#soenya

Nyrene is.... kooky. In the words of the immortal TVTropes, she’s a cloudcuckoolander. Ny is weird and unabashedly so, partially because she’s actually Like That and partially as a tactic to unnerve and disarm the people around her. That’s why I think she’s a Slytherin, her entire gimmick is deception. People don’t lie well when they’re faced with something (or someone) that completely contradicts their understanding of reality. Ny’s one of my oldest non-fairy OCs and her original characterization was a direct manifestation of my most infamous ADHD-fueled manic episodes, if that gives you any idea of what we’re working with here. She probably does have actual ADHD but there’s more to her weirdness than that, she’s deliberately exaggerating stuff and she’s also just a super dramatic person. Very smart, surprisingly emotionally mature, but sometimes flips out over random stuff. Her ethics are questionable. 

Underneath the kookiness, Nyrene’s incredibly clever. Her main power as purple paladin is the ability to manipulate time, typically by traveling through closed loops. This takes a ton of coordination, memory, and clever improvisation. She’s constantly keeping a record of everywhere she goes, everything she touches, everything she sees and hears, so that she doesn’t overlap herself by mistake. Paradoxes are potentially lethal, after all. As a result, she can be a bit spacey, which reinforces how weird she is... but you can’t underestimate her. She’s paying attention to everything. Like, she’ll miss being spoken to or miss random information for the sole reason that she’s too busy memorizing everything else. The proof of her intelligence is the fact that she does this successfully and hasn’t broken reality yet. No dead timelines allowed here. In theory, she could jump forward through time or even pause it, but she’s never tried--it’s not safe to mess around with that stuff, the consequences could be even more devastating than those of the closed loops she currently works in. 

Way back in the day when I first made these characters, Nyrene and Syzyga had a really close relationship--sometimes I shipped them romantically, sometimes they were just platonic BFFs, but they were always stuck together as a duo. In the current iteration of the story they’re still very close, I think Syz is the only person who really gets what Nyrene’s deal is. Anlied knows in theory that Nyrene’s smarter than she looks, but Syzyga gets it. Syz is also pretty good at making Nyrene calm down when Ny loses her temper or just freaks out about something. They play well together. 

Another big part of why Nyrene’s Like That is her origin story, she’s from Nemmonay. Nemmonay is the weirdest setting in the Nymiaverse, it’s basically just one island off the coast of Kelrie, but it’s walled up and has survived attacks by all three of the other realms on the continent. Nemmonay’s  home to a lot of pirates and criminals, anyone fleeing the law in another country or who just doesn’t buy into the “system” of normal society. There’s a whole little hierarchy and social order to it, but the Nemmonese system grows out of pure anarchy and things could tip over at any time. Nyrene grew up there as the daughter of a major Nemmonese power family. Her mom is even smarter and more ruthless than she is, Pagala Enkeli is on another level of badass. Pagala also raised Nyrene with um.... with a really questionable set of ethics. I mean, they’re anarchist pirate gangsters, some of that’s just to be expected. Nyrene got her goofball act from her mother and took it up to 11, Nyrene also got her intelligence from Pagala--Pagala’s a chessmaster type and Nyrene is chessmaster junior. Ny knows a ton of different ways to kill people, pick pockets, manipulate a fight, and just generally get what she wants. What she’s lacking in is a sense of social awareness. She reads people like a book but doesn’t understand that she shouldn’t always do that, she has strong battlefield instincts but doesn’t always realize that she can’t punch or time-loop all her problems away. that’s why Syz is good for her. Pagala tried to teach Nyrene manipulation and social savvy, but Ny’s just not that good at it. Everyone’s bad at something. 

Soenya’s different...so she comes from a pretty remote area up in northern Sapir. The Sapiran Empire is the biggest realm of Nymia by far, but most of it is very sparsely populated because of how barren and cold it is. Sapir’s got a lot of mountains, a lot of tundra, and only a small handful of places where people could reasonably expect to live the year in one place. I want to take inspiration from IRL northern cultures to start building these remote settlements, I’m still deciding if I want to lean more towards Siberian cultures or American indigenous groups in terms of reference. Either way, the point is, Soenya’s from a tiny place up on the northern Sapiran coast that’s very small and close-knit and cold. Before the Academy she had very little exposure to anything beyond her village/group, and she was one of the only magic users she knew. 

She’s uh... she’s enthusiastic about people. Soenya’s a constant flirt, wants to get in everyone’s pants, and if she’s not attracted to you then she’s peppering you with random questions about whatever’s on her mind. She’s nosy and can’t mind her own business. She and Nyrene butt heads a lot because they’re both very strange people, but in different ways--Nyrene is reclusive and likes to be enigmatic for effect, where Soenya is nearly impossible to unnerve, at least not in the way Nyrene likes to unnerve people. Ny doesn’t know what to do when she genuinely can’t freak someone out? And of course Soenya’s noticed this and uses it to mess with Nyrene right back... Soenya’s pretty clever. She’s not that book smart (for reasons explained) but she’s good with people and has strong intuition. She’s got that good good folksy knowledge. She’s also pretty competitive, and she tends to provoke Nyrene’s competitive instincts whenever she gets going, because they just cannot STAND each other. Nyrene doesn’t like that Soenya won’t react to her weirdo act, Nyrene doesn’t like that Soenya keeps flirting with her (and everyone else). Soenya doesn’t like that Nyrene won’t give her a straight answer, and Soenya thinks Nyrene’s behavior means she’s a medical oddity--who’s ever heard of a person going senile by the age of 20? 

Soenya’s the paladin of yellow and that gives her some serious trickster instincts. She can control weather (within reason), talk to animals once in a blue moon (elk/deer and rabbits are the easiest bc she grew up around them), and she gets a power boost when somebody underestimates her or doesn’t take her seriously. She’s super annoying in a fight. 

I’m still developing Soenya as a character, because her role in the story has changed a lot since her creation--originally she was an antagonist, being mind controlled by the villain from the very beginning and fucking with the heroes all the time. she was also banging the villain (which given the context and character ages is gross and creepy, @past me WTF!!!), and then I deleted her entirely from the story for a while because I didn’t want to deal with the baggage of that original character dynamic. I’ve brought her back because she’s a really fun character and I like her, I want her to be part of the good guy team now, but I’m still figuring out who she is. You know? So pretty much everything I’ve said here could change. All I’m sure about is that she’s still a flirt, just with people worth flirting with, and she really hates Nyrene. (It’s mutual.)

Of the three you asked about, Talxin’s probably the most thoroughly developed, just because he’s a little more straightforward? He’s a beaten-down guy who’s been through shit and who’s fighting to make sure nobody else has to suffer the way he did. Archetypal antihero stuff. He’s brave, and stubborn, and smarter than he looks. He’s also impulsive and reckless, leaving him vulnerable to the darker side of his powers. Talxin’s what you get when I rewatch the Star Wars prequels and get pissed about how cool and morally ambiguous Anakin deserved to be. 

Talxin’s small, and for most of these characters’ early development he stays that way in his friends’ minds. Fair warning, his backstory is HEAVY and really dark, and one of the things I’m most worried about in terms of actually executing this story well. He grew up basically enslaved--Elcrin has a really really broken system of generational punishment. Talxin’s grandfather committed a crime, what he did is irrelevant, and so the family line got stuck as “indentured servants” to pay for the crime. Talxin’s dad Temerius was supposed to earn his freedom at age 20, but the owner of the farm where they all worked framed Temerius for another offense to lengthen the sentence and trap his children with him. So Talxin grew up in a horribly broken system, being told that this was justice, while his parents raised him worshiping the colorgod Red as a champion of true justice--all things equal in death. That later became Talxin’s mantra as a paladin. When Talxin was chosen as the red paladin in early childhood, he was attacked by the lord of the farm for having heathen magic, and he panicked and caused a ton of destruction. He got arrested and taken to an actual jail (this all when he was like four years old), escaped a few years later, and he’s been in and out of prison. Being called to the Academy for formal paladin training was a respite, and in his eyes, a chance for a fresh start and the tools to free his family. And then the Academy fell apart and he got sent right back to where he came from.

So what you end up with, after all of this, is a kid with a horribly fucked up traumatic history and a massive amount of power at his disposal. Because redmages are rare and persecuted, Talxin proportionally has a LOT more magic than the other paladins, he’s the strongest one of the lot. He’s got a strong sense of justice and he’s very much willing to kill to make things right--all things are equal in death, after all, and his patron deity is a god of plague and decay as well as justice. And he’s fixated on getting vengeance for the cruel and unjust treatment of his family, who’ve been scattered on the winds during the few years he was at the Academy. 

Talxin’s... really, really brave. Brave enough that when he’s sent back to Elcrin after the Academy falls apart he goes right back to the system and starts breaking it apart, rescuing people from the law and stealing shit from the corrupt government and making a big loud mess. In a demon AU I once nicknamed him “frog Robin Hood.” He’s also smart enough to get away with it. He’s a minor antagonist for a little bit, even... he winds up losing control of his magic and going way too far. All of the colors have minds of their own to some degree, and Red is vengeful and destructive and bent towards revenge. Talxin goes on a killing spree, which is fine when he’s killing people who deserve to burn in hell, but he starts hurting innocents too in the process. He loses sight of why he’s fighting, the ideals and morals and drive for justice that led Red to choose him above anyone else. Plagues don’t just stop spreading once they’ve done away with your targets, famines hit the people he wants to protect so much harder than the people he wants to hurt. The other paladins have to step in and talk him down before he starts something he can’t stop. I feel like he’s stuck between Gryffindor and Slytherin in my head because although he’s so daring and brave, he’s also ambitious and willing to do some very unchivalrous things when pushed to the line. He’s got a difficult goal to reach but nothing’s gonna stop him. 

As you’d expect from a character with this kind of life story, he’s pretty serious. He’s quiet and keeps to himself, he’s always watching and listening... the main word I’d describe him with is intense. But at the same time, he’s got a great sense of humor when he feels safe enough to express it! He’s sweet and goofy, and he cares so so much about his family and friends and acquaintances and any random stranger on the street who looks sad enough. He also plays fantastic elaborate tricks on people who fuck with him, like, in a modern AU he’s the one who sneaks into your nasty ex’s house just to steal all their toilet paper and the batteries from the TV remotes. And then he leaves the doors open so they waste money on heating. He’s the god of April Fools’. When it comes to his primary objective, he takes himself and everything else very seriously, he’s willing to put aside minor moral issues for the greater good. But if you get him to come out of his angst shell and just be a person for a little while, he’s a genuinely good guy. He’s not quite at Batman levels, there’s still hope for him yet. He’s just lonely and angry and desperate for affection. 

Talxin’s very close with Nyrene and Syzyga, out of everyone at the Academy he probably trusts those two the most, but he gets along great with Pariya too once she shows up. He wants to like Soenya but he doesn’t trust her, something about her sets off his internal alarm bells. Anlied scares the living shit out of him. He may or may not have dated Syzyga at some point in the past, they were a couple in past versions of this story but I’m not sure their current iterations are compatible. He’s got an older sister named Elysia, Lyss for short, whom he hasn’t seen since he was very small. He’s been trying to reconnect with her ever since the Academy caved in but she’s nowhere to be found. Nyrene actually finds her first. 

So yeah! Those three! They’re a LOT, Talxin in particular is really fascinating to me. Nymia doesn’t really have a protagonist in the traditional sense, but I think Talxin’s the closest to playing that role, as his personal arc drives so much of the story so far. Whether he’s the hero or not, he exerts a major force of change on the world of Nymia, and everything he does is important. The others influence things, sure, but Talxin’s.... he’s that. He’s a big deal. He’s a symbol.