Post by lore on Mar 30, 2013 3:03:08 GMT -5
EMRISSA
Name: Emrissa
Pronunciation: Em-RIH-sa
Age: 18
Season Born In: Autumn
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Heterosexual
Appearance:
Emrissa's of medium height, with a plump build. She used to wear her hair longer, but in preparation for Candidacy and to show her enthusiasm for dragonriding, she's trimmed her black hair short like a boy's, which has had the effect of rounding out her face. Her eyes are dark brown, and her skin olive. One thing you'll notice about Emrissa is that she's energetic - moving assertively, speaking quickly, all snappy sentences and abrupt gestures. She tends to speak loudly, and her voice often sounds sharp.
Personality:
Emrissa was once a lady's maid; this is usually a surprise to people who have known her for more than three seconds. She's loud, brash, and tactless. Propriety is something that doesn't come easy to her, even when she makes a conscious effort to try. Emrissa is not easy to get along with; she hates and rejects anything she views as charity or special treatment, and she's quick to take offense. Rather than correcting her mistakes as others do, Emrissa takes setbacks as a reason to become resentful and more set in her ways; this has pretty much caused every single problem in her life so far.
Beneath the bravado and the prickliness, she has a soft heart, and she genuinely wants to do good. Emrissa grew up during the Obsidian Rebellion and the time afterwards in which Rindell tried to find its bearings, and that has affected her thinking considerably. She's sympathetic to the Rebellion, refusing to believe anything that doesn't support her rosy view of the Rebellion. She considers Noita her personal hero.
Though she thinks that Rindell definitely shouldn't have split ties with Noita (who is, after all, perfect in every way), she's been particularly inspired by the election system at Rindell and thinks that it should be applied everywhere. Strike down blood privilege and color privilege! Stop the ostracization of the poor, mutated dragons! She believes very strongly in Equality and Liberty and Freedom from Persecution, though if you asked her what she meant, she won't be able to tell you except in the vaguest terms. But clearly what Pern needs is another Rebellion, one that will wash away the old, hidebound systems!
The hope of a second Rebellion - one that will actually succeed and 'save' the whole of Pern - is what keeps her going, and what she considers her reason for accepting Candidacy. She's hoping to infiltrate Trelis, foil their plots against the innocent and persecuted Rindell (she's convinced they have plots against Rindell) via spying and sabotage if the latter becomes necessary, and do her part to bring about a second and more successful Rebellion! She plans to fight on a strong dragon in the Rebellion that she imagines will come again.
Of course, part of the reason she's so keen on a second Rebellion is that Emrissa craves adventure, meaning, and the thrill of knowing that she's on the right side. Ordinary life hasn't been satisfying for her, since she's basically failed consistently since adolescence; she's decided that it must be the fault of the system instead of her own fault. A second Rebellion gives her something to believe in and helps her to justify her life.
Emrissa is hopelessly naive and unaware of political realities; most of what she knows is from hearsay, her imagination, and Obsidian Rebellion propaganda. She's more concerned with grand ideals than practicality. She's also very eager to suffer in the name of the Rebellion; she think that sacrifices and suffering in the name of a greater cause is romantic, and she wants very hard to be the perfect Rebel - confident, witty, courageous, just, and willing to die for the cause.
Family:
Emra/Mother/Lady's Maid
Neril/Father/Harper
Raneril/Brother/Harper
Emila/Sister/Young Nuisance
Location: Trelis
Rank: Candidate
History:
The daughter of a Journeyman Harper and a maid to the Lady Holder of Apolla, Emrissa was expected to follow in her father's footsteps and become a good Harper. After all, her brother was already showing the signs of doing the same! At the right age, she entered into a Harper's apprenticeship with high dreams of changing the world through music - her Harper family background had managed to give her a love of song.
She was mediocre, and she knew it. Her brother was a star student with a voice to die for; she was just all right, and there was probably only a future ahead of her as a mediocre Harper. Emrissa couldn't stand being second best in the family, so she started slacking off and fooling around with her friends instead - this, obviously, worsened her performance. By sixteen, she was hopelessly behind on her studies and fully aware that she was a failure; by eighteen, the Harper Hall "strongly suggested" that she leave the Hall. She did.
Her mother used her connections to the Lady Holder to find Emrissa a new position as a lady's maid to Varnil. Perhaps Emra was hoping that the position would stabilize her daughter and teach her propriety; instead, it made Emrissa sulky and resentful. She still wanted to be a Harper, and she certainly didn't want to have a position as a lady's maid just because of her mother - especially since she felt that she didn't fit in, though a good deal of that was probably her own refusal to cooperate with anyone. She became more isolated, resentful of her old Harper acquaintances, frosty with her family (as she felt that her mother had forced her into the lady's maid position), and prickly toward everyone else.
During this time, she rediscovered the ideas of the Rebellion - as a young Harper, she'd been sympathetic to the Rebellion because it had sounded dashing and exciting, but her sympathy now became fanaticism. The hope of a new, more successful Rebellion gave her something to live for, and the Rebellion seemed to prove to her that the her failures weren't a problem with her, but rather with society itself! Her ideals helped her live through months of misery working as a lady's maid, a job she completely detested and kept only because of parental pressure and the sense that she had no other options; she spent most of her life daydreaming about a better future to come and seething about the present, which not surprisingly gave people the impression that she was unlikeable and distant. She began fiercely idolizing Noita - clearly all those rumors about Noita's conduct were Trelis propaganda designed to malign her perfectly innocent hero - and aspired to be as wonderful as her fictionalized image of Noita was. She learned, after a while, to be quiet about her Rebellion leanings.
Then, she was Searched. Of course, Emrissa eagerly leapt for a chance to leave her work and Impress a dragon - she's convinced that it will give her life meaning, and that Impressing will allow her to do her part to defend Rindell and make Pern-wide revolutionary a reality. She's not happy at Trelis, since she despises everything she thinks it stands for, but she's not unhappy either - coming here has given her life a new meaning, and she honestly enjoys the intrigue...even if the intrigue is all made up in her head.
