#tanil

[wally-b-feed]

Anthony Fineran, Tanil Ad, 2024

[kollyblast]

[kollyblast]

[sionid]

Goosebumps, Nails, Spine!

Goosebumps: What scares you the most?

Narit shrugs noncommittally, eyes flickering down to her hands. “Nothing stranger than what anyone fears. Being alone in the winter. Being underground without a light. Dying.”

(Narit has a couple of acute fears. The most long-standing and deeply engrained is her fear of being trapped, physically restrained or otherwise. The other is a not entirely logical fear of vampires, which she’s encountered too few times to really know much about. It comes from the memory of the weakness and terror of her first encounter with one, which just about killed her.)

Nails: When you’re feeling vulnerable, do you become more defensive or do you take the offensive and lash out?

(Done for Narit, so we’ll do Tanil)

“‘Feeling vulnerable.’ You mean anger? Or sadness? Or,” he laughs, a little harshly, “an actual fight? I have no mapped reactions for these. I’ll let you know when it happens.”

(Tanil lashes out. He tends to act without thinking too hard on the consequences when he’s emotional. Verbally or physically, he’s likely to use offense as defense. Though if it’s simply something like mild social discomfort, he’ll probably just get flustered and leave.)

Spine: What is your biggest weakness?

(Narit’s greatest weakness could be said to be her tendency to flee, to disappear rather than duke it out. It’s not a bad tactic for survival, but not a great one when it comes to social interaction, and it’s probably what’s kept her from forming very few friendships that are anything more than casual. She also tends to think of isolation as safety, which is often not the case.)

[sionid]

For Narit, Throat: What is your proudest memory? For Tanil, Nose: What is your favourite scent?

Throat: What is your proudest memory?

Narit frowns in consideration, drumming her fingertips on the wooden table and propping her chin on one hand. “Proudest. The things I do best I do easily, so it’s…hard to be proud. Silly to be proud, ‘least. It should be something hard-won? It wasn’t hard to leave home. It wasn’t hard to leave the college. But I’m lying if I say I’m not pleased with myself for having made what I’ve got—a place to sleep that’s mine. A way to feed myself.

"Oh, and there was this one time with a troll. No, stop smiling, it’s not a joke—" she grins, "—it was terrifying! Had me backed into the corner of a shallow cave, snuffling around like a damned hog. D’you know that invisibility is next to useless once one of those has got your scent? They just start bellowing and swinging their great arms around. Anyways, it was the first time I had to think of illusion as something other than what the eye sees, and that, I am told, is a good realization for any mage."

Nose: What is your favourite scent?

"Candles," Tanil says immediately. "Ah, not tallow. Yellow beeswax. It’s strangely rich and strong, and it gives me a strange mixture of a memory of being awake in the wee hours, feeling on the verge of something important, while at once being…soothing. I suppose."

[sionid]

Thieves' Guild. Blackwood Company. Bards' College.

Thieves Guild: What kind of hobbies are you into?

Narit: “There is one project I’ve undertaken at the moment—an old shell of a thing I’ve decided to fill. It’s small, and it’s not finished, and it smells of damp and dust, but it has a sort of sweetness to it. Perhaps I’ll take you sometime? If you’re ever near and care to see.”

Tanil: "Mmh. Would you consider ‘sorting Calcelmo’s notes’ a hobby?"

Blackwood Company: What is your favorite weapon?

Narit considers for a moment, head cocked to the side. “Well, the bow’s the most practical, mm? But not at all the most exciting.” With a brief fumbling of straps, she places two blades on the table between them. Both are sheathed in leather, clearly worn despite care, and she slides them out with an easy quickness. Touching the smaller of the two, she pushes it gently toward her ashen-haired companion, taking care not to disturb his mug.

"This is Siti. Mother said she named it after her youngest sister." The hilt is antler, with a wickedly curving double-edged blade perhaps ten inches long. "Most often, she serves for hunting and skinning, but it’s certainly not her only skill."

"This other is Kinat. I…don’t know who she’s named for. Mother would never say." It appears to be by far the older of the two. One-edged, heavier towards the tip, with a curved hilt and blade. "She’s heavy—should’ve seen the me lug her around, back at the start—but she swings fast and hard."

"And yes, I realize they’re two. I couldn’t bear to separate them."

Bards College: Tell a story.

Tanil squints, as though trying to discern some motive in the face of the Dunmer before him, and then sharply turns away. He seems entirely unwilling to make eye contact.

"A story." He says the words slowly, raking a hand through pale hair. "You want a story. Should I tell you what I ate for lunch today, or how I obtained it? Read you the notes I last took? Or perhaps you’d like an account of how the hill-savages nearly took my life when I last ventured out, hmm?"

His hand drifts towards his right side, an unconscious touch through thick robes. His mouth settles into a tight line, eyes distant. Minutes pass. Tanil seems to have forgotten that he’s not alone.

[sionid]

Morag Tong and Black-Briars!

Morag Tong: Tell 3 secrets.

Narit: Narit’s not big on secrets, beyond the secret: the fact that she’s something of a freelancer, an explorer/occasional thief (though she wouldn’t call herself one) who specializes in acquiring hard-to-get items. 

Beyond that, her “secrets” would simply be things that she’d never bothered to tell anyone, simply because they never seemed relevant: she’s deeply fearful of vampires, and, despite its obvious uses, she dislikes fire magic to the point of never having learned even the most basic forms of it.

Tanil:

-He sees absolutely no issue with necromancy, in the form of simply reanimating the dead.

-His appearance matters to him, a lot, and he hates that.

-He finds his mind drifting to fewer dark places now that Narit stops in from time to time, as if the distraction is actually, in some way, helpful. He’d probably admit to the necromancy thing before this.

Black-Briars: Do you care what others think of you? (both good and bad)

Tanil's eyes narrow, dark and glassy in the dimness. “What? Look at where we are, will you?” The room is dark and cluttered, bearing the typical geometric stonework of Markarth. It's clean enough, but there is a pervasive scent of dampness, and the ashes in the fireplace are long cold. “If I cared for approval of mages, I'd have kept to the college. If I cared for the thoughts of Nords-” he laughs, a little too loudly, “-well. I'd be on a farm in Whiterun, trading labor for scraps.”

(Insults mean little to Tanil. Compliments about knowledge or skill are either accepted as truth, rather than flattery, or dismissed if he doesn’t deem them truthful. Compliments about most other matters baffle him entirely.)

Narit leans back, propping her feet up on the edge of the table. “Important what some think, sure. I’ve got a certain degree of reputation to uphold, mm? True of anyone trying to make a living.” She smiles, then, without warning, wide and sharp-toothed. “Insults and flattery mean little enough on their own, but that’s not their purpose, is it? Tools, or—gateways, to other sorts of things. You won’t see me crying over harsh or honeyed words, friend, but you might see me chasing down reasons for speaking them.”

[sionid]

It's Narit's broski, Tanil.

What a dork.