Garach Nidana

> "*Just because Jay joined the faction with the tackiest colors doesn't mean you have to inflict them on the rest of us.*" --Garach Nidana
>
>

**Garach Nidana** was the youngest sibling of Shuos Jedao and Garach Rodao, and the only daughter of Garach Ledana. She is mentioned in Ninefox Gambit, Raven Stratagem, and the flashfic Hunting Trip, and appears in the flashfics Honesty, Bunny, Silence, and A Belated Blessing.

## Appearance and Personality

Like Jedao, Nidana took after their mother, eccentric agricultural researcher Garach Ledana. The two shared the same tilted smile, slanted eyes, and angled eyebrows. A poet, she shared Jedao's ability to flay antagonists with words, and would spoil their nieces with books and disappear to write whenever her surroundings inspired her. She was known to put mood-enhancing substances in her drinks.

Throughout their lives, she called her mother "Mom," Jedao "Jay," and Rodao "Ro."

## History

Nidana, the daughter of Garach Ledana and a non-Shparoi father, was born five years after Jedao and ten after Rodao. She and her siblings, each of whom had a different noncustodial biological father, grew up together on Ledana's farm on Eshpatan. Though Nidana was raised by her mother in the Shparoi traditions, she did not share Jedao's belief in them as an adult.

As a child, Nidana had a good relationship with Jedao, who played with her and made her lunch in the morning because Ledana would forget. She noticed that Rodao disapproved of a lot of things. She could read picture books at four years old, and was present one night when her mother shouted at her to run because goose eggs were exploding in their incubator.

At five, she named all of the family's pets: a cat, a dog, two finches, and a snake. Having a limited vocabulary concerning animals at that age, she named them all "Bunny." By age six, she enjoyed books such as one that Jedao lent her about "a bold girl space adventurer who punctured space monsters with her space rapier."

In adulthood, Nidana became a poet. After her eldest brother Rodao's marriage to Teia, she helped Jedao paint Shparoi fertility blessings on the couple's hovercar.

Nidana gave Jedao a deck of jeng-zai cards featuring anthropomorphic farm animals, saying she chose it because of the geese. She also complained about his photography, arguing that the engagement party pictures he took looked more like reconnaissance photos, and was present when Jedao brought home a set of flying toy moths, one of which caught fire due to a manufacturing defect.

After Jedao was executed, Nidana vanished and was never heard from again. Though Jedao never learned of her fate, he believed she had left the heptarchate, remarking that she was always the practical one.

## Trivia

* Nidana referred to Shuos red-and-gold as the tackiest of the hexarchate's faction colors.
* Jedao once met a Liozh poet who had a "dim view" of Nidana's verses.
* Jedao played with the jeng-zai deck Nidana gave him so often that he wore the cards thin. The deck was present during his first meeting with Nirai Kujen.
* Although there was no time to tell Nidana's story in the course of the series, the author confirms that she fled the hexarchate after the Hellspin Fortress massacre.

## References

1. ↑ Honesty, A Belated Blessing
2. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 22
3. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Silence
4. ↑ Honesty
5. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 10
6. ↑ Bunny
7. ↑ A Belated Blessing
8. ↑ Honesty
9. ↑ Bunny
10. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 22; Hexarchate Stories: Silence
11. ↑ A Belated Blessing
12. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 21
13. ↑ Hunting Trip
14. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Silence
15. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 8
16. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Silence
17. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 8
18. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Silence
19. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 22
20. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 21
21. ↑ Hexarchate Stories: Silence: Author's Note