Dardani

Dardani is an Old One hybrid and a member of the Royal House of Thracia. She currently resides in Ville de Quebec, Quebec, Canada.
==Bio==
Write the first section of your article here.
==Trivia (Interactive)==
1. Dardani's love for her father knows no bounds. She worships him as slavishly as any of his cult might and will do anything he asks her without a second thought or even a single question. She doesn't care nearly as much as she should about being the perfect kenthas--she just wants her father to be proud of her.
Thrace's reaction: Since earning his pride and being a good kenthas are the same thing, Thrace approves.
Triballi's reaction: His dominant personality is pleased about this, because it is quite appropriate to worship a god. His shadow personality is deeply saddened by it, because he cares about Dardani and hates Thrace.
2. The only other people in her life that wield anywhere near that degree of control over her are her eldest brothers--Odrysai and Satrai, as her father's favorites, are the ones she aspires to be the most like, and will therefore listen to every single word they say, and Triballi is the one that she feels is the most like her, and as such is the one she can most easily talk to.
Satrai's reaction: Even though Satrai has been taught for most of his life to be a role model, he was absolutely floored when confronted with the reality of this beautiful, perfect baby sister looking to him as a guide on what to be. It drives him to try even harder to be a good kenthas.
3. Dardani neither likes nor trusts her own sex. She gets along perfectly with her mother and sisters, but views them as her natural competitors for her father's and brothers' affection. She's willing to go to ludicrous, even extreme, lengths to outshine the other females of her family.
Iesta's reaction: Iesta disapproves of this. She thinks that the way people choose who to trust and mistrust is very important, and that basing it on gender is foolish (except for when it comes to fending off competition for a mate).
=====Dardani's reaction to Iesta: When Iesta told her this, Dardani smiled and told her, gently joking, that her sisters quite possibly will be comptetition for a mate--either inside or outside the family. She did, however, begin working much harder to control this particular trait.
Odrysai's reaction: Odrysai loves this trait, because he thinks he can use it to get Dardani as his ally against Thyni.
4. The third great love of her life, after her father and brothers, is languages. Old Ones don't use words like other species do, which makes adapting other languages to her own syntax a challenge that she enjoys. She studies them largely through total immersion--speaking only the language she is learning while she is learning it, except in those cases where her preferred authority figures ask her not to.
5. Dardani envies absolutely anything her siblings have that she doesn't, even if it's not necessarily a status symbol or any particular sign of her father's favoritism. She became incredibly aware of things like rank, duty and privelege at a young age, and consequently became very conscious of the "they have, I don't" mentality very early on, and just as early on, decided she didn't like it. Prime example: she wanted her own illusion by the time she was six years old.
6. She is not as comfortable being touched as some of her siblings, but she will pretend to be if she thinks it will give her an advantage of any kind in the situation. Absolutely tortured herself once when she was fifteen by greeting everyone she met over the course of a month with a handshake. The lingering energy signatures clinging to her kept her in a state of near-constant migraine for the last week.
7. Pursuant to #4, one of the worst things Peter ever did in Thracia was teach Dardani to speak Pig Latin.
Peter's reaction: "I think you mean it was one of the best things I ever did."
8. Dardani believes in learning practical skills, as well as theoretical and tactical ones. She taught herself to sew when she was twelve by "re-upholstering" her stuffed rock lobster, Galileo, to be waterproof.
The chance to practice the skill was the only reason. She was not attached to a stuffed animal.
9. Another reason that Triballi is Dardani's favorite of her brothers is that he's the one she feels the least inferior to, and, more importantly, the one her own position is least threatened by. She likes and trusts the males of her family more than the females, but she's not blind to the fact that all of her siblings are her natural competitors for status. Odrysai is her least favorite brother for the reverse reason--he is the most superior to her, and the greatest threat. He's also her father's favorite, which makes him the one she is the most jealous of.
This doesn't alter in any way the amount of respect she pays both. Or the amount of power she lets both have over her.
Odrysai's reaction: Odrysai often sees Dardani as competition for Triballi's loyalty. Triballi's affection for Dardani angers him, because Triballi is his, dammit. He's careful to hide this anger by keeping it in his shadow personality, but the competition aspect is pretty obvious to everyone in the family.
10. Dardani chooses to acknowledge the filial love she has for her father, as her observations of lessers have led her to conclude that denying their love causes as much of a problem for them as the ability to love in the first place.
She refuses, however, to love anyone else but him.
Thrace's reaction: So. Many. Mixed. Feelings. On the surface, it's nice to be loved. Love is like worship and loyalty, and worship and loyalty are excellent qualities for a kenthas to have. But it's still love, and love is an irrationality that can border on insanity. Most distressing of all is that his own emotions react to hers, and he sometimes finds his control slipping. When this happens, he immediately becomes cold and distant from her.
Satrai's reaction: Satrai is fascinated by Dardani's love. Which is not because he hopes that she will prove to Thrace that love is an acceptable emotion for a kenthas to have. It's. Not.
Moesi's reaction: Is so.
Satrai's reaction: Is not.
Moesi's reaction: ::thwaps:: We've been through this before, brother. Do I have to copulate with you to get you to admit that it is?
Satrai's reaction: ::innocently:: Yes.
Moesi's reaction: Brat.
Satrai's reaction: ::runs off to the ocean with Moesi for an hour or two::
Moesi's reaction (when she's not arguing with Satrai): Moesi shares Satrai's fascination, though she's less concerned with being allowed to love. She once asked Dardani to show her what love feels like.
11. Dardani briefly entertained thoughts of getting to know her biological mother when she was a teenager. She thinks of Iesta as her mother, and has never thought about replacing her. But the thought of having a family member she didn't have to compete with was, admittedly, quite appealing.
She got over this after about a week. Her father didn't need her biological mother for any reason other than her willing uterus, therefore, as far as she's concerned, Dardani doesn't, either.
12. Dardani doesn't want children of her own for any reason but to fulfill a possible duty to Thracia. Children have a way of provoking an emotional response that she would rather not have if she can help it. She will breed if, when and with whom she is told to. If it comes up, she's not interested in raising them herself. She'd rather be doing other things to serve her lord.
13. Dardani enjoys reading more than any other diversion she uses to occupy her own free time, but her second favorite is using an internet-ready computer. The thought of such a wealth of information, of so many varieties and in so many languages, available so quickly, would make her toes curl if she actually had toes.
14. Dardani prefers to speak the language of the Old Ones when she's alone with her family members, but deeply longs for the day when she can be truly fluent in Thracian and use that instead. She was somewhat disappointed to learn that the language was not one of her father's inventing--even at that young age, language was already her passion, and her child-mind was secretly harboring the desire to ask Thrace's permission to just hole up somewhere with Triballi for a month and make the entire thing up.
15. Dardani is proficient with weapons, but has no interest in using them. The thought of a battle or of killing doesn't upset her; it just bores her to tears. Her fighting style is rigid, adhering to rules and forms. In actual combat, her biggest weakness is that she lacks the ability to creatively improvise to beat her opponent. Her greatest strength is that she keeps going until the rules work in her favor. Generally, her battles go on for too long because she creates no opportunities for herself and doesn't readily see the opportunities her opponents create for her...but she'll stubbornly keep going, even if she gets herself gravely injured in the process.
16. Dardani considers her favorite of her abilities to be the perfect recall she inherited from her father, what Illyria refers to as "the long memory." It makes learning things much, much easier...and she feels it makes her stand out more, as the ability is a comparitively rare one in her generation.
17. Dardani's favorite food is snow crab. Her favorite color is teal. Her favorite book is "La Nausée" by Jean-Paul Sartre. Her favorite movie is "Waking Life." Her favorite of the human languages is French.
18. Dardani views manipulation--either mental, emotional or physical--as one of the most useful skillsets anyone could ever add to their repetoire, and admires (albeit grudgingly, in some cases) anyone who does it well. She is not, however, especially good at it, as she sees practicing it to any truly admirable extent on a lesser as unchallenging and practicing it on her own peer group as disrespectful to them.
Iesta's reaction: Iesta completely shares this opinion, and does her best to teach Dardani how to manipulate people of all species.
19. Dardani is strangely intrigued by most natural phenomena, and wishes to experience each of them at least once. She is jealous of her siblings that are stationed in California (earthquake central), the midwest (tornado alley) and Florida (hurricane zone), because they'll get to see these things first, and probably repeatedly.
20. Dardani wants to meet each of the living Old Ones at least once, even, and perhaps especially, the ones that are her father's enemies. She thinks it'd give her a fascinating insight into her own genetic history and culture, and that it'd probably provide at least some strategically valuable knowledge.
21. Dardani has admitted this only to her parents, but fears the Mind Death more than any other squidlet. Through their twin bond, she felt all of it when Dersaii was mindkilled, to the point where she cried out in pain from the sense of it as it happened and fell over, comatose, when it was done. She stayed unconscious for two days after, then catatonic for another two after that. When she finally came back into consciousness, the first thing she did was go to her parents and ask their forgiveness for her physical weakness in reacting that way.
It came as a surprise to no one that she more than doubled her efforts at being the best possible kenthas after that.
22. The first fictive language Dardani ever spoke was the twinspeak she and Dersaii used when they were little kids. As they grew up and grew apart, Dersaii wouldn't use it to talk to her anymore. Dardani's first interest in linguistics specifically was actually somewhat spiteful--she started looking for flaws in that language's mechanics, as one of many ways that she was picking apart her sister. She then fell in love with linguistics independent of that fact...again, surprising no one, as she had already had a pre-existing love for knowledge in all its forms.
==Notes==
Category:Characters
Category:Active Characters
Category:Old Ones
Category:H's Character
Category:Merrois
Category:Mosuscs