"I can't make you help me and if you want to sell me out again, I can't stop you. But I can ask you- Please stand with me this time. You're my dragon. Please choose to be my partner."
TW: Mentions of abuse, victim blaming
BASICS
RETIRE INFO: Retire
NAME: N'ell
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Interested in the general idea of kissing. Reserving judgment on who she wants to kiss until she tries it.
BIRTHDATE: Late summer, 2755
AGE: 19 as of 2774
LOCATION: High Reaches Weyr
OCCUPATION: Garnetrider, Apprentice Harper
APPEARANCE
EYES: Hazel
HAIR: Brown, with a bit of a curl
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'4, slender
PLAY-BY: Jena Malone
FULL APPEARANCE: Never the tallest woman on Pern, N'ell has grown into the muscular build typical of a dragonrider. Her features are fairly average, neither particularly lovely nor particularly plain, but her looks are improved by with her well-tended, shiny brown hair, kept cut to just above her shoulders. She has dimples that come out when she smiles. N'ell is a fashionable women, favoring weyr styles over hold styles, showing a firmer sense of her own tastes than she had in her youth. These days, she prefers simple pants paired with eye-catching tunics and stylish boots, with enough jewelry to add a touch of sparkle without getting in her way. Like many riders, N'ell carries a knife and can defend herself with it if needed.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY: Norell is a deeply angry young woman. She's furious at the world and at herself, for all she gave away, for all that was taken from her, all the things she can never get back. And she knows- it's all her own fault. She put "coolness" over her family. She wasn't as clever as she thought was. She forsked up in a way that's unforgivable. Now, she's stuck at a foreign, enemy weyr. Everything she spent her life working to become, everyone she thought she was, is gone and there is no going back. Any letters she receives from Fort will go unopened and unanswered. She's a traitor to her weyr and she accepts that exile is the fate she deserves
But Norell is a survivor and a girl on a mission. She will find a way to bring down everyone complicit in ruining her life, especially Majima. She knows she doesn't have power yet, so she'll use what does she has. She'll plot and she'll scheme and she'll dig up as many secrets as she can find. And someday? She'll have a dragon of her own and be strong enough to bring them all down.
Norell has a good eye for people and a keen understanding of how social capital operates. Highly observant, she is quick to read the dynamics of any room although she does have her blind spots. Norell assumes everybody is using or being used by somebody else. Genuine affection tends to confuse her. She instinctively sizes up the vulnerabilities of those around her and isn't afraid to use them when necessary. Norell still isn't nice, she still isn't soft and someday...someday she still plans on being someone.
Oddly, she's picked up a recent interest in learning how to actually be a Harper. There is a different type of power in old cothold songs, sung together by families who've shared a homestead for generations or carried it across Pern to somewhere foreign and new. Her study of folksongs is one of the few things outside of candidacy and Ramala she is genuinely interested in, although she's slow to admit it.
She's also...not very nice. Status conscious and self-centered to the core, she refuses to associate with anyone she views as a liability. She doesn't care if it upsets them or hurts their feelings or makes them cry. Norell looks out for Norell. Which means her family of losers? Out. The only one worth acknowledging is Essa, who is a bronzerider and acts normal. But the rest of them? Totally lame!
It's easy to miss exactly how smart Norell is because she masks it all beneath a whole lot of superficiality. She calls power "coolness" and liabilities "lame". She acts like the stereotypical bubble-headed popular girl. Because it's fun. And helps her fit in. And means that nobody will ever see that knife to the back coming until it's too late.
She's usually seen with at least one of her girlfriends. They're not terribly nice either and are almost all the children of riders with deep weyr roots. She doesn't hesitate to mock other weyrbrats if it helps enforce social cohesion. Her clique is her friends but they're also her allies, carefully hand-picked and brought into the fold of her slowly evolving group. They're not the types of girls who SHOULD want to be friends with the scion of a no-name cothold...but Norell has a way of making people forget where she came from. She doesn't trust adults at all, seeing them as pretty useless, and is not close with her mother, who she does at some level resent for leaving Norell to protect herself against her father.
Norell might have been born in the hold, but she's quickly lost all relics of hold custom. Because they're stupid and lame and holding her back. She's not a traditionalist, in any sense of the word, and plans on riding bronze or brown someday, because "goldriding is a cliche and she's better than that". Translation: Norell has no interest in being forced into a proscribed role but still wants power enough to ensure she is never at anybody else's mercy. Yes, Norell is a weird, vaguely unsettling child...and most people will never see it.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Mother: Relli, garnet handler, Fort Weyr
Father: : Geronor, holder, cothold
Many, many siblings and half-siblings
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: N/A
BIRTHPLACE: A cothold beholden to Fort
HISTORY: People might want to blame Norell's upbringing for who she is. Norell would say those people are wrong. Yes, her father was an abusive asshole and her mother was a pushover and perennial victim. But Norell knew that before even they did. She might have been too young to put it into words...but Norell saw exactly what was going on and understood.
And when her father tried to turn that abuse on her? Norell realized he was a bully, but he also wasn't all that bright. She learned quickly that the best way to get him to leave her alone? Let him yell and scream his little heart out...And then yawn, act bored and strike back. Hard. Nobody else might have known why his wine cellar flooded. Or how the carefully stitched seam of his pants had torn. Or where that rumor had come from that Relli was having an affair with the fishmonger. But Geronor always did. Norell ensured it. He wanted to call her stupid and worthless? Fine. Hope he enjoyed the coming public humiliation. She turned typical childish pranks into a weapon and he quickly learned that it was best to leave Norell be. And she never bestirred herself to save anyone else. If they couldn't figure out how to protect themselves, they didn't deserve to benefit from her efforts. Nobody had ever come to her rescue, why should she ride to theirs?
She was only four when Essanora robbed her ex-fiance and rode away into the night. So for most of her life she came from the "bad" family. She figured out through the next few turns how to turn that to her advantage, crafting herself into a rebellious, edgy figure who was above her lame, boring neighbors. Which meant even when G'er Impressed garnet? Eh. She'd worked out what her siblings and parents couldn't- if you couldn't change things, embrace them and use them. She was going to be that girl your parents warned you about and you hung out with anyway, because what did parents know? It wasn't her favorite role to play, as she was always the outsider looking in but it was the best she could do while burdened with her family, who never seemed to think very much about her at all.
When she was ten, Norell was finally plucked from her hovel of obscurity by Essanora of all people who after running away, had actually become kind of cool. Or at least cooler than the rest of Norell's epically lame family. She didn't entirely understand why they'd left NOW of all times, when they'd been dealing with her father for turns, but she was happy they had. She was going to build a new life at the weyr, where she would no longer be the "rebel" but an accepted part of the group. And she was going to have as little as she could to do with her family, to ensure they wouldn't ruin things again.
UPDATES
- Late Spring, 2767- Norell briefly apprentices as a Tailor. She lasts all of two days before realizing that while she likes wearing and looking at clothes, making them would require her to learn to sew. She decides to apprentice as a Harper instead because she's guesses it isn't as lame as some other crafts or (worse) being an unspecialized weyrfolk.
- Early Spring, 2770- Norell accompanies a Master Harper named Marland on what is supposed to be a brief trip to High Reaches to study the folksongs of the local cotholds. She learns from a letter that her brother's garnet, Neozeoth, has recently laid her second clutch. She tells the story to a wherhandler named Majima. Shortly after, Neozeoth's eggs disappear.
- Late Spring, 2770- The eggs reappear on High Reaches' sands. Norell knows that somehow, it was was orchestrated by Majima, and thus indirectly her. When relations between High Reaches and Fort collapse, Norell refuses to return to Fort. She devotes herself to bringing Majima down...somehow. Her attempt to search Majima's room ends badly, when she is caught and he breaks her fingers. Norell is not dissuaded and has a Healer make a record of her injuries, for later use as evidence.
- Late Summer, 2770- Norell turns fifteen and becomes a candidate. While she has no desire to stay at High Reaches, she still has every intention of being a rider.
- Early Fall, 2770- N'ell Impresses garnet Pamith, a garnet who starts a fight with her green sister moments after she hatches. Luckily, the two new riders manage to pull them apart before any permanent damage is done.
- Late Spring, 2771- N'ell continues her search for evidence against Majima. She speaks to a greenrider named T'ir whose story makes her suspect the involvement of former Weyrleader Schneizel.
