#verabio

VERA NIKOLAEV

TWENTY-ONE ❈ HEALER THE ORDER OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

* This character is trans and uses she/her and they/them pronouns.

She was meant to be the glue that would hold her half-broken family together, the miracle child that would reignite a flame that had long gone cold. Born to affluent parents who were held in the highest esteem by everyone at court but each other, she was bred to be an example—of propriety, of gentility, of anything but the ugly truth that thrived beneath the extravagance of Ravkan court, and in another life, perhaps she might’ve been. In another life, she might’ve become everything her parents wanted and a mere fraction of what she had the potential to be—a respectable, but distant family friend of the Lantsovs, a benevolent, if not a bit odd, distraction from the cracks her father’s infidelity had left in the family name, and little more. She might’ve been their Atlas, their savior, their own little saint—brought into the world for the sole purpose of bearing it on her too-narrow shoulders, but the world, it seemed, had other plans. In the making of Vera Nikolaev, it had sought to create not a hero, a martyr to bloody and press into the pages of its history books, but a confidante, a soul to burden with the secrets it couldn’t bear to keep for itself, and she played the part well, much to her parents’ dismay. They’d wanted a savior of the shallowest sort, a child that donned the silk and gossamer of court and spoke only of empty pleasantries, and what they’d gotten was a child who wrapped herself in cotton and wool and spoke of truths that ran far too deep for even the court scholars to understand. She was a child prophet, the world’s humble deliverer from itself, but above all, she was a disgrace.

It began with a bird—wings broken, heart fluttering, nearly forgotten and half-trampled in the languid frenzy of young nobility exploring the palace gardens. She’d been trailing behind, as she often did, dark eyes wide with wonder at things she’d seen dozens of times before, when she’d disappeared, seemingly waltzed away by the summer breeze or swallowed whole by the rose bushes, and though it certainly hadn’t been the first time, she frightened her parents nearly beyond their wits—sent the palace into a sort of fever not by her actions, as the other children often did, but by her absence. She was striking in that way—in her ability to make her silence louder than her words, but she grew only more peculiar once they found her there in the most obscure corner of the grove, knobby knees dirtied, brows furrowed, and small hands cupped around the shivering body of a creature better left for dead. For a long, quiet moment, she’d been almost normal, a child meeting death’s cold gaze for the first time; for a moment, their pity had outweighed their fear. But Vera Nikolaev was lost to them forever when death blinked first, when the bird she’d been holding sprung from her palms as if it had only been resting, whole and free and alive. They disowned her—called her a witch, a curse, an abomination, but none could deny what she truly was, what they’d mistaken for sheer oddity all along: a healer, half-blessed and half-cursed, half-poison and half-cure.

Whisked away to the Little Palace and draped in corporalki red, she became a noble of a different kind, a child who belonged more to the earth than she ever had her mother and father. It was liberating, being understood, and she thrived there, in the anatomy rooms and the schoolyard alike; she grew into the sort of Grisha who would live on long after she’d been buried—in books, in dreams, in the aspirations of the young and learning, but she would always be as she had been her whole life: peculiar, the sort of thing you hold at arms-length. She was still the strange enigma she’d always been, regarded curiously even by those who donned the same colors, whispered about behind cupped palms pulsing with power. She had not ceased to be a puzzle to those around her, her pieces scattered and oddly-shaped, and perhaps she never would be, for the way of the world is sacrifice, and the price to pay for the gift she’d been given was this: even those who were the stuff of myths, of creation stories, of divinity, would never fully grasp the knowledge she had—would never see what she saw when she peered outside her window, down at her palms, into their eyes: pain, longing, loss, hope. She saw the world and its people for the flawed things they were, and though they loved her for it, they feared her for it, too.

But make no mistake: the world has never been gentle with its affections, and in kind, neither is she. An upright healer who will just as readily toe the line of her breaking point to save you and reattach your finger at the wrong end for ingratitude, she’s as bitter as she is sweet, as foolish as she is wise. Perhaps it’s made her cynical, knowing just how cruel fate can be; perhaps it’s made her arrogant, being hand-picked as one of fate’s own favorites. Perhaps she’d have been better off ordinary, forgettable, a child raised on pretty lies and blissful ignorance. But for all her doubts, for all the questions she’s not certain she’ll ever be granted answers to, she’s never longed for the soft cloak of mediocrity, of being so easily understood and loved. Let it sting, she thinks; let the knife of knowing cut so deep that no earthly healer will ever be able to mend the damage. She has known divinity—has heard its breathless whispers in the dark, and she knows no truth greater than this: to love is to understand, and to understand is to hurt. This is her martyrdom, her terror-filled song.

CONNECTIONS

ANASTASIA LANTSOV: They were friends, once, before prejudice tore them from the warmth each other’s arms and tried to teach them what it was to hate. Sometimes, when they catch glimpses of the princess while in the Grand Palace to heal, Vera remembers those days fondly, thinks of Anastasia’s freckled nose crinkling and her soft brown curls wrapped around their fingers, and they smile, at what once was—at what could’ve been. They know better than to dwell in the past, as the future makes a jealous lover, but they can’t help but wonder if she remembers, if she knows—if, by some stroke of fate, she misses them, too.

OYUN KIR-NARAN: Though it’s never been particularly difficult to invoke their momentary wrath, it’s rare that their ire festers into something more. The irony of the Shu Han diplomat being one of a select few to earn such a place of dishonor at their table certainly isn’t lost on them, but their own nobility, though given up in exchange for a share in something greater, is lost on her. Lady Kir-Naran would do well to learn that prejudice hardly sits well with diplomacy; if she can’t do so on her own, the healer might be inclined to educate her themselves.

LEI YUL-KEUNG: They saw through his smile like light streaming through polished glass, heard the sadness in his laugh as though he’d stopped time to tell them his sorrows himself. He was an open book to Vera, they who had never tried to hide the secrets they knew, and they told him so, equal parts crass and empathetic. “You’re not really happy, are you?” And so began a tumultuous sort of discovery, an understanding not unlike the tides—ever pushing and pulling, consistent in the way it gives. They won’t call it love; they’re not quite sure they know what the word means, but it’s something, and for now, that’s enough. 

VERA NIKOLAEV

TWENTY-ONE ❈ HEALER THE ORDER OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

* This character is trans and uses she/her and they/them pronouns.

She was meant to be the glue that would hold her half-broken family together, the miracle child that would reignite a flame that had long gone cold. Born to affluent parents who were held in the highest esteem by everyone at court but each other, she was bred to be an example—of propriety, of gentility, of anything but the ugly truth that thrived beneath the extravagance of Ravkan court, and in another life, perhaps she might’ve been. In another life, she might’ve become everything her parents wanted and a mere fraction of what she had the potential to be—a respectable, but distant family friend of the Lantsovs, a benevolent, if not a bit odd, distraction from the cracks her father’s infidelity had left in the family name, and little more. She might’ve been their Atlas, their savior, their own little saint—brought into the world for the sole purpose of bearing it on her too-narrow shoulders, but the world, it seemed, had other plans. In the making of Vera Nikolaev, it had sought to create not a hero, a martyr to bloody and press into the pages of its history books, but a confidante, a soul to burden with the secrets it couldn’t bear to keep for itself, and she played the part well, much to her parents’ dismay. They’d wanted a savior of the shallowest sort, a child that donned the silk and gossamer of court and spoke only of empty pleasantries, and what they’d gotten was a child who wrapped herself in cotton and wool and spoke of truths that ran far too deep for even the court scholars to understand. She was a child prophet, the world’s humble deliverer from itself, but above all, she was a disgrace.

It began with a bird—wings broken, heart fluttering, nearly forgotten and half-trampled in the languid frenzy of young nobility exploring the palace gardens. She’d been trailing behind, as she often did, dark eyes wide with wonder at things she’d seen dozens of times before, when she’d disappeared, seemingly waltzed away by the summer breeze or swallowed whole by the rose bushes, and though it certainly hadn’t been the first time, she frightened her parents nearly beyond their wits—sent the palace into a sort of fever not by her actions, as the other children often did, but by her absence. She was striking in that way—in her ability to make her silence louder than her words, but she grew only more peculiar once they found her there in the most obscure corner of the grove, knobby knees dirtied, brows furrowed, and small hands cupped around the shivering body of a creature better left for dead. For a long, quiet moment, she’d been almost normal, a child meeting death’s cold gaze for the first time; for a moment, their pity had outweighed their fear. But Vera Nikolaev was lost to them forever when death blinked first, when the bird she’d been holding sprung from her palms as if it had only been resting, whole and free and alive. They disowned her—called her a witch, a curse, an abomination, but none could deny what she truly was, what they’d mistaken for sheer oddity all along: a healer, half-blessed and half-cursed, half-poison and half-cure.

Whisked away to the Little Palace and draped in corporalki red, she became a noble of a different kind, a child who belonged more to the earth than she ever had her mother and father. It was liberating, being understood, and she thrived there, in the anatomy rooms and the schoolyard alike; she grew into the sort of Grisha who would live on long after she’d been buried—in books, in dreams, in the aspirations of the young and learning, but she would always be as she had been her whole life: peculiar, the sort of thing you hold at arms-length. She was still the strange enigma she’d always been, regarded curiously even by those who donned the same colors, whispered about behind cupped palms pulsing with power. She had not ceased to be a puzzle to those around her, her pieces scattered and oddly-shaped, and perhaps she never would be, for the way of the world is sacrifice, and the price to pay for the gift she’d been given was this: even those who were the stuff of myths, of creation stories, of divinity, would never fully grasp the knowledge she had—would never see what she saw when she peered outside her window, down at her palms, into their eyes: pain, longing, loss, hope. She saw the world and its people for the flawed things they were, and though they loved her for it, they feared her for it, too.

But make no mistake: the world has never been gentle with its affections, and in kind, neither is she. An upright healer who will just as readily toe the line of her breaking point to save you and reattach your finger at the wrong end for ingratitude, she’s as bitter as she is sweet, as foolish as she is wise. Perhaps it’s made her cynical, knowing just how cruel fate can be; perhaps it’s made her arrogant, being hand-picked as one of fate’s own favorites. Perhaps she’d have been better off ordinary, forgettable, a child raised on pretty lies and blissful ignorance. But for all her doubts, for all the questions she’s not certain she’ll ever be granted answers to, she’s never longed for the soft cloak of mediocrity, of being so easily understood and loved. Let it sting, she thinks; let the knife of knowing cut so deep that no earthly healer will ever be able to mend the damage. She has known divinity—has heard its breathless whispers in the dark, and she knows no truth greater than this: to love is to understand, and to understand is to hurt. This is her martyrdom, her terror-filled song.

CONNECTIONS

ANASTASIA LANTSOV: They were friends, once, before prejudice tore them from the warmth each other’s arms and tried to teach them what it was to hate. Sometimes, when they catch glimpses of the princess while in the Grand Palace to heal, Vera remembers those days fondly, thinks of Anastasia’s freckled nose crinkling and her soft brown curls wrapped around their fingers, and they smile, at what once was—at what could’ve been. They know better than to dwell in the past, as the future makes a jealous lover, but they can’t help but wonder if she remembers, if she knows—if, by some stroke of fate, she misses them, too.

OYUN KIR-NARAN: Though it’s never been particularly difficult to invoke their momentary wrath, it’s rare that their ire festers into something more. The irony of the Shu Han diplomat being one of a select few to earn such a place of dishonor at their table certainly isn’t lost on them, but their own nobility, though given up in exchange for a share in something greater, is lost on her. Lady Kir-Naran would do well to learn that prejudice hardly sits well with diplomacy; if she can’t do so on her own, the healer might be inclined to educate her themselves.

LEI YUL-KEUNG: They saw through his smile like light streaming through polished glass, heard the sadness in his laugh as though he’d stopped time to tell them his sorrows himself. He was an open book to Vera, they who had never tried to hide the secrets they knew, and they told him so, equal parts crass and empathetic. “You’re not really happy, are you?” And so began a tumultuous sort of discovery, an understanding not unlike the tides—ever pushing and pulling, consistent in the way it gives. They won’t call it love; they’re not quite sure they know what the word means, but it’s something, and for now, that’s enough. 

INTRODUCTION

LOYALTY: The Dregs

STATUS: Open for Auditions

FACECLAIM: Blanca Padilla

So cold and quiet they often wondered if you had a heart beat. Drenched in the blood of other children who’d fought their way from the darkest of depths from the ravenous tides that surrounded Ketterdam. The waters were still and yet within the silence, it was only ever your loud and ravaging scream that echoed through the night. For you’d learned at a young age that to survive meant to fight, to claw ones self from the wreckage if only to find bodies piling at your feet. To be a survivor was to be a murderer, watching as the light left the eyes of those around you as you’d stolen the clothing off their backs and the food in their pockets. Some whispered that you were something of an angel, an omen of death, a girl gifted with the knowledge of the devil himself. For, you were denied entry to every cathedral and place of worship, deemed unworthy if only for your darkened gaze, black as the darkest winters eve. As if they could sense something sinister boiling beneath your skin, seeping through your veins and pouring from every pore. Ketterdam had never welcomed you, and in turn you’d found yourself as unforgiving as the Fjerdan seas themselves. The streets had rotted as time went on, and you alongside with them. They’d declared you a dead girl, a merciless soul whose flesh would be fed to the wolves in the woods and the monsters in the sea if they’d caught you stealing to eat, stealing to survive once more. Yet, gambling dens had become a hub for foolish men and women alike, ones who’d never thought to lose against a girl in rags, a ghost so gaunt and pale it was as if she hadn’t seen a single drop of the sun in all her days. It was within the dens that you’d found something, the pockets of wealthy businessmen who’d allowed themselves nights of debauchery, who’d prided themselves in shining possession and jewels. It was there that you’d won your pistols, the same ones that would become something of shield to you.

Whispers of pity had turned into whispers of fear. Vera, the once prey had now turned into a hunter, a fury to be feared in the Barrel. Soon enough, the Dregs had come along and offered you a seat amongst the most dreadful of all, the most hungry. Alongside them, you’d found some sort of solace, a make shift family in which you’d never had, to call your own. The looks of admiration as they’d listened to stories of how you’d sneak into the rooms of men and slit their throats for even propositioning you for an evening. The stories of a girl so merciless and violent that some would believe her to be nothing but a villainous and selfish creature. However, with the markings of crow and cup burned into your flesh, you remained nothing if not loyal, always vying for a seat at the top, to reign over a city who’d only ever sought to bury you alongside the rest of the children who hadn’t had a chance such as yours. They’d claimed you to be something likened to the devil, to a hellhound, and you’d delivered in all of their nightmares. Teeth bared and fury sweeping against chiseled cheekbones and plumped lips. Darkened hues had turned into something ravenous, something almost beautiful. Yet, you’d never allow yourself to be watered down to such a thing. To the world, you were something ferocious and fear inducing, their very own executioner. If it was a ruthless death they’d wanted, it was the only one you’d deliver. Smile stretching against your lips as you’d laid a chaste kiss against the barrel of your gun before pointing it towards every enemy, every person in Ketterdam, who’d sought to bring an end to your terror, to your unravelling dread. A girl is not a god, they’d said to you once. You, in turn, agreed. You may not be a god nor a saint of any kind, but you’d been touched by something grim a time or two and had felt death wrap his tender claws around you and whisper : kill them all.

CONNECTIONS

ANTON DIJKSTRA  ( Devil’s Advocate ) : It’s his word that allows her to draw her pistols, adorned in gold and rubies glistening. He, her captain and she his best lieutenant. Together, the streets of Ketterdam remain fearful beneath their watch, as if perfectly timed clockwork. Some consider her to be nothing but a lap dog, a loaded gun awaiting instruction of a man who deems himself more fit to lead than she herself. There were doubts, of course. Nights that kept Vera awake in a rage that the Dregs had appointed an outsider as their leader, whilst she awaited carefully in the wings. However, there was no shadow more fit for her than that of his own. No greater place than to be behind the man who’d singlehandedly burn Ketterdam to the ground in his own vanity.

KIRA EMON ( Combatant & Competition ) : Games of cat and mouse, that’s all there was to it. The simplicity of the chase. They would rip the rug from beneath her feet and she in turn would point a pistol between their eyes in an act of anger. There’s slight admiration covered only by that of slight jealousy. A woman of Vera’s calibre at the mercy of a common thief, a street rat that reminds her of nothing if not herself. While she may wear an expression of disdain in the others presence, she finds a comfort in the competition and as they say, keep your friends close and your enemiescloser.