is due to her tendency to curl and twine around on herself. Her posture is hunched and slinking, and she seems to have a penchant for sitting in dark places from which only her slowly whirling eyes gleam. As she gets older, and larger, it will be a little trickier to stay in the shadows, but she is not the sort to leap into the light by any stretch. At least...not until she is good and ready with every piece of every plan carefully and calculatingly set out into place.
She is sly, cunning, and ambitious, but not one to openly strike for a goal or at an enemy. Instead, she keeps to the edges, always watching, always aware of more than is expected. This green is a backstabber, and prefers to be her own ally rather than tossing in her lot with someone else. She’ll manipulate someone if she can, but is too evasive to be a leader. Nufuinth likes to watch from the shadows rather than being involved herself, the better to avoid blame and revenge. If she can play both sides against each other, so much the better for her, but if it comes down to it she’s more likely to align herself to the side with more power rather than the side with nobler ideals. If the two coincide, great, if they don’t, she doesn’t care.
Without a doubt, she is looking after number one, and by that she means, of course, herself. She will rise to power, just you wait and see, but then again, maybe you won’t. She is ever the shadow-queen, and will shy away from the spotlight if possible. After all, if she has a figurehead, then they will be the ones to take the blame and fall should things go awry. Better to have a loyal pawn than risk herself. And all such pawns are utterly expendable, she is the important one, they are just so much rubbish on the roadside, good so long as they can be used and then discarded without a second thought.
Being 'just a green' is ever so useful. Underestimating her is a grave mistake, but she will do her best to make sure you never realize as much. Or, if you do, the relization will only come too late for you to save yourself. She is confident and arrogant sure, and anyone who fails to appreciate her, as all must if she is to succeed as she will, is simply another fool begging to be used.
The betrayal of Aedeth will not be soon forgotten.
Strengths: Cunning, ambitious, clever, manipulative, perceptive
Weaknesses: Underhanded, selfish, backstabber, secretive, pitiless
Body Points: Lean and slender, she looks a bit less than average for a green due to the way she twines and coils up on herself all the time. Her limbs, tail, and neck are all long and snaky, and when she stretches out she proves to be well longer than the average green, though certainly not broader. She is an uncannily quick (and quiet) creature, both on the ground and in the air. Quite fond of twisting and turning, often coiling her body around itself, she is a master of sharp turns. Just watch out that her whip-like tail doesn’t catch your snout if you’re too close.
Why Me?
Those who watch and wait are the ones who are going to pull the strings in the end. Stealth and cunning will always outfox brute strength. Nufuinth knows this, and Chiana does too. Patient ambition will rule for far longer than those hasty or overt desires. There is only room for one puppetmaster and only the one with no strings attached will hold that role… and it will be Chiana and Nufuinth, the green is certain of it. Oh plenty were ambitious to be sure, but they were embarrassed about their ‘dark secrets’. There is no shame in the rise to perfect control, only weakness in the face of true power… and that true power will always manipulate those weaknesses. So be selfish! Everyone is a tool to be used and discared, a knife in the back is wiser than a brawl, and those who run away can fight another day when the odds are in their favor. So let the others underestimate them, Nufuinth will be pleased to teach Chiana how the opinions of others are worthless. There is no need to feel hurt when the fools of the world fail to appreciate greatness, let the pair of them be dismissed as a mere green and her pretty rider, they understand one another perfectly and only they will know their secrets. The shadows cast by those who squabble for power are long and dark, and the strings within are waiting to be held… their time is coming and none will be the wiser.