#niqmepa

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[forgiven-naunet]

Two-toned echoes tumbling through time

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A little night mining in Thanalan. I love the skies out here.

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I know they've only known each other for a couple days, but... Niqmepa on Mide, for that heart meme. :3

Funny how long we’ve been playing the characters together before they ever really got any real RP time. I’ll toss this up mostly without commentary, just saying that Niqmepa can be very conservative and these marks are already above the norm.

VISUAL ATTRACTIVENESS: 💗💗💗💗(purely aesthetic appreciation of looks)

FRIENDSHIP LEVEL: 💗💗💗(how close a friend they consider them)

SEXUAL DESIRE: 💗💗💗 (wanting to have sex with them)

ROMANTIC INTENT: 💗💗 (hoping for a romantic relationship)

💔 Non-existent💗 Very low💗💗 A little💗💗💗 Hopeful💗💗💗💗 High💗💗💗💗💗 Maximum

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LFRP: Niqmepa Desfosse

(singal boosts appreciated, btw.)

the basics ––– –

AGE: 38

RACE: Duskwight

GENDER: Female

SEXUALITY: Bisexual

STATUS: Single

physical appearance ––– –

HAIR: Naturally purple. Tipped in red and decorated with metal rings crafted from coins or other baubles.

EYES: Pink, often mistaken for red.

HEIGHT: 6′3′’

BUILD: Lithe but muscular. A laborer’s build.

DISTINGUISHING MARKS: Tattoo over left eye.

COMMON ACCESSORIES: A long red tapestry, as thin as a sash, that can be worn but is more frequently tucked away.

personal ––– –

PROFESSION: Acquisitions and sales. Sometimes this means finding rare items for clients. Sometimes it means turning a store-room into a junk shop. She’s registered with the adventurer’s guild, so sometimes this means grabbing a leveplate and a pickaxe and doing the hard work.

HOBBIES: Maintains a “written” record of her genealogy and some of her clan’s history in the form of of a woven tapestry of significant length. She is often busy at work creating a second one. Journals meticulously.

LANGUAGES: Eorzean.

RESIDENCE: Travels. Keeps store-houses in some places.

BIRTHPLACE: A network of caverns beneath the Shroud, not directly connected to Gelmorra.

RELIGION: Loosely holds to the Twelve. Practices her clan’s traditional augury and lets omens guide her travels and choices. She reveres the earth and the forces that shape it, a kind of individualistic geomancy.

FEARS: That she might, even after so much life, still unknowingly embody the wicked philosophies that caused the downfall of her clan, or that these things might be an inescapable outcome of her beliefs and experiences.

relationships ––– -

SPOUSE: None.

CHILDREN: None.

PARENTS: Deceased.

SIBLINGS: Deceased.

OTHER RELATIVES: Deceased.

PETS: Xiajhi, a lesser panda.

traits ––– -

extroverted / introverted / in between.

disorganized / organized / in between.

close minded / open-minded / in between.

calm / anxious / in between.

disagreeable / agreeable / in between.

cautious / reckless / in between.

patient / impatient / in between.

outspoken / reserved / in between.

leader / follower / in between. (indepent, tbh)

empathetic / unemphatic / in between.

optimistic / pessimistic / in between.

traditional / modern / in between.

hard-working / lazy / in between.

cultured / un-cultured / in between. (what does this mean?)

loyal / disloyal / unknown / in between.

faithful / unfaithful / unknown / in between.

additional information ––– –

SMOKING HABIT: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

DRUGS: never / sometimes /frequently / to excess.

ALCOHOL: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess.

RP Hooks:

You need an item acquired. Do you want an artifact or rare material and need someone to obtain it, but you can’t afford a Champion Of The Eorzea or some Legendary Artificer Slash Archaeomancer? Niqmepa is a working class laborer who gets the job done, digging up potsherds, ore, or rare relics if she’s got enough clues to go on. She frequently answers job listings of this kind, or gets referrals from past clients who know that she’s reliable and doesn’t charge more than she’s worth.

You see a sale and hope to find a good deal. When Niqmepa isn’t employed by clients, she’s maintaining a general inventory of useful items. Most of her income comes from trade goods that she either obtains or buys for resale, but a byproduct of this is a bunch of junk goods that she has to liquidate somehow. Her store rooms can be converted into junk shops when they get too full, and you might find some nice stuff in there if you go looking.

You meet on the road. Niqmepa is the kind of person who would offer to share her fire with a fellow traveler, and maybe even some food if they needed it. She might also ask another to share their fire, if it was late and she decided to stop. This is, of course, assuming you don’t have any bad omens hanging over your head. You don’t, do you? She’s unlikely to travel outside of Eorzea, though.

You have a bad feeling about Niqmepa. If you’re sensitive to aether, particularly if you’re wary about voidsent or curses, this might be the case. Oh, it’s not like she’s possessed or a demon in disgusie -- or, if she is, it’s concealed better than most -- and there’s no darkness or dramatic aura pouring out of her. But something feels off in her aether, something subtle, that you can’t really place. Maybe it’s a curse that’s missed its mark, or maybe something that happened a very long time ago and left its sign. Or it could be something more troubling that is deeply, carefully concealed. It would be impossible to say without investigating.

Or whatever your character’s hook is. I’m okay with bringing her to you if you can’t decide how to come to her.

OOC Notes:

I’d prefer to rp in chat, PMs, discord, Skype, whatever. I’m unlikely to participate in in-game rp at the moment, for reasons. I’d be game for RPing on a forum if you have a site you rp on. Otherwise I’m willing to go to your preferred chat service. Or we can just rp here on tumblr; that’s good too. Niqmepa’s on Coeurl, if that matters.

I’m not always the fastest RPer. I don’t require that you be fast either. My preferred pace for RP is that which is comfortable for all involved.

I get anxious sometimes. This can make it hard to begin. Given time, I’ll work my way through it. I might ask for your patience if I’m having trouble.

I’m not against romance in RP, but I prefer to rp that kind of thing with RPers I’ve known for a long time. It’s not like I never make exceptions, but I probably won’t be making any right now.

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The Shape of the Stone

Niqmepa - (from my Duskwight prompts)

Gelmorra had been carved passageways, pillars and bricks, she had been told. The Desfosse caverns had not been carved by hands. They had been carved by the movement of the world, by wind, water, and time. They had been carved by Oschon, Thaliak, and Althyk, long before Clan Desfosse had come to inhabit them. They had been carved deliberately, to give the clan a place to live, a place to die, a place to thrive as a family and eventually to go extinct. The river cut through the center of the caverns, in high rooms, through slim tunnels, to low rooms, until finally coming to the funerary cavern where it poured into the endless pit. There, the water left the world.

There, they committed their dead, regardless of how they died.

When Niqmepa’s older brother died, they did not discuss why. This meant that her father had killed him in retribution for some crime, and the entire event was better not spoken of. Deaths like this had happened enough times that Niqmepa, still not yet an adult, fully understood and accepted this. Her brother had been an unhappy and ill-behaved person his entire life. He had left the Clan for Gridania, which was not permitted. He should’ve remembered that all the children of Desfosse ended their worldly journey in the same place, in the waters that had been prepared for them by the Twelve.

Clan Desfosse would gather in the funerary cavern that evening, after the sun had gone down and the highest caves were as dark as the lowest caves. But first the Elder spoke in the augury cavern, highest room their home, to those who knew how to read omens. Niqmepa was among them. By now, she was practically a young woman, well-versed in augury, the languages of the earth. When her grandfather showed them the omens that had been fulfilled by her brother’s death – his old hands pointed to stones in the ceiling, where gray light shone through cracks on the unmelting ice of quartz – she understood and did not dispute them. Her brother should’ve seen these signs himself. Why hadn’t her brother heeded the omens? The quartz in the ceiling took on an internal brown and gray shine, refracting stars above the Shroud, here visible only as vague imperfections in the complete dark. The omens had been in the stones for ages, waiting to be seen and interpreted. Had her brother been trying to flee from them?

From the augury cavern they walked down to the where the river flowed through the clan’s commons, following it to the narrow hallways it carved. These tunnels were alive with the rushing sound of swift water, walls damp, air cold. Here, when it rained, the water swelled and carved out recesses in the walls. They were thin, deep open cavities at irregular intervals. When they carried light this far, as they did now in the form of candles, these recesses looked to Niqmepa like a fish’s gills. She could imagine that when the water swelled, the stone breathed.

Her mother grabbed her and pulled her into one of the recesses, where they were close in the dark. Their family moved past without pause, and in a moment Niqmepa and her mother were invisible. Her mother held her close and whispered something about warmth in the cold. Niqmepa asked if her mother was sad because of her loss, the omens, the funeral, the shape of the stone that had promised it. But her mother did not begrudge the stone its shape; it had given them these recesses to hide in, to be close and concealed inside.

Niqmepa found that she, however, did begrudge the Twelve the shapes of the stone, both in the augury cavern and here in these recesses. The Twelve had carved these places for her mother to pin her, to demand proof of affection, and in Niqmepa’s heart it was quickly becoming hatred. Yes, she hated her mother, and these stones, and this river. At least, in that moment, she did.

When Niqmepa finally arrived in the funerary cavern, they had place her brother’s pallid body on the water, holding him in place by his shoulders, about to release him. Niqmepa looked at where the candlelight shone on the wet ceiling, the veins of quartz, and the moss that shivered like fur. Here, Niqmepa saw omens that spoke of her own death, though she did not know how to read them beyond that. There was a dark quality inside the quartz. There were constant imperfections. Did her grandfather know how to read these omens, or had they not yet been revealed to him? Niqmepa did not understand the specifics, the omens vague like smudged writing, but she decided that it must be a promise that she would die young.

She looked down at her brother as they released him. The water swept him through the cavern and he fell into the maw of the earth, the black pit beneath which was nothing. He would fall forever now, out of the world, into the gentle dark beyond.

Niqmepa did not ask her Grandfather to help her read the omens in this room. She did not look at them again. She left the room as quickly as she could, hurrying to the higher caverns ahead of her family and finding a dark place to conceal herself. The Twelve had prepared it all long before they’d come: the omens, the water and the pit, the dark recesses, even this place where she could hide from it all. Niqmepa wished she had never learned to read omens.

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Niqmepa as a bunny. There... They might be a fantasia happening.

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Am I not as cold as you expected? That’s something I can work on.

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Feeling fashionable. These outfits are much more likely to be IC. :)

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Just running around.

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Neither of us are out of place in a cavern, it turns out.

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Light Through the Cracks

Niqmepa - (from my Duskwight prompts)

She remembered, years ago, when her grandfather and great aunt were teaching her to read omens. Her parents had said she needed to learn, because her brother had no talent for it, and they’d be damned if they let the art die with their generation. “I’ll be damned,” Megiddo had said, not just words; her father had promised himself to hell. So now it fell to her to listen to her elders and try to learn about omens.

Niqmepa flinched at the light in the augury every time her grandfather lifted his old hand to gesture to it. This was the highest cavern in their home. The surface was right there, just beyond the cracks in the ceiling, and the light flashed green and white through the cracks as the Shroud shivered in the wind above. Niqmepa sat with her knees close and her arms fastened around her legs, squinting up. She didn’t like being this close to the surface. The air was different here, and the light hurt. She’d never come up here if they hadn’t made her.

Her sister was here. Abd looked more like their grandfather, like their father, just younger and female. Not as young as she should’ve looked, though. She had their brown-blond hair and gray eyes, but also some of their wrinkles. From that, Niqmepa had learned that wrinkles come from bitterness more than age. Abd came bitter from birth, like a bad crop on the vine. This was the kind of omen Niqmepa could read easily: Abd watched and listened with intent to retort and defy. She wouldn’t care about their father’s promise to hell.

“Light’s supposed to be a good omen.” Abd spoke with pride in her petulance. “But there’s light all over in here, so it’s all good omens. The augury cavern’s useless.”

Their grandfather pointed to where darkness moved among the light. “Signs change when you go to the surface. We’re close enough that the light speaks differently. Watch the shadows here. Can you tell if that’s a swaying tree, or the passage of a bird? Do you know what birds mean?”

Abd looked away unhappily. Niqmepa muttered, “Depends on the bird.” She wondered if watching the shadows was like seeing the lines on Abd’s prematurely-wizened face. Squinting up at the ceiling was painful, but she looked down when her grandfather’s attention fell on her. As he talked about birds, Niqmepa noticed that she could see the light on her gray skin, see the shadows as black smudges spilling over her knees and her arms. She watched them shift.

A cold sensation, like a breath, tickled her cheek. Hackles raising, Niqmepa straightened and cast her gaze to the side. As she did, the shadows in the room spilled over the corner where her mother stood, watching her from the pathway that lead deeper into the earth. Ugarit stood there with her silver-purple hair like a cap of frost on the dark stalk of her head, shadowed alcoves of eye sockets concealing her expression but for smiling black lips. Then, all at once, the shadows bent away and the light poured over her face, and Ugarit’s eyes reflected an unnatural whiteness, a glow that stung like the light from above.

Niqmepa looked down at her toes, curling them against the black stone floor. She heard her grandfather saying, “Light is not always a good omen, especially on the surface. Shadows are sometimes kinder. Learning to tell the difference will… Ah, come in.” He’d spotted her mother. “I’ve been talking too long again. Here I’m just getting started, and I’m already out of time.”

“I can stay,” Niqmepa said quickly. “I like it here. I want to keep learning.” She couldn’t lift her eyes to her grandfather, to see her mother coming toward her. She couldn’t say what she really meant: don’t make me go with her.

Of course, as an adult looking back, Niqmepa knew that she should’ve told someone how afraid she was of her mother. But also, as an adult looking back, she knew it wouldn’t have changed anything. They were all dead now. No child’s warning, no child’s fears, could have stopped anything that had happened. These days, though she was alone, Niqmepa could augur anywhere.

She could augur here, sitting in the the Carline Canopy, with a glass of tea in her hand, surrounded by warmth and only the softest of shadows. Shadows that she could see through, that were merely gray or brown and never truly black. She could sit back in her chair and let her hair fall away from her face, and cast her gaze to the stained glass windows where the refracted outlines of leaves moved. She could watch the shadow of a bird pass by. She could tell it was a crow: not a bad omen, despite Gridanian poetry.

It got her on her feet and moving outside. Crows were omens of protection and safe passage, but they carried messages that bore a bit more investigation, further seeking. Where was it going? Where would it land? With crows, one needed to look carefully into the darkness of their wings and see the light captured between their feathers.

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Been struggling to find an outfit for Niqmepa (besides her gathering gear) that feels in-character. This... probably is not that outfit. Still neat though!

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Canopies Like Caverns

Niqmepa - (from my Duskwight prompts)

You can sleep here, the shadows said. It took time to trust the Shroud, the thin and unstable leaves overhead instead of hard, stable stone. Still longer to trust the open air. There had once been the promise that, when she surfaced from the Desfosse caverns, she could eventually return. Now she no longer went back to them. Oh, they were still there, the openings in the same places, the water still running through it, the augury cavern still bright with light and dark with shadow and offering its wisdom to one wise to omens. But the place was a tomb, now, to her.

Niqmepa had learned the darker parts of the shroud. They were often wild, but they didn’t reject her the way that the Wildwood seemed to imagine they would. The elements did not wise to chase her away. No spirit-called beasts came to prey on her for daring to walk the woods. Here, where the air was cool and smelled sweet with rot, Niqmepa could sit in the old growth. When she looked up, there was no sky, just leaves, shivering, casting their manifold shadows one atop the other, so that the earth was so dark Niqmepa could almost vanish into it.

After trips to open places – the vast, cloudless blue of Thanalan skies, the roaming froth of clouds above La Noscea, even the endless white of snowstorms in Coerthas – a night camping beneath the shivering cavern-like canopy of the deep Shroud was therapeutic. No, more than that, it was essential. It was life-giving. Like the Gridanians said it was, but differently than they could understand. Here, Niqmepa settled, coat spread like a blanket beneath her, pack set aside. She leaned against a tolerant tree, eyes closed, and listened for subterranean sounds. She could hear them, sometimes: wind through tree trunks, water in the earth, the breath of someplace deep beneath her. Maybe this was the feeling that had given the first Gelmorrans the idea to go underground in the first place. It was so nice here, it just made her want to go deeper, to dig into it, to burrow and curl up in the cool, the welcoming, the black earth of the Shroud. This was good enough, now. She could be home in her heart here, for a night at least.

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Aether in the world, aether in my hands.