emily falke
The sea is a hole, is a gaping mouth, is a library...
...and when I was born my mother hid the sea in me...
...a terrible, restless, unfathomable sea...
...and all of its sleepless, undrowning saints.
| Ethnicity | Miqo'te ( Kokkish ) |
| Gender | Cis female |
| Orientation | Pan, feminine lean |
| Archetype | Sea-witch |
| Occupation | Tidewright; ship captain |
| Home | Falke townhouse, Limsa |
| Age | Twenty-nine |
Traits
Curious, bold, and forward; pleasantly polite and politely driven; deceptively powerful; dancing as a form of magic; grace as a form of destruction; was once 'deified' at the age of five; sweet childhood gig; little-god (ceremonially-speaking); but then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked she was nine; prone to mood shifts; can be surprisingly controlling; really thinks you'd be happier if you just did what she said; good at convincing herself that she’s doing the right thing, that it’s best this way; always eager for gossip; prefers 'feeling' magic over 'knowing' it; guild representative for the worshipful company of tidewright's; bureaucracy and a lot of weird stuff with ritual, ceremony, and the mysteries of the deep, dark sea; powerful family; patron of the arts and craftsmen; unorthodox; captain of the HMS Dandelion; ships as mobile wizard towers; catches things; keeps them; has proud mother / big sis energy, honestly, would show your report cards to everyone if she could; will fuss with your clothes and treat you like a lost puppy or doll if you let her; the endless sea and Sunless Sea in miqo'te form, probably
At a Glance
Horn of the Sea Shepherd. Her clothing? Distinctly Vylbrandian and upper-middle class. At least, until you get to that strange, horned headdress she wears: curved backwards; carved from dark whalebone; etched in sigils; threaded with gold, jingling bands; and faintly humming. If you’re knowledgeable in esoterics and occult societies, that’s the mark of a Tidewright.
Falke Family Brooch. She wears a brooch, either around her neck or pinned to her collar. It bears the stylised FD of the Falke Family of Dunpool with their motto etched around its outer border: ‘beyond the lighthouse, it’s all chaos.’
Scrimshander Hands. She has a hobby, that much is clear— nothing about her speaks tradesman, after all, and yet her fingers and hands are covered in numerous bandages, nicks, and scabs.
Chatelaine
The various accessories and accoutrements hanging from the chatelaine at her belt.
A finely-crafted eating knife; three talismans - one to Llymaelyn, two obscure; an aromatic pomander smelling of citrus and cloves; a small band that unfolds into a set of interlocking astronomical rings; a coinpurse embroidered by a child most likely; what looks to be a small, golden reliquary pendant, its glass display cloudy with age; a scribe for scrimshawing; a whittling knife; a book of hours; an overstuffed reticule
Story Hooks
& Dynamics
Loyal Hounds, Reliable Tools
She finds you desperate, broke, or broken. She takes you as you are and tidies you up, cleans the blood from your mouth. You are lost, rudderless, but that's okay - many of the things she finds are. She is infinitely kind and infinitely patient, it seems. She knows where to fit you in and how to give you purpose.
Scrimshawed Destiny
Emily gives you a piece of scrimshawed whalebone or walrus tusk as a boon. It hums with a strange kind of magic and bestows on you a subtle, elusive power. However, it also has a way of bringing you back to her in a hundred different ways. It must just be your imagination, though, and besides: it's too beautiful to trade away.
Class In Session
The teacher longs for the student, it's only natural. Maybe you're a novice that's only just started on their path of magic, or maybe it's never even been a plan of yours in the first place, but one day, you cross paths with her and she decides, either by deduction, divination, or plain, uncanny intuition, that you will learn magic, and she will guide you every step of the way.
Siren Snares
Vylbrandians might sneer at the rituals of their Tidewrights, but no one can argue that to watch them dance is anything but enchanting. Maybe it's why they fear it: for the way it can make you lose yourself; for the way it can make you weep. One night, in moonlit pond or on a starry ocean shore, you stumble on her working her magic, and something happens that changes everything.
Seaspit
You drowned. Or the last thing you remember was drowning, thrown from a vessel in a storm or pulled into a riptide or put there by someone who wanted you dead. One thing is sure, though: you definitely drowned. And so how is it that you wake to find yourself in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar home, far grander than the sea's gullet that claimed you?
An Artisan's Patron
Emily commissions you for for a piece of art - a portrait, a sculpture, whatever your trade. You arrive at her home at mid-day for tea. You blink and several hours have passed that you hardly remember, and a painting you never started is half-finished. Your hands are covered in watercolours or plaster and sore from use. The painting is in your style, but far more beautiful than you've ever made. It feels powerful.
In For A Penny
You require a favour or boon from her, a magical one that you cannot easily acquire yourself. In exchange, she will ask for a favour of you - one of unspecified date, time, or even details, but 'equal in magnitude.'
Albatross
The ship you work for or even captain needs a Tidewright to make that run. Maybe not technically, but legally-speaking: there are certain waterways forbidden to use without such an individual aboard the vessel. When the day comes, she arrives early and begins setting up her station at the centre of the main deck. Things always go strangely when she's aboard, though, and this time will be no different.
Worldbuilding
& Headcanon
(Abridged)
Kokkish Tribals of the Strait
Kokkish is a general term used by scholars to describe a large collection of miqo'te tribes - spread across islands in the Strait of Merlthor, up through the Yafaem Saltmoor, and far further along the White Maiden river - many of which share a language group, various cultural traditions, and faiths centred around sea-based gods.Emily's tribe in particular, the Tahn, belong to a particular archipelago off the southeastern coast of Vylbrand. There is little fondness between the Kokkish and Vylbrandians, though, who tend to view the islanders as pirates at best and sirens and witches at worst, thanks in no small part to their above-average aetherical affinity and their tendency to use magic in directing their small, maneuverable watercrafts to attack moored and anchored vessels at night.
The Worshipful Company of Tidewrights
An occupational guild native to Limsa Lominsa, the Worshipful Company of Tidewrights serves the Vylbrandian populace by licencing and regulating specialised arcanists (known as Tidewrights) who provide a myriad of solutions to seafaring ills: wave-cutters, wind-shapers, seer-like navigators, and otherwise. Their contributions can be so valuable, in fact, that many of La Noscea's largest shipping guilds will rarely send a vessel out without a Tidewright aboard to soothe that greatest foe of any sailor: the sea.With a reputation for being clannish and insular, outsiders have drawn many parallels with it to a kind of 'maritime knighthood,' with most of the guild's members being lifted from the many families that hold ancestral ties to the guild, such as the Falke's, and suffused with an endlessly strange brand of pageantry: oaths, rites, traditions, chanting, and dancing, most of which are regarded as eccentric, superstitious, and ritualistic by many of the other more modern and secular guilds. They even host their own personal pantheon that (largely to assuage the mob in older times) is still subordinate to Llymlaen, if not the rest of the Twelve.Beyond their smaller chapter houses in many of Vylbrand's ports, the Tidewrights' ancestral home is the Drowned Stacks: a sprawling, members-only library carved out of a coral grotto a few miles up the coastline north of Limsa Lominsa. All that humidity must be terrible for the books, you say? That’s probably one of the reasons it was chosen. Just like artists, sorcerers – real sorcerers – love to show off. It’s a statement: we own the ocean; it doesn’t touch what we don’t want it to.
Lexicon
In a worldbuilding sense, I will occasionally use invented words or words I've somewhat altered the meaning of to suit the character or setting. I've provided a non-exhaustive, work-in-progress list of some of these:
| Goodman / Goodwife | Used in polite, formal settings as the default form of address for an individual, regardless of marital status, who is neither a lord, knight, or classified under some other social caste's address. |
| Fellow | Gender-neutral; reserved for scholars, academics, and skilled tradesmen belonging either to Emily's guild or one she's determined is closely-related to it. |
| Master / Mistress | Address for skilled craftsmen, teachers, or ranking guild representatives. |
| Sir / Ser | Gender-neutral, interchangeable; reserved for those belonging to martial-equestrian social classes relevant to their culture (chevalier, samurai, sipahi); does not use 'dame.' |
| Honourable Miss | Reserved for the female heirs of lower nobility, or for any woman belonging to a prominent family (mercantile dynasties, guild influencers and organisers, naval officers, et cetera). Will often be shortened to 'Miss' in more informal settings (ex. Miss Emily, Miss Falke). |
things i'm about
brainstorming & gushing about character stuff together
horror, ritual, horrific rituals, characters that want to be good but aren't
headcanon and worldbuilding
maturity, kindness, and enthusiasm
being 23+ irl preferred; i don't care what your character's age is, but it might understandably limit the ways emily interacts with you depending on that age
please, no
ooc capitalists/libertarians, fascists (this includes being pro-Israel or pro any current government really), misogynists
ooc/ic transphobes (there's just no ic basis for this, so one probably implies the other)
acting like solution 9 and other sci-fi or modern tech is commonplace and normal; it ruins this character's vibe
kinda goes for glams, too
leaning too much into the msq (i find it boring for rp)
miscellany
i have a few alts, and so although not necessary, i like adding people to discord if we vibe; it's just easier to get in contact with me!
sometimes i will eschew words like 'try' and 'attempt' because i think it's linguistically clunky; if i do this, i'm not seizing narrative authority from you, just explain what actually happens in your next post and i'll roll with it
be nice to me, it's the law
