Character 100-ish 035: Prince Noku
Feb. 13th, 2014 03:21 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
annarti.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
yrae
Not gonna lie, I had to look up who this was when I pulled his name out of my little box of names. YEAH.
I honestly didn't know what age to draw him at--Yan remembers him as a child, history remembers him in his 20s-30s, and he died in his 60s so that's what he'd think of himself as. I've gone with how history remembers him, mostly because the reference photo was perfect.
NAME Prince Noku
WHO IS THIS PERSON Third child of Yan, Raykin's first king and the guy who found the first yrae stone.
GENDER Male
AGE Dead; died age 63
BRIEF BIO Noku was born a prince, by which point Yan was pretty comfortable in his role as king, but his daughters were clearly the favourites. Noku was kind of ignored as a child. He was taught the same as his big sisters, about desert magic and respect for life and all that, but always more as facts than as compassionate parenting like his sisters had. Then Yan was killed when he was five, and suddenly Noku and his family were thrown out of Ni-Yana into the desert.
For a good decade and a half (iirc, I might be getting the timing wrong in this because for some reason I haven't got it in the Big Book of Stuff and can't be bothered looking it up) he stayed with his mother and sisters, living alone in the gorge of the Ra-Lin, working on bringing Yan back to life. They started small, trying to bring back little birds and lizards. Finally, when Noku was 20(-ish), they succeeded with a bird, but the cost was that their mother died.
Noku was furious. He refused to waste his life on someone who died fifteen years ago and never gave him any attention anyway, so he left. He tried to go back to Ni-Yana, but Qewir (the one who had killed Yan) still wouldn't take him back and threw him back into the desert. All Yan's sympathisers (there weren't many) had been tossed out not long after Noku and his family. Noku managed to find a few of them in the desert, living as they always had before civilisation happened, and settled down with them. The group slowly grew to become quite a substantial force, and none of them were particularly happy living in the desert. Noku, who had assumed the position of leader by this stage, led them back to Ni-Yana to demand acceptance. The biggest war in history-to-date happened, with Noku on the losing side. Qewir moved the city downstream to re-establish it as Ni-Qewira and rebuild, while Noku moved with his survivors back into the desert.
Defeated and lacking any hope of living with people again, Noku gave up on his revolution and instead built a family. He married and had half a dozen children, treating them with the love and attention he'd never had from his own father. He never looked up his sisters, and they never looked for him, either. Since the three of them all had desert magic, he knew the exact moment when both of them died. He half-expected Yan to come looking for him, but never heard that the tyrant had actually been resurrected. He still double-checked every bird silhouette he saw in the sky, though Yan never came. Just gave Noku extra evidence that his father didn't care about him.
Noku eventually died of a snake bite.
CHARACTER ...Many and varied? Idk I can't sum up three generations' worth of a character who changed as much as Noku did. As a child he was always trying his hardest to be noticed, to be useful and wanted. Then in his teens he began to realise it was actually Yan's fault for not paying him any attention, not his own, so he turned pretty cynical and bitter, reaching a head when his mother died trying to bring a bird back to life. Yan's lesson on the value of life stuck with him throughout but, unlike his sisters who took that lesson very literally, Noku actually interpreted it better than Yan did himself. He tried to better the lives of those he found, tried to gain acceptance and bring the community back together, but when he ultimately failed he didn't kill more people fighting a losing battle. As a father he was everything he wished Yan could have been: attentive, willing to teach, compassionate but firm, and above all, loving.
POINTS OF INTEREST
One of Yan's big regrets was that he never gave Noku enough attention. It's why he never sought Noku out when he was brought back, because he knew Noku would hate him for it.
Noku was a dead ringer for Yan, so nobody could ever see past the tyrant that was his father when they looked at him. Mighta helped if he'd looked more like Aliah.
I think I've said pretty much everything of interest. Noku was interesting :D I never quite realised this until I just pulled everything about him together like that.
I honestly didn't know what age to draw him at--Yan remembers him as a child, history remembers him in his 20s-30s, and he died in his 60s so that's what he'd think of himself as. I've gone with how history remembers him, mostly because the reference photo was perfect.
NAME Prince Noku
WHO IS THIS PERSON Third child of Yan, Raykin's first king and the guy who found the first yrae stone.
GENDER Male
AGE Dead; died age 63
BRIEF BIO Noku was born a prince, by which point Yan was pretty comfortable in his role as king, but his daughters were clearly the favourites. Noku was kind of ignored as a child. He was taught the same as his big sisters, about desert magic and respect for life and all that, but always more as facts than as compassionate parenting like his sisters had. Then Yan was killed when he was five, and suddenly Noku and his family were thrown out of Ni-Yana into the desert.
For a good decade and a half (iirc, I might be getting the timing wrong in this because for some reason I haven't got it in the Big Book of Stuff and can't be bothered looking it up) he stayed with his mother and sisters, living alone in the gorge of the Ra-Lin, working on bringing Yan back to life. They started small, trying to bring back little birds and lizards. Finally, when Noku was 20(-ish), they succeeded with a bird, but the cost was that their mother died.
Noku was furious. He refused to waste his life on someone who died fifteen years ago and never gave him any attention anyway, so he left. He tried to go back to Ni-Yana, but Qewir (the one who had killed Yan) still wouldn't take him back and threw him back into the desert. All Yan's sympathisers (there weren't many) had been tossed out not long after Noku and his family. Noku managed to find a few of them in the desert, living as they always had before civilisation happened, and settled down with them. The group slowly grew to become quite a substantial force, and none of them were particularly happy living in the desert. Noku, who had assumed the position of leader by this stage, led them back to Ni-Yana to demand acceptance. The biggest war in history-to-date happened, with Noku on the losing side. Qewir moved the city downstream to re-establish it as Ni-Qewira and rebuild, while Noku moved with his survivors back into the desert.
Defeated and lacking any hope of living with people again, Noku gave up on his revolution and instead built a family. He married and had half a dozen children, treating them with the love and attention he'd never had from his own father. He never looked up his sisters, and they never looked for him, either. Since the three of them all had desert magic, he knew the exact moment when both of them died. He half-expected Yan to come looking for him, but never heard that the tyrant had actually been resurrected. He still double-checked every bird silhouette he saw in the sky, though Yan never came. Just gave Noku extra evidence that his father didn't care about him.
Noku eventually died of a snake bite.
CHARACTER ...Many and varied? Idk I can't sum up three generations' worth of a character who changed as much as Noku did. As a child he was always trying his hardest to be noticed, to be useful and wanted. Then in his teens he began to realise it was actually Yan's fault for not paying him any attention, not his own, so he turned pretty cynical and bitter, reaching a head when his mother died trying to bring a bird back to life. Yan's lesson on the value of life stuck with him throughout but, unlike his sisters who took that lesson very literally, Noku actually interpreted it better than Yan did himself. He tried to better the lives of those he found, tried to gain acceptance and bring the community back together, but when he ultimately failed he didn't kill more people fighting a losing battle. As a father he was everything he wished Yan could have been: attentive, willing to teach, compassionate but firm, and above all, loving.
POINTS OF INTEREST
no subject
Date: 2014-02-13 10:40 am (UTC)YES, HE WAS. Will he get a spin-off of his own sometime? He sounds like spin-off novel material.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-15 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-13 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-15 03:52 am (UTC)It's been a while since I wrote anything in Raykin so you never know. I've certainly got them piling up >>