[DOTW] Nimue | Hintertomb | Stray

HELPFUL RP-RELATED INFO

    Nimue was born into an age of violence.

    It began with her mother, Queen Igraine. The Shrouded Court was an ancient and arrogant clan, secluded in a mist-shrouded swamp with generations of legend and tradition to guide them. Its line of royalty was said to be descended from a wolf known only as the Giant King, who was said to have ruled over hundreds through strength alone. Every so often, unusually large pups would be birthed into the Court...and these new giants were said to be the old king’s heirs, sent to win him back the territory he had conquered in life. They were more than royalty — they were demigods, omens of victory to come.

    When a giant came to the Shrouded Court, it was time for war.

    Queen Igraine was one such giant, and she took to her role readily. When she wasn’t leading her swamp-dwelling pack into battle against its neighbors, she took up the mantle of birthing new warriors for the cause. After all — there was always the chance that a second heir would be born, wasn’t there?

    Nimue was not this heir. Although she was born a large and healthy pup, to her mother she was nothing exceptional. She and the rest of her litter were quickly shunted off to a wet nurse, and the burden of their care was placed upon Igraine’s many consorts while the Giant Queen herself prepared for more warmongering.

    One figure from Nimue’s early days still stands out in her memory: her “father”, Duke Pellinore. Although the number of consorts Queen Igraine kept  made true parentage difficult to ascertain, Nimue bore a striking resemblance to Pellinore, and so he took it upon himself to raise her and another of her littermates as best he could.

    A few weeks later, one of her brothers disappeared.

    Nimue can barely remember him, thinking back. He was under the care of a different father. On the occasions they nested together, she noticed only that he was quiet. That was all. And then he was gone. When the trackers looked for him, they found only traces of mountain-wolf scent left behind where he had last been seen.

    A son of the queen, kidnapped by a pack of worthless rock-hoppers.

    His father was exiled for negligence.

    Things grew more intense for the remaining pups, after that. The Queen’s baleful eye had turned towards the mountains surrounding their valley, and the pups learned through their caretakers that the best way to impress her was to prove their strength in battle against the wolves that had spat in the face of their Court. Nimue, eager to impress her distant mother, threw herself into training. As weeks passed, then months, she transformed rapidly from a chubby potato into a wild, vicious youth.

    She acquitted herself well in her first battle — a territory dispute against one of their neighbors. It was sheer luck, panic perhaps — but she managed to hold one of her opponents underwater until they drowned. It was something she quickly became infamous for.

    Her father couldn’t be more proud.

    As Nimue made it to her second year, she grew still stronger and more cunning. Queen Igraine recognized her skill and allowed her a great deal of independence in how she took on the Court’s enemies. She was a terror on the battlefield, but it was her stealth and her unnatural affinity for water that struck true fear into the hearts of wolves — some feared to go near any body of water larger than a puddle, lest the Water Witch appear from within it and drag them to their graves. 

    But while Nimue shaped herself into the stuff of nightmares, the war against the rock-hopper wolves raged on with no sign of a clear victor. The warriors of the Murky Court were numerous and well-versed in battle, but the mountain wolves remained evasive, and their territory proved difficult for the swamp-dwellers to traverse. What was supposed to be swift and violent revenge became a years-long war of attrition.

    But Queen Igraine could not let it go.

    Nimue and her many siblings fought skirmish after skirmish, both against the mountain wolves and against the rebellious vassals that attempted again and again to escape Igraine’s bloody, unstable rule. Some died in those endless, exhausting battles. Some vanished, perhaps seeking a life better than the one they were born to.

    Nimue remained. She gained her mother’s respect and the fear and adoration of her peers. She mastered the art of violence. She sharpened her mind into a fang. She was the Queen’s rage lunging straight for her enemies’ throats.

    She was empty.

    It was during one of those endless, tedious rebellions that she realized it. Her mind went to another place, as it often did during these battles. She tore at wolves methodically until they stopped moving and then moved on to her next opponent. Her brethren screamed and died around her, but this didn’t trouble her much anymore.

    Time passed. She chased a rebel into a hollow, cut him down without a thought. But he had been protecting something. A warm and squirming thing. Abstractly, she knew what it was, but it didn’t stop her from reaching for it with blood-stained jaws.

    Then it squeaked in fear and it occurred to Nimue that she was about to kill a puppy for no reason at all.

    She left the hollow carrying the child; shoved it on some fleeing rebel maybe, she couldn’t quite remember. It didn’t matter, so long as it was alive and far away from her.

    Then she just walked away. 

OTHER