Age: 38
Sex: Female
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Weyr: formerly Western, now High Reaches Weyr
Rider Rank: Goldrider
Previous Rank/Craft: Courtesan
Physical Description: Turns of training and the usual passage of time have slimmed down some of her more generous curves, but the pleasing fiure of a courtesan still lurks beneath her leathers. Klah-brown hair has been streaked lighter here and there by time in the sun, but she has never been convinced to cut her thick curls short, choosing instead to keep it braided in a somewhat-contained length that rides her spine or wound about her head like a crown of orts. Her eyes are deceptively dark, a simple brown at first glance, but upon closer inspection or in the right light, reveal themselves to be a richer color, a hint of reddish-mahogany around the pupil. She considers them her best feature, despite the faint lines time and weather have carved around them. Her gaze is direct and a genuine smile very rare, though she smiles quite prettily when it will make a point.. She does not drift or waft when she moves, but walks with purpose from place to place. She is small enough to stand in most men's shadows, but tall enough to be impossible to overlook.
Personality: Niobet has an absolute, undeniable sense of place. If she is preset and in someone's company, it's because she chooses to be there and never by chance. While she does enjoy having time to rest and will take avantage of downtime, that, too, is by her choosing, at her discretion. While she may seem at peae, she is very rarely idle.
She is outgoing and friendly enough to spare a moment for listening to anyone who wants to talk, but she's not a gossip. She has strong opinions and is neither shy nor delicate in pronouncing them, but she doesn't tell tales on others. She listens and records and takes note of who might be plotting againt whom or who is pining over another, but only for her own ends. If there are rumors or whispers about her, she's happy to answer questions, but be prepared to answer questions in turn.
When it comes to her dragon and her duties, she is competent and controlled. Aedeth requires -- has always required -- a steadying hand to ground her. Time has tempered her somewhat and made them a reliable pair, even f their approapch to problem solving isn't always by the book.
That's not to say that she can't or doesn't know how to have fun. She laughs, ofen. She has been known to sing and with a drink or two in her, she will not turn down a dance. She keeps a small circle of friends and loved ones closer than the rest, who know the woman behind the defenses and who have hear her true secrets and wishes, but only a very carefully chosen few. Those few people might recognize the fact that she keeps people at a distance not because she's that independant, but because being too close to anyone is a terrifying risk. They are the ones who know that some of her loudest laughs or most off-putting moment are the times when she feels most vulnerable. They are the only people she will ever talk to about her family. They are the few people she would, quite literally, defend to the death.
For all the rest, she can be looked to to lend a houlder if someone is in truly in need.
She is not, however, a baulble to be collecte or a notch to be cut into the wall of someone's weyr. She is not shy about sex, andher bed has seen many a body, but no one has yet managed to stay for long.
Positive Trait List Outgoing, competent, reliable, supportive, determined, adaptable.
Negative Trait ListOpinionated, direct/blunt, judgmental, guarded, proud, vain.
History: As is to be expected, Niobet had parents, but the most she says when asked about them is that it seems clear that there were one of each.
In truth, her father was a somewhat decent man with a knack for keeping himself out of trouble and in the business of supplying unapproved medicinals to people who knew that the dried herbs and tinctures he sold up front and center on his cart at the marketplace were not the things they truly wanted. Those he kept under lock and key. Her mother, never married to her father, worked in a brothel. Between them, they did fairly well by Niobet and her brother, Betin, and kept their children safe.
As safe as they could in Nabol Hold, at least. . As a girl, Niobet helped her father, leading both the curious seeker and the familiar customer to his cart so he could ply them with his wares. Her brother got the bigger jobs, running packages to clients who chose not to buy so openly lest they be blackmailed. When he got older, and after he'd learned to hold his own in dirty street fights, he was recruited to run with a gang of information traders, for want of a better term, playing the part of enforcer as well, when it was or is needed.
Betin and Niobet only rarely spoke to one another directly once she followed her mother into the brothel trade. It was a logical progression for a girl who'd grown up too much to go unnoticed at her father's cart anymore. Safer, her mother reasoned, since there were enforcers there to get rid of unruly men and the conditions were far more sanitary than the back end of an alley somewhere.
She would have been content, or so she thought, to tay in that life forever, perhaps one day becoming a madam herself and looking out for the girls who'd come into the trade after her. Instead, her brother got himself into trou ble too deep to sort out, the kind that put him at direct odds with Lord Gansey and made the family's almost-immediate departure from Nabol a necessity. Their mother and father fled for the relative anonymity of Lemos where his knowledge of herbs and plants might, at least, lead to some sort of gainful employ if not an entirely new start. The children? Betin collected his few personal things, his little sister and the things she couldn't leave behind, and got them one way transport to Rivercrest Hold on the western continent and a whole new class of crooks and thieves.
Starting over in a new house wasn't easy on Niobet but she was adaptable and mostly willing to bide her time, so once she'd found herself suited to a new madam's tastes, she was back at work. For a time. Betin lost himself in his new-but-usual trade and Niobet entertained and smiled and flirted.
And caught the eye of a rider with a curiouly insistant dragon who convinced her, on a dare, to leave the House temporarily and go back to the Weyr -- Western -- with him. He was, he bragged, so confident in his dragon's ability to sniff out a dragonrider in the making that he would pay her fot her lost time if he, and conequently his dragon, were wrong.
He never paid Niobet a quarter-mark.
Aedeth, in her overbearing and not-to-be-contradicted way, introduced herself to the world with a flourish and made it very clear that she and Niobet would never again be apart. The stuoobrn young queen made concentrating and controlling two sets of roiling emotion a challenge, but eventually they found their balance and their grace and learned to comport themselves as they should. Most of the time.
As the result of the urge to shake off the rules, express herself and enjoy the lifting of restrictions after graduating from her Weyrlingc class, Niobet has a son. There are many things she might claim to regret as a result of impulse and urge, Petrion is not one of them. Though she was not made to deal with diapers and tantrums on her own, neither was she willing to have her son be raised entirely without her or a sense of who he was, and from whom he came. She was a regular visitor to the creche, or a nuiance, as the creche workers migt have argued.
While Western's willingness to recognize initiative and offer opportunities based on merit rather than old hidebound notions of structure and order appealed to Niobet and the life she'd led before Aedeth, convincing the domineering gold that "lesser" dragons deserved her respect and attenion became a mounting obstacle as the dragon grew. There had been more than a few tense standoffs between Weyrling and Weyrlingmaster, followed by more between senior riders and the junior gold. As she grew, the conflicts seemed destined to continue and something had to be done.
The decision to request a transfer to High Reaches Weyr after the pair's first seven Turns of service were concluded was a mutual one. The hope was that there, with an adherence to more traditional training, Aedeth might settle into her place and Niobet might better learn to navigate her duties without wrangling a dragon insistent on her due.
It's been nine Turns since the move and the pair have found High Reaches' pace much easier to follow. Conflicts and temper flares are much fewer and farther between, and though Niobet might occaionally struggle with a stricter chair of command, she is optimistic; Aedeth is patiently waiting.
DRAGON
Name: Aedeth
Age: 16
Color: Gold
Size: 45'
Physical Description: A rich, shining gold, almost bronzed along her spine and at her points as well as the trailing edges of her wings. Her leading edges and the highlights of her hide are bright, brassy gold, like firelight in the cold of a ring. Though medium sized for a queen, she is quite long in her proportions, and as a result is not as quick to turn on a wingtip as some smaller dragons. Long wings, long limbs, when flying, walking, or just relaxing, she is the very picture of elegance... a deadly sort of beauty.
Personality: Aedeth is hardly a gold to be trusted, insidious and sly, she is a master of deceit and feeling-out weakpoints. She delights in finding hopes and dreams that she can toy with at her whim, and your lives are her games. It isn’t that she doesn’t take things seriously, you better belive she takes her power quite seriously indeed, but everyone else is largely unimportant or there for her amusement. And everyone is hers to toy with, this gold is rather possessive of her playthings after all, she likes to watch them and dislikes anyone trying to get between her and her amusement. Her rider, perhaps, is the single exception, though it is far from a master-slave arrangement. No, her rider is a valuable person, and the holder of the only key to this Queens complicated heart.
Relentless and unpredictable, this gold is one who will keep her Weyr, and it will be hers, on their toes at all times. That lure of temptation, that desiring sensation that comes from watching her, will lead some to fall at her feet more than once. It is so easy to covet a gold so fine, and so easy to want to follow her… but all her promises are in vain and she laughs at those who trust her or hope for a kind word. Sometimes she’ll help, and sometimes she’ll appear generous, but it’s always another ruse, another manipulation, another game. Honesty is a problem that she has never had to cope with, preferring to flourish in lies and deceit. She can twist anything you say to suit her, and may even have you believing that you agree.
Building others up to take them down is a delightful pastime for her, and she is endlessly creative and insightful as to how to do this. That’s not to say her cunning and ingenuity cannot be put towards more productive tasks and problem-solving, but her preference will always be taking people apart just to look at the pieces. Pride, self-confidence, even simple joy, you name it and Aedeth will find a way to strip it from you if it pleases her. A foolish rider would attempt to contain her, a wise one will learn how to redirect her.
That said, she is more than a little vain, and flattery might get you out of her cruel claws… or it might simply bring you to her attention. She loves power, and is loathe to share it with any who might fall beneath her… so some ‘flatterers’ might find themselves judged to be trying to mooch off of her power. Rather than simply being dismissed, these unfortunates will be twisted and toyed with until she grows bored of luring them on and decides to break them instead.
Dragon Art or Proof of Obtainment: Requesting a transfer from Sands of Pern with an updated background.
