Syrena Kalihd

Syrena Kalihd
Syrena/X'rena
Gender	Female
Race	Miqo'te
Clan	Seeker of the Sun
Citizenship	Ul'dahn
Age	Unknown, between 19-22
Marital Status	Single
Occupation	Dancer
Orientation	Pansexual, Demisexual
Relatives (surviving)	X'kalihd Tia (Father) X'khel Tia (older brother)
Relatives (deceased)	X'inhara Jamihr (Mother) X'sorahn Nunh (twin brother)

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Basic Info

Likes ■ Improvised dance ■ Terrible puns, dirty humour ■ New experiences ■ Jewelry

Dislikes ■ Rain ■ Liars/Duplicity ■ People being judged for their appearance or wealth ■ Manipulative men

Other ■ Alignment: Chaotic Good ■ Vice(s): ■ Favorite Food: Cinnamon buns ■ Favorite Drink: Water. "Is there anything else?" ■ Favorite Color: Sunset orange

Appearance & Personality

Should one catch their first glimpse of Syrena while she's on-shift as one of the infamous Ul'dahn dancing girls, they might be struck by her beauty. There's a flirtatiousness to her glinting green-and-gold eyes which speaks of mischief on the horizon, and there's an impish quirk to those full lips; slightly parted as though their owner is perpetually on the brink of disclosing a juicy secret. Her cinnamon skin bears tan-lines here and there, and her long, wavy chestnut hair is sunkissed, picked through with copper and gold, and always looks casually mussed – as though she has just tumbled out of bed. Her form is slender, pleasingly toned, and sinfully curved; her hips in particular seem to draw the eye, a languidly magnetic sway present with every step. Her long, plumed tail almost seems to beckon one closer, and her lynx-tufted ears beg for whispered sweet-nothings...or perhaps a nibble or two.

Viewed objectively, Syrena is every bit the beautiful temptress her name might imply, a perfect example of the minxish exotic-desert-jewel sex-kitten fantasy marketed by the ones who organize the performances of the Ul'dahn dancing girls...

...and then she goes and ruins it all by opening her mouth.

Classless and crude, brightly exuberant, tomboyish and more likely to be found rolling in dirt than in silken sheets...although alluring at a glance, Syrena's appearance as a performer could not be further off the mark from the miqo'te behind the jewelled veil. Syrena is a plucky and fearless Seeker of the Sun with a heart as golden as her mismatched right eye ("I toldya, th'green one's s'posed t'be my lucky eye!").

When not dancing, Syrena draws the eye for an entirely different reason than her physical appearance: she is, quite simply put, a larger-than-life personality. Constantly in energetic motion, she never seems to walk anywhere and has a tendency to hop from foot to foot as though her electric excitement simply cannot be contained. Her attire when not on-duty is simple enough: loose-fitting pants (never ever ever dresses...though skirts may be worn on occasion) and shirts, designed more for function than form to keep comfortable in the Thanalan heat.

Perhaps the sole vestige of any personal femininity is her obsessive fixation with jewelry and accessories. She is perhaps more magpie than cat: her inn-room is a veritable nest of explosively disorganized sparklies and dance props (don't go in there, please, you'll never find your way out). She's never seen off-duty without her rings and necklaces and earrings, and of course the everpresent feather tucked into her hair. Also notable are her small, matching red gems: one upon her forehead and one pierced into her navel.

'Syrena' and 'shy' are two mutually exclusive concepts; the Seeker is proud to state she has never blushed in living memory. Warmly outgoing to the point of being obnoxious, the desert-rat of a miqo'te is prone to looping in strangers – or, as she might put it, 'new friends' – with the offer of shared food or a terribly cheesy joke; and of course, the fact that it's terribly cheesy is in her eyes what makes it so great! She's as free with her bright smiles as she is with her words, viewing herself as an open book and willing to talk about anything asked of her. Syrena looks beyond things such as physical appearances, social standing, and wealth, viewing these things as nothing more than insubstantial giftwrapping to be torn away to get at the present of a person beneath...though her willingness to welcome strangers with open arms has burned her in the past, as perhaps a little judgement based on outward appearances might be prudent. Still, she pooh-poohs the concept, pointing to her cadre of terrifying-looking Pearl Lane thug-and-vagrant friends as examples of people who are "brighter gold than th'gil you thought they were gonna nick off you" under the surface.

Syrena nurses a competitive streak, and can often be found betting on random occurrences or challenging people to silly little contests such as 'who can fit the most cinnamon buns in their mouth' or 'who can get to the cinnamon bun stall the fastest I'll race you threetwoonego haHA!'. Although gleeful and perhaps rather gloaty in victory (whether fair or ill-begotten), she doesn't seem to be a sore loser, preferring to stand by the teasing yet determined adage of "next time I'll get ya!" She is, however, quite hotheaded and prone to sudden dramatic flare-ups at the mention of a few very specific talking-points...and as one who definitely leaps before she looks, this too can land her in trouble. At the very least, her moods seem to be mercurial, shifting as quickly as the sands she once called her home back to her affable default. She forgives rapidly, but never forgets.

Skills and Abilities

Dance

Syrena can't recall when she started dancing; as far back as she can remember, she's identified as a dancer. Fireside dance was used in her tribe to celebrate just about anything: a good hunt, a new Nunh, a birth...and also to honour and pay respect to the dead. However, although dance was pervasive in her tribe's culture, even at a very young age Syrena stood out as one gifted at it beyond the abilities of her fellow tribesmates. She has an excellent grasp of motion and control of her body, and even when not officially 'dancing' there is a sense of visual poetry to her movements.

In addition to her natural proclivity towards dance, Syrena has an unmatched passion for her craft, which results in 'practice' doubling as hobby one might describe as a fanatical obsession. She is skilled in a technical sense and can use with panache and innovation various props such as gossamer veils, coinbelts, fans, swords, finger-cymbals, and (a personal favourite of hers) isis wings. Technical skill notwithstanding, her passion shines through in her dances; it is not uncommon for her to laugh as she dances, simply from the sheer glee she finds in the motions, and at this point her dances are equally as impressive with or without music and props...but although she's come a long way from her tribe's fireside dances, she still prefers (perhaps out of nostalgia) to dance before flames. She has – thankfully – never yet set any props aflame whilst doing so.

Natural talent, practice, and immense passion; these three components have combined to produce a prodigious dancer, one almost fearsome in her ability to draw and hold the eye.

Although she works as one of the Ul'dahn dancing girls, she views the rehearsed group routines with a casual disregard, feeling that they're not 'true' dancing, more in the line of pretty posing and cheap titillation – it's a job, and she does it well, but she's quick to dismiss it as soulless and misrepresentative of dance; "try an' come to one of the solo performances 'nstead, the ones where the dancer improvises...now tha's real dancing. Tha's art."

Medicine

Syrena is nominally skilled at nonmagical healing. While she would be utterly clueless given a White Mage's staff or a Scholar's book (her illiteracy adding to the mismatch with the latter), she can bandage wounds and re-set bones using physical methods.

She has some knowledge of herbs and poultices, but only so far as those which can be found out in the Sagolii desert (as such, not many).

Most notable, however, would be her knowledge of pressure points and her limited ability to temporarily paralyze specific parts of another miqo'te's body. Although she herself is unaware of the specifics, the practice entails forcing a small amount of her personal aether into another person's body at a pressure point, cutting off her target's aetherial flow from there onwards. She can withdraw it at will, returning function and feeling, but even if left alone function will return to the affected body part(s) within a short period of time – a few minutes, at most.

The technique is performed by hitting pressure points with rapid jabs – Syrena does this with two fingertips or occasionally a single knuckle, claiming that it must be done 'just so', and that a person with larger hands might need to use a single fingertip instead. Precision is of the essence, and so she is generally unable to perform the technique on targets outside her scope of experience (which is limited to miqo'te) due to their slightly differing physiology...not that this would stop her from trying and hoping she'd manage to find a pressure point anyway. It also does not work through metal armour, though cloth and leathers are fine.

Syrena uses this technique in a strictly medical fashion: as an anaesthetic and to prevent movement in response to pain-stimuli while stitching together a wound, or other such uses. She has been learning it since the age of seven, and claims that anyone with the inclination and dedication to study and practice it could learn to do it.

For more information, see Varma Kalai or Chi-blocking (or Vulcan nerve pinch at a stretch).

Scrappy Fighting

While utterly untrained in the arts of combat, Syrena is far from helpless. Light on her feet, creative, and perhaps slightly feral, the miqo'te does not hesitate to fight dirty should she find herself in danger...her favourites include (but are most definitely not limited to) sucker-punches, biting, jabbing her fingers in eyes, and vindictive knees-to-the-groin. She does also carry a kitchen knife from time to time, or a slim curved sword used as a dance prop...but these she would hesitate to use as she views them as purpose-objects, not weapons.

She could potentially turn to her aetherial flow blocking technique, but she has yet to use it for anything outside a capacity where it would be used to aid a healing process, and in a genuine fight she would be unlikely to think of using it.

Biography

Present

Rumours Some of these rumors are untrue or are greatly exaggerated. Please feel free to add your own rumors under PC! ◢ Common Rumours (Easily overheard) ■ ■ ■ ◢ Moderate Rumours (Moderately difficult to overhear) ■ ■ ■ ◢ Rare Rumours (Very difficult or rarely overheard) ■ ■ ■ ◢ PC Rumours (Rumours from the characters of other players) ■ ■ ■ ■

Relationships ♥ Romantic Interest ♥ Platonic Love ● Good Standing ● Poor Standing ♥ Name : Description

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Footnotes

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