|
|
| Nick |
| Location |
Southern Weyr |
| Position |
Wingsecond |
| Wing |
Ocelot |
| Dragon |
Brown Edyth |
| Birthplace |
High Reaches Hold |
| Played By |
Linda Hamilton |
| Player |
Antigonick |
Description
Nick is about 5’6” in height, square-shouldered and square-jawed, compact and wiry and strong. One might seek in vain for any quality of femininity in her shape or her stance. Her iron-grey hair is thick and shaggy (if you suspect her of hacking it off with a knife, you’d be right) and short enough that it doesn’t fall across her warm and intelligent brown eyes, which more often than not are screened from sunshine and observation alike by flight goggles or smoked-glass lenses set into thin golden frames. She speaks in a gravelly alto flavoured with a northern drawl; her deadpan expression sometimes leads mere humans to misjudge the intention behind her words. She keeps her nails short and clean; despite the frequent oiling her brown’s hide requires, her hands bear the calluses of the long years of hard physical work, martial training, and dragonriding, that have given her a casual but absolute confidence in her own body.
Her usual garments are a white linen shirt tucked into low-slung breeches of sturdy but breathable black cloth, the cut simple but the quality and the stitching fine. Buttoned pockets proliferate richly down the outsides of her legs, each holding some useful object. The knife at her belt has a plain hide-wrapped hilt but a very keen steel blade — not a decorative trinket but a coolly functional threat, to her enemies or just to her dinner. Rolling up her sleeves reveals that both her forearms are marked with faint, thin lines as souvenirs of knife fights long past and the left one, too, with a silvery score-streak she’s had since the Pass began. Despite her age she carries considerable lean muscle; somehow she contrives to have a permanent suntan, too.
Common Knowledge
- One of the few women to Impress a brown during the last Interval.
- In her early sixties now, she was a wingrider at High Reaches for many years.
- A bit too liberal for the conservatives; a bit too conservative for the liberals. Great.
- Kind of avuncular, for someone who's so many people's auntie.
- Carries round a lot of useful things in her pockets.
- She and her dragon fell afoul of erratic Threadfall over Nabol Hold in the 20th Turn.
- Transferred to Southern Weyr to recuperate but not to retire.
- Flew with Puma for 3 months before transferring to Ocelot.
- Appointed Ocelot Wingsecond in the 6th month of the 21st Turn.
- Finding the winter pleasantly mild here.
Uncommon Knowledge
- Not quite as gay as people sometimes assume.
- Not a picky eater either.
- Likes throwing axes.
- Dislikes Harpers.
- Would probably like throwing Harpers.
RP Hooks
- Nick and Edyth were at High Reaches Weyr for 47 years, till the 20th Turn of the 12th Pass. Anyone who’s visited in that time, or who has family there, might have come across them or just heard their names spoken in passing.
- But because Thread can’t eat mountains or snow, the riders of High Reaches are likelier than anyone else to be helping out beyond their own usual protection area. Maybe you met them during a brief stint assisting their neighbours at Telgar or Fort, or even farther afield.
- Greensleeves Are My Delight Brown Edyth has scarcely ever seen a lady dragon he didn’t like. Make of that what you will — especially if it’s going to be a bit awkward for the humans concerned… He sired two clutches at High Reaches in the late 170s/early 180s (exact dates to be determined as need be). Older Nowtime riders, or the parents of younger riders, might have Impressed his offspring at High Reaches and thus be special to Nick.
- A couple of beers at the Tipsy Kitten = always a good idea.
- Firelizard acquisition project, y/n?
History
Persuasion
Nikulina was born at High Reaches Hold in the 158th year of the last Interval and betrothed early, as these things are done by holders. Her intended husband Aurikk being one year her junior, their marriage was waiting upon him to finish growing up, when this conscientious plan laid by their families was interrupted: a search dragon came riding by and identified Nikulina as a Candidate for the glittering golden egg baking on the sands at High Reaches Weyr.
The idea struck the adults in her life as absurd. At fifteen, in 173, Nikulina was the hold's most incorrigible tomboy and nobody’s idea of a future weyrwoman. Still, she negotiated and she shouted and she adolescently sulked, and as a last resort she pleaded. She was allowed to stand at that next Hatching (an absurd whim, her parents felt), on condition that she’d wear dresses and tie her hair up in ribbons and not get too grubby or otherwise embarrass her family — and after that she'd settle down, marry Aurikk (such a suitable boy), and get on with the vital business of rebuilding Pern's dwindling population one squalling infant at a time.
Well, is it any wonder she pinned her hopes upon dragonflight?
Only to find them dashed, mind you, when the golden dragonet broke forth from her shell and flapped and waddled directly toward another girl, whose hair curled naturally and whose plain white gown flowed with an unfair elegance over her lissome young figure. Nikulina was with the rest, being ushered hastily away from the scene of their communal failure, when a great big gawky brown dragonet came hastening after and declaring to anyone who would hear that he wanted to pledge his life and flame to that one.
… WHAT?
Love & Freindship
When your entrenched local custom is to offer dragonets an all-male Candidate buffet, it stands to reason you won’t get many female riders. But when a brown makes up his mind, there, he’s created a brownrider. Edyth’s Impression of Nick (and vice versa) was an anomaly but inarguable. The weyrlingmaster of the time wasn’t exactly hostile to the weyr’s only girl brownrider, he just didn’t expect much from her. No one really did. She floundered at first — there’s a difference between being a tomboy, and suddenly living in a boys’ club — but she attracted the guidance of one older rider in particular, who in his youth had also been considered an atypical brownrider, someone who would have been more suitable to a green. He believed in paying it forward. He taught her to hold her own, how to perform masculinity more effectively — and, when Edyth was a little older, how to fight with fists or knives and pay back, with definitive force, the slights she had received in training from idiot boys. Thus equipped Nick took to her new and purposeful life, training and preparing for the Pass yet to come. But the nature of her position was that she had to prove herself in ways that, for a young male brownrider, would have been taken for granted. To be accepted she had to out-bloke the blokes. Ride harder, drink harder, never back down from a social or physical challenge, never get caught in a moment of weakness or femininity. Some of the battles she had to fight were dirty ones and pitched against men who ought to have been colleagues and friends.
This all got a little easier, paradoxically, as a result of a tendency of her dragon’s that in their early days together caused Nick massive cringing private embarrassment: Edyth’s a womaniser. He’s scarcely ever met a lady dragon he wouldn’t chase with all the passion of his fluttering romantic heart. That kind of thing results in a reputation which rubs off on the rider as well, and conveys a certain kind of credit — as well as a certain kind of ribald, manly joking. In Nick’s case especially, because it was common gossip around High Reaches that she had an on-again, off-again love affair with that luscious junior goldrider who Impressed the new queen they were both ostensibly standing for. There was always a fondness between their dragons — though not the gold’s most regular partner, in the late seventies/early eighties Edyth sired two of her clutches — but the relationship between the riders was a rocky one. The goldrider was ambitious and, other things being roughly equal, she leant toward and became weyrmates with a rising bronzerider. He was considered a potential future weyrleader; he could do more for her, practically and politically, than a mere female brownrider. Together they made a power couple, each bolstering the other. But the whole weyr knew when they were having a lovers’ spat because there’d be a gold dragon just lounging there on Edyth’s ledge…
The situation finally ordered itself when that gold and bronze were transferred together to another weyr that was a bit low on queens, in the Interval’s last decade. They’re doing well. That’s nice. Somehow Nick has never been that close to anyone else, though.
Pass & Prejudice
When the Pass began and the weyr’s internal compass swung away from gender and politics toward sheer competence, Nick and Edyth — as one of the most seasoned and hard-working brownrider pairs High Reaches then had on its roster — were finally tapped into the Weyrleader’s Wing, in which they flew for nineteen of the last twenty years.
As Nick grew aware of the cultural differences between High Reaches and the majority Newtimer weyrs, she began the ritual of putting in a biannual transfer request.
The Weyrleader of the time, though, simply refused to lose a capable heavyweight brown — especially one whose rider was accustomed to going the extra klick in order to be accepted, and who would uncomplainingly shoulder any extra chores he didn’t have time for or paperwork he didn’t like to do. Nick functioned as a bonus Wingsecond in all but name. And that name never did come. When promotion time rolled around, somehow the Weyr leadership always mysteriously found a man for the job. Usually a bronzerider, usually younger too.
After a while it stopped mattering to Nick that even astride Edyth she couldn’t ascend through that glass ceiling. When the survival of the planet and everyone living on it is at stake on a daily basis, who cares where the credit goes, provided the work is done well and dragons and their riders come back alive? The leadership and senior riders at High Reaches knew the care and the effort and the patience and the crazy long hours single and childless Nick was putting into her wing and her Weyr, and especially the time she and Edyth gave to any newly-fledged pair who needed it. Eventually she stopped requesting transfers. Years before, Edyth had sired those two clutches: the Weyr was full of dragons of his making, as well as riders Nick had mentored or just watched growing up. She’d never wanted children of her own but year by year she grew to treasure all these nieces and nephews by adoption. (Not to mention the many greenriders Edyth saw to it that she got to know more intimately.) Leaving, depriving them of her experience, would have felt like letting them down. She couldn’t do it.
Southhanger Abbey
In erratic Threadfall over Nabol Hold on the 16th day of the 9th month of the 20th Turn (RL date = 7/30/2020) they took a hit for a green who was flying below them. They had a split-second choice between a) the strong likelihood of flaming her, and b) shielding her with Edyth’s greater bulk. Given his chivalrous nature, and the fact that the greenrider was the daughter of some of Nick’s oldest friends, it wasn’t much of a choice. Even with all that it has meant for them — being grounded for so long and not knowing what their future holds — they’d do it again rather than harming another dragon and a younger rider who looked up to them for support and care.
Once Edyth was, at length, flying again despite his damaged right wing, they made the transition to Southern Weyr and a balmy climate in which Nick hopes he’ll regain his health more quickly. (It’s doing wonders for her arthritis too, though she hates to admit it.) It’s anyone’s guess if they’ll fight Thread together again — but, perhaps, they can make a life here.
