"I don’t want to be a weyrwoman. I want to be the weyrwoman."
BASICS
NAME: Nivaya
GENDER: Female
PRONOUNS: She/her/hers
ORIENTATION: Bisexual
BIRTHDATE: Early Spring 2750
AGE: 24 as of 2774
LOCATION: Semaca Weyr
OCCUPATION: Wingrider
WING: Minuet
APPEARANCE
EYES: Green
HAIR: Black, generally kept pinned up
HEIGHT AND BUILD: 5'8, muscular
PLAY-BY: Mildred (A Wicked Tale of Cinderella's Stepmom)
FULL APPEARANCE: A woman of respectable, but not exceptional, height, Nivaya has a muscular build developed over many turns of candidacy. She keeps her black hair long, but is rarely seen with it down, preferring to keep it safely pinned out of the way. She has green eyes and light skin, slightly tanned by the Semacan sun. Nivaya favors well-made and luxurious but practical clothes, shirts and trousers of fabrics in simple cuts that are easy to move in.
PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY:
Nivaya believes thoroughly in the world the old rulers of Benden tried to build. The hierarchy ought to be absolute: golds and bronzes- ridden by women and men respectively- leading, with blues and greens as footsoldiers and the occasional gifted brown serving as wingsecond. She sees the garnets, whites, mutations and chimeras as no more than a symptom of weakening draconic bloodlines. The untraditional impressions of browns, bronzes and golds is clearly a result of a combination of bad breeding in the dragons and poor quality in the candidates, leading to confused hatchlings. She believes if garnets can somehow be prevented from clutching, and golds resume choosing their mates more wisely, all these oddities will cease appearing and the problem will solve itself. She will offer her opinions and advice to Semacan candidates, in hope that if the general candidate population can be improved, the next clutch of Semacan dragons will choose more appropriate riders. While the future of Semaca isn't particularly important to her, she may as well help where she can while she's there, so long as it doesn't interfere with her own goals.
Nivaya doesn't care for the fate of most of Pern. Most weyrs, in her mind, are beyond saving. She is a Benden patriot, who seeks to restore the honor and glory of her home. The rest of Pern can sink into degeneracy if it so desires. She looks down on most Semacan candidates. And riders. And, really, Semacans in general. Semaca is where she needs to be for now, but there’s no true loyalty there. She thinks Semacan candidate pools must be pretty dire for their last two golds not be able to find suitable women. Nivaya is fairly xenophobic and is suspicious of most foreigners and of Bendenites who've turned against their home weyr. Nivaya glorifies the Benden of her early childhood, but does not always fully understand all the details of how it was maintained.
Nivaya is a deeply ambitious woman. She is driven in part to improve the corner of the world she cares about, but also by a more selfish hunger for power and prestige and all that comes with it. She is perfectly willing to lie, cheat and bend the generally accepted rules if it will get her a step closer to what she wants. She saves her energy for the things that matter most to her and won't go above and beyond for its own sake on things she considers meaningless. She doesn't have much warmth to spare for people outside Benden and has no real interest in making friends at Semaca. She thinks highly of herself and her own background and abilities. She is very proud of her Bendenite heritage.
HISTORY
FAMILY:
Father: N'var of Bronze Lioneth
Mother: Getaya of Green Milleth
Assorted siblings and half-siblings
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: Has had lovers in the past, but none at the moment and none of particular note
BIRTHPLACE: Benden Weyr
HISTORY:
Nivaya was born the daughter of N'var and Getaya, a bronze and greenrider of Benden weyr. Like most weyrbrats, she was raised in the creche. Both her birth parents and her foster parents were deeply traditional people, who imparted their values on Nivaya.
Nivaya's youth was a time of great change. The war between weyrs ended. The 10th pass began. The first garnets hatched and bronzes Impressed to women for the first time. Greens and garnets began to clutch and golds no longer had a monopoly on laying future generations. Benden grew increasingly isolated, as their ally Golre fell and High Reaches abandoned the old ways. Nivaya's parents watched it all with suspicion, clinging ever tighter to their treasured traditions. Young Nivaya learned to do the same.
When Nivaya came of age, she became a candidate, hoping like many traditional, ambitious girls before her for a gold of her own. She was left standing instead. She waited, mostly patiently. She would rather Impress a gold at 25 than a lesser dragon at 17 and every turn of maturity left her more prepared to be weyrwoman.
In 2766 and 2767, it started to unravel. Fortian riders recused Alayna of Gold Wyzeth, who claimed to have been imprisoned by Benden. Nivaya's father explained to her that Alayna had threatened to spread the degradation of Pern to Benden, but that Wyzeth's bloodline had been too valuable to lose. She'd been treated well, he promised, simply isolated where she could do no harm. Her claims of abuse were a calculated effort to make the rest of Pern turn against Benden and all traditionalists. Then, Benden's charitable effort to donate eggs to the struggling Semaca ended in chaos, with a Benden queen driven out by Wyzeth's golden daughter and her Semacan allies. The next year, a conclave made Benden a pariah weyr and a Fortian gold murdered the Benden bronzes that had gone to Fort in a show of diplomacy and good will. Back home, the situation deteriorated, between the sanctions and unexplained catastrophes, big and small, until Benden's rightful weyrwomen stepped down.
A Telgar interloper came to be weyrwoman in their place. A liberal foreigner, who tried to take away what made Benden special and make it just like the rest of Pern. Nivaya resented her intrusion. She didn't belong there.
A few turns later, another foreigner came, from High Reaches, Toki of Gold Aldoeith. A pair who wanted to rule and had Impressed at a weyr that did not wish to be ruled. Nivaya admired Toki's ability to raise a fine, traditional gold even in High Reaches' system and for her willingness to leave High Reaches behind to take a goldrider's rightful place elsewhere. But, like Quebeley and Aniseth, they were foreigners who should never be senior weyrwoman of Benden. Worse, under these new golds, it seemed Benden was populated by ever more aberrations. They weren't Benden golds and their offspring didn't belong in their ranks.
More turns passed and Nivaya remained a candidate. In 2773, she heard word that Nebulaeth had laid another gold, who had Impressed a man, a man rumored to be a pirate, at that. Semaca's candidate pool must have been truly dire, for a gold to choose a rider like that.
Nivaya was approaching the end to her time as a candidate and so she knew what she needed to do. There were too many quality candidates for too few queens at Benden. She needed to follow the path Toki had shown her. She would go to Semaca. She would Impress the next gold Xialath or Nebulaeth laid. While their Semacan offspring included many aberrations, it was surely the fault of their Semacan mates. They were golds of excellent Benden bloodlines, after all.
Once she Impressed, Nivaya planned to serve no more than her five turns at Semaca and preferably to cause enough trouble to be permitted to leave early. She would restore Benden's lost goldline and return Benden to a place of honor. She would be hailed as a hero and become a weyrwoman honored in her time and the harpers' tales.
