⇀ Description

• Height || 5'3
• Build || Slender
• Eyes || Pinky-purple
• Skin tone || Pale with blue undertones
• Hair color || Iridescent light blonde
• Hair style || Curled, and tied up with a bow
• Demeanor || Watchful
• Style || Practical, but minorly frilly.

It's hard to pinpoint Nomi's most distinguishing feature, because all of her is pretty strange.

Her light skin, bordering on ivory in color, is speckled with iridescently shimmering scales that glimmer with the same pinks, blues, and purples that shine in her pale-blonde hair. Horns rise out from the crown of her head, slightly notched protrusions that are the same mauve hue as her eyes, which have white, diamond-shaped pupils that carry a sharp sort of intelligence within them. Her ears, if you can call them that, have a fin-like appearence, with their color shifting from a bright aqua to duller, dustier pastels. Her third eye, which often remains closed on her forehead, opens when she's using her powers to reveal a blue iris. Her features are strong, with a wide forehead, a strong nose, and a triangular face that ends in a sharply pointed chin, and her lips are large, but lacking in a prominent bow. Her thin neck, which she often keeps mostly uncovered, has three slits across it in the form of gills, and her abdomen has similar marks that aid her in breathing underwater. They're a bit unsettling, to be honest.

Like her face, her forearms and legs are scaled, the patterning tapering off around her fingers and toes. She wears mostly moderate hues, preferring browns and neutral greys, though her favorite garment seems to be a frilly blue coat she wears out-and-about. It has a large number of pockets sewn along the inside seams, allowing her to keep a number of critical utensils on her at all times. Notebooks, pens, a magnifying glass and some of her fortune telling equipment - Nomi is already prepared for the basics of observation. Who knows when a clue might arise, or when she might need to jot down a critical detail? She's always on the lookout for a new mystery, or a new piece of insight to add to her collection.

Nomi carries herself confidently, with straight shoulders and an upright posture, and often seems like she's looking down her nose at the people around her. She's focused, critical, intent, and though she does like making jokes, she does so at the expense of others. She wants the people around her to know that she's better than them, because honestly, she's terrified that she isn't. The outside world is a scary, overwhelming place, and if Nomi lets herself falter for even a second, she's afraid the tide will sweep her up and consume her whole.

⇀ Important Notes

• Her hair contains pink and blue hues that change with the light - the same is true of her scales.

⇀ Moodboard

⇀ The Pearl Isle

Set on the edge of the Grand Medallion, the Pearl Isle - well... more of an archipelago, really - occupies the shimmering waters of the southern Rim Sea.

The Medallion is an enormous circular landmass that occupies the majority of the habitable mortal plane, while the Rim Sea is an endless body of water that borders it on all sides. The Medallion has a number of quirks due to its peculiar metaphysical geography, one of the most predominate being that reality works just a little bit differently the closer and closer one gets to the edge of the world. Circumstances near the center of the Medallion - which is in colloquial terms, called the Axle - are relatively normal. The technological level is at an early industrial era, where increased urbanization is beginning to warp much of the countryside and the benefits of the railroad transportation are being explored with much enthusiasm. Reality works much as one might expect it to, with the sun rising and setting in predictable patterns, gravity being constrained to a universal constant, and magic is a thing confined to legends, folk-tales, and carnival side-shows. That's not to say it doesn't exist, simply that the farther one gets to the center of the world, the less powerful it becomes... and the less people believe in it compared to 'reasonable' things such as mathmatics and the power of good old-fashioned steel.

In direct contrast, the edge of the Medallion - known usually as the 'Rim' - is completely bonkers. Travelling from civilization to civilization can almost feel like entering into new worlds, as each 'piece' of rim-world territory has such vastly different qualities. From zero-to-sixty degrees, for example, plants have souls and having a casual chat with a tree is just a normal facet of existance. Yeah, his name is Fred, it's cool, and the forest stretches into the ocean so the costal peoples row their boats through ancient oaks whose leaves drift through the water. Then you can go ten degrees farther along (think of it like measuring angles on a circle) and you're looking at pealescent beaches warmed by an eternal summer, which only lasts for about five degrees until you inexplicably reach frozen wasteland. At the edge of the world, logical biome placement doesn't really matter - and what's weirder is that it does matter closer to the center, so in the north you've got this strip of land that accepts it should be permafrost before devolving back into Wacky Shit, and in the south you've got wretched, inhospitable desert that in some places decided okay, it'd continue to the Rim, and in other places decided 'naw, I don't feel like it' and transforms into something else.

This is actually part of the reason why travel between the Axle and the Rim is so uncommon, and why people around the Axle maintain that magic isn't actually real and don't truly comprehend how batshit crazy life on the Rim is. To the average Axle citizen, the people on the Rim are weirdos who are stuck in the boonies, practicing odd traditions and believing in things that don't actually exist... which goes entirely unchallenged because of this relatively even circle of brutal territory that's hard as hell to cross. To the north is a portion of frost, to the south is desert, and thick ranges of mountains block the east and west of the axle from the rest of the Rim. More simply put - those in the Axle have zero inclination to go backpacking towards the Rim, which to them is full of nutjobs who think trees can talk, and no one in the Rim wants to go towards the center of the world because a.) it's a pain in the ass to travel and b.) once you get where you're going, you're confronted with people who are even more a pain in the ass to deal with. Also your magic doesn't work that well, which sucks.

Anyway. The Pearl Isle (again, more of an archipelago, but don't argue with the Pearldwellers about it) is in a chunk of Southern Rim Sea that's realtively cool with the idea of being tropical. Because of a unique quirk of the water there, which has a - you might have already guessed this - mother-of-pearl sheen, the people born on the Isle develop third eyes, have weird psychic powers and an odd, empathetic connections to each other. This means that life on the Pearl Isle is actually pretty... idyllic? Like, food is plentiful, you're not freezing to death, there are some awesome beaches to hang out on, and everyone around you is naturally wired to care about your feelings and emotions because of the water you've all been drinking since you were kids. There's some occasional interpersonal spats, sure, but that's mostly solved with a decent talking session, and most of the adults on the isle also double as counselors so if someone is being a dumbass, it'll probably be fixed in fairly short order. Creativity is encouraged on the Isle, life is predominately simple, there's no real concept of war and famine because again, tons of food, and are you really going to hit someone you're hard-wired to care about?

It's pretty likely no one would leave the Isle if it wasn't for the Call.

In a cruel twist of fate, there's this phenominom that happens to certain Pearldwellers, where a crushing sense of dread overwhelms them which they realize nothing they can achieve on the Isle will ever fix. It's like they're being 'called' by some cosmic force to do some mysterious thing, and they'll never be happy unless they go out and fulfill their purpose for existing. This means that said Pearldweller has to go haul their butts to the mainland and figure out what the hell is setting off the destiny bells in their head so that they can return home and go back to being, y'know. Happy.

There are a lot of potential explanations for this. Some think that there's a diety-like force who is assigning Pearldweller's missions, like a godly version of forcing one's children to go shopping for groceries. Others think this is a manifestation of Pearldweller's natural psychic powers - it's like they're getting a message from the water telling them that they gotta go fulfill their fate or something bad will happen. Some think it's a fulfilment of a legendary pact the Pearldwellers made with the land which allows them to be happy as long as some of them go out and accomplish these important tasks, and some people think that it's just a way to stop Pearldwellers from getting too mind-numbingly bored. Functionally, though, this means that the Pearl Isle isn't completely cut off from the rest of the world, because those that do manage to return - and mind you, there are plenty that don't - often bring back cool shit, cool stories, and most importantly, cool people which are necessary to vary up the genetic pool.

(This is not the only way new blood is introduced into the Isle, but it's a major source of it.)

Fulfilling the Call can happen in a lot of ways. Sometimes it's absurdly simple, like meeting someone for coffee, and sometimes it forces a Pearldweller to get involved in catacalysmic international politics. Because Pearldwellers psychic abilities are pretty hard-coded into their bodies due to routine consumption of their homeland's special water, they don't tend to dwindle as much as other forms of magic when they go towards the center of the world. This means that they're actually absurdly useful to have around, but most people don't actually accept that they're really psychic because again, people near the Axle don't think magic is real. Often, Pearldwellers who are trying to fulfill their Call find that even though they have these incredible abilities, they're entirely useless due to the Cassandra effect, and they often end up working for carnival sideshows because, haha, they have no idea how to deal with a world outside of the Isle. People have... bad motives? Not everyone... knows exactly what you're thinking? People... don't want to share resources evenly and love their fellow brethern? Crap! The outside world sucks!!

Tl;dr these idiot psychic babies should not be allowed to go outside but for some insatiably cruel reason some of them Gotta Leave Home or they'll go crazy.

⇀ A Detective's Child

To talk about Nomi, one must first talk about her parents.

She was born to Richard Becker and Amana of the Pearl Isle, a pair of people whose courtship was so unusual that they could quite easily be the focus of their own memoir. When Amana was in her youth, she felt the Call, and she traveled inwards towards the center of the world in pursuit of the purpose of her existence. However, she - like many of her kin - found adjusting to life outside her homeland to be very difficult, and since she was too proud to sell her services to a carnival to be labeled a 'laughable curiousity', she came upon hard times in a city-state known as Durmund. By chance, she encountered the senior Mister Becker - Richard's father - in the market while she was haggling for bread, and he recognized what she actually was and immediately took her into his employ as a psychic consultant in his textile business. This was a stroke of almost unbelievable fortune, as there are very, very few who actually understand what Pearldwellers are and what they can do... and if word got out that Amana's abilities were legit, things could get genuinely dangerous for her. To protect her, Mr. Becker had her pose as one of the maids in the household, and this was how she formed a friendship with Richard.

Richard and Amana both enjoyed puzzles in a casual intellectual capacity. Whenever they were together, they'd often swap riddles, and Richard would lend Amana detective novels that he acquired in town for her to read. Despite the differences in their social status - and despite social status mattering quite a lot in Durmund - Richard became very fond of Amana, though he made no romantic overtures to her out of respect for his general position of power over her. His feelings were requited by Amana, but before anything could be done about them, Richard and Amana found themselves the sole survivors of a mass murder.

It occurred during a holiday gathering, where multiple branches of the Becker family - along with a few related parties who had been invited to attend - came together to celebrate the winter solstice. In a series of tragic, brutal, and moreover mysterious killings, most of the Becker line was eliminated in a bloody and systematic fashion, and worst of all, the killer adeptly kept their identity secret. Only a few survived the massacre - Amana and Richard, Richard's older brother, a close childhood friend of Richard's named Lucas, and two of his cousins who Richard only vaguely knew. The resulting investigation pinned Richard as a prime suspect, despite his innocence and his complete denial that anyone in his family could have committed such an atrocity, and Amana found herself filling the role of the book characters she and Richard had bonded over.

Using her clairvoyance and her own deductive abilities, Amana began investigating the crime, as she had a solid enough alibi to be let go early in the proceedings. She ended up proving Richard's innocence, and - to her horror - concluded that the culprit was his dear friend Lucas, who afterwards confessed that the Becker family had lead to the ruin of his own through the machinations of Richard's grandfather, a man who'd betrayed his business partner... Lucas' grandfather. For years he'd been nursing that grudge, as the resulting descent into poverty had lead to his profoundly troubled upbringing. Even Amana could not say with certainty whether or not there had ever been any real friendship between Lucas and Richard since the very beginning.

This left Richard a broken man. Not only had his family been murdered, but one of the most important people in his life was the cause of it. As the gavel sounded on Lucas' sentence during the trial, Amana felt something dissolve in her spirit - that pull, that drive, that desire to find something in the outside world. She could only conclude that the purpose of her Call had been to fill the role of the detective in this case, and it was now time for her to return home.

She brought Richard with her. He had nothing left in Durmund, and he was so devastated by what the truth had been that he grew melancholy and weary of the world. The resulting years were hard for Richard, but those on the Pearl Isle accepted his presence, and he found himself slowly recovering on the shores of the world's end. Eventually, he and Amana were married, and the tragedy of his family slowly lost its powerful hold over him.

Instead, it became a story, one that Nomi was fascinated with as she grew.

When Richard Becker talked about what happened to his family to Nomi, he did it in the terms of a mystery novel. He presented the culprits to Nomi, the clues, and it became a game among them for her to try to solve it. He'd clarify when necessary, offering her the information he and Amana had at the time, and as Nomi grew, she came up with suggestion upon suggestion about the means, the motive, and the identity of the murderer. In all respects, this was an extremely macabre past-time, but somehow... it provided Richard with a sense of satisfaction. Talking about his family's deaths in these terms made it seem less like a real thing that happened, and in a strange way, it comforted him to hear possible solutions other than the one that had left him so miserable all those years before. He was particularly fond of her theory that one of Richard's cousins had actually been someone entirely different in disguise, but in the end, Nomi came upon the solution that was 'correct' - the one that pinned Lucas as the murderer with a decades old grudge overshadowing it all.

During this process, Nomi came to an interesting conclusion.

If Lucas Burmont had not been revealed as the culprit, then Richard Becker's life would have turned out completely differently. He would have never come to the Pearl Isle. He never would have married Amana - at least, it was likely that she would leave at some point, returning home as was customary for her people. Lucas' crimes meant that Nomi had a father she adored, so in her eyes, learning the truth had meant her father ultimately ended up happier. What would have been left for him in Durmund if he'd stayed? Picking up the pieces of a family business? A lifetime of suspicion where people never quite trusted him? A relationship with a best friend who had, quite possibly, been using him for his entire life? Nomi thought this sounded terrible. She loved her home, and thought it was only natural that it was the best place in the world... so to her, the truth wasn't only 'correct', it had lead to ultimate good.

She deeply internalized this mindset. Her mother had found fulfillment through the truth; her father had gained a place in the world. Even if it's painful, sometimes you need to do painful things to get eventual betterment, right? Hiding from the truth is just that - hiding. It's cowardice. And so Nomi became fascinated with the idea of a detective, someone who unveils the truth and fixes the world of the power of what is right.

⇀ Early Life

Other than being a complete weirdo obsessed with mysteries, Nomi had a pretty normal upbringing on the Pearl Isle.

She played with her sisters. She learned how to tie knots from her teachers. She gathered shells on the beach to make jewelry and she helped catch fish with her father, and the only true peculiarity that distinguished Nomi from her peers was her tendency to be a gigantic snoop. If you wanted to know something-about-somebody, you'd go talk to Nomi, because she had a habit of paying attention to literally everything. This was sometimes extremely useful, such as when a toddler wandered off and Nomi could track her footprints to where she'd fallen asleep against a tree, to extremely annoying, such as when Nomi caused a debacle by putting it together far too early that two of her friends liked each other, and of course Nomi believes in The Truth so she just blurted it out to the public embarrassment of both. Nomi made a mystery out of everything, which - combined with her natural Pearldweller empathy - meant that people... mostly liked Nomi? Like, you didn't really have to tell Nomi very much, she just... understood whatever her peers were feeling on a level far above average. In Peardweller society, this wasn't weird, this was pretty cool, and even though Nomi was a generally reserved person, this meant that everyone liked having her around (despite her frequently getting distracted from work to go play Detective.)

She did have a habit of being a bit restless, though. There were some books on the Isle, but not a lot, and Nomi really, really liked books. She liked riddles even more than that, but at a certain point she'd exhausted her islet's ability to offer her new challenges. Luckily, she could do a little bit of travelling, and she got good enough at sailing that her parents didn't mind her taking little jaunts to the next island over to go bother whoever felt like talking to her today. This meant that pretty much everyone knew Nomi, or at least knew of Nomi, because when you go around looking for mental challenges, you get moderately famous. This was actually a source of some entertainment, especially among the elders - people would specifically think of riddles or mysteries to try to stump Nomi.

It was kind of cute, in a way.

⇀ The Call

Despite Nomi's relative happiness, it was clear that, by the time she was a teenager, she was getting... bored. Because her father was an outsider, she had a connection to the world beyond her home that many other Pearldwellers simply didn't have. However, she totally accepted that life outside the Rim was kinda... not great, because the struggles her mother had undergone really did sink in. Nomi might be stubborn, sure, but she also really respected her parents, so she heeded their words of warning well. This meant that Nomi both wanted to go outside, but she also understood that outside was dangerous, so when the totally expected thing happened and Nomi received her Call... she thought the matter over with incredible severity.

She would have to put a mask on for the world, so it would not devour her as she explored.

Knowing that she'd have to be paranoid to keep herself safe, Nomi began to travel. She didn't know where to go to fulfill her Call, but she felt a deep certainty in the pit of her gut that, like her mother, it had to do with mysteries. Figuring that Durmund was at the very least an okay place to start, Nomi travelled there, and immediately began establishing herself as a private investigator. She got some pretty weird looks at first, because it was fairly obvious she wasn't from anywhere nearby, but she was so annoyingly persistent and also insanely good at her job that she's now attracted a decent client base. This kinda pisses the local police off a bit, because something feels off about Nomi, also she acts like an arrogant piece of garbage (which is... only half a facade to protect herself). Nomi doesn't really let on that she's an actual, bona-fide psychic, because either people wouldn't believe her, or they would believe her and then try to take advantage of her.

Now Nomi is running around the city of her father's birth, solving crimes and desperately hoping this will lead her to stumble across the reason for her Call. Despite herself, she's actually having quite a bit of fun - like, yes, it's super weird to be around people she doesn't share an empathetic link with, but if she treats it all like a game... it's fine. They're like the stories her father told her, or the puzzles the elders concoted for her.

To Nomi, the outside world isn't really real. She's playing the part of aloof detective, only there to harvest the truth she loves so much, and nothing more. At least, that's what she tells herself, as she seeks out clues and loses herself in the deductive process she loves.

⇀ Symbol

Eyes - for one observes with the eye, and to truly understand the Truth, one must observe it firsthand. Yet... Nomi is also a creature of lies and self-delusion, just as the eye can be tricked and misguided, signifying her intense devotion to her character.

⇀ Abilities

Like all of her people, Nomi's exposure to the water of the Pearl Isle has given her mystical psychic powers. She's very intuitive, often getting feelings or gut instincts about the history of places or the true nature of people, and by using a guiding mechanism such as tarot cards or reading runes, she can gain insight into the future. Unlike her mother, whose abilities were more focused around seeing into the past, Nomi's powers usually concern the future. Sometimes, she's frustrated about this, as there are plenty of times when she wishes she instead be told what happened instead of what's going to happen as that would be more traditionally useful for a detective. She's a creative woman though, and she actually finds a lot of fulfillment in being forced to take nonstandard leaps of logic based on what she knows is going to happen, even though sometimes she is jealous of people who can cheat.

⇀ Flaws

Nomi is so incredibly self-satisfied with her own abilities that smacking her becomes an almost irresistible temptation.

She's just so... full of herself. Her successes have made her arrogant, and she's so enamored with her own intelligence that she comes across as unrepentantly self-centered. Her youth has made her brash, and she doesn't seem to quite acknowledge that she is not infallible. She's daring, she's bold, but she's also prone to throwing herself into danger without really accepting that sometimes, her safety is more important than a clue. The only reason she hasn't been hurt yet is because she's also fantastically paranoid when observing her environment, and her precognitive abilities give some unique ways to avoid danger. As much as she claims to be careful and understanding of the outside world, she totally loses her head when it comes to mysteries, and she's willing to sacrifice far too much for her perfect solutions.

Part of Nomi's general, better-than-you bearing is honestly overcompensation. She hates feeling vulnerable, so she affects this aura of complete, unyielding competence in the hopes that it'll make other people take her seriously. She knows that people from the Rim have a reputation for being uncultured and superstitious, so she's incredibly defensive about being seen as lesser for her odd appearance. Any anxieties she may feel, she keeps hidden, which makes it hard to empathize with her. On the surface, she doesn't seem like a person whose ultimate desire is for people to be happy - she seems like a smug piece of shit who needs to get what's coming to her.

Most of all, Nomi is a natural liar. She puts up these fronts and facades to protect herself, which is ironic considering her fascination with the truth. But for Nomi, truth is not necessarily sincerity, and she has a lot to learn about the world outside her home.