Post by Deleted on Jul 10, 2018 21:51:04 GMT -5
NAME: Nehauka (Ne-HOW-kah)
RANK: Sailor
AGE: 33
GENDER: Female
ORIENTATION: Heterosexual
PETS: Two German-Shepherd-type working canines, Biscuit (1 Turn, male) and Sweetcane (4 Turns, female, walks with a limp)
APPEARANCE:
Face-claim: Olivia Foa'i.
Nehauka's the height of most men at 5'9", and looks quite at home in either her birthplace of Igen's coast, or the desert border that she lived on with Greym. Olive-skinned with black curls and dark brown eyes, she caught a lot of eyes when she was eighteen and still does in her early thirties (though she now gives men a shock when they find out she has three children, not just one or two). On the other hand, she's a beastcrafter's widow and a sailor, so while she still cuts quite a figure in a Gather dress (and definitely enjoys dancing in one), she's now got square shoulders, thick legs, and hard hands. On the coasts and with other sailors it's not a big problem, but land-lubber men often find her height combined with her physique disappointing, "for fun but not marriage," or even a downright turn-off, considering that Nehauka has the common southerly habit of wearing as little as possible when it's too hot.
PERSONALITY FAULTS: Nehauka has inherited her parents' optimism and laid-back flexibility, which is normally a good thing... but she may be falling back on "everything will work out" to keep the kids from worrying too much. Hell, she might even be trying to keep herself from worrying too much. And with the double-shot of self-reliance she got from being a sailor's daughter and a beastcrafter's wife, her last-ditch effort to sail to Mavros probably wouldn't have happened if she'd tried a little harder to write to her husband's family. Or asked her siblings to help with her and Greym's cothold. Or kept asking riders to help her until she found one to take her to Mavros (she only asked a few, after all). Plus she spent a whole Turn trying desperately to keep the cothold, so she might need to talk to someone about... the death of her husband, or something upsetting like that.
PERSONALITY STRENGTHS: As mentioned above, optimism and flexibility are both good things if she's not using them as a crutch to deal with grief. Environment switch aside, being a sailor's daughter translated surprisingly well to stock-raising. After twelve Turns and three children with a beastcrafter's canine-breeding son, Nehauka's become the Pernese equivalent of the homesteader's wife in a Western story: A curious mix of tough-as-nails and femininity, since their stretch of the Igen border was too hot and isolated to keep a good pair of hands shut in at home. Nehauka can help with the crops, tend the livestock (and butcher the old or sick ones), and raise her husband's gigantic canines. Once she's washed up and changed into clean clothes, she's quite happy to offer visitors a drink.
FAMILY:
Father Jehau, sailor (51, deceased)
Mother Ikani (54, deceased)
Husband Greym (31, deceased)
Son Nereym (11)
Son Greyston (8)
Daughter Aliki (3)
Brother Hauniki, Captain of the Moonflower (30)
Sister-in-law Orany, ship's cook (32)
Aunt Jemoya, First mate of the Moonflower (48)
Sister Jekaua (26)
Husband's family:
Father-in-law Gerran (50)
Mother-in-law Layka (47)
Sister-in-law Gisellaine, Searchrider at Mavros (27)
Sister-in-law Karredy, Mavros Weyrwoman (22)
The Moonflower's crew - 15 other people
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HISTORY: Born on Igen's tropical southern coast to a family of sailors, Nehauka, her brother Hauniki, and their youngest sister Jekaua lived on the mid-sized ship Moonflower and the crew of a dozen or so for most of their lives. It was surprising when Nehauka ended up settling north with the very landlocked Greym when she was 18, but her parents didn't mind too much--winds shift, after all, and so do people.
With her in-laws heading to Mavros Weyr two Turns back and leaving the bulk of their canines with Greym, it didn't seem much trouble aside from piecemeal communication--Nehauka knows that Karredy is now Mavros' Weyrwoman, and that Greym's family is generally alive and healthy, but not much else.
Her parents' deaths stung when the newly-made Captain Hauniki sailed upriver last Turn to tell her--but they were getting old, and she knew as well as anyone that sailing is a hard life.
Nehauka's real problem was when Greym died, after their first daughter Aliki turned two--not from their canines, as most would think from his father's occupation, but from a plain old herding accident. Nehauka could have left the boys in the cothold until noon for lunch, but there was no leaving a barely-weaned infant with only other children to look after them, and Nehauka definitely couldn't bring the very fragile, very loud Aliki along to tend the livestock.
The neighbors helped out when they could, but they had their own holdings to look after. And regardless of her looks, at thirty-three Turns? Most of the men Nehauka knew were already married. The single men usually got scared off when she mentioned huge canines, three children, or both.
So began the slow, inevitable decline of Nehauka's cothold. First went the livestock, not much trouble since they were supposed to be food or money. To her dismay, she then had to sell all but two of their canines--Biscuit, a gangly half-grown male, and Sweetcane, a good-natured female who'd been crippled by an angry ram. She knew Gerran brought some of the canine stock out to Mavros, but that didn't make it hurt any less.
The only thing she couldn't sell was the cropland, since a cothold is no use without it--but that just went back to Nehauka's first problem of trying to run a farm alone, with three children too young to help out. Once the harvest came around, she worked day and night to get the crops in... and was forced to leave the other half withered up in the Igen sun.
So she was finally worn down into transferring the cothold's rights, and her first instinct was to buy a boat so she could ferry people and goods along the rivers. It wasn't perfect and it didn't earn nearly as many marks, but everyone was full and safe, and river sailing was a welcome cousin to Nehauka's open-water roots.
An added bonus was that Nehauka was in much better contact with her family and a nice chunk of Pern's travelers--and neither she nor Moonflower's crew failed to notice that the travelers going to or from Mavros, though never very numerous, had all but vanished one day. The mainland Weyrs seemed angry at them, but news was spotty as to why; or maybe they just didn't bother to tell some river-widow in Igen about politics.
The individual dragonriders weren't very helpful either; one rider was apathetic, the second refused once she heard where Nehauka wanted to go, and the last greenrider flat-out insulted her after Nehauka said her husband's sister was Mavros' Weyrwoman. Not that she didn't believe it--she did--but she also shook her head and said she'd rather be a greenrider in Igen than anyone living in Mavros.
After just barely squashing the urge to cuss her out and stalking off back to her boat, Nehauka was not only angry and
So she sent a message to Hauniki to stop at the nearest Igen port, took the kids to meet them, and Moonflower got ready to sail to Mavros.