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Naarrah Nuukis| 15 | Furred Ukanuq
Nobody really knows where he or she goes in this life; the difference lies in that I, at least, have clear that I do not know…
Appearance:
Naarrah is part of the many species of Ukanuq that roam and settle the lands, while she mostly identifies as a female for convenience, her particular race, which calls itself the Shiriah, is made entirely of hermaphrodites. Of a slender and nimble body, she stands up to just 165cm., though what she might lack in apparent muscle mass she makes up in agility and dexterity. This is helped in great measure by being digitigrade. While her kind isn’t particularly strong by nature compared to many others of the Ukanuq, she is likely more so than a strong man a head or two taller. Compared to some of the Jotun which could rip her in half with no effort, that isn’t much to say.
A species whose members are only hermaphrodites is a rare sight but not one that is unheard of among the Ukanuq, though that is something completely different in the Holdings and the cities, where said knowledge has been something to be discriminated for, and, also, the first weapon ever used against her. In this manner is that by this point in time, Naarrah has learned to live and pass as a female, something that isn’t that hard considering her kind is of androgynous shape which is made harder to discern with their winter coats of fur. In the remaining seasons, Naarrah prefers to use loose clothing, specially greatcoats and ponchos, in the beginning to avoid suspicion and now as a habit inherited from the days when she lived in the snowy plains to the south of Vallstead. It is a plus that said coats can be customized and adapted to blend in with the surroundings when the need arises even so far from her home and in circumstances so different from their original purpose of hunting.
Naarrah’s species sheds their winter coat of fur each year; of this is exempt a scally tail that is as long as two times her height crowned by a tuft of fur at the end. Another curious fact is that in the place of her smaller finger on each hand, instead lies a second opposable thumb.
Contrary to what might be recommendable for a hunter, Naarrah has let her hair grow very long, which she ties into several braids, sometimes dyed in bright colours for her amusement. It is something hard to take care of and for this she is proud of it… Even when she had several try to grab them to slit her throat.
A species whose members are only hermaphrodites is a rare sight but not one that is unheard of among the Ukanuq, though that is something completely different in the Holdings and the cities, where said knowledge has been something to be discriminated for, and, also, the first weapon ever used against her. In this manner is that by this point in time, Naarrah has learned to live and pass as a female, something that isn’t that hard considering her kind is of androgynous shape which is made harder to discern with their winter coats of fur. In the remaining seasons, Naarrah prefers to use loose clothing, specially greatcoats and ponchos, in the beginning to avoid suspicion and now as a habit inherited from the days when she lived in the snowy plains to the south of Vallstead. It is a plus that said coats can be customized and adapted to blend in with the surroundings when the need arises even so far from her home and in circumstances so different from their original purpose of hunting.
Naarrah’s species sheds their winter coat of fur each year; of this is exempt a scally tail that is as long as two times her height crowned by a tuft of fur at the end. Another curious fact is that in the place of her smaller finger on each hand, instead lies a second opposable thumb.
Contrary to what might be recommendable for a hunter, Naarrah has let her hair grow very long, which she ties into several braids, sometimes dyed in bright colours for her amusement. It is something hard to take care of and for this she is proud of it… Even when she had several try to grab them to slit her throat.
History:
Ever since she was very young, Naarrah has been in contact with the remains of before the Long Silence. She had been chosen and then raised by a witch, not the shaman of her tribe of Shiriah, but a renowned furred Ukanuq powerful enough that was said to take a pilgrimage to The Tear every ten years.
Naarrah’s relationship with the witch would be distant the short amount of time they managed to interact, however, during that period of time an avid Naarrah would learn several lifetimes of experience with poisons, how to use, collect, create, combat and react to them. This might have been the only saving point in the relationship between the two as, because of her status and the fact the witch was never very expressive in her indirect affection for the young Shiriah, Naarrah couldn’t really appreciate how much the witch did care for her. She would only do so several years after, when she was much more aware of the world.
Of untold age, the witch, by the name Kirata’a, had trained a number of apprentices so large that is said that the first had been forgotten by the great-grandfather of the great-grandfather of the oldest surviving Ukanuq, even when their kind shouldn’t live a tenth of said time. Naarrah wouldn’t be anyone special in that long succession of chosen ones, however, with the sudden sickness of Kirata’a, everything changed. A young and scared Shiriah was taken to the deathbed of the witch and given a blessing. After that she was forced into a bed and tied until a dark liquid came from the now dead witch and entered her body. The numbing sensation was as terrifying as anything could be for the young Naarrah, causing her to hyperventilate until she passed out. She would wake up a week later to a tribe that revered her, despite that, no one could help control the new abilities which she would awaken involuntarily with time.
She knew she needed learn to take care of herself if she was to ever understand what kind of powers she held now within herself. Naarrah had always had the heart of a wanderer, now, that was to be her fate both by own hand and by the circumstances. There was something pulling her, pulling her towards different directions at the same time, telling her things nobody she knew could know, disjointed and probably useless knowledge, and taking her to places beyond the veil of the Long Silence when she was behind the veil of sleep.
Naarrah awoke many a night frantic and illuminated in a hypnapompic half-trance whishing she was where the shard of magic in her soul called. Thus, when she was old enough, when she learned enough to survive by her own means in the wilderness, then she would leave her tribe behind and headed towards the closest city: Vallstead.
It wasn’t as easy as that though. The Konlor, a council of elders in which the most significative members of all the tribes of the Shiriah came that spring, one every ten years, and as the inheritor of the witch she was forced to assist even against her wishes. Naarrah demanded to be let go from the tribe to find what kind of magic was calling her. She convinced the elders that if she could complete three tests of her ingenuity and prowess, they would let her go.
First came the representatives of the tribes of the snowy plains in which she had lived most of her life: hunting the largest animal which the tribe knew, but they only gave her one arrow. When she confronted the Gyrim, a great lizard of 7 metres, she unleashed as much power as her only arrow could resist without vaporizing. The Gyrim received the equivalent of the impact of a pair of tones straight to the muzzle and died on the spot.
After a week in which Naarah was unconscious, came the second test. This time it was by the representatives of the tribes of east, a group of great navigators. She was to cross a large river, without getting wet with only what she could carry in her hands. She took a length of rope and tied it to the end of one of her arrows. She added weight to the arrow and it carried her from one side of the river to the other, at the cost of breaking both of her legs.
Then, confronted by the reality of her surpassing and them having only one chance, the representatives of the great savannahs to the north decided not to wait until she was fully healed. She was to catch ten Thundersouls, the fastest birds known to the tribes without using neither traps, her bow, nor her hands. It was often said that the best hunter in the tribes would only be able to hit one once in its lifetime.
Naarrah was frantic trying to find a way to solve this problem but finally came to a conclusion at the end of the day before. In the dead of the night, she sneaked around and decided to tie pieces of her arrows to the legs of the Birds after they fell asleep thanks to a poison she put in the air. It was a dangerous mission as the bird lived in the edge of a vertical cliff and her legs hadn’t fully healed.
When the next day came, she only increased the weight of the pieces of arrows on the legs of the birds and they fell from the sky. The tribes never learned her secret, thinking she was able to manipulate gravity at her will. Victorious, Naarrah packed her things and headed for Vallstead.
In Vallstead she found a life a tracker and hunter, much like on her tribe, and learned from the circumstances that everyone wasn’t as honest as back home. That she was another shade of grey, though light she was, in a world where black and white didn’t really exist as more than concepts to define the greys by. They weren’t harsh lessons, but she was a good learner. Soon she would take her firsts jobs as a mercenary, without any kind of special recognition. She was another face in the crowd, even in the crowd of mercenaries. Naarrah left Vallstead after some time and decided to wander the cities of the Holdings. The treks were harsh, nonetheless, it wasn’t something she was unaccustomed to thanks to her previous life. So, with the shared purpose of arriving at other cities, she guarded caravans between them. Tracking in the snow was different than doing so the savannahs or in the desert, however, she managed to grasp the concepts much further than well enough.
Now Naarrah feels the pull in her soul ever stronger, the Shiriah is in Mournhold and now she knows, somehow, that what has been calling her is around Ashfoot. Because of it, now she has joined a krewe and appealed to become part of the Vigil under the Count of Mournhold.
Naarrah’s relationship with the witch would be distant the short amount of time they managed to interact, however, during that period of time an avid Naarrah would learn several lifetimes of experience with poisons, how to use, collect, create, combat and react to them. This might have been the only saving point in the relationship between the two as, because of her status and the fact the witch was never very expressive in her indirect affection for the young Shiriah, Naarrah couldn’t really appreciate how much the witch did care for her. She would only do so several years after, when she was much more aware of the world.
Of untold age, the witch, by the name Kirata’a, had trained a number of apprentices so large that is said that the first had been forgotten by the great-grandfather of the great-grandfather of the oldest surviving Ukanuq, even when their kind shouldn’t live a tenth of said time. Naarrah wouldn’t be anyone special in that long succession of chosen ones, however, with the sudden sickness of Kirata’a, everything changed. A young and scared Shiriah was taken to the deathbed of the witch and given a blessing. After that she was forced into a bed and tied until a dark liquid came from the now dead witch and entered her body. The numbing sensation was as terrifying as anything could be for the young Naarrah, causing her to hyperventilate until she passed out. She would wake up a week later to a tribe that revered her, despite that, no one could help control the new abilities which she would awaken involuntarily with time.
She knew she needed learn to take care of herself if she was to ever understand what kind of powers she held now within herself. Naarrah had always had the heart of a wanderer, now, that was to be her fate both by own hand and by the circumstances. There was something pulling her, pulling her towards different directions at the same time, telling her things nobody she knew could know, disjointed and probably useless knowledge, and taking her to places beyond the veil of the Long Silence when she was behind the veil of sleep.
Naarrah awoke many a night frantic and illuminated in a hypnapompic half-trance whishing she was where the shard of magic in her soul called. Thus, when she was old enough, when she learned enough to survive by her own means in the wilderness, then she would leave her tribe behind and headed towards the closest city: Vallstead.
It wasn’t as easy as that though. The Konlor, a council of elders in which the most significative members of all the tribes of the Shiriah came that spring, one every ten years, and as the inheritor of the witch she was forced to assist even against her wishes. Naarrah demanded to be let go from the tribe to find what kind of magic was calling her. She convinced the elders that if she could complete three tests of her ingenuity and prowess, they would let her go.
First came the representatives of the tribes of the snowy plains in which she had lived most of her life: hunting the largest animal which the tribe knew, but they only gave her one arrow. When she confronted the Gyrim, a great lizard of 7 metres, she unleashed as much power as her only arrow could resist without vaporizing. The Gyrim received the equivalent of the impact of a pair of tones straight to the muzzle and died on the spot.
After a week in which Naarah was unconscious, came the second test. This time it was by the representatives of the tribes of east, a group of great navigators. She was to cross a large river, without getting wet with only what she could carry in her hands. She took a length of rope and tied it to the end of one of her arrows. She added weight to the arrow and it carried her from one side of the river to the other, at the cost of breaking both of her legs.
Then, confronted by the reality of her surpassing and them having only one chance, the representatives of the great savannahs to the north decided not to wait until she was fully healed. She was to catch ten Thundersouls, the fastest birds known to the tribes without using neither traps, her bow, nor her hands. It was often said that the best hunter in the tribes would only be able to hit one once in its lifetime.
Naarrah was frantic trying to find a way to solve this problem but finally came to a conclusion at the end of the day before. In the dead of the night, she sneaked around and decided to tie pieces of her arrows to the legs of the Birds after they fell asleep thanks to a poison she put in the air. It was a dangerous mission as the bird lived in the edge of a vertical cliff and her legs hadn’t fully healed.
When the next day came, she only increased the weight of the pieces of arrows on the legs of the birds and they fell from the sky. The tribes never learned her secret, thinking she was able to manipulate gravity at her will. Victorious, Naarrah packed her things and headed for Vallstead.
In Vallstead she found a life a tracker and hunter, much like on her tribe, and learned from the circumstances that everyone wasn’t as honest as back home. That she was another shade of grey, though light she was, in a world where black and white didn’t really exist as more than concepts to define the greys by. They weren’t harsh lessons, but she was a good learner. Soon she would take her firsts jobs as a mercenary, without any kind of special recognition. She was another face in the crowd, even in the crowd of mercenaries. Naarrah left Vallstead after some time and decided to wander the cities of the Holdings. The treks were harsh, nonetheless, it wasn’t something she was unaccustomed to thanks to her previous life. So, with the shared purpose of arriving at other cities, she guarded caravans between them. Tracking in the snow was different than doing so the savannahs or in the desert, however, she managed to grasp the concepts much further than well enough.
Now Naarrah feels the pull in her soul ever stronger, the Shiriah is in Mournhold and now she knows, somehow, that what has been calling her is around Ashfoot. Because of it, now she has joined a krewe and appealed to become part of the Vigil under the Count of Mournhold.
Skills:
- Self-Healing: The main power granted to Naarrah by the witch seems to be the ability to heal from all wounds she has experienced in her life without fault or scar though it takes time. The Shiriah doesn’t know how far this ability extends though and she isn’t about to receive a grievous wound to find out, after all, if she managed to survive this long without really needing to use this ability except to get rid of scars that is a testament enough to her ability to survive, self-healing or not. Her worst punishment has been in the scale of breaking a few fingers and she isn’t sure if the ability can do much more. Maybe this is the reason the witch survived for so long, who knows?
- Manipulation of momentum and weight: Naarrah can manipulate the weight of small objects she is intimately familiar with to add or remove momentum or weight to them. They still weight the same to her in all moments though. For example, if she is to hunt a great beast she can make her arrows change to weight several hundred kilograms in mid-air without them losing momentum for a few seconds. Should she, by some strange reason, were to catch one of the arrows in mid-flight during that period of time though, their weight for her would be normal.
As stated before, this can only be done with objects she is intimately familiar with. Taking a random stone and trying to kill a person with the same technique used in her archery would most likely result in nothing more than a bruise. - Tracking: Her tribe was specialist in tracking through snow and cold climates. Through her travels, Naarrah has become an expert on tracking through almost any kind of terrain.
- Hunting: How useful would be to be able to track if she couldn’t hunt? Naarrah is an expert hunter, being able to bring down terrible beasts with ease through many means such as traps, archery and poisoning.
- Knowledge of poisons: Poison is a great equalizer for many small creatures such as spiders and scorpions, the tribe knew this in spite of their rare appearances, and respected it. Naarrah respects it too, that’s why she spent most of her life before being able to hunt, read childhood, in learning about the different poisons that exist in nature around her. With her more juvenile years she discovered how this could be applied to reinforce her already prodigious prowess as a hunter and with the passage of time and different environments, it was only a question of time until she was considered an expert, or maybe even an artist.
Equipment:
- Great bow: A powerful bow, longer than the height of its user in most cases. Its reach and accuracy are unrivalled in the lands from which Naarrah comes from and, up to this point, very few weapons have been able to compete with said legacy of the tribe of Shiriah.
- Assorted sharp instruments: Naarrah possesses a collection of sharp instruments and blades, many of which spend most of their time in her persona, the majority hidden and covered in some sort of toxic substance, from push-daggers to the equivalent of trench-knives.
- Inventory of poisons: The Shiriah always carries with her small doses of extremely concentrated poisons and their antidotes in case they are needed apart from her poisoned weapons. Also with her are implements necessary for the extraction and/or preparation of everything stated before.
- Capes and camouflage: As well as hunting, this tribesperson prides in her physical aspect, from being able to disappear in every environment she has been subjected to, to her clothes, meaning capes more than anything else. This is the reason she dyes her hair, secretly she tries to look her best in every circumstance were she can allow it.
General Nonsense:
Naarrah knows that is likely that her kind existed as pleasure toys for the humans before the Long Silence. It took her a long time to accept as the pain and stigma she didn’t deserve felt justified in some weird manner, but all the pieces fit. She received this knowledge in part through her life experiences and through the visions given to her by the power inherited from the witch.
Naarrah has clear in her mind that she is, at best, an average fighter and that she depends a lot on her bow and poisons to be able to do damage to more powerful enemies.
Visions sometimes come in unexpected moments, most last mere milliseconds in real time but some last more and Naarrah is always afraid to be caught in an important moment or even a life and death situation, by a vision.
Another disadvantage is that, while their species and similar ones are well known for their heightened senses, this also brings with itself a tremendous sensibility to pain.
Naarrah has clear in her mind that she is, at best, an average fighter and that she depends a lot on her bow and poisons to be able to do damage to more powerful enemies.
Visions sometimes come in unexpected moments, most last mere milliseconds in real time but some last more and Naarrah is always afraid to be caught in an important moment or even a life and death situation, by a vision.
Another disadvantage is that, while their species and similar ones are well known for their heightened senses, this also brings with itself a tremendous sensibility to pain.