Avis Ingram
 Avis Inkwood
| |
 "The world's on fall." | |
| Gender | Female |
| Race | Hyur |
| Clan | Midlander |
| Citizenship | Ul'dahn |
| Age | 25 |
| Patron Deity | Azeyma |
| Server | Balmung |
Basic Info
Dedicated diarist and arcanist Avis Inkwood is a curious, contemplative adventurer with a fondness for libraries, outrageous tavern storytelling and the sublime sea-winds of Limsa Lominsa.
History
The sickening sand storms that year had brought Avis to them, along with the plague – or so the Lady of the Inkwood family delighted in proclaiming disdainfully, draped out melodramatically along her favorite couch. This, however, never troubled the girl Avis, youngest of her siblings; on the contrary, she reveled in the extravagance of the myth-like retelling of her birth and in her burgeoning status as potential black sheep of one of the richest and most well-connected Hyur families in Ul’dah. She was reticent and rebellious from infancy, preferring the company of “flowery words” and her own imagination to numbers and lists, and, increasingly, the rowdy streets of the city to the carpeted corridors of her home.
In her adolescence and early adulthood, Avis took to mingling and developing close relationships with people from less privileged classes, more for a misguided taste of danger and a different world than any strong sense of empathy or social justice. In considering herself above her family’s elitism and narrow-mindedness, Avis, too, became arrogant. She was a constant source of exasperation to the rest of the Inkwoods, willfully displaying disinterest in trade and business, negligent as an accounts scribe, even failing abysmally during a brief stint as their shop manager when she wrote love poems to her new Highlander lover behind the counter while a thief, pockets full, whistled her way out.
Hawley was his name; he was resourceful, daring and in equal measure ardent and ironic in his affection for Avis, who was the same, matching him in thought for thought, word for word in the dissonance of their accents and speech. The Calamity hit Ul'dah hard, but Hawley saw it as his opportunity to finally ascend the social ladder and make a place for himself on the battleground of the vicious Ul’dahn marketplace, and was, occasionally, not above disreputable means to achieve his aims. He would have succeeded had he not begun playing for the wrong side, becoming entangled in the years-old rivalry between the Inkwoods and another trading giant; when things came to a head, the Inkwoods and their partners sent men to crush the competition. Literally. Hawley was found among the remains of his stall, quite broken in back and spirit, while his wealthy bosses reconvened with their enemies and brokered another deal in the coolness of their halls. Hawley’s companions understood the nature of the resistance they faced and bowed out quietly, packing themselves and Hawley back home – if a refugee camp could be considered home. Some months later, Avis received word of Hawley’s death in Little Ala Mhigo, and folded her returned, unopened letters away.
Only belatedly aware of the connection between their youngest daughter and the latest casualty in affairs of trade, and more annoyed than surprised by this, the Inkwoods prayed that the youngest daughter’s self-confinement mean that she knew her place at last. Of course, this ‘peace’ was short-lived. Within weeks Avis was back to roaming the streets of Ul’dah blithely, almost like her old self, but not quite - while a scathing allegorical polemic against the upper class began circulation among literate members of society. It was dismissed by some, critiqued for its clumsy flamboyance by others, and would not have made waves had its clearly caricaturized characters not borne a hilariously punishing resemblance to the members of the Inkwood family. Admittedly, Avis enjoyed the attention for a short while – in particular the sweet howls of mortification from her family members – but it eventually grew intolerable. At 24, Avis finally felt compelled to quit Ul’dah, and set off for Limsa Lominsa to forge a different life.
Personality
Avis has matured since the events in Ul'dah and her perspective of society is considerably grimmer, but she is still a great observer and lover of life - of sights, sounds, people. Her keen interest in stories - indeed, the larger, the better - is telling in her conversations. She tends to be candid in her remarks and incessant in her questionings once they begin; while insightful, these sometimes border on intrusiveness and tactlessness. She therefore swings between listening blissfully and dominating the table with the lurid detail which she dedicates to her own tales and recounts, but curiously enough never actually reveals much that is important about herself. Despite being calm and wry in demeanor, often ironic and incisive in her observations of people, Avis is lacking in self-awareness - her pride being her one great blind spot.
Clearly, Avis can be somewhat capricious. A romantic and an introvert at heart, Avis needs solitude and contemplation at intervals; her free-spirited nature means that even close friends have found her strangely pensive and detached at times. Conversely, she can be fully fixated on an ideal or cause or wildly devoted in love when it happens, and in fact quite enjoys the abandon of it.
Generally, Avis has good intentions. She is highly accepting of, if not embracing, difference and ambiguity. She can be fiercely intolerant of bigotry, however, and can be provoked to deep anger when injustice happens.
Affiliations
Maelstrom.
Other Notes
N.A.
