Nimue

### Build

Imposing. Nimue is a large wolf whose shaggy black fur hides powerful muscles. Her snout is long and distinctively shaped. She has bigger paws than most, helping her traverse mud and snow with ease.

### Fur Color

Mainly black, with a pale face and tail tip

### Aliases

Lily, Ghost Mask, Witch, the Changeling, etc.

## Affiliations

### Relatives

Queen Igraine (Mother, NPC)Consort-General Pellinore (Father, NPC)

Hemlock (Brother)

Myghchaell (Half-brother)

## Application Sheet

Nimue was a tall, dark wolf with a distinctive pale face and light yellow eyes. Once a knight bound in bloody service to her mother, the Giant Queen, Nimue chose to abandon her old life for that of a pacifistic wanderer. She roamed the Domain, seeking a purpose to her existence that wasn't defined by violence and fear.

Recently, her winding journey has led her to take refuge among the wolves of Hintertomb. Her story is still ongoing. She is RPed by sea-lamprey.

## Personality

***Patient***

Nimue lives by the philosophy of the ambush hunter: all good things come to those who wait. Stillness comes naturally to her; she has been known to sit motionless for hours on end, waiting for just the right opportunity to present itself. It’s hard to truly frustrate her. Nimue knows well that even if things don’t go her way one day, there’s always the next...

***(Dubiously) Pacifistic***

“I will harm nothing that I do not intend to eat.” This is the oath Nimue swore to herself after fleeing her erstwhile home... and while it has been broken, it still holds heavy sway over her actions. She is notably reluctant to bear her teeth at another wolf even in the most dire of situations.

However, it would be unwise to assume that just because Nimue is reluctant to do violence, she is entirely incapable of it. While *conventional* provocations may bounce harmlessly off Nimue's facade, if one is unlucky enough to pierce one of the small chinks in her armor, they will soon find out just how easy it is for her to slip into bad old habits. The easiest way to silence someone is through force, after all. Best not to push her too far.

***Liar***

Nimue learned from an early age that the best method of survival was to shape herself into what others wanted most. To put on a 'mask', if you will. Over the years, Nimue has become a wolf of a thousand masks; if one personality no longer seems viable for her given situation, she will discard it and form a new one. She is a mirror; defined entirely through reflecting the will of others.

This is not to say that she is good at being *likable*; no matter what face she wears, there is a limit to her knowledge of acceptable behavior, and most wolves get the sense that something is faintly off about her these days. But that is fine; singing an off-key tune keeps those around her off balance, and this, too, is a kind of advantage.

Anything to avoid revealing the loathsome, desperate creature that lurks beneath the facade.

***Mischievous***

If it could be said that Nimue truly *enjoys* anything — which, from her skewed perspective, is sometimes debatable — it's a good trick. Most of the games she plays are intended to be harmless; humiliating at worst... But it can't be said that she always has a reliable understanding of what the boundaries are between 'harmless fun' and 'mentally and/or physically scarring'.

***Observant***

Having been raised to a life where keeping a careful eye on the moods of her superiors was frequently a matter of life or death, Nimue is well practiced at noticing details others might overlook. Anything that could possibly be advantageous to her — or simply amusing — is carefully absorbed and catalogued in her steel trap of a mind. Thankfully for her (and unfortunately for everyone else), Nimue's tendency towards long periods of stillness often puts her in an optimal position to observe others without them realizing it.

***Mercurial***

It would be unwise to mistake Nimue's patient nature for any kind of reliability. Her internal motivations are obscure and incomprehensible to most; she sees most of those around her as fleeting diversions and nothing more. Any attempts to bind her to a set course — be it through the chains of obligation, bonds, or even threats against her life — are likely to have the opposite of the intended effect.

She may yearn to find meaning to her life, but she will not be made another wolf's tool again so easily.

***Haunted***

Once upon a time, a young wolf sacrificed everything for the sake of a purpose that inevitably went up in ash.

The drowned. The scorned sun. The ones who called her 'Sister'. Even, in the end, the one known as God-Queen. Beneath her affectations, Nimue is a damaged, twisted soul, chased by a thousand ghosts. Though her old mask is long gone, the scars it etched into her run deep. She finds it difficult to relate to others, after so long of seeing them as nothing more than corpses in the making. Understanding the turmoil that seethes within her heart is a harder challenge still. The burdens she carry make her unpredictable, even to herself.

After shattering and reforging herself anew, destroying nearly every bond she managed to make along the way, Nimue has currently decided that her best course of action is to remain in the distant north with Hintertomb. Whether her presence will be a boon or a curse to the pack, even she cannot say.

## Pre-Group History

***CONTENT WARNINGS FOR: descriptions of murder, drowning, puppies in danger***

    Nimue was born into an age of violence.

    It began with her mother, Queen Igraine. The Shrouded Court was an ancient and arrogant clan, secluded in a mist-shrouded swamp with generations of legend and tradition to guide them. Its line of royalty was said to be descended from a wolf known only as the Giant King, who was said to have ruled over hundreds through strength alone. Every so often, unusually large pups would be birthed into the Court...and these new giants were said to be the old king’s heirs, sent to win him back the territory he had conquered in life. They were more than royalty — they were demigods, omens of victory to come.

    When a giant came to the Shrouded Court, it was time for war.

    Queen Igraine was one such giant, and she took to her role readily. When she wasn’t leading her swamp-dwelling pack into battle against its neighbors, she took up the mantle of birthing new warriors for the cause. After all — there was always the chance that a second heir would be born, wasn’t there?

    Nimue was not this heir. Although she was born a large and healthy pup, to her mother she was nothing exceptional. She and the rest of her litter were quickly shunted off to a wet nurse, and the burden of their care was placed upon Igraine’s many consorts while the Giant Queen herself prepared for more warmongering.

    One figure from Nimue’s early days still stands out in her memory: her “father”, Duke Pellinore. Although the number of consorts Queen Igraine kept  made true parentage difficult to ascertain, Nimue bore a striking resemblance to Pellinore, and so he took it upon himself to raise her and another of her littermates as best he could.

    A few weeks later, one of her brothers disappeared.

    Nimue can barely remember him, thinking back. He was under the care of a different father. On the occasions they nested together, she noticed only that he was quiet. That was all. And then he was gone. When the trackers looked for him, they found only traces of mountain-wolf scent left behind where he had last been seen.

    A son of the queen, kidnapped by a pack of worthless rock-hoppers.

    His father was exiled for negligence.

    Things grew more intense for the remaining pups, after that. The Queen’s baleful eye had turned towards the mountains surrounding their valley, and the pups learned through their caretakers that the best way to impress her was to prove their strength in battle against the wolves that had spat in the face of their Court. Nimue, eager to impress her distant mother, threw herself into training. As weeks passed, then months, she transformed rapidly from a chubby potato into a wild, vicious youth.

    She acquitted herself well in her first battle — a territory dispute against one of their neighbors. It was sheer luck, panic perhaps — but she managed to hold one of her opponents underwater until they drowned. It was something she quickly became infamous for.

    Her father couldn’t be more proud.

    As Nimue made it to her second year, she grew still stronger and more cunning. Queen Igraine recognized her skill and allowed her a great deal of independence in how she took on the Court’s enemies. She was a terror on the battlefield, but it was her stealth and her unnatural affinity for water that struck true fear into the hearts of wolves — some feared to go near any body of water larger than a puddle, lest the Water Witch appear from within it and drag them to their graves.

    But while Nimue shaped herself into the stuff of nightmares, the war against the rock-hopper wolves raged on with no sign of a clear victor. The warriors of the Murky Court were numerous and well-versed in battle, but the mountain wolves remained evasive, and their territory proved difficult for the swamp-dwellers to traverse. What was supposed to be swift and violent revenge became a years-long war of attrition.

    But Queen Igraine could not let it go.

    Nimue and her many siblings fought skirmish after skirmish, both against the mountain wolves and against the rebellious vassals that attempted again and again to escape Igraine’s bloody, unstable rule. Some died in those endless, exhausting battles. Some vanished, perhaps seeking a life better than the one they were born to.

    Nimue remained. She gained her mother’s respect and the fear and adoration of her peers. She mastered the art of violence. She sharpened her mind into a fang. She was the Queen’s rage lunging straight for her enemies’ throats.

    She was empty.

    It was during one of those endless, tedious rebellions that she realized it. Her mind went to another place, as it often did during these battles. She tore at wolves methodically until they stopped moving and then moved on to her next opponent. Her brethren screamed and died around her, but this didn’t trouble her much anymore.

    Time passed. She chased a rebel into a hollow, cut him down without a thought. But he had been protecting something. A warm and squirming thing. Abstractly, she knew what it was, but it didn’t stop her from reaching for it with blood-stained jaws.

    Then it squeaked in fear and it occurred to Nimue that she was about to kill a puppy for no reason at all.

    She left the hollow carrying the child; shoved it on some fleeing rebel maybe, she couldn’t quite remember. It didn’t matter, so long as it was alive and far away from her.

    Then she just walked away.

## Trivia

* Enjoys claiming to be "feeble" despite her obvious size and strength.
* She’s an accomplished fisher and the majority of her meals come from the water, but truthfully she is slightly partial to red meat. There is a lingering part of her that relishes the visceral challenge of rending the life from larger game.
* She has an uncanny talent for mimicking others' voices.
* Appreciates performances; the one thing she misses about her homeland is the theatre troupe that would entertain nobility on festival days.
* She can hold her breath much longer than the average wolf.
* She avoids pups if she can help it.
* Currently not a fan of her own reflection.

## External Links

* Official Group Application
* sea-lamprey's DeviantART Gallery