Nayantai Ejinn
 Nayantai Ejinn
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| Gender | Female |
| Race | Au Ra |
| Clan | Xaela |
| Citizenship | Limsa Lominsan |
Basic Info
This strange, diminutive Au Ra girl barely reaches for a height of five fulms, with dark skin and darker scales typical of the Xaela tribes. Being tiny (she is) and clearly foreign (that too) are not what mark her as outwardly odd -- it's the fact that she's clearly averse to speaking aloud, even in passing to a friendly hello, instead relying on her expressive face and hands to convey a sort of joviality at odds with this affect usually associated with a crippling shyness. She makes eye contact and smiles easily enough at onlookers, though, with a round face framed by roughly-chopped, wine-colored hair, and a limbal-ring-glow about the eyes the color of jades.
History
Nayantai had an upbringing among the Ejinn tribe that was both typical in some ways, and exceptional in others. She was a vivacious child, downright precocious even, with a reputation for being underfoot and back-talking elders juuust to the point of getting in Serious Trouble(tm) for it. Her family were modest fishing folk, with an elder son and her, their only daughter. However, when she was all of eight years old, a surprise attack by Garleans razed much of their camp to the ground, something that was thought to be nigh impossible given the Ejinn vigilance in avoiding other, more warmongering tribes in their native steppes by traveling through rivers and lakes. But Othardian life is harsh, and where there had been tragedy they were forced to pick themselves back up and carry on -- Nayantai, tempered a bit by the sudden loss of her beloved father in the massacre, was selected as one of a handful of Ejinn children to study under the honored tribe Storyteller, a sort of shaman healer and lorekeeper of their kind. The old crone was vaunted but had a reputation for being harsh and demanding, and few imagined that the mouthy girl Naya would last more than a week or two. Stubbornly she clung to the training, however, taking the scraps of the old woman's mysticism as she saw fit to hand them out, grudgingly.
With her father gone, however, Naya's brother Vachirqa's demeanor had changed from a serious-minded, if stalwart youth into a controlling, angry young man who assumed control of their household in a slightly... flimsy interpretation of customs that gave him that role. In his darker moods, altercations often turned violent with their mother between them, bearing the brunt of her elder child's fury. Throughout this time, Nayantai poured herself into learning the songs that upheld the past, as the Storyteller called them, and the songs that would knit the bodies of the wounded with aether to heal them. She was still a little bit of a shit, quite frankly, and lessons among the six or so candidates to become the Storyteller's apprentice, there was a pretty ironclad belief that she would fail out of the process at any time.
But for weeks and months and even a year, she persisted, possibly out of spite.
Things at home got worse, as they have a way of doing when matters are kept quiet and secret. Vachirqa had, in his more unguarded moments of contempt, muttered a few strange comments about how he resented being stuck caring for his kin in their "dirty, backwater" lives, and Naya, being constantly berated to listen, listen to every word and breath I take or so help me I'll beat the scales off you! by her crotchety old mentor, immediately picked up on the shift -- these were the kinds of words outsiders used to put themselves above Xaela, after all, and it was not so much the Raen that would use those terms -- it would be Imperials.
Nayantai followed her older brother one night when the tribe stopped near a popular trading crossroads, and found him sharing drinks and jokes with young conscripts, and among them, a pure-blooded Imperial girl... a girl upon whom Vachirqa's eyes fell over and over again.
She confronted him the next night when he finally returned home, and in the ensuing enlargement he admitted he'd not only befriended the Garleans the year before, but had "earned" a high place in their ranks, that he would be escaping their life of scraping along like "lowly animals". Nayantai, torn loose of all sisterly love by his admission piled on months of running their house like a tyrant, openly accused him of betraying them to the attackers that had killed several of their kin, including father. He hadn't meant for that to happen, he said. It was one general trying to upstage another, to bring the Empire-resistant Othard tribes to heel with shows of force. Nayantai, blind with rage at his excuses and the pain he'd inflicted on their entire clan, raised a blade against him -- normally he would be impervious to the fury of someone so much smaller and weaker, but Naya had also gotten a handful of strange magic secrets in her time waiting on their ancient lorekeeper. Magic she used, then, to pull the waters out of the very river just beyond their tent and knock Vachirqa flat to the ground. With that, a small blade wielded by a small girl is infinitely more deadly.
The deed sent shockwaves through the Ejinn -- nobody had heard Vachirqa's terrible confessions except Naya, not even their mother had been present. The only thing that came to light during the judgement of the elders was that Vachirqa had been dishonorable in his duties to care for his widowed mother and unmarried sister by striking them and shirking his role as provider. For this, then, Naya's crime earned her an exile from the Ejinn, rather than execution.
For all of the seeming injustice, Nayantai was not completely ill-suited for a life traveling the steppes. Ejinn ways taught her how to hide when it was best to avoid a fight, and being on the cusp of becoming the next Storyteller -- for all this time, the old crone had liked her after all, imparting one last secret to her in the night before her banishment -- bestowed on her the ability to entertain an audience with her magic-infused songs, even if the lyrics were more of an exotic novelty to non-Xaela. She was woefully unprepared, however, for crossing into lands that were not controlled by the tribes, where slavers make deals with Imperials behind courteous smiles.
Nayantai and other vulnerable Domans, particularly un-worldly tribal Auri like herself, were chained and bound for lands unknown on a slaver's ship, but she wasn't going to go without a fight. The small amassing of power she'd discovered in her horrible lashing out at her brother had given Naya control over water, and the pirates were taking her directly into her preferred terrain. She almost succeeded, too, in causing enough chaos to free herself and some of her fellow slaves. Unfortunately, they were unarmed, and her strange powers to shape water required a constant focus through song. The backlash against this near-mutiny was unpleasant and best left un-described in polite company. She was left alive, though, as her powers were obviously magical and therefore all the more valuable. But the Captain himself made a few choice injuries to the girl's "witch's tongue" to ensure she would be unable to manage the same trick again any time soon.
With escape vanishing along with Othard's shore, Naya was faced with two fates arguably worse than death -- being sold to the highest bidder, or being kept as the slavers' personal "witch" for healing and their wretched entertainment. But the vessel was intercepted by the Maelstrom's privateers -- eager to snatch treasure out from under the empire in the last approved bastion of piracy in Eorzea.
Personality
Despite her weird misgivings about holding normal conversations, Naya carries herself as a fairly easy-going, friendly person who does not shy away from crowded places or lingering eye-contact -- her body language projects a certain amount of confidence, if nothing else. She's got a nigh-bottomless well of patience for the over-talkative folk who've had one too many drinks at the Drowning Wench, probably because these were the first Eorzeans to gravitate towards her. Being a refugee of no rank or status, she doesn't seem choosy about whose alliance or friendship she takes on, even keeping the company of Limsa "privateers", though she's quick to disappear when some of the nastier pirate crews' names are mentioned. There is still a bit of cultural adjustment going on, as the more perceptive will no doubt notice, as Naya furtively attempts to copy the table manners and style of dress of her Limsa peers and occasionally misses the mark. She's fascinated by the famous Eorzean horse-birds, and spends considerable time and effort treating her newly-acquired chocobo like it was a full-fledged member of the Spoken Races (including bringing it into places where custom dictates PLEASE MADAM LEAVE YOUR BIRD IN THE STABLE).
Affiliations
(TBD, feel free to contact me to make connections)
Rumors
Other Notes
She can speak (in a thick Xaela accent, the common tongue being her second language), and she will when the matter is forced, because otherwise her name would have to be, at least functionally, Hey You. She can also hold her breath underwater for fifteen minutes, just as the rumors of her clan claim, and has used this trick many a time to escape terrible danger -- it works every time! Except for the one time that it didn't.
