Greetings! Me and my wife are peeking out of our cryostasis so that she could infodump about her OC. It’s a Divine World OC, so prepare to be confused by dense worldbuilding, lots of text (~9 pages of 12pt font) and good-old dark fantasy misery. All trigger warnings will be written below right before the triggering paragraphs but here’s the ones that you will always have to keep in mind: in-universe misogyny, racism and ethnic discrimination, psychological trauma and mental illness, poverty. Have fun!
Kemalipi Talnekeleua
A wandering doctor with specialization in surgery, a secret blood mage and a member of the unofficial revolutionary-heroic organization The Caravan. Kemalipi is a secondary character in a Tragedy of the Divine, a book and an isometric RPG we’re planning to develop.
Biography — Part I: The Loneliness
(CW: family conflict & abuse, death of a beloved relative)
Kemalipi is the sole child of two members of the Sanko (proto-police) caste: Okauka Talnekeleua, a second-generation immigrant, and Uolosi Enuahakata, a native of the Atelualeya island. Okauka’s mother, Ittonala, raised her daughter very strictly, to make sure the people of Atelualeya will treat her as one of their own, but by Kemalipi’s childhood realized that she was way too strict, and started treating her granddaughter much softer, to Okauka’s irritation: after suffering abuse at hands of Ittonala she saw lack of it towards Kemalipi as a dangerous hypocrisy that could turn her daughter into a spoiled weakling. Because of that she and Ittonala were constantly fighting, and Uolosi was unable to stop them, mostly because he was so busy with his work and friends.
When Kemalipi was 5 cycles old, her hometown of Kitu was attacked by raiders, who killed not just all her friends, but also Ittonala, who started a fight with one of the raiders when he dared to insult her heritage. This left a huge scar on Kemalipi’s psyche, as now she was surrounded by people who treated her with little love, forcing her to ask a very tough question: why is that every person she cared about died, while all the people who were supposed to protect them with their lives survived?
Okauka and Uolosi, horrified by the raid, were now pressuring Kemalipi into becoming a proper member of their cast, relentlessly training her to become a warrior, but to Kemalipi her parents have failed as warriors when they allowed her friends and grandmother to die, and out of pure antagonism she developed a desire not to cause wounds and death, but to heal and prevent them. At first it was treated as generic teenage rebellion, but such patronization was making Kemalipi only more stubborn and determined to become a healer, and when she realized she can’t take it anymore, she ran away at the first ship she coud board and together with her favorite kitten she went westwards, to the land of Smait — an alliance of desert kingdoms whose people were renowned for their medicine skills.
Her first stop was at Medenit (an island within Ardiramid Kadanuum, aka The High Kingdom) but at the advice of the locals she moved to Kha-Nesit (aka The Middle Kingdom) where she started properly researching medicine. To her disappointment the tales of Kharakt (people of Smait) misogyny were not exaggerated: women were literally treated like property (her native culture group, ate, had gender equality, unlike most of other cultures) with no rights whatsoever, so she could study only illegally, and her teachers knew that, eagerly exploiting Kemalipi’s status in all kinds of ways. So just like with her parents, she was doing her best until she couldn’t take it anymore, and then moved to another place and teacher, in the meantime not being shy of stealing any medical tools and books she could: she’d be happy to buy them, but money was amongst many things women weren’t allowed to have and use. Black markets would sell to anyone, of course — but they knew full-well how limited women are in their options and weren’t shy of having the kind of prices that would make Kemalipi go bankrupt ten times over, if not outright make her a slave.
At very least the illegal nature of her learning meant one positive: being a “non-property woman” meant she had no lower bottom to sink to, so she could find herself teachers who could teach her not just medicine, but the illegal blood magic. Looking back, Kemalipi had no idea how she could be a proper healer without it: blood magic was the foundation for any magic that required body manipulation, without it she would be unable to regenerate tissue, like, say, growing new eyes for someone who lost them, and so on. Banning something like this, in Kemalipi’s opinion, was illogically dangerous, and it further proved to her that something needed to be done with the traditional medicine institutes.
Because of money issues, Kemalipi, despite her noble desires of making the world a better, healthier place, really hated helping people for free. Especially since her obsession and stubbornness have turned her into an exceptional healer whose services would be appreciated even at a noble court… If she was a man, so Kemalipi had trouble simply satisfying her most basic needs like food and sleep. But when she met Mahamba, a dying Ahagayan (a nomadic culture group of the desert) woman, who was injured while defending her only child, whom she loved more than anything in the world, Kemalipi couldn’t help but to see Ittonala, and helped her survive even while knowing that Mahamba had nothing to offer to her.
But she did. When Mahamba got better, she begged Kemalipi to do one more thing for her — take her child. Mahamba was soon to be married to a new husband after her previous one died, and she knew that her future husband was the kind of man who will follow the ancient tradition and eat her child, so that his own children would have more to eat. Unable to refuse someone in whom she saw her grandmother, Kemalipi suddenly became an adoptive mother, despite not being ready for motherhood at all.
So she decided to be not a mother, but a partner — this teenage child was male, and thus would be treated with actual respect, unlike her, even despite his young age, and that he had actual rights, including one of operating money. With his help Kemalipi could finally earn these now, instead of near-begging her clients for food and services, and thus have not just money, but dignity. So they strike a deal: Kemalipi will teach him medicine so that he could pretend to be the healer, and she could pretend to be his assistant, which will allow them to find clients more easily, and while she does most of the work, he makes sure to earn as much money as they possibly can, becoming, in a way, her manager. Since in Ahagayan culture personal names were sacred, and he couldn’t say his to anyone but his mother and Kemalipi, she gave him a public name of Naloikiasu — in her native Luna language it meant “the one who counts the silver”, so “a treasurer”.
Part II: Kidnapping, Smait Style
While the scheme was working out for the duo, it wasn’t doing so as well as they hoped: Naloi was discriminated against for being an Ahagayan (who were often confused for their ancestors, Yartavan, who once enslaved the Kharakt people) and a woman involved, even as an assistant, was still too much for some people, and being an Ate (with whom Kharakt had bitter relationship after losing a couple of invasions) didn’t help. So they decided to move to the Bassaqra Republic, a country famous for being one of the most socially progressive states in the entire world.
To their chagrin Smait had recently closed the borders with the Republic, preparing for a potential war, so the closest and easiest routes were out of the question. They could bribe sailors to move through the Sea of Three Empires, but that sea was swarming with pirates, and the kind of sailor to take a bribe could be the kind of sailor to get even more money by selling slaves, so instead they decided to move through the Stone Ridge, another alliance of the states which were rivals to Smait — and thus their borders could be closed just as easily as those of the Republic, so the duo had to move quickly.
(CW for, obviously, kidnapping, also near-fatal wounds)
And then something unusual happened. The duo spent a night in a remote tavern — but when Kemalipi woke up, she was not at the tavern with Naloi, but in a desert with a daemona. Daemonas are one of the many threats to a regular person, the mindless, unholy creatures of destruction, but this one was anything but mindless and destructive: she didn’t even want to result to kidnapping in the first place, but she really needed Kemalipi to listen to her, instead of calling the guards and causing a panic.
Daemona was named Tigre, and her best friend, Munash, was in trouble: Munash was an Ahagareg, a member of the demon-hunting caste, but unlike her colleagues, Munash hunted only the truly dangerous daemonas, sparing the rest. When the other Ahagareg learned of this, and Munash’s friendship with Tigre, they ambushed the two, and while Tigre survived the attack easily, Munash ended up getting near-sliced in half.
Tigre didn’t even demand anything from Kemalipi, merely explaining the urgency of the situation and giving her the ultimate choice: and to her relief, Kemalipi agreed. Not just because she felt it was the right thing to do, but because just recently The Blackest March ended: the most devastating invasion of the undead, daemonas and other dark creatures, which, while making Kemalipi’s services very much needed, almost ended her life more dozens of times, and made her very interested in reports about sapient daemons, partially because they are, according to rumors, immortal, and what was Kemalipi’s ultimate goal as a physician if not curing death?
When she saw before herself a woman whose upper and lower body was connected by nothing but the spine, Kemalipi realized that before researching daemonic immortality to make it a gift to all of humanity, maybe she should first cure death for this person alone. And she couldn’t do it alone: Kemalipi is forced to take a risk, and sends Tigre to get Naloi so that he could help her operate. Thankfully, Tigre, despite her tongue-tiedness, is very charismatic, and is also a succubus (ironically an asexual one), so Naloi was easily convinced even before Tigre really said anything (actually, especially before she tried to say anything). And so began the most grueling, excruciating 12 hours in Kemalipi’s life. By the time the operation was done all her magic supplies were completely exhausted, and so was Kemalipi herself — to the point when she was sure that Munash is saved and doesn’t need any more medical help, she lost consciousness from all the fatigue on the spot.
She was suffering from hand tremors for a week after that, but all that mattered is that a life was saved, even if Munash lost all sensitivity beneath her waist and thus was no longer able to use her legs. Kemalipi had no idea how much getting kidnapped would change her life: for the first time in her life she didn’t just truly saved someone life from a fatal wound, in less than stellar circumstances no less, but the person she saved didn’t just take Kemalipi’s help for granted and was actively grateful. For the first time in her life Kemalipi felt content: countless cycles of abuse and hatred weren’t for nothing after all, and her dreams and goals weren’t simply a waste of time, even if only three people were here to witness this.
Despite Naloi’s desire to continue the journey, Kemalipi decides to stick with Munash and Tigre for a while, to make sure the former heals properly, and to study and examine the latter. But as the time went on, Kemalipi became much less interested in studying Tigre as a species, and much more in the Tigre herself: there was no proof of daemon’s capability for everything good and kind more obvious and solid than Tigre herself. No human ever treated Kemalipi with more kindness, understanding and care than her, and with each passing day Kemalipi felt that she really didn't want to go.
But she needed to, and so did Tigre. Ahagareg will look for their missing sisters, and Munash, now officially dead and thus relieved of her Ahagareg duties, could finally start writing a book on the history of Atarasekal (The Lower Kingdom), and for that she needed to remain in Smait, while Kemalipi was simply too sick of Kharakt misogyny at this point. So, despite the bond between them, the group separates, but Kemalipi promises to write letters to Tigre. She, however, doesn’t admit her feelings, deciding that romantic love is not something she should ever expect in her life.
Anxious and paranoid after the kidnapping (even if a very noble-intended one), the duo quickly moves to the border, and, to their joy, the further journey was very boring and uneventful. Usually crossing borders, especially between Smait and Stone Ridge, was very hard (and for such an odd and inconsequential duo practically impossible), but they were moving through the Concordia Sector, a region whose population didn’t care about its own laws and rulers, as they were changing essentially every week, so all border patrols asked for is a reasonable bribe and to not bring any trouble.
Part III: Two Surgeries
At first the duo had a great time in Concordia: the Smait armies and Ridge spies fought over it for hundreds of cycles, turning chaos into a status quo, and thus making services of a healer very much needed. The duo worked non-stop, trying to earn as much money as they could: Kharakt of Smait were ripping them off under the pretense of “free market” and Stenere of Ridge will rip them off under the guise of “sinfulness of material thinking”, so the duo wanted to turn an actual profit while they could.
(CW: disfigured face, physical assault and kidnapping attempt, grievous lung injury, murder)
At some point they encountered a client, a mercenary, whose face was so brutally torn apart she looked like she was making out with a bucket of molten glass mixed with acid. She paid quite well, despite asking only to restore her eyes and nose, as most of the money was paid for not asking questions about how she got these wounds. The duo didn’t care anyway, but the client nonetheless asked a couple of her friends to keep watch during the operation just to make sure.
These friends were hunters, who during the operation decided to speak to each other using Concordian Pidgin, fully sure that the duo doesn’t know it. But it did, not speaking it openly specifically to play fool, so that they wouldn’t get caught off-guard ever again, and this time it absolutely paid off: these hunters were talking about how much Kharakt alchemist value Ate organs, convinced of their special properties, as well as “what to do with the guy and the cat”. After hearing all this out, the duo, of course, ran away at the first opportunity, not finishing the operation and stealing everything they could.
As it turns out, running away from hunters is not easy — they’ve found the two by the next week, knocked Naloi out unconscious and decided instead of bringing Kemalipi to the alchemists to gut her right here, right now — after all, deer, human, what’s the difference? The difference, as it turns out, was quite a notable one, so by the time hunters carved out a single lung, Naloi had quietly woken up, partially because of Kemalipi’s painful screams, since hunters decided not to give her any anesthesia in punishment. Ever since meeting Tigre Naloi was learning white magic, aka the magic of the mind, and he uses it to knock hunters out and slice their throats.
Not telling Kemalipi about the murder, he quickly patches her up, and together the two move to the Ridge as quickly as they can, fully convinced that there’s not a single soul in this world they can trust, except for each other. And it was very hard to blame them, when they were moving to the Stone Ridge, the land of Stenere, who were quite infamous for their insincere, reserved mentality.
Part IV: The Beginning of Something Grander
Their first stop in the Ridge is Varbalog, the capital of the Kingdom of Erdo Komor, and this stop takes a while: first of all, the local guards were much more strict than those of Concordia, and wouldn’t allow some suspicious immigrants to just move anywhere they wanted, and also, similar to Concordia, Varbalog was a goldmine for a healer thanks to its “prestigious” status of being the second most crime-infested place in all of the Ridge.
But this time the duo chooses their clients with much more care, not willing to make Kemalipi’s second lung become someone else’s possession. Thankfully, Stenere nobles were happy to hire Kemalipi: well, not really, they were disgusted even about the idea of such plebeians existing, but they needed her services, because she was not connected to the Omniunumat Church, which was keeping a close eye on most medical matters. This is how the duo gets on the radar of Her Grace, the Mighty Duchess of the Great Duchy of Vesperite, Valeria Nerva Severina Tsorbea Aralia Vespera Constantinescu ar Morion attra Margreza-Viperata, or simply Valeria Vespera, daughter of the third most powerful person in all of the Ridge.
Valeria herself had no complaints of medical nature, well, not officially anyway, but her “good friend” Yelena Hrabovskaya required an urgent help of healers who were great at not just the healing itself, but were also capable of holding their lips shut. The duo takes a while to think about it: the requirement of being discreet was obviously reminding them of the Concordia incident, and the powerful people are usually followed threats as powerful as them, but they weren’t simply offered a handsome reward — Valeria wanted to hire them on a constant basis, and even a month of service would give the more money than they ever saw in Concordia.
(CW: neck injury, surviving death)
So they sign a contract, which surprises them with some very strict terms and punishments for breaking them, but nothing surprises them more than the condition from which Yelena was suffering — immortality. Well, first and most of all Kemalipi was hired to heal the horrible wound on Yelena’s sliced neck, since she learned of her immortality the hard way, but Yelena really enjoyed Kemalipi’s attention, and allowed her to study herself, as long as it was making Yelena feel like she’s the most special woman in the world.
As Kemalipi expected, travelling with these kinds of people quickly proves to be a mixed experience: as it turns out, Valeria and Yelena are secretly political dissidents with the kind of armies of skeletons in their closets that would make any necromancer cry bitter tears of jealousy, and as they kept travelling, the number of suspicious, odd, weird and dangerous people around Kemalipi only kept growing, to her irritation and sometimes amusement. But nobody brought more troubles to her than Faskhar van Kaasnof, the recently hired bodyguard… and the same mercenary Kemalipi left on the operating table back at Concordia.
When Kemalipi learns who Valeria hired as their new bodyguard, she barricades in her wagon, refusing to come out of it in fear for her life, fully convinced that all the seedy people she’s surrounded by, will pick Faskhar’s side. The latter was incorrect, since The Caravan (the name by which this group of people started going by at some point) simply didn’t know enough about the situation to pick a side, but the former, sadly, was true. From Faskhar’s perspective she was scammed, left on an operation table with unfinished eyes and nose, turning one disability into another, instead of truly healing it, as she was now forced to constantly inject her half-done organs with a mix of blood and Black Aether (which isn’t easy to legally get) to keep them from melting down like yellow snow on a sun. So, okay, a scam and thievery Faskhar could kinda understand, maybe even forgive — but not the murder of her friend. Yes, a friend, not friends — one of them survived.
Naloi was sick of getting credit for Kemalipi’s efforts, and now seeing her getting flack for the murders he committed was something he couldn’t stay away from. Not afraid to die, he gets between Kemalipi’s wagon and rage-blinded Faskhar, telling her everything: the plans of her friends, about how these friends took everything him and Kemalipi stolen, for themselves, not planning to give it back to Faskhar, and how he killed them, and would do it again if needed. Faskhar doesn’t believe Naloi, not at first, but she is dumbfounded enough for him and Yelena to be able to deescalate the situation and make Faskhar promise not to harm Kemalipi, while asking Kemalipi herself to stop her paranoid fit, come out and promise to Faskhar to finish the operation.
The whole situation forced Kemalipi to ask a very tough question: what to do when she’s stuck with people who can’t be simply divided into allies versus enemies? Faskhar, once an enemy, after taking some time, believes Naloi and now genuinely apologizes to Kemalipi for her behavior and that of her friends, while Naloi, an obvious ally, turned out to be a murderer and a liar, who took a life of someone and mutilated another. Kemalipi had no tears for the people who tried to brutally murder her, of course, but the whole thing still wasn’t something to easily brush off and forget. And different Caravan members all had their own opinions on the situation — did it make some of the allies and some of them enemies, potential or actual? Was there even a point to divide people like that, now or ever?
Kemalipi had no answer. And the longer she was a part of the Caravan, the harder it was to find one — not even because the question itself was becoming harder, but because other, even more existential questions arose. As Caravan keeps traveling, growing and changing, they turn from simple dissidents and intellectuals into wanted revolutionaries, who fight not simply against corrupt men and states, but their own world, as injustice is revealed to be not a human invention, but something that was corrupting the world since the dawn of time. What was the point of being a healer, of trying to cure death, when the world itself was sick? Kemalipi turns from a simple hired worker into a passionate ideological supporter of Caravan’s ideas, even as the army of their closet skeletons keep marching, revealing itselves to the world, each more horrifying than what came before it. Because maybe there was something much scarier than unjust death — unjust life.
Personality
Kemalipi, speaking honestly, is quite an unpleasant person: she’s passive-aggressive, obnoxiously nerdy and judgemental. Most judge her in return as an arrogant know-it-all, which isn’t particularly correct — because Naloi is her only company for most of the time, she speak to everyone like to him, aka speaking with a thick accent she never bothers to soften, having a very uncommon lexicon that is filled with medicine-specific terminology with a lot of Luna words, and constantly making inside jokes, so to most people she is simply incomprehensible yet acts as if she was speaking nothing but the most common of knowledges. In reality Kemalipi is anything but arrogant, as her mind is haunted by how disappointed her parents were about her disrespect towards the caste system, and Kemalipi is afraid that they could be right.
Learning medicine in the most patriarchal society in the world didn’t help: striving to prove herself, Kemalipi was trying to use her head instead of blindly following the books and teachers, leading to constant arguments where it didn’t matter who was right or wrong, only who’s a man and who’s a woman, and let’s not even talk about what was happening when using her head was a genuinely wrong choice.
Kemalipi wants to make the world a better place, but systemic lack of appreciation for her effort and skills turned her bitter and sometimes incapable of seeing and/or appreciating an actual gratitude, just because she never expects one, coming off as needlessly rude and very mean. It doesn't help that it’s not just parents haunting her, but her teachers, who are always finding flaws and problems in what she does, and when Kemalipi is arguing with someone, she argues more with these ghosts than the people before her, making her arguments completely irrelevant to the topic.
Another issue that plagues her is paranoia, as Kemalipi never had a chance to relax in any country. Back home she was under the watchful eye of her sanko parents, who weren’t planning to give their daughter any special treatment; in Smait, as was mentioned multiple times, she had no rights; the people of the Ridge are just liars on a constant basis; and mind control magic is a thing, usually practiced by men, so to her none of them, except for Naloi, obviously, were worthy of trust to begin with. The worst thing is that Kemalipi still craves social connections to a degree, so she’s constantly torn between trying to forge new ones and a desire to completely isolate herself from the rest of the world for her own sake.
With all that said, she’s not a malicious person, after all, why would she want to cure the world then? It’s just that motivation does not fully define her as a person, and definitely doesn’t shield her from trauma. The combination of Ate’s indiscriminate mindset, great understanding of medicine and biology and the genuine desire to help people makes Kemalipi a very progressive person who is capable of judging people by more than their appearance and stereotypes. When she gets her emotions under control, she’s capable of being a pleasant person and keeping an enriching conversation, usually with people as intelligent as her, but not necessarily.
Very beautiful by Ate standards: tall, thin, elegant, dark-skinned, pink-eyed. By the standards of Smait and Ridge she’s not much to look at: the former dislike the lack of muscles and fat, pink eyes and untied, thin hair, and the latter dislike her for dark skin, epicanthic fold and, again, lack of muscles and fat. This is a source of frustration for Kemalipi, as she’s proud of her looks, and makes sure to always be well-groomed and well-dressed. She’s 34,6 cebres tall (289,1 cm) and weighs 281 Earth kilograms. She smells like cherry, pepper, and a little bit like santonica. She’s born in the 6259 cycle and by the time of joining The Caravan she’s a young adult, being 25 cycles old.
Culture
She comes from the Mastluna culture, and is ¼ Maimekua on her grandmother’s side. Ate cultures (which Mastluna and Maimekua are a part of) are partially inspired by Ainu and Japanese cultures.
Naming
1. Kemalipi means “guardian of life”. Her original name had an additional syllable, with which it meant “guardian [of the proper order] of life”, but she removed it in a sign of protest against her family and country’s ideals.
2. Talnekeleua means “from Nekeleua”, reflecting the origins of her grandmother.
3. “Madam Physician” is what she’s called by most Stenere. At first it was confusing her, but she quickly started getting enjoyment at such respect — especially after being called “ey, uhhh, ya” by Concordians and “scrawny broad” by Kharakt.
Languages
Luna (native), Loiolteo (lingua franca of Ate cultures), Maime (taught by grandma), Satakh (LF of Smait), Vorbire (LF of The Ridge), Concordian Pidgin (LF of The Concordia). Luna and Satakh are the ones she speaks most confidently, she very slowly forgets loiolteo, as she finds no need for it, but does not forget Maime out of stubborn love for her grandma, every other language was learned out of pure necessity. She can read and write Luna, Satakh and Vorbire.
Social Status
Born in a wealthy family from a powerful caste, until her escape she was living safely and comfortably, having all her basic needs met. After her escape she’s become a de jure nobody with no home or influence, caused by lack of money and citizenship. De-facto she has a somewhat reliable source of outcome and respect thanks to her skills, pleasant looks and knowledge of basic socialization with nobles which allows her to find wealthy clients.
Skills
Kemalipi is obviously very skilled in medicine: she’s capable of making a diagnosis, preventing ailments, disinfection, surgery (which is her main medical skill) and care for the sick, all by the highest Kharakt standards and to the best of her abilities. Aside from Kharakt medicine she also studies and practices that of other cultures, for example Stenere and of some Nomadic clans. She practices blood magic, but its illegal status doesn’t allow her to practice it as much as she wants, often relegated to the status of the last resort.
Thanks to her nomadic lifestyle she’s familiar with many cultures of the world, and most of the time is capable of being reasonably polite and respectful, even if those capabilities are not always noticeable because of her unpleasant personality. Has a sense of humor, but most of her jokes are funny only to her colleagues and to the people who speak the same languages, especially Satakh.
Surviving alone for many cycles has given her many survival skills: she can fish and adequately cook (mostly Ate and Kharakt cuisines), taught her pet cat to hunt, and is very proud of her sewing skills, always keeping both her and Naloi’s clothes in pristine quality. Since she cares a lot for her cat, she knows how to properly treat it and cats in general medically.
Favorite Things, Tastes & Dreams
— In order to learn medicine without relying on teachers Kemalipi stole a lot of books back in Smait, but her initial lack of language skills led to her accidentally stealing books of various other nature. While the mistake itself was very frustrating, Kemalipi did enjoy the stolen books, and has become an avid reader as a result, especially when she realized that it’s much less frustrating than socialization.
— Regularly consumes maalam-terat, a popular Kharakt drug with anti-anxiety properties. Since moving to the Ridge, Kemalipi struggles to find a replacement for it, and becomes even more irritable than before.
— Obsessed with beautiful clothes, which is very easy to notice even despite her poverty. Because of Ate’s gender equality Kemalipi sees no problem with wearing traditionally masculine clothing, all she cares about is style. During her work in Smait Kemalipi preferred loose clothing, because of the hot climate, but after moving to the Ridge she found skin-tight clothes very enjoyable, not just because of the colder climate but design-wise as well. She prefers clothes with a small color palette, usually no more than 4 colors.
— In love partners Kemalipi appreciates loyalty, kindness, intellect, an ability to listen and make her feel safe. Her theoretical perfect partner is either a fellow scientist capable of holding an intelligent conversation and understanding of Kemalipi’s ultimate motivation as a scientist, or a typical herbo who wants to get smarter. Because of all that Kemalipi finds defined muscles, tall people and soft facial features very attractive.
— At first Kemalipi enjoyed the nomadic lifestyle and dry, hot climate of Smait, but as she truly realized she can’t go back anymore, and couldn’t just change her life again, it started to hang over her mental health like the slowly descending sword of Damocles. Kemalipi is so tired of constant movement, poverty and constant socialization that her biggest dream is her own house, big and comfortable, filled to the brim with books and dresses, unashamed of her Ate roots (which were so despised in Smait and misunderstood in the Ridge), full of servants and cats, as far removed from civilization as reasonably possible.
— Speaking of cats: hers, Scalpel, was gifted to Kemalipi by her parents, and she endlessly adores him. He’s kind and polite, but avoids most people, because nomadic lifestyle made him used to the fact that, at best, they can be briefly used to satisfy his need for pets and scritches. But if he realizes that he is stuck with someone for long, he’ll start treating them as a family, demanding a lot of attention and playing: Kemalipi and Naloi have spoiled him a great deal. He’s very talkative, purrs a lot, and has a pretty deep, creaky voice that resembles the sounds of an old, thick wooden door.
— Kemalipi misses her home cuisine a lot: most of it is fish-based and in the rest of the world only a couple of other cultures eat fish at all to begin with. Thankfully she considers Kharakt cuisine a fine enough replacement, enjoying the diversity of dishes, especially spice-wise. She also enjoys Stenere cuisine, despite its infamy, as she’s not the best cook herself, and, similar to Stenere, is better at making food healthy than tasty.
— Aside from reading and sewing Kemalipi has many other interests and hobbies, mostly of the intellectual kind: she enjoys humor, playing cards, various riddles and puzzles (and react very passionately when both wins and loses), is very interested in Callaprai (relatives of Stenere who are very famous for their culture) theater and, when she learned how uncommon cats are in the westmost part of the continent, dreams of becoming a cat breeder if she’ll ever find the time.
Voice
In her youth Kemalipi had a high-pitched voice that reminded people of the windchimes and spoke very quickly, but as she got older her speech became more nasal, coarse, low-pitched and slow. She often pauses as she speaks, a habit she developed while talking with clients: after all, a happy client pays more, so she needed to stop herself from talking shit in their faces.
Despite speaking a lot of Satakh and Vorbire, she still possesses a very strong accent, because she simply never bothered to soften it up: she still pronounces all Rs as Ls, adds vowels where the original words have none, especially in the middle of plosive letter combination.