[Bio] Antimony Jhanhi

[Naunet]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this, but... here we go! Been working on this for a while.

 

 

Name: Antimony (formerly K’piru)Jhanhi

 

Race: Miqo’te, Seeker of the Sun

Tribe: Hipparion (no longer associated with)

Gender: Female

Age: Mid-50s (or whatever the miqo’te equivalent is)

Hair: Mostly greyed over, a few lingering strands of ruddy brown

Skin: Light olive

Eyes: Blue-green

Build: Heavy in some places, speaking to past child-bearing, but thinner now than in the past, likely from stress or work or a combination of the two

 

Biographical

Place of Residence: Limsa Lominsa

Place of Birth: Southern Thanalan, to a nomadic tribe that roamed the Sagoli Desert

Profession: Accountant specializing in the auditing and restructuring of assets; she currently works for a firm that advertises as a “discrete” accounting business. There are rumors that the higher ups use their work as a cover for darker dealings. Antimony may or may not be aware of this. ((OOC note: As of writing this bio, Anti is not ICly part of the Linkshell that I intend to place her in, so her occupation will change upon ARR's release.))

Hobbies: Theoretical mathematics, particularly as it relates to the arcane; occasionally dabbles conjury

 

Relationships

Mother: K’deiki Nhyt (no longer in contact)

Father: K’jhanhi Nunh (no longer in contact)

Sister:

Mate: K’thalen Nunh (deceased)

Children: K’airi Thalen (believed deceased), K’airos Thalen(believed deceased), K’aijeen Thalen (estranged)

 

Patron God: Nymeia the Spinner (no longer observant)

 

 

Appearance

 

Thin lines along the seams of expression on her face – her mouth, her eyes, her cheeks – the less than perfect skin elsewhere, her nearly completely greyed hair, and the way her weight has settled at her hips and thighs all speak to the age of this Sun Seeker miqo’te. She perhaps looks older than she is, though she’s by no means young. At the same time, her not infrequent business trips outside Limsa Lominsa have kept her otherwise healthy and given her some amount of muscle definition in her limbs – not that one would generally be able to tell unless doing rather improper things.

 

Antimony dresses modestly, plainly, and functionally:thickly woven robes or cowls, sturdy boots (usually polished, but if she’s been on the road, they’re likely dust-covered), hair neat and clean and done up but not in any elaborate style. When on the road, she carries a simple, wooden staff slung across her back, though she rarely uses it for anything more than a walking stick. A pair of wire-framed glasses is ever present on her face, speaking to vision marred by her age and years of pouring through reams of cramped numbers. Sometimes the humid coastal air of La Noscea leaves her with achy joints.

 

 

Personality

 

Having lived alone for the past five years, and never verymuch of a social butterfly to begin with, Antimony has grown rather used to solitude. She doesn’t decline company, but she doesn’t entirely know how to act around others in a casual setting, which has in the past led to her making comments that are easily misconstrued or otherwise inappropriate. If she realizes what she’s done, she’ll generally try to laugh it off and excuse it as a sign of her age. This, combined with a general unwillingness to speak about her personal feelings or thoughts, can result in conversations that remain shallow, like two acquaintances exchanging pleasantries. She can be dragged into deeper debates, but only with great reluctance. This tendency may change if she begins to develop stronger connections with other people, but it will take time.

 

She has a very strong protective streak in her that can often force her into actions that would normally go against her otherwise conflict-avoiding persona. She was once a mother, and that instinct has never left her, even when her children did. Overall, Antimony is a kind-hearted soul, albeit stubborn, and generally gives everyone the benefit of the doubt – sometimes to a degree that can and has gotten her in trouble.

 

Her intellectual aptitude is largely self-taught and something she can be rather self-conscious about, or even downright resentful towards others who have had educational opportunities she didn’t. Her skill with manipulating numbers is a source of pride while simultaneously a source of anxiety, as she constantly worries she’s missed something or made an obvious mistake without realizing it. It’s largely for this reason that she’s procrastinated for so long in submitting some of her hobby’s work to the arcanist guild in Limsa.

 

The loss of her family affected her deeply, but she has spent the last five years working past it, with variable degrees of success. The demands of her work have certainly helped.

---

 

History

 

Rhalgr’s fury rumbled menacingly in the sky above, dark clouds swarming above them with eerie speed and flickering with pale, green light. The first drops of rain struck K’piru’s small, round face in icy, fat blobs, smacking against her skin in an increasingly rapid staccato.

 

Minutes later, a huntress returned with warnings of a flash flood, and the entire tribe was set into chaotic, hurried motion. Her tiny feet slapped and sloshed against wet sand, sinking in and pulling out with thick slurping sounds as she ran, ushered forward with the other children. The sky flashed and the world around her flashed with it, flickering dark and then light and then dark again in a way that made those around her seem to move in stop-motion. She stumbled and saw the moving bodies flickering past her, called out, felt the mouth of the desert engulfing her foot like a ravenous monster, and then she was free and she could feel the sand sinking between now bare toes as she ran.

 

She tasted salt in the water that poured down her face.

 

***

 

A steady arm, smooth, straight posture, gaze unblinking in the early morning sun. The twine of the huntress’s bow creaked faintly as it drew tight, and K’piru watched, along with half a dozen other children, as their teacher’s body seemed to suddenly relax into its motions.

 

The sandworm squirming lazily in the valley below bellowed as the first arrow struck its pillowy flesh, screeched at the second that followed soon after, and a third sent it crashing to the sand where it spasmed and groaned out its death throws. K’piru couldn’t tear her eyes away from the scene, even as her vision wavered and she realized that the echoing cries in her skull were her own screams.

 

Someone laid heavy hands on her shoulders and forcibly turned her away, but she saw the frowns of the other children, their tanned skin clad in hunting leathers, young, lithe bodies ready to make their own first kills.

 

K’piru did not return to the hunt after that day.

 

***

 

She could hear laughter outside, mixed with fake roars and self-made sound effects of battle. Silhouettes wove back and forth across the thin hide of one of the tent she’d helped her father and another Nunh erect several days ago, lithe bodies accentuated with the sharp curve of a bow on their backs, a dagger at their hips, their tails flapping like ribbons behind them. K’piru huddled lower behind a rack of food stores, parchment and charcoal in hand and ears pulled flat against her skull.

 

All signs pointed to the huntresses having decided to gather the children and take them out, to teach them the skills they would need to better contribute to the tribe. Glancing down at her papers and the carefully scratched out multiplication tables, interspersed with sketched out diagrams of the sun’s travels across the horizon, K’piru held her breath and waited.

 

Sunlight knifed through the dim tent suddenly, and she flinched, scooting further backwards, holding her papers in front of her as though they could hide her from what she knew must be K’jhul or K’takka, or even her mother, esteemed huntress K’deiki. Instead of the stern lecture and firm hand on her wrist that she expected, however, a low giggle followed by the shuffling of feet reached her ears. Curiosity piqued, she lowered the parchment enough to squint through the light towards the silhouette before her.

 

A darkly tanned boy, red hair catching the sun behind him so that it looked like his head had caught fire, stood grinning at her from behind the flap of the tent. His ears flicked one way and then the other, and then with deliberate slowness, he brought one finger to his mouth. They stood that way in silence for several moments, ice blue eyes meeting her own green ones, and then he lowered his finger and backed away slowly.

 

She could still hear the laughter and play fighting outside as the hide slipped back into place, but K’piru smiled. Not today, for her. Thanks to him, at least.

 

***

 

With the cool, shifting sand at her back and the endless blue-black of night stretched out above her, flecked with thousands of tiny pin-pricks of light, K’piru could for a moment pretend she was flying, soaring between each bright point. She could measure each distance in finger lengths, time her travel from star to star, carve shapes in the sky that her mind knew meant something, was significant.

 

A sharp call behind her pulled her down from the sky, and she returned to the slow, evening activities of the tribe with reluctance.

 

***

 

He had managed to prove himself as one of the tribe’s new Nunh’s only weeks ago and was riding high on the confidence that came with such an accomplishment. K’piru watched silently as he swaggered from one end of their current camp to the next, broad mouth grinning, tail swooshing gaily in his wake. He looked obnoxious to K’piru, even though he did seem to try and catch her eye every time his little parade passed her by.

 

She divided her attention that afternoon between the charts scratched out in charcoal on her lap and the testing grin of a friend who had come into his own.

 

***

 

The first child, contrary to common wisdom, had actually come the easiest. K’thalen had stayed with her, sweating and staring wide-eyed at her belly as she slowly crushed the bones of his hand and brought a new member into the folds of the tribe. K’airi.

 

He wasn’t with her for the second, or ten years later, the third, but K’piru didn’t mind. She was happier for the presence of the midwives as the second daughter came backwards and the third simply refused to come at all until significant prodding. K’thalen would have been nothing more than a useless distraction in those moments.

 

Not to mention she had threatened him with evisceration if he had set one foot in that tent, sweating buckets and looking like he was going to be sick. It wasn’t like he was the one giving birth.

 

***

 

The day her eldest returned with her first kill, skin shining with sweat under the mid-day sun and practically glowing with pride, K’piru found herself struck with a sudden desperation, an unrelenting need to impress upon the younger two – K’airos and K’aijeen – the importance of expanding their minds. It wasn’t that she saw the hunters of their tribe as dull, but it was only natural to want to transfer one’s values into your children. Her own parents had attempted to do so to her.

 

When she sat them both down for the first time, parchment and charcoal in hand, she had prepared herself to be firm, prepared herself for the likelihood that there would be resistance. The wary expressions on both of their faces suggested things would go exactly as she expected.

 

K’airos grudgingly accepted the lessons, even if she didn’t put much time into studying; at least that acceptance was something K’piru could find it in herself to be grateful for, even if she did silently blame herself for waiting so long to try and reach them. Her youngest daughter, however, seemed to find every excuse under the sun whenever K’piru deemed it time for practice.

 

It wasn’t until years later that she recognized the similarities between herself and K'aijeen. By then, however, it was too late.

 

***

 

At times, K’aijeen worried her. The girl seemed fascinated with healing, but in a way that left K’piru uncomfortable. She tried to capitalize on her daughter’s interest, but their relationship grew more and more strained by the day.

 

It was more than worry. The truth was that K’aijeen scared her.

 

***

 

The sand beneath her feet seemed to shake with the unrealized weight of Dalamud hovering so terrifyingly near above them. Looking away from the roiling maelstrom in the sky – the moon’s mass tearing through clouds and stirring up violent winds – was not enough to escape it as its foreboding glow reflected off every available surface and seemed to cast the entire world in an otherworldly, orange light.

 

K’airi and K’airos had left several weeks ago, along with many other women in the tribe. Eorzea was embroiled in war against an empire K’piru had only a passing understanding of but had grown to fear, and even their simple tribe had sent out who it could spare to help in the war effort. It had meant saying goodbye to two of her children. It had meant recognizing that they were grown and perfectly capable of making their own decisions. It had meant accepting the likelihood that she would never see them again. She could only manage two of those things.

 

When a number of the men in the tribe left a day later, unwilling to stand idle while their world was threatened on all sides, K’thalen was with them. She found she couldn’t weep, but not for a lack of wanting, or trying.

 

***

 

Wind buffeted their desperate race over dunes, tossing up sand into near-panicked faces and churning the clouds above. They had seen the fall of Dalamud even at this great a distance, had watched the storm of smoke and cloud blot out the moon and stars until they could barely see the sand beneath their feet. They fled west, towards the thin line on the horizon that marked the cliffs bordering the Sagolii desert, a scattered, ruined tribe of children and elderly and those otherwise incapable of fighting. In the midst of them K'piru kept her eyes wide, watching the bobbing heads of children, counting frequently, praying.

 

A great roar shook the air and the ground beneath them, sent several of their chocobos tumbling down one side of a dune, and then the desert was bathed in yellow-orange light. The air grew searing hot, almost painful to breathe. Their bodies cast long shadows as though light by an afternoon sun, but the black forms twisted into silent horrors under the light of fire filling the sky. Their screams lost in the roar of great blasts of heat and light cutting with explosive power through the night, the fleeing tribe cowered and stumbled towards the cliffs, hoping for safety but expecting death.

 

***

 

Those that returned to the tribe in the days following the Calamity were far fewer in number than those who left. They came somber and shaken, steps sinking heavily into the sand with the weight of a burden unspeakable. There was no sound of laughter from the children, no happy greetings, not even a sweet breath of relief that they had been spared. Everything was grey - from the mood and from the ash that still rained down from the sky - and everything was completely, utterly silent. K'piru stood amongst the members who had remained in the desert, watching the slow, small procession approach them. She saw the lingering fear and despair in the eyes of the walking, and saw long shapes wrapped in white cloth slung across the backs of weary chocobos.

 

They laid the shapes out in a line along a sloping dune. The Elders came, pulled back the cloth from faces battered, burned, and broken, and then finally there was sound. It choked from the tribe in a chorus of grief, terrifying wails flung skyward with desperation. Within it all, K'piru stood silent, frozen, watching the lifeless face of the young boy who had kept her hidden from the huntresses, of the freshly made nunh who had listened to her theories and even tried to understand her equations, and of the friend she had shared love with.

 

Sand gave way beneath her knees and thin fingers sunk deep into its rough grains. All around her there was mourning, and this time K'piru found she could cry.

 

***

 

K’piru noticed the change in the air long before the ship she’d found passage on reached the docks of Limsa Lominsa. Gone was the dry heat, the musky scent of sand, the vaguely sweet aroma of sweaty bodies plodding over dunes and through valleys in search of their next temporary home. She’d been nearly overwhelmed with claustrophobia for the first day on the ship, and that feeling didn’t leave even as she stepped off the boarding plank and onto the wooden path that would take her into her new home.

 

Limsa Lominsa’s winding, white stone walls towered above her like great, lurching giants, their tops spinning to even wilder heights with cylindrical towers topped with banners flicking madly in the wind. She smelled salt and rot and an undertone of something dirty that left her tail twitching anxiously and her skin itchy.

 

Another passenger jostled her shoulder, and K’piru spun dizzily, feeling like one of those brightly colored pennants dangling so impossibly high above the city. Only luck kept her from tumbling into the bay.

 

Drawing in a deep breath of resolve, she straightened, turned once again towards Limsa Lominsa, and took the first steps toward leaving behind the desert, her family, her memories, and her name.