In the last post we got to meet Adren. Today’s post will include the other two characters I made pictures for.
Nadin
What Nadin wants most in the world is as follows:
- For his mother to be well (she’s currently suffering a rather awful disease that has affected both mind and body)
- Live up to his mother’s expectations and, by extension, the responsibilities he has being a member of his father’s family.
Nadin is definitely more naive than will be safe for him. He’s willing to give people a certain amount of trust up front, but he does at least have enough common sense to require people to earn his trust after that point. Even still, this guy is just adorkable in so many ways.
Confidence is not his strength. He isn’t ever really sure if he is capable enough to meet his goals, or even at least brush by them. He knows that he doesn’t know much, and he knows that there are a lot of things he isn’t yet able to do, and he lets that knowledge get in the way of him seeing just how much he does know and how much he can do, even as he is more willing to see past the faults of others.
Abilities
Due to having some fairy blood on his father’s side, Nadin can see through illusion (like Adren’s invisibility), and he can also see and do magic. Seeing through illusion is effortless on his part, but what’s really going on looks a little wavery so, even if he doesn’t know what the illusion is, he knows it’s there. Seeing and doing magic, on the other hand, depends mainly on how well he trusts his ability in those areas. Unfortunately, this is also where his chronic lack of confidence comes down most heavily, and so his already mediocre magic ability becomes spotty at best.
Nadin’s day job (figuratively speaking, as he mostly works nights) is as a mechanic for Lord Watorej, who has far more motorized carts than is good for him. As it turns out, Nadin is pretty good at this, and it’s one area in which he’s actually confident in himself and his abilities. Which is good, because his mother is bedridden by now, and his mechanic work is their only source of income.
When it comes to languages and literacy, Nadin can read, write, speak, and understand the same two human languages that Adren does, although he has a better accent with one than she does.
Fun Facts
- Nadin generally uses too many words. For everything. Which means he is also the one to go to if you’re looking for sugar coating of things, or just confusion. He can do confusion, too.
- Lord Watorej has a tendency of driving too fast and damaging his motorized cart as a result. Since Nadin and the other mechanics got frustrated with having to constantly fix all these dings and scratches and replace missing parts, Nadin figured out how to limit the capacity of the motors so that the lord would only ever be able to drive at a safe speed. But not so much slower than before that he would notice too easily that anything had happened.
- Nadin and Adren meet entirely by accident. She hides in a barn next to his house and makes a ladder invisible. He, naturally, can see through the invisibility, and goes up the ladder. She freaks out (and understandably so), Nadin gets thrown against a wall, and Adren takes off. I’d say that’s a wonderful start to a strong friendship, wouldn’t you? :P
Rina (who doesn’t really come to the forefront until book 4, but she’s too cool not to include)
What Rina wants most in the world is
- The end (whether figuratively or literally) of all who she implicates in the suffering and early death of her mother.
- For everyone she cares about to have the good lives they deserve.
Rina is a very hard person to get to know. This is partially due to occasional mental problems, but also due to the fact that she doesn’t let people in easily. Which includes the author, apparently, as I’m still trying to figure out why she does the things she does. One that’s quite clear is that she values effective action quite a bit, and will go to great lengths to get what she wants (how great? Well, borderline evil. Maybe entirely evil. It’s hard to tell. That and I keep not being able to tell if she’s a good guy or a bad guy).
Another thing that’s clear: She has a certain confidence and poise that’s absent in both Adren and Nadin. And trust me. It’ll show.
Abilities
Rina has some healing abilities. She can soothe pain and promote healing with a touch, and she can calm the mind with song, so long as that mind is not her own. But don’t expect anything miraculous. Just a more comfortable, less complicated, and somewhat quicker healing process. Unlike her ability to calm the mind, her abilities with physical healing extend to her own body, as this is how she normally heals from wounds or sickness.
She is also excellent at acting. I don’t mean the theatre variety. She is unnervingly effective at putting on a consistent act such that people see her exactly the way she wants them to see her, and such that they don’t see what she doesn’t want them to know.
When she was little, she loved to dance. It’s been a long time since she last did anything even remotely like that, but I have the feeling that it’ll come back to her quite naturally when she has another chance. Which she will, seeing as I have important story reasons for this being a thing that will happen.
Fun Facts
- Rina is quite eloquent when she wants to be. I wrote a monologue for her in first person and was struck by how beautiful her use of language was.
- Her mental problems involve occasional spontaneous (and temporary) amnesia and/or breaks with reality. Which I guess isn’t really “fun” in the strictest sense. Heh.
A Couple of Notes on All Three Characters
First, I put a bunch of little details about the story and characters into the creation of all of these avatars. The backgrounds are important. What they’re wearing is important. The expressions they have are important. All three of those in combination are important. This is a thing I do, and in my stories, too, not just in side materials. There are lots of little itty-bitty things that I put in on purpose that, if you find them, could be anything from a fun little easter egg to a paradigm-shifting realization about the series as a whole. Trust me, if you like looking for this kind of stuff, you won’t be disappointed.
Second, in the vein of things being important, you may have noticed that Nadin’s the only character in this lineup that’s brown. Does that mean he’s from some other ethnicity or country or continent or whatever? Is it because he’s part fairy? I could let you speculate, but I figured that this detail was important enough for me to make explicit: Nadin’s colouring is normal for humans in his part of the world. It’s Adren and Rina who should be standing out. Not him.
:D
In the Comments
This concludes the avatars and descriptions of characters in the White Changeling series. Do you have any theories about the story or how these characters might interact? Is there anything about them you’d like to know?
