Name:Thrydlden Rutt
(
th-RIDDLE-dehn rut)
Age:4987
Gender:agender (though comfortable being referred to as s/he, the most correct pronoun, according to them, would be it, while the more polite would be they)
Alliance:Edhil's resistance
Race:Uialie
Appearance:Spindly-limbed and squat, the first thing one might notice about Thrydlden is that they are quite small, around 2’ tall, without much excess muscle or fat. The second thing would assuredly be their smell. They’ve a pungent scent of earth and rotting things surrounding them, particularly on their breath. It is not altogether unpleasant, but it isn’t exactly the nicest of odours. Most often, it can be compared to rotting trees and leaves, but does depend on their diet.
They’ve a rather large and flat head, with a wide expressive mouth, upturned pug nose and beady little eyes set far apart. Their ears are long, pointed and floppy, sticking out to either side from a mat of hair that is as much a mixture of moss, dirt and little growing things as hair. It covers their back completely, and is far less mobile or wispy than standard hair, it being both incredibly matted with twigs and plants and partially attached all down their spine. They’ve wrinkles gathered under their eyes and chin, along their throat and creased around their joints, their mottled skin becoming looser and slightly transparent as they age. Pigment in their skin gives it a naturally yellowish-green tinge with gradually changing blue, purple and brown splotches that give Thrydlden the appearance of being covered in bruises, though in truth, the more mottled they are, the healthier they are. The mottling is a natural camouflage that helps them blend into darker places.
They have long limbs with relatively flexible joints, though their bones are becoming brittle. Their hands are the same, being long and slender, with only three spindly fingers and a thumb each. But they’ve no feet, as they were never meant for much travelling they didn’t need them, and tend to look a little silly tottering about on the ends of their peg-like legs. To round out their differences, they usually have a few fungi growing from their skin. Sometimes capped mushrooms from their scalp and other times fanned mushrooms spreading along their arms or sheet fungus down their torso, which is, itself, the most unremarkable part of them, being flat-chested, short, and somewhat potbellied. They wear only a string belt around their waist with small stones and various items strung on it.
Class:Sairuvar
Abilities/Skills:Bodily Manipulation – they hold a very mind over matter way of life, and can manipulate said matter with a relatively precise skill. The bodily aspect focuses mostly on the health and reaction of the body, from slowing down or speeding up the metabolism or the heart, to strengthening muscle and bone. They never really went beyond their own body in these studies, however, and there is only so much they can do to slow their aging before the effort becomes detrimental in and of itself.
Mental Manipulation – their mind is their most powerful weapon. They can manipulate their own and those of others with almost the same instinct, though a great deal more effort, as they can breathe. Within their own mind, they can block out what they do not like, or recall with unerring clarity every aspect of one memory, and they can keep others from entering and rearranging their thoughts. They can do the same with others, but prefer a more passive approach than forcefully rummaging about in the brains of others. Instead, they more usually observe and come to understand the other’s way of thinking, and then offer hints and nudges using more conventional techniques, like talking… They can, however, enter into direct contact in which both are aware of the other, rather like simple telepathy.
Divination – Thrydlden rarely uses the direct techniques of throwing runes or bones or using other physical aspects of the world to gain insight into it. And the knowledge they gain is not always about the future. Instead, they prefer to rely on instinct and intuition to give them the upper hand. Sometimes it is nothing more than a worrisome feeling about spoiled food, and other times it might be clear enough to make them decide to try dreaming further. But they do not usually get direct, specific insight(like look in the third room on the second floor of the Prancing Pony Inn, more like a preference for one place over another), and while each method is passive and uses power automatically, it does require that they be paying attention to notice. And the dreaming takes more magic than one would expect.
Armor and Weapons:Thrydlden has no armour, but they do have a little
knife they use to scrape up bark and moss that might be used to cut someone as a last resort. It’s not really shaped right for any sort of offensive, but it is sharp. They also have two little bags of powdered hot spices that they rather like the taste of, but that can become an irritant when blown into the face of an attacker. Beyond that, they can try running away?
Personality:A kindly, patient creature, Thrydlden does not consider itself capable of rancour or anger, nor are they particularly aggressive. Having immortality on their side means they never really learned the value of moving quickly or making fast decisions. They can, if sorely pressed, do both, but they don’t particularly enjoy it, or go out of their way to encounter situations that call for it. They are, however, eager to be helpful and do enjoy quiet interactions, though they aren’t easily drawn into lengthy conversations. Their approach to life is quite simple: take each day as it comes, remember well, and never be afraid to offer counsel or to ask questions. They are quite practically minded and down to earth, but not above giving in to strong emotion when caught up in the moment.
They have a strong, if subtle, sense of right and wrong, believing in the balance of natural scales that usually require no interference to even things out again. Their moral compass, therefore, is geared more towards forgiveness than retribution, and they make the utmost effort to allow insults or wrongdoings to roll past without making too many ripples or passing too harsh a judgement of those responsible. The genocide of their people is a far more serious offense than anything they’ve encountered before, and they’ve decided it cannot be righted by nature alone, so they want to help.
These days, they have become withdrawn and increasingly absentminded. Still capable of remembering much of their earlier years, their mind purposely shies away from the past 50 years and sinks further into melancholy at each reminder. They do not ask much of anyone, though they have a particular dislike of being alone, but their age and ageless life means they’re a strange combination of childlike and ancient; smiling at the simplest of wonders while being perfectly capable of explaining the phenomenon in more detail than anyone would likely want to know. They have a far more powerful mental presence than their small body would imply and are aware of it, in a haphazard manner, not afraid to reach out when they feel they should, or when they are frightened or seeking to calm someone else, and they don’t have quite the same notion of mental separation as those who cannot encompass more than their own thoughts. A fact not always welcome.
History:Thrydlden was born amongst many like them. The first few years of their life was spent in and around the trunk of a single huge tree, growing slowly and learning about this land that was their home. The tree was, in truth, the physical representation of their mother, though she was more an entity of magic than a corporeal being. Their siblings were each similar in appearance to them, though some were gendered, and they all changed as they grew, adopting their own personality and preferences, making themselves individuals using the plants and animals they encountered during their explorations. It was Thrydlden’s encounter with a mushroom that set them on the course to what they’ve become today.
And it was their mother that gave them their first lesson in magic: in escaping the bounds of the physical. Thrydlden learned more about their world without leaving the roots of that tree than most could manage. The single, greatest lesson their mother shared was that being small did not have to mean being limited. They took it to heart, but though they were occasionally curious about the world beyond the forest, the farthest they ever moved away from their tree was to a nearby city built within the boughs of still growing giants. To Thrydlden, it was a world apart from living in the roots of their mother’s tree. A good experience to realise there were others out there, and that they could adapt to something different.
Still, they remained where they felt safe and familiar, preferring explorations of magic and the mind rather than the world beyond Aliudea. They made friends and acquaintances from all walks of life, and gained some small familiarity with a few members of the Seelie Court, their magic having the same propensity to wax and wane as the moon did. They never joined in any of the politics though, merely enjoyed the chance to observe the activities of those with greater responsibility than them. There were few struggles or ambitions to be thwarted during that time, however, and both Seelie and Unseelie courts abided well within their rights and rules and kept to the balance that nature had dictated for them.
It was only when they met the Edhil allied with the Uialien some thousand years after Thrydlden first ventured into the city that they truly understood the passage of time. Of course, they’d seen it, in the days and nights and seasons, but that seemed more like a cycle than a straight line. It was only when they came to know the mortal Edhil that they saw the effects of aging. It was a sudden death, the loss of an elder Edhel, surprising, but even that gradually turned into a cycle that was larger than any one creature. Of course, it helped that those things Thrydlden had come to love and study happened to live off the death and decay of others. Generally, they found most discoveries could eventually be fit into such a world view without being too troubling, and though they did miss those that passed on, there were always others to meet. And nothing of the sort had ever happened to an Uialie, even their mother, whose tree could not last forever, suffered only the loss of a home rather than any permanent death.
That was how their life passed for some time. Occasionally, they would spend their days wandering the forest, and moving with others to different cities. But they preferred the familiar, and learning magic did not always allow for a lax schedule. They learned from their mother more about the mind and body, and from a Seelie woman hoping to pass on the art, and thus, the responsibilities, they learned divination. It did not always come easily, but they enjoyed every success, and were encouraged by the faith the other Uialie had in them. And then that life ended.
It began with unsettling fear, and continued to invade their dreams when they tried to pinpoint the problem. But even when the Uialien were left dying or dead, it did not end. Thrydlden was pulled away from the body of their tutor and dragged past the empty shell of their mother’s tree by the Fatanen that came after the decimating magic. They were taken beyond the shores of their home across rough, uncomfortable seas with the broken remnants of their people and hidden away in the dark. It was that darkness, empty of everything but pain and sorrow and anger that tipped the scales and rather than working to accept and deal with their grief, Thrydlden worked to escape it, bending their magic in upon themself and instinctively forcing their body into a dormant state. They could endure, but with so much loss, they did not immediately want to, and it was their method of waiting until the grief was manageable before letting it in.
They might have remained that way indefinitely, caught on the verge of abandoning their sorrow, but the dungeons where they were kept were neither still nor silent, and gradually, it reached through to Thrydlden, until they had to acknowledge it. Most of those nearby felt similar anguish, but when they felt a stronger presence on the edge of their awareness, they reached out and found an anger and strength fighting a more physical pain than they wanted to feel in their state. So they reacted by diving deep into better memories, and felt a distant resonance in the stranger.
The second time Thrydlden reached out, their effort was deliberate. They were awake and aware. Tired, aching, but sympathetic and needing the chance to nurture rather than weep. They continued to reach for the stranger, to comfort and console and share memories of the land and life they’d lost, whenever they felt the mind falter. They did not truly understand what occurred in the other cell, but they knew it helped, and they knew the effort helped them. So, though it wore away what few reserves they had left, Thrydlden continued to reach for the presence instinct told them would be important someday. They nearly failed towards the end, and when the other vanished after a deal of noise and struggle beyond their door, Thrydlden smiled and let themself drift.
They were awakened again, weaker than before, when a Nogyth stepped inside their cell and lifted them from the ground. The rescue came in time to let them recover some strength, but Thrydlden was dying from the moment they broke away from dormancy too soon. They’ve spent the past several years helping their rescuers in their search for answers, hoping it would ease their own mind as well. In the end, it brought an answer, but not a nice one. And they decided that the natural balance had tipped too far to fix itself. Those who lived on the world and did not like what the Fatanen had done would have to fix it themselves.
Other:I’m calling them Truffle in my head, yes, yes I am.
