Qiqyat
Ruhn
"How terribly strange it is ... to be anything at all."
Vignette
The witch's apprentice wakes in the predawn darkness to an eerie silence. He knows instinctually that his teacher is gone, but not to where. Since he was a child, his days have been meticulously planned out for him -- fetch this, scribe that, pluck and sing and thread -- and then suddenly, without warning, there is only time.For three days, he skulks aimlessly through the house: through her workshop with its shelves of cloudy tinctures and extracts and elixers, its half-finished poppets, its spells woven into needle-and-thread; through her Chamber of Reflection where the shadows cling to you longer than natural; through her library and its half-decaying bookshelves and dry-rot where he spends most of his time doing what he's always wanted to: reading.Eventually, though, the pantry's stocks begin to dwindle and he must venture into the great, wild woods around their home to forage for food. This is unlike her, he knows. She would have informed him, or left a note if she was in a hurry, and yet the days stretch on carrying no sign of her and with each one an uneasy restlessness grows.After the eleventh day, he gathers his supplies for his journey: the grimoires he knows, a few he does not but has always wanted to know; the staff he and his teacher had fashioned together for himself and etched with subtle enchantments; his thick, roughly-fashioned, lovingly-worn robes and wide-brimmed, pointed hat to keep the weather at bay and mark him a sage; and whatever else he can fit on his person. He locks the door, first with key and then with whispers and commands, and steps out onto the old road travelled only by two sets of feet for years, wondering as he does, if either of those sets will ever make it back again.
Qiqyat Ruhn
The Horsefly; Curse-Arm of Ada the Gilded Guest
| Gender | cis male |
| Age | young adult |
| Ethnicity | kokkish miqo'te |
| Sexuality | femme pref, polyam |
| Profession | wandering witchling |
| Background | ex-apprentice (blood tax) |
At a Glance
See the Horsefly as he is: small; always stooped and skulking, always scurrying, rarely still; big fluffy tail; so big, much fluff; a crooked nose, broken some ten years ago, never set back quite right; dirt always under his uneven nails; hands worked raw into the kind of rough one gets from living two, maybe three times the years he’s actually been on the earth; pale hair and gold eyes; fluffy hair and owlish eyes; seldom-blinking; dressed in woodland rags; a ratty shawl of fox fur over one shoulder; an old, pointed shepherd’s hat, frumpy and threadbare, capstoned in gold, etched with sigils to mark him a sage of the world; a couple whittling knives stuffed into his belt; pouches upon satchels upon bags, stitched by his own hands; a blackthorn shillelagh hung from a strip of rawhide on one side of his hip; and a poppet tacked to the other with a needle made of bone stuck in its shoulder; hollow yet heavy as lead, and is the needle humming?A backpack that looks precariously swollen and oversized, fitted with: a bedroll; a lantern; an extra pair of boots; a simple, iron, tube-shaped container (one more on his right hip); a scroll case (two more on his right hip, next to the iron container); a book (strapped-in thrice, plus another book fitted into a holster under his left arm); a long waist-pouch framing his left hip; a chatelaine of keys, talismans, and various smaller, specialised tools and measuring devices hanging from his neck; a specialised inkpot with a base that can be clipped onto the hardcover of a book for a mobile, sturdy surface.
Personality & Themes
A bumbling, troublesome, and long-unsupervised apprentice; obsessed with weird creatures and finding every scrap of magic he can find; means well but doesn’t always understand property; prolific scavenger, even from the living; might steal your spellbook the moment you look away; “legitimate salvage”; sprites often gravitate towards and orbit ponderously around him; play pranks on him; and others; magic as folklore; as mythical and mystical; as a softer, more intuitive system that, yeah, 'just works'.Shy, dreadfully shy; but too curious to leave well enough alone; dangerously earnest; soft-hearted and helpful; more bonobo than chimpanzee, tbh; affection as a way to reduce stress; thoughtless hand-holder; natural-born follower and would like you to help him with that; bit of a pushover; just point him somewhere, tell him to fetch; or give him a puzzle to work out; he'll try not to trip over his own feet; eager to impress; wrap a blue ribbon around his head; a sense of wonder and melancholy in equal measure; a quiet yearning to belong anywhere and a loud certainty that he doesn't.
Wheelhouse
Rudimentary grasp on an eclectic range of arcane knowledge such as: shapeshifting (cats, mostly); minor illusion and enchantment; pyrokinesis (better at manipulating than manifesting); brief shockwaves; aether vampirism; relocation (short distances); creating small hedge-constructs such as poppets and 'bramble-troops'; able to travel vast distances using an amulet his teacher made, but has no control over it and so winds up in random places nearby (relative) wherever she placed her 'aetherial anchors'. Otherwise, most of his magic takes the form of rituals than can take several minutes, hours, or even days. Herbalism & folk medicine; foraging; animal-creature husbandry; hiding; fetish-crafting; trail cooking; whittling; camping.
Following the Fool's Flame
A mote of sprite-fire drifts through the air - maybe no one told you that you aren't supposed to follow them, or maybe this one just seems especially playful and insistent, but either way, you let it lead you through the trees to a glade - to the plinths that the boy is reading on, or reading about.
Zzzt
You’re minding your own business when you hear the static discharge and thunderclap of spatial relocation magic. You investigate and find a miqo’te standing in your living room and scratching his head while muttering something like: “Huh. More aetherial drift? Teacher needs to be better about routinely calibrating her anchors…”
Creature Seeker
You're something monstrous (voidsent, yokai, even headcanon'd things). You’re used to people fleeing at the sight of you, so why is this twerp… running directly towards you… with journal-and-quill in hand, already sputtering out half a dozen questions and staring at you all misty-eyed like you’re a celebrity?
Creature Keeper
A fiendish beast has started wandering too close to town, and now it’s gone and ate a local’s goat. Either you’ve been tasked with dealing with the thing, or you end up woefully staring it down by coincidence when— “Behave!” You hear and see a small miqo’te dragging the beast to heel by… a leash?
Spirited Away
You’ve finally caught up to him, but what’s this? That rustling of wind and dim glow? He’s in the middle of an incantation, better grab him now. “No wait, don’t—” he starts to warn, but too late you grab him and… you’re both suddenly in a very different place.
I Am an Island
You'd heard this stretch of the wild was haunted, and after three days of eerie sights and sounds just beyond the road, maybe you're starting to believe it. At least until a miqo'te fumbles his little string of illusions and cantrips and ends up revealing himself... as something entirely unthreatening, and probably more frightened than you.
Near-Death Experiences
Was it venom or bad mushrooms or a mean, bloody wound? Either way, you were going to die today, except fate had other plans for you, and as your vision begins to turn bleary, you notice a small, unassuming figure crouching next to you. "Not today," he says, as you descend into darkness. You wake up somewhere else, in his care.
A Literal Stray Cat
You find a cat and decide to take it home. Maybe you have it for a few days or a few weeks, but one evening you find not a cat, but a catboy rummaging through your pantry. What then?
The Charmed Diaspora of the Kokkish
Exiles, Conversos, and the Kokkish Heartland
“Solomon? That short for Sau’li Moht or something?”
Adalwolf, Emily, Doru, Solomon, Tabitha, Qiqyat. From the Arlwich Highlands in the western foothills of Coerthas to the White Maiden shoreline of the Twelveswood, from the eastern Vylbrandian fishing settlement of Dunpool to the Sharlayan island-colony of Tuhl, the Kokkish ethnic group presents a persistent challenge to ethnographers and anthropologists seeking cultural definition, primarily due to their wide geographic dispersal and an above-average tendency towards cultural assimilation: Kokkish populations frequently adopt local naming conventions in place of their ancestral lexicon, and their traditional practices are often embedded – intentionally or unintentionally – within the dominant cultural frameworks of their host regions.Recent academic consensus, however, has begun tracing their likely point of origin to an archipelago within the Strait of Merlthor. There, the extant island tribes preserve what are regarded as the most unadulterated forms of Kokkish language, ritual practice, culinary tradition, and religious observance – forms notably absent or significantly diluted among their Vylbrandian counterparts. Likewise, the caldera-like sea geography separating the islands of the archipelago is frequently cited as a contributing factor in their early exodus, particularly up through the western riverine corridors of Aldenard: ancient volcanic activity had most likely fragmented the island communities and necessitated their early migrations and subsequent integrations.
Metaphysical Ecstasy & the Kokkish Thrill
“It’s in the blood. Matters not for all the makeup and silk, the polished boots or knock-off knight-spurs: they’ll never unknot the wild from their souls.”
Commonly referred to semi-academically as the ‘Kokkish Thrill,’ the most obvious physiological difference that separates the Kokkish from Keepers and Seekers are their intense relationships with aether, which can produce an increased sense of euphoria comparable to hours of spiritual ecstasy or even moderate doses of opium – and, like opium, it has been shown to be addictive, and thus ethically-inhibiting. Naturally, this has informed several aspects of Kokkish culture, most notably their religious sectors, which incorporate vast pantheons of spirits and extensive occult, aethero-arcane rituals that often utilise mythopoetic-charged summoning practices.
Marital Practices & Black-hearted Lovers
“[...] she tried to crawl inside him as gentle as falling snow. Love can have its own ways of biting, though, and he still has the scars left by her eyes.”
Most Kokkish communities practice some form of Tesharic clan-laws. Taken from the Ilaat root teshar, meaning “to knot or braid,” it refers to a set of hierarchical polyconjugal marital practices — a genderless form of polygamy or polyandry whose hierarchical rules concern themselves chiefly with the question of inheritance as a compromise to the predominantly and legislatively monogamous cultures they often find themselves integrated in. As such, there is often little restriction or care towards affection, so long as the core estate, holdings, land, and/or property do not come under threat because of it. Generally-speaking, the one who inherits will be the firstborn of the parent agreed upon, generally between the first and second union-ceremony, and formalised on the third (and final) one. It is rarely contentious who that will be, as who has the largest holding, prestige, or resources is often self-evident.This laissez-faire, almost practical mentality towards love would come as some surprise to many outsiders that have found themselves on the receiving end of Kokkish affection, however, which is markedly far more intense, emotionally-charged, and… toxic than what is considered modern and popularly-practiced among the city-states. It is no accident that the words “love” and “black” are cognates in many Ilaat dialects, as it often tends to sweep through them with an overwhelming and addictive force that has had some scholars suggest a possible link between it and their aetherial responses. Furthermore, there is no end to myths and stories of black-hearted lovers as cultural heroes, humiliating and destroying their love rivals, kidnapping the objects of their affection, and defying the gods to cataclysmic results in the name of their ardour.There’s the sadness, too, of course: at the end of evenings – when all their friends depart, when the project comes to a close, when the silence crowds in – sadness is what remains. As if, after everything else is brushed away, that’s what comes natural to them. Sadness, longing, and obsession. Children of nowhere who never know how to leave well enough alone. Some say they’re cursed.
Gender & A Magus’ Subtle Puberty
Fully-clothed in androgynous attire and style, it would be hard to distinguish between pure Kokkish male and female adults due to the low range of visual secondary sex characteristics that present itself during puberty. Certainly, females experience a widening of hips and enlargement of breast tissue, but beyond this gendered signs are modest, easily overlooked, and not exclusive to one or the other. Instead, their body focuses far more on internal mechanisms, with special attention given to an abnormally high metabolism to support what seems to be its central component: maturing the exceedingly abundant number of aetherial glands throughout their body. Due to this, along with one’s usual ‘catastrophic’ range of emotions during this tender stage in one’s life, Kokkish youths often have to deal with and learn how to control a rapidly developing, abnormally high, and often runaway capacity for sorcery.
Likes
brainstorming & gushing about character stuff together
writing pc's into each other's backstories
horror, ritual, occult, ten tonnes of Chekhovian heart, regret, nostalgia, and stories that hurt
headcanon and worldbuilding
being 23+ irl strongly preferred; i don't care what your character's age is, but it might understandably change the ways mine interacts with yours
Dislikes
transphobes, misogynists, fascists, capitalists/libertarians, anti-Palestinians, all that ooc yucky stuff you get the idea
leaning too much into the msq (i find it boring for rp)
telling me what i can and cannot rp; you like what you see or you don't
Miscellany
i have a few alts so i love adding people to discord if we vibe; makes it easier to get in contact with me!
sometimes i will eschew words like 'try' and 'attempt' because i think it's linguistically clunky; assume everything is an attempt
yeah, he probably would listen to neutral milk hotel if it existed in eorzea
be nice to me, it's the law