#ismene originally only had a visual design and I suspect in 2017 when locking that down I added it as easy space fill asdlfjas

[outeremissary]

🍉🍪🍕 for Ismene?

Thanks for the asks, Ash! This took longer than expected because after drafting the answers I went to fact check some lore and um. Spent over an hour reading about libraries. Whoops!!

[prompt list]

🍉: Does your OC have a particular piece of jewellery that they always wear or refuse to part with?

Ismene has a black velvet choker she wears almost constantly (an item which is fortunately easy to keep secure on the road and in fights). The choker was a gift from Imoen from not long after Imoen was first brought to Candlekeep, and one with some backstory to it. Around that time Candlekeep had hosted a noblewoman for several weeks who was a dedicated lover of scholarly pursuits bursting with admiration for the monks of Candlekeep. It had been her dream to visit the great library and learn from it, and she treated the hallowed library and its keepers with nothing but the utmost reverence. For the other residents of Candlekeep, however, she seemed to have nothing but contempt- even for the little elf girl who helped to mind the reading rooms and who carefully shelved the books for the librarians between visits. Ismene became a frequent target of the woman's ire. The woman complained frequently of her presence, berated her for her presumed background, treated her as a servant, and harshly criticized the work she did. After a day where Ismene attempted several times to correct the woman for violating the rules of a reading room, the woman went to one of the Great Readers and went on at length about the girl's insolent behavior, accusing her of singling the woman out for harassment and attempting to steal from the woman's bag.

Imoen saw Ismene crying after being scolded over the accusations, and the morning after the woman suddenly found herself with real problems on her hands. Somehow a bottle of ink had cracked in her bag, leaking all over her fine clothes and ruining pages of her careful notes. For the rest of her visit she seemed tormented by an endless string of accidents. Things broke or went missing, her food burned, the floors outside her room were always just slick enough with half done mopping for her to slip... Although she went to Winthrop more than once over these incidents, her complaints fell on deaf ears after weeks of tormenting the inn's staff with false claims. On the last day of her stay, the woman reported frantically that a favorite choker, one which she had worn frequently during her time at Candlekeep, had gone missing. Although she turned half of Candlekeep upside down searching for it, she never managed to find it, and she left the library fortress disconsolate over its loss. That night Imoen presented it to Ismene as a gift. The girls have been fast friends ever since (though they did both get in trouble over the clearly stolen item).

🍪: What is something that's sentimental to your OC?

Any of the many things that remind her of Candlekeep- she misses her home dearly, and has not been happy to leave. The smell of books, the gentle warmth of the afternoon sun in a comfortable seat by a window, the droning sound of chant... Any of it can take her back for just the briefest moment. Maybe the most potent, but thankfully the least bittersweet, moments of sentiment come from time spent with Imoen talking and braiding hair as if they were girls again. Ismene isn't one to voice gratitude, but she's incredibly thankful for Imoen's companionship.

🍕: How does an OC spend a lazy day?

Ismene spends huge portions of unoccupied days sleeping. She can easily sleep for more than twelve hours when not interrupted, and she doesn't mind the time lost. She loathes having to wake before dawn to maximize daylight while traveling; even though elves have no real need for sleep she always sleeps on rest days in towns like she's catching up from weeks of deprivation. Of course, in her eyes her sleep is far more valuable than the sleep normal people experience because of the visions she receives in her dreams.

Aside from sleeping, she enjoys reading and will spend her waking hours squirreled away in a library given the chance- in the small towns of the Sword Coast these are often collections belonging to temples or wealthy private individuals, and identifying who locally has a worthwhile collection to attempt to access is one of her priorities when arriving somewhere new. Often there's little truly new and worthwhile in these collections relative to Candlekeep, but occasionally she's pleasantly surprised. Although on other occasions she is prematurely escorted out of the library after revealing to unhappy owners expensive forgeries or offering unsolicited critique of the gaps in their collections...

I wish I could say she had other things she spent time on as a hobby, but unfortunately Ismene is the number one nerd who never goes outside unless dragged and it really is mostly that.