Etoil Nimbral

[Etoil Nimbral]

Etoil Nimbral

✨Appearance✨

Race: Ethaefal (Symenestra Seeming)
Gender: Male
Age: 53
Birthday: 3, Spring, 470 AV.
Birthplace: Shoreline Near Lhavit

Appearance:

By Day

By day, Etoil appears in his Symenestra form. Just a bit below six feet tall, he is ghastly pale, with a short crop of white hair accentuating rather than counteracting his bone-white complexion. Long limbs and sharp black nails mark his unmistakable Symenestra physicality, with golden eyes completing the look.

His hair is cropped just below his neckline, outlining a gaunt, thin face. A long neck and sharp collarbones accentuate his graceful albeit largely androgynous features, giving many who are not intimately familiar with Symenestra biology pause when guessing his gender. The final hint of his Symenestra appearance, the sharp teeth which the race all sport, is generally kept behind a thin, tight-lipped smile. No need to call attention where none is welcome.

Generally unwilling to be singled out at a distance, Etoil keeps a hood over his face throughout most of the day. While anyone up close can clearly tell the nature of his mortal seeming, it seems to be enough to keep those just passing by from asking too many questions.

By Night

At night, when Leth smiles upon his children, Etoil can breathe easier. The shimmering change seems almost to stretch him out an extra inch or two, and his frame becomes even more skeletal than normal. His horns jut out of his head from beneath his hair, reminiscent of the shorter horns a young antelope might sport. They're fairly short and sharp, and sweep backwards at an angle.

Violet eyes peer out from a face markedly softer than in its diurnal appearance, further confusing the casual observer as to Etoil’s gender. Skin of pale white alabaster, already present in his mortal seeming, gains a shimmer of supernatural reflectivity, calling to mind the appearance of a full moon on a cloudless night. As all Ethaefal do, Etoil varies with the seasons. He is most comfortable in springtime, the season of his birth, with grayish silver hair accentuated by ice-white horns. In the winter, his hair brightens into a stark white, and his horns slowly become jet black. In the fall, his hair takes on a pale gold color, while his horns assume an amber color. The summertime takes his hair into a black color, and his horns take on a pale green color reminiscent of dried mint.

✨Character Concept✨

Etoil was born already in mourning for a divinity he never quite experienced himself, and with a hot smattering of ancestral memories which were similarly inscrutable. The kindness of those who found him and took him in saved the Ethaefal from developing the familiar complexes around betrayal and lost hope which plague so many of his kin and left him with a stable and friendly personal relationship to Leth.

This friendly relationship to his patron is supplemented by an unwitting attraction to the afterlife, which Etoil has had trouble meaningfully distinguishing from the living world as long as he can remember. Washing up on shore in the company of the ghosts of stranded sailors and a spiritist can have that effect on people. To others, this is seen as a certain level of spaciness, as he is often inexplicably staring into the distance, at a wall, down a well, behind an empty alley, and the like. It can be even worse when he appears to be speaking to empty air.

A dreamy relationship to the afterlife, in conjunction with his dutiful devotion to Leth, mark him as a friend to those looking to pass on. Just as the moon must be replaced by the sun in the morning, Leth believes the dead must move on. But he isn’t one to rush things. He has plenty of time. A proponent of persuasion, Leth extends his respect and understanding to the dead, who are often a valuable source of insight on some of the finer points of astrology.

The practice of weaving helps Etoil stay grounded. Beyond the physicality of the practice, his experience flogging cloaks in Lhavit taught him how to interact with creatures that have a pulse. And a body. And can be seen by everyone else. But it also leaves a sour note on his tongue. Though he prefers to weave by moonlight, it can conjure strange images of past lives among the Symenestra, lives full of beauty and art but also full of bloodshed and violence. The loom is where he questions himself, his place in the world, and the nature of things. Its also his only real source of income, so he can put these metaphysical concerns aside for the most part.

He has, of late, reverted a bit to the state of mourning he was born in. Leaving behind a well-lived life, full of familiar routines and kind companions, companions who will most likely be dead before he has a chance to return to Lhavit, can do that to you. In the absence of his companions and the relatively more enlightened populace of Lhavit, he has also developed a sociopolitical discomfort with his mortal seeming, on top of the more mystical discomfort it already provides. Being mistaken for a bloodthirsty kidnapper during the day is a constant source of dull pain for him, but a pain he will have to reconcile if he is to start a new life.

✨Character History✨

Etoil’s story starts with someone else altogether. Or rather, it depends on someone else altogether to make any sense. Gros Nimbral, a wizard, and devotee of Leth, had been meditating on a rock outcropping facing the shorelines west of Lhavit. The moon seemed to shimmer unnaturally for a second, forcing her eyes open, and drawing her out of the meditative state she had been working to cultivate that evening. Suspecting nothing special at first, the human woman cursed under her breath and looked to settle back into a trance. But before she could do so, something caught her eye. At the shoreline, something seemed to sparkle. A tall, naked figure stared up at the moon. Even from a distance, she could tell that it was weeping.

Making her way across the jagged rocks which lined the coastline, pulled by an inscrutable force (Alright… it wasn’t quite inscrutable. She was a spiritist of some skill, and there were at least four ghosts pointing at the figure and demanding she go see if it was alright. But mystically inscrutable sounds better than admitting it was at the whim of a common apparition!). Upon arriving at the coastline proper, Gros was shocked to see that she had witnessed something truly special. It was the birth of an Ethaefal, in this case one of Leth’s chosen.

The creature turned to her with tears in its silvery eyes, clearly shaken by its recent journey into mortality. Although some would call it madness rather than motherly instinct, Gros was driven by something primal in her next action. She strode forward confidently and hugged the creature, gripping it tightly as it relaxed in her arms and wept fully, traumatized by its journey. Wrapping the newborn moonchild in her cloak, she started the trek back into Lhavit with him in tow, heading towards the Shinyama, her home as well as the seat of the Temple of the Moon.

Gros couldn’t get a coherent sentence out of her new charge for the life of her. The journey back to the city was equal parts weeping and silence, with little in the way of conversation occurring. Regardless, the woman couldn’t care less. There was living proof of the value of her worship in front of her, and the religious implications of abandoning such a charge to the cruelty of the world was more than her pious heart could take. So, she put the Ethaefal up for the night in her home, after urging her housemates back into their beds. A talented spiritist and weaver in her own right, the woman lived together with a few other magicians and craftspeople, who had pooled their funds together to purchase a somewhat haphazard building. The funds had been well-spent however, as between the few of them, they had the skills required to produce supplies for some of the Shinya, whether they be cloaks, potions, oils, or whatever else was needed.

In the morning, following a sleepless night, Gros and her housemates looked upon the slumbering figure of their new charge. Significantly less captivating during the daytime, it appeared they had adopted a Symenestra. Her housemates were wise enough to know this wasn’t the case, and trusted Gros. They knew what they were dealing with. One of Leth’s own charges had been dumped on their doorstep, in a manner of speaking.

Upon waking, the creature was still in its painful birthing stage, weeping without provocation and clearly confused as to its origin. With time and kindness, they managed to extract but a word from it. Etoil. Taking this to be its name, the band agreed that it was only right to attach Gros’ family name, Nimbral, to it. And that was when they got a bit uncomfortable with the whole business of calling the creature it, even if it was hard to say whether it was male or female. After an uncomfortable but necessary bit of investigation, it became clear they were dealing with a male incarnation of lunar beauty.

With a few days of slow and careful work, Etoil began to grudgingly accept what had happened. He was not one to question Leth’s will, particularly after the kindness afforded to him largely because of his association with the God. He quickly began to make himself useful, doing his best to repay Gros for her kindness, while quickly making friends with the rest of her compatriots. Chief among them was the swordsman and navigator, Bilian. His talents lay in reading stars and producing maps, he was a sailor who had left behind the rough life on the high seas to focus on the trades. Although he lived in a small cottage a bit away from Gros and her housemates, he spent most of his time in the mildly decrepit building which contained their workspaces and shopfronts.

Between Gros and Bilian, Etoil quickly began to develop a more grounded understanding of himself. As the days passed, the urge to weep lessened, and the concerns of mortal life began to take the forefront over half-forgotten memories of divinity.

It was here, in this building, that Etoil’s talents began to take shape. Gros had been shocked to find the Ethaefal calmly conversing with a spirit in her study without any form of assistance or guidance from her. He also seemed to have an ancestral knack for weaving, taking to it quickly and with little complaining. For quite some time, Etoil’s life was lived largely in the confines of the building and of Gros’ business, learning some of the commercial aspects of spiritism while refining his abilities with the loom.

These were the years during which Etoil came to develop that dreaded thing, a personality. While his caretakers were law-abiding and religious, their status as tradesmen left them all with a keen knack for detecting trickery and unfairness, and so the young Ethaefal distinguished himself from some of his more metaphysically inclined peers by developing a modicum of street smarts. While learning some of the basics of swordsmanship from Bilian, Etoil spent most of his time studying under Gros, becoming learned in the more commercially exploitable aspects of spiritism. Bilian, a storyteller by nature, loved to regale Etoil with his stories of travel, even teaching him a few words of that exotic language of Kontinese, which seemed to always remind the old sailor of what appeared to be a long-lost love. In the interest of paying his own way, he made use of his seemingly in-born familiarity with weaving to bolster his caretaker’s income, making beautiful cloaks which sold especially well to those followers of Leth who valued having clothing touched by a servant of Leth.

Life was peaceful and plentiful. But life tends to change, and much more quickly than expected. Etoil didn’t quite grasp this, having a different relationship to time than the average mortal. But Gros and Bilian knew this quite well, as evidenced by their slow graying and descent into both physical and mental frailty.

They weren’t stupid. The craftsmen and wizards who made up the motley crew around Gros and Bilian understood Etoil would most likely outlive the lot of them. As they aged and had children, though Etoil was a wonder as a babysitter, it was clear his body-clock did not operate similarly to theirs. According to Gros, he looked just the same as he had when he washed up on the coastline.

Etoil himself wasn’t stupid either. Though he had little personal understanding of aging, he knew what was happening to his friends. They weren’t going to be around forever. After a few tough conversations and quite a bit of urging on the part of both his friends and their children, he agreed to respect their wishes. Gros and Bilian were both aghast at the thought of dying while their compatriot watched, knowing he would live much longer than them. They insisted he respect their wishes not by staying by their deathbeds, as one might ask of a purely mortal being. Instead, they urged him to head out into the world. Though their lives had been happy, they had been small. But wouldn’t it be nice if their names could be heard far and wide? And wasn’t Etoil an ideal candidate for such a thing? If anyone could carry a history, it was a being like him. They also seemed to be doing it for his sake in a sense, as the presence of other Ethaefal in the city had been starting to grate on him. It was time to move on, even if he would miss his friends dearly.

It was this train of logic which led Etoil to his current situation in life. With tearful and heartfelt goodbyes behind him, he stepped onto a tradeship chartered by one of Bilian’s old sailing buddies. It was on course to Syka, a new settlement where the future seemed pregnant with possibility. Armed with the basics of star-lore, skills in weaving, training in spiritism, and a simple grasp of self-defense, Etoil’s new life would begin here. Upon arriving in Syka, he quickly found himself drawn to Tropical Fever, the local fashion outlet. Where they were well-learned in colorful apparel, befitting their name, he was more of an expert in subtle gradations of white, silvery, grey, and black. His first order of business in setting himself up in the recently established settlement would be in seeking stable employment here.

✨Language✨

Fluent Language: Common
Basic Language: Symenos
Poor Language: Konti

✨Skills✨

Please list skills in alphabetical order by competency

Skill	EXP	Total	Proficiency
Astrology	10 SP, 10 RB	20	Novice
Spiritism	15 SP	15	Novice
Weaving	15 SP	15	Novice
Weapon: Estoc	10 SP	10	Novice

✨Gnosis✨

N/A

✨Lores✨

Weaving – Textile preparation. Etoil is familiar with the washing, stripping, and general preparation of the most common textile materials.

Sailor Death Rituals. Etoil has a basic grasp of the folklore around death shared by sailors, particularly those most familiar in and around Lhavit.

✨Possessions✨

1 Set of Clothing
-Simple White Shirt
-Simple Grey Pants
-Simple Undergarments
-Simple Grey Cloak
-Simple Poorly-Dyed Blue Boots
1 Waterskin
1 Backpack which contains:
-Comb (Wood)
-Brush (Wood)
-Soap
-Razor
-Balanced Rations (1 Week's worth)
-1 eating knife
-Flint & Steel
100 Gold Mizas

Heirloom: A black leather belt with small charms dangling from it. Each of the charms is a keepsake from his adoptive family of craftsmen and merchants, representing this or that aspect of their craft. These charms are made of iron and are nothing valuable, beyond the emotional comfort they bring Etoil.

✨Housing✨

Location: A room at the Protea Inn.

House: Simply a room at the local inn, kept tidy and neat.

✨Ledger✨

Purchase	Cost	Total
Starting	+100 GM	100 GM

✨Thread List✨

Coming soon!

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