Welcome to Gaia! ::

*raises hand* Question! What is she? o_o

She's a sand-devil.
No, not the fish...

Humanoid creatures are dominant in the world it's set in, but the races are a bit more varied, physically, than human races. The level of difference is more akin to the variety between breeds of dogs.
Sand-devils are, as the name suggests, mostly found in desert areas, though where she lives is far chillier, since her family moved to another continent centuries ago. Think of a little burrowing goblin-type thing.

Yeah, I've done quite a bit of world-building, so I'm working on getting the characters right. She's meant to be the lead, so I want to flesh out the bones a little.

Bob: I'll take that as a compliment. whee

Ah, excellent!

What makes her get up in the morning? Well, for one, a sense of duty. She's a woman of routine, and each day is pretty similar for her. She's got to be up bright and early to get into work at just the right time. She's so set in her ways she doesn't even sleep in late on her days off. Luckily, she is naturally a morning person, so this isn't much of a hardship for her.

As for her family dynamic, in the city-state itself, people are generally raised communally. Siltok never knew her parents; they were selected in the breeding lottery to have a child, and she was conceived by artificial insemination - the Administration view sex as a distraction, and bureaucrats are routinely given libido suppressants in their tea.
Instead, she was raised with her fellow administrators-to-be, by an army of caring if rather impersonal nannies. Families are considered a bit vulgar and decadent by the professional classes of the City.

As for her fears and dreams? She's greatly afraid of the unknown, like a lot of people. She doesn't trust what's unfamiliar to her, and change makes her very nervous. She's not hugely ambitious, unlike some of her peers, and is happy being low-ranking and unobtrusive, in a job which doesn't put too much pressure on her. She's also got a few private little dreams - for example, she really wants a pet cat, but it's terribly difficult to get permission to keep pets (her current substitute, a small potplant, was tricky enough to get in itself). And she's terribly curious about what lies outside the City, even though the idea of it scares her witless.

Good questions, by the way - had to think about those a bit, and I've got some nice new ideas.

The age rather depends on what job's being done. There's children as young as 12 doing unskilled labour (and probably kids much younger than that, unofficially), whereas in skilled professions training can go on well into one's twenties.
Siltok herself started employment at 16, whilst still undergoing part-time education, which is pretty commonplace for the Administrators (though unusually bright children are singled out, undergo studies until they're 21, and automatically enter quite high up the hierarchy).
Pretty much everyone gets taught at least the basics of literacy and numeracy, but being born to a vocation requiring a fair degree of intelligence, she's also been educated in certain aspects of history and science. From 12 to 16 she underwent learning geared specifically to her profession, so she was taught law, politics, and all about the ins and outs of administering to the City and its government. More important, perhaps, is what she HASN'T been taught - geography, literature, art, philosophy and suchlike.
Learning in the schools for the Administrators - and, indeed, in most schools in the city - is done by rote, with the emphasis on being able to remember stuff for when you might need it. Analysis and discussion are definitely out.


This guild's helping quite a lot - it may seem like I already know this stuff, but I'm making it up as I go along. The questions help me work out what needs adding, and it's all helping with the characterisation and the world-building.