#giwella

giwella is a name inspired from the welsh word 'gwella' which means to enhance/improve. her name pronunciation is a bit odd bc it's a hard g when saying her full name, so giwella is pronounced 'gih-vell-ah' (more on that pronunciation here), but her nickname 'gi' is with a soft g, so 'jee'. this is because her nickname is technically just the first letter of her name, G, but that looked weird typed out so i went with Gi instead.

gi is one of our wiser characters and is one of the longest standing members of the brotherhood. her, darra and naithan are the only people alive who knew nate before he became 'nathairan of kroi'. because of that, she's an incredibly respected member of the brotherhood and treated very much as one of their backbones. she's also a terrifying fighter (she has a non-combat ability that i'll get to in a sec and still she's the 4th best fighter in the whole camp, behind nate, lilla and naithan who all have very aggressive abilities. if they fought without abilities nate would be the only one who could rival gi and even then it would be a pretty even split. drako is the only person who's ever beaten her in an honest swordfight and she is FURIOUS about it). this reputation for being a very senior member who's thick as thieves with nate combined with her ability to kick ass sees gi as either very respected or very feared in camp.

before the brotherhood, gi had another family. she was an only child with two fathers, both wisers, who were relatively poor and lived in a small northern town. some things you need to know about wisers before i explain gi's ability. the first is that wiser community is a hugeeeeee deal, both just as a general cultural thing and also just a natural reliance on one another after so many decades of oppression. im not gonna talk too much about this here just bc there's a lot of posts about it, but you just need to understand how fundamental community is to wisers. they are not lone creatures by nature. they're like the harasaeons in that sense; to be alone is inherently against their instincts. another thing you need to know about wisers is, despite this cultural angle, their magic is still incredibly individual on account of no two wisers having the same ability. it's tradition that the different factions of wisers (ainebelas, treabelas, nadubelas and beabelas) will help each other, so when a wiser's ability manifests they'll typically be tutored by someone in the same magic faction as them, but still it's very much an individual journey of learning your own ability over the years. it's VERY sacred. the final thing you need to know is that in burnos there is a metal called kallarium. it has the ability to strengthen magic and was very significant to wiser culture because for generations kallarium jewellery was given to wiser children in order to help manifest their magic and learn to wield it. however, one of the terror laws implimented by lugalia was the illegalisation of kallarium, which was a huge blow for wisers. this created a black market because demand for kallarium was still really high, and there are even bandits dedicated specifically to finding/stealing/selling kallarium, called kallarium hunters. they're very violent as is the nature of their work.

so that's some wiser context. now, gi's ability is that she's basically walking kallarium. there's nothing special about her individually, but she can strengthen OTHER wisers and she also learns how to weaken them too to the point of even nullifying their magic altogether - she can basically just tamper with other wisers' abilities. even now, just being around gi as a wiser creates a very physical sensation of being unsettled because she's like a magnet to their magic, disturbing it even when she isn't doing anything. as a child, it was much worse because she had no control over it. remember what i said about wiser magic being a very personal, sacred thing to them? for it to be tampered with is SOOOOO fucked for them like it's a huge cultural no-no and gi's parents hated her for it. she'd literally just be existing in the house but it would unnerve their magic and they blamed her completely for it. this became abusive the older she got, and they got more and more voilent with her until, at age eleven, gi gets kicked out of home.

she has nothing. no money. no survival skills. no friends. the very community so important to wiser wellbeing and existence just completely rejects her. yet to the humans who aren't impacted by her ability, she's still a wiser, and they hate her for that. there isn't a single group that accepts her, and on top of that, it doesn't take her long to realise that she's relevant to the kallarium black market. if kallarium hunters caught her, she'd make them millions. not only is she the biggest source of kallarium to ever be found, but she can be controlled, can dull and strengthen at will. it's gamechanging and she has some really awful run ins with wisers, humans and bandits alike. in the end, she retreats to the woodland.

so here we have this little girl who's always been rejected by humans but whose worst memories are at the hands of her own kind. where other wisers have turned to each other and found comfort in the community there in the face of their oppression, gi has no one. it makes her mean, cold, cynical, angry. and at fourteen years old, living in the harsh northern woods and hunting with a bow and arrow that she's now a pro at but took months to first kill a cotir, she's completely alone. she steals from travellers and hunts as best as she can. all of her survival skills are learned the hard way; she literally knew nothing before being kicked out. the only good thing about her ability is that it allows her to sense other wisers nearby, and while a wiser would normally run to that, to that promise of community, gi always steers far fucking clear, so she genuinely will sometimes go months not seeing another person. that fucks with your head.

at fourteen, she meets nate. at this point she's gone three years keeping herself alive and avoiding people, but she sees in nate the same young, troubled, mean wiser that exists in herself, both northern and poor and fighting tooth and nail for the space they take up. despite how close they become, their first meeting is rocky. nate stumbles upon her little treehouse/nook in the woods and steals from her, assuming she's just some lone, weak traveller, but she catches him and they fight. it's initially very aggressive bc nate is pissed off about getting caught (he's a very good thief even at age 12 and knows kawl is gonna give him shit for this now) and gi is FURIOUS to have been caught unawares after so long keeping to herself, but as the fight progresses, they both start enjoying it a bit. they can keep up with each other and neither has had a good fight like that in a while, and at the end of the day, even if she rejects it and knows it's better this way and what's more has never had a good experience with it, gi just misses PEOPLE. it's an animal instinct to crave community, and nate is quick as a whip and keeping her on her toes both with conversational jabs and physical ones. it's fun. for a moment, they're just two kids sparring in the woods.

in the end, the brothers intervene and literally haul them off each other lmao. gi doesn't like this at all because she takes real issue with grown men so much bigger than her after the abuse she suffered, and the one who happened to pick her up was NAITHAN, who's built like a fucking truck, so she panics and punches him in the nose, breaking it. darra laughs his ass off because he not only saw that happening but also points out that nate, when they found him on the streets, ALSO lashed out in panic and wound up kicking naithan in the shin. it's always naithan LMFAO. kawl starts fussing over nate even though he knows he's not injured and the whole group dynamic is so strange and overwhelming to ANYONE let alone a girl who's had minimal social exposure for years, so gi kinda just. freezes. there's a real thing with her in those years alone where she hides in trees a lot and watches people interact from a distance, fascinated by community like it's a zoo exhibit of which she is an entirely different species. the brothers are loud and shamelessly fond of each other and nate is near feral but clearly feels safe with them, and gi understands him enough to know it would have been hard-earned. when kawl extends an offer for her to join them, she rejects it, explaining her ability, but naithan ever so gently says that they aren't bothered about that, that she should at least join them for a meal to make up for breaking his nose. against her own better judgement, she agrees and the rest is history bc she kinda just can't shake them after that.

gi is eighteen when kawl dies and nate creates the brotherhood. at this point, gi is entirely devoted to them. she's got a very stoic exterior so it's not super apparent, but she almost hero-worships them. in many ways, she sees herself as one of the first wisers saved by the brotherhood, and vows to dedicate her life to repaying that debt. nate, in becoming the symbol of the brotherhood and being the one who found her all those years ago, has an almost religious status in gi's mind. their relationship is really inexplicable to most people, bc on the one hand ive talked about the fact gi has a HUGE dog motif with nate - she'll do anything he says without question, even if she disagrees with it, even if she doesn't WANT it - but also they act very siblingy a lot of the time, teasing and ribbing and having such intensely thorough knowledge of each other, and most people can't find the middleground of those dynamics. like she's his dog he's her master but they'll kick each other to the floor for more leg room on the sofa.

some fun facts about gi!

despite her trauma, gi becomes close with all of the brothers over time, but has the most reservations with naithan just because of how big and heavy-footed he is and also the fact they, in her mind, had a very rocky start. still, he's an inherently kind, gentle man and he works hard with her. the thing they eventually bond over is cooking. he makes all the meals for their little family and she finds a real comfort in the method and creation of cooking. it goes from her tentatively pushing his cookbook over to him one day open on a page for a meal she wants to try, posture rigid and the counter firmly between them, to her nowadays cooking side by side with him, wordless and comfortable with each other as they move fluidly around the little kitchen. he's now her favourite of the brothers and she's his favourite.

appearance wise, gi is pale with a very lithe build. i always picture her looking very moorish, so a sharp face, dark brown eyes, freckles, thick eyebrows, long eyelashes, and her hair is a light brown and cut to her shoulders, falling in waves. @witch-of-aiaia did some fantastic art of gi once and somehow exactly captured how i picture her despite lacking any form of description. her fashion sense is also quite piratey, which is typical of the north. she wears long jackets and fingerless gloves and will often wear a long skirt with boots, unless she's training/fighting/travelling, in which case she wears trousers and billowing shirts, sometimes shaped by waistcoats. picturing gi in those slutty pirate shirts is so important to me.

she's a master archer from hunting in the woods for so many years

gi has a foullll personality in most people's opinion like she barely speaks unless you're one of the rare few people that she likes and when she does it's always very monotone and usually mean. part of it is just an utter lack of comprehension for social norms but it's important to me that you all know she could have had the best upbringing ever and would still be a bitch to everyone and i love her for it <3

darra gave her a kallarium necklace years ago. while literally every other wiser would use kallarium to channel their abilities outwards, gi uses it to channel her ability inwards (into the necklace), otherwise she'd become so powerful that literally just being in the same room as other wisers would make everyone's abilities go mental and she really just doesn't need that in her life. gi has been wearing this necklace for about a decade. it was powerful already on account of simply being kallarium, but being worn by GI this whole time??? that shit is charged like a fucking nuke at this point. it's effectively kallarium on steroids which was very much an unanticipated side-effect but it still does what she needs it to do so it's not exactly an issue.

...... until nate uses this necklace to commit the silverhall massacre

when wisers first join the camp, regardless of age, they're offered combat lessons. these are typically really popular because the wisers the brotherhood save have had really close, horrible encounters with oppression and many have never had the chance to learn how to defend themselves. these classes are done based on skill, so it's typical to get kids in the beginner classes but you'll also get adults that have just joined, so it's quite a fun dynamic. gi is the teacher for combat. she isn't very popular because she's strict and demanding and doesn't offer much praise, but there's a group of kids that idolise her and follow her about camp showing off new moves and begging for tips. she's weirdly fond of them, though she doesn't recognise it as fondness and assumes it's just annoyance.

when lilla joins the camp, there's a lot of wisers who are against it because of her connection to the harasaeons. to be safe, nate effectively makes gi her bodyguard and gi, being gi, is like 'this is the job i have been given by nate so naturally i will kill and die for this girl who i met yesterday'. this sets the tone of their dynamic and years later when they DO know each other and genuinely like each other gi is still very protective and near-possessive over lilla. very much 'is the sun bothering you queen'