▶ PLAYERHANDLE: Jenny
CONTACT: ![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
cephalopodsOVER 18? Yes!
CHARACTERS IN-GAME: n/a
▶ CHARACTERNAME: Nina Zenik
CANON: Six of Crows/Grishaverse
CANON POINT: Between Crooked Kingdom and King of Scars
AGE: 18
BACKGROUND: The
wikis aren't all that great, so a quick bullet point list:
- Nina was born in Ravka (essentially fantasy Russia), and as a Grisha, was near instantly recruited for the Second Army.
- The Second Army was led, unbeknownst to everyone, by the Darkling, an infamous figure and the main villain of the Shadow and Bone trilogy. The discovery of his true nature plunged Ravka into civil war, so Nina's training was cut short and she was sent on missions early.
- After the civil war, Ravka and their Grisha population was decimated, and so the Second Army attempted to rescue Grisha in other countries. During one of these missions, Nina was sent to Fjerda to help save Grisha being captured there. Fjerdan drüskelle, or witch hunters, gathered up Grisha for execution because they were believed to be abominations. Nina was captured by the drüskelle and while she was being shipped to the capital for trial, the ship sank.
- Nina found herself forced to partner with a young drüskelle named Matthias to survive. Over the course of the time it took them to get back to civilization, the two grew close and developed feelings for one another. Once they reached a village, though, Nina discovered that there were Ravkan spies working there. They recognized Matthias and contacted Nina. Fearing that the Ravkans would capture Matthias and execute him, and that Matthias would tell his superiors about the Ravkan spies if she warned him, Nina tried to protect both sides by turning Matthias into Kerch traders as a slaver. She believed that he'd only get a slap on the wrist and they'd both be able to escape to Ketterdam. Matthias was sent to an infamous Ketterdam prison called Hellgate instead, and overcome with guilt, Nina stayed in the city trying to figure out a way to free him.
- A Ketterdam gang, the Dregs, essentially led by the young Kaz Brekker, recruited Nina.
- The events of
Six of Crows and
Crooked Kingdom take place.
- Post-Crooked Kingdom, Nina returned to Ravka, taking Matthias' body with her, as she had promised him she would return him to Fjerda to be buried. Over the next few months, as she prepared for her mission to Fjerda, she struggled with survivor's guilt and intense anger, but also learned to master her new abilities.
PERSONALITY: Nina is a young woman who's had to deal with a ton of things that no teenager should, which has forced her to grow up very quickly. It's also made her something of a chameleon. She was raised as a soldier in the Little Palace, and that identity is a point of pride to her, and something she clings to when she needs courage. It means she grew up with privilege, learning multiple languages and the customs and cultures of many of the nations surrounding Ravka. It also gave her a love of luxury and excess. In a lot of ways, she doesn't really act like a stereotypical soldier—she loves perfumes and beautiful clothes and sweets.
On the other hand, she often worked as a spy for the Ravkans and later for the Dregs. She can take on roles and manipulate marks as the job requires, and Kaz mentions that she missed her calling on the stage. When the Dregs need someone distracted or flirted with, they also go to Nina, possibly because she is in every sense a huge flirt. She's also used to learning languages and mimicking the customs of other cultures to fit in seamlessly.
In general, she does nothing by halves. She savors everything, whether it's food or friends or a good nap. When she feels things, she feels them deeply, and Matthias comments that she's "too much" while her superiors often remarked on her lack of subtlety. She can rarely hold back her emotions, and can rarely keep herself from needling those she's mad at or throwing her arms around someone she's missed.
Still, Nina is utterly dedicated to Ravka, and to the Second Army. She believes in her country deeply, despite the setbacks and struggles it's endured since the civil war, and wants nothing more than to go home. She's also fiercely proud and protective of her fellow Grisha, and one of her number one goals is to protect them from the slavers and witch hunters who plan to do them harm. Nina's been through a lot, and it's made her a survivor. Despite all appearances to the contrary, she's not one to back down from a challenge, and she's absolutely lethal in a fight. This loyalty extends to others, too. The Dregs, of course, but also Matthias, who she spent a year near miserable in Ketterdam for, trying to right the wrong of getting him thrown into Hellgate.
Nina has a strong sense of personal morals, a sense that can sometimes lead her to think of things in ways that are too black or white. She has no issue stealing, manipulating, or killing people when she thinks they deserve it, but is disgusted when innocent people are harmed or taken advantage of. She also tends to paint people with wide brushes. For example, she believed all Fjerdans were horrible, cruel barbarians, and only meeting and falling in love with Matthias tempered that view. Even after that, Matthias has to remind her that the druskelle they face have been brainwashed just like he had. Nina often has a hard time showing mercy in those situations, and trauma and hurt usually curdle into vindictiveness with her.
Most of that comes from the fact that Nina has a big heart. She really, really cares about people, and desperately wants to help the underdogs she sees around her, especially the Grisha. All she really sees in Ketterdam is people being hurt and taken advantage of, and she hates it. She grows attached to people easily, and when she does, she'll do absolutely anything for them and is incredibly affectionate and supportive. In a lot of ways, she's often in over her head, but leans on the support of her friends, her identity as a Grisha, and her (sometimes feigned) confidence to survive. She rarely allows herself to show weakness, and is often embarrassed when she's forced to.
After Matthias' death, Nina finds herself somewhat adrift, overwhelmed by guilt and anger. She feels her life with Matthias was stolen from them, and that he deserved so much more than to die viewed as a traitor in a foreign land, but she doesn't know how to move on from that pain, and feels severed from her connection with the Dregs. She throws herself into training with her new powers and readjusting to life in the Second Army, and believes she begins to hear Matthias' voice urging her to keep going, though it's later revealed that it was simply a coping mechanism and he was never there at all. She also begins to view her mission to save other Grisha as a way to heal and make up for what she views as a debt to Matthias, but her anger and grief still makes her volatile and often makes her go overboard during conflicts and missions. Because of this, and because of her decimation of the drüskelle at the end of Six of Crows, Nina becomes an infamous and terrifying figure to the Fjerdans and even some Ravkans.
POWERS/ABILITIES:Nina is a Grisha, technically a Corporalnik—this once meant that she had control over living things. Generally speaking, Corporalki can manipulate human bodies, and their talents fall into three categories: Heartrenders, Healers, and Tailors. All Corporalki learn a bit of all three, but Heartrenders specialize in breaking and damaging, Healers heal, and Tailors can alter someone's appearance. Nina was a Heartrender, but she had some skill in healing and tailoring, too.
After using jurda parem, Nina was cut off completely from those abilities. Instead, her power shifted to control over death and disease specifically. She's essentially become a sort of necromancer, and has shown to have almost telekinetic control over dead cells, allowing her to reanimate corpses, move bits of bone telekinetically, etc. As Nina gains further control over her powers, she's also able to control cells in living humans again, but only diseased ones. For example, she accelerates the growth of cancer in a man, killing him.
She's also able to speak to the dead, or at least to restless spirits that haven't moved on. Generally this is when they need her help with something, such as avenging the hundreds of dead girls and women in a Fjerdan village in King of Scars. One ability Nina explicitly does not have is the ability to bring the dead back to life. She tries this with Matthias, but when he opens his eyes, they're black, and he only says her name when she orders him to. This is never explained in detail, but my assumption is that because she has control over death specifically, she brought Matthias back for a moment as more of a puppet, not as himself. Nina is the only known Grisha with these abilities.
Other than that, Nina has a talent with languages and is a skilled con artist.
INVENTORY:- Six slim daggers sewn into the seams of her uniform (made out of human bone, which is either gross or super metal)
MOONBLESSING: Cordis
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