'''Name:''' Nicodemus Morrows
'''Age:''' 52 (born 2660, Ophus 1)
'''Race:''' Passive
'''Place of Origin:''' Brunnhold
'''Occupation:''' Gardener and poisoner

!!!Backstory

Nick was born a pessimistic child, to overbearing parents. They loved Nick, as much as any parent loves a child but the weight of their expectation was heavy indeed. He was schooled from a young age, in music, language and the sciences. Etiquette was a constant necessity. Nick only rarely made missteps in this arena but when he did, he was immediately corrected with gentle hands and hard, embarrassed eyes. Nick's parents were perfectionists, products of the high-stakes political rigmarole they had both entered into. Nick began to suspect that his best efforts would never be enough. In reality, his parents simply did not understand that he needed to hear their praise, because they were proud of him. They were just terrible at expressing it. Nick no longer remembers their names.

When Nick turned nine, he began to hope that he might see some evidence that he had a field before his time at Brunnhold. His parents told him he would not but precociousness encouraged him to think otherwise. The fear kept him awake at night, turning over in his bed. He became sure that he was a passive. He did not tell anyone, afraid that speaking it might make it true. He tried to comfort himself by spending time in the gardens and reading about chemistry and obscure plants. He had always liked plants. He did not need to say anything to them, so there was no way he could say anything that was wrong.

When he was tested, he was surprised that despite his fears, learning he was a passive was worse than unexpected. He cried for hours, his perpetual restraint broken by the fact that he had been right. His parents were broken-hearted. He was lost to them, forever. Their final act of kindness to him was to orchestrate his employment as a servant with an acquaintance of theirs, a man who studied botany. They wanted their child to at least have access to something that had seemed to give him succour and hopefully a life without hard labour. Nick was never made aware of this arrangement, nor was he informed that his parents would occasionally seek news of his health. They retired from society shortly after Nick was tested. Their marriage produced no further children and the pair died within months of each other, just before Nick's twentieth birthday.

Nick's life was not a bad one. He took to his new work with the same resignation that he had felt in his childhood. The only difference was that now he knew there was no one to impress. Even his employer was not his kin, nor a man he felt any great loyalty to. He suddenly had a measure of intellectual and emotional freedom that he had always been denied, despite being a slave. He stole his master's books and read them in the passive dormitories, under candlelight, returning them every morning. His habitual blank expression, honed from years of behaving, made him look like a half-wit. His employer had never believed that Nick was capable of understanding any of the material in his notes or tomes and initially he was right. Nick had to steal a dictionary and an introduction to botany first. When he was fifteen, he found a book on poisonous plants. It appealed to him. He realised that many of the plants described were grown in the Brunnhold greenhouses. He managed to take on some hours working there, where he was taught how to handle such deadly creations out of necessity. He also learned a lot about growing strawberries, something he found to be quite rewarding.

One day, he decided he wanted to test his knowledge. He wasn't sure how but he was fairly sure he'd be able to think of something given enough time. After a month of pondering, inspiration struck. His employer entered his office and took a sip of the tea Nick had made for him and mentioned that he was facing the sack due to budget cuts. His boss, the Dean of Biology wasn't happy with spending so much money on plant biology but he was going to try very hard to find Nick a new job within Brunnhold that would suit his experiences. Nick's main experience, as far as the man knew, was making tea so Nick saw this to be a kindness. In thanks he poisoned the Dean. He always felt he could have done a better job of it, since everyone knew the man had been poisoned. Nick hadn't expected that the Vidatabrusca he had used would make him froth at the mouth and drop dead so quickly. After a few nights study, he realised he had mistaken milligrams for grams when he'd been making his extracts. He resolved to be less careless next time. No one ever suspected him because he did not work near the Dean and because he was supposed to be a slack-jawed half-wit. Nick had been practising looking stupider than a half-wit and it had paid off.

Becoming bored of Brunnhold in his twenties, Nick decided to leave it. He walked out one day, with his dormitory roomate to collect a package from the Stacks and never returned. He told his friend that he was going to take a leak behind a building and quietly walked off and away. He stole some clothes off a washing line and that was that. He was now a human. He knew a search would be conducted, so he hid in the one place he imagined no one would check, the sewers.

Unluckily for him, he was mugged that same evening anyway but since he didn't have any money, he was beaten. He did not enjoy this experience. He made a note of remembering the faces of those that had mugged him. Three weeks later, almost expiring from hunger and smelling like a dead horse, Nick found them and spiked their beer with Alioelander. Unlike in Brunnhold, Nick's actions were noticed in the Stacks. He gained employment in this way, with a wick from the Black Hand tribe. He married her later that month and they had several children. Her name was Gilli Sands, she was ten years older than him. She helped him hide from the seventen and provided him with a sewer-free life.

Nick remembers her fondly. She died of a gut wound two years ago, leaving Nick feeling quite confused. He had relied on her to tell him what to do.

In his confusion after Gilli's passing, his children all flown from the nest, Nick walked through the gates out of Brunnhold. He was immediately frisked and recognised as a passive. He wasn't pleased about it but there wasn't much he could do. He now works as a gardener at Brunnhold, slipping out letters and carefully packaged poisons to his children once a month. He has found some solace in the fact that he now has more access to dangerous plants than he ever did and everyone still thinks he's a half-wit. He's still available in a professional capacity to those in the know. Admittedly, most don't.

!!!Personality

Nick is used to listening to what people tell him do. He doesn't entirely enjoy being obedient but it's all he's known since he was a child. He was even obedient to his wife. Her word was gospel and no one else since has quite compared. She was at least nice to him, so he misses her terribly and often wishes he could be with her again. He is grieving less with the passage of time but he is still quieter than he was before. He speaks rarely but when he does, his speech is ponderous and sometimes a little vague. He perks up when discussing strawberries.

Nick has quite a rich internal life. While he does do what he's told, he also knows how to get around doing things he finds truly unpalatable and he knows how to find time for himself. He likes to spend quiet moments in the gardens, something which gives him great joy. Nick never gets angry, ever. He was never allowed to be angry when he was small, so he has replaced the emotion with protective, considered apathy. Instead of anger he tries to remove people from his life if they treat him poorly. He achieves this in a number of ways.

He doesn't entirely see poisoning people as a bad thing. His experiences have skewed his moral compass and he now feels that everyone is essentially as disposable as he was and still is. This is not to say that he kills everyone he meets or hates people. He likes people in an abstract way. Unfortunately he also thinks it is perfectly reasonable to sell items that kill and to protect himself with the means available to him. In a sense, this is the anger he never allows himself to show. He is the passive equivalent of a cone shell.


!!!Physical description

Nick is average height for a passive, which isn't particularly tall. Age is starting to bend him and his back now curves over slightly, from years working in the gardens. His eyes are a dull green, the colour of a eucalyptus leaf. His face is flat and often expressionless. His most striking feature is a strong chin, coupled with a straight nose. He might have been a handsome man, had his life been kinder to him. As it is, he has few laugh lines, confused-looking eyes and slate-grey hair. When he smiles, he looks quite gentle. When he doesn't he tends to look like he has a few cogs missing in the mechanics of his brain.

!!!Inventory
*One change of clothes
*Gloves for gardening
*Various powders for various things


!!!Skills
*Gardening
*Poisoning


!!!Goals
To grow the perfect strawberry. Possibly to one day leave Brunnhold and end his days quietly. Barring that he'd like to just end his days quietly.

He'd also like to create an undetectable poison.

Ello, lovey!

Just a couple things:

1) Children don't typically feel their fields developing before they begin to cast magic, so he wouldn't have really known he was a passive; it could have just been his paranoia and pessimism.

2) Escaping from Brunnhold is a bit more complicated than that. The guards do have descriptions and specs of all the passives, and they're generally sent out in pairs when they run errands; if one was missing they'd definitely conduct a search with a reward, which would be difficult for anyone to turn down. Nick would probably need some help if he wanted to blend in in the stacks, as it's not that big.

3) It seems odd that he doesn't have anger reactions. Maybe you could add a bit about how he doesn't get angry but he does get hurt feelings, or sad. At the moment, he seems kind of robotic.

That's all! See you on the other side of your edits!

Thnk you Jade! The field stuff was running off what I knew from Piran, I'll go edit it now so it makes more sense.

edited! Thanks again!

Thanks, love! Have fun!