Nil Admirari: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Snake

Here is some relevant information on Nil, beyond the bare-bones wiki entry. Anybody at Bethelion would be aware of this information; Calvus also probably knows a chunk of it thanks to his bro.

In several reasonably brief chunks. Feel free to ignore everything after the first item and a half if you'd rather your character(s) just be utterly clueless about the kid.

PHYSICAL:

Nil is a tall, ectomorphic type (ie: period-equivalent to 6 feet of nerd); as Charles kindly noted, he is from Tyr. He has very scientifically tousled brown hair which, at least at Bethelion, altered subtly according to the better fashion trends.

He dresses nicely but avoids flamboyance as a rule. He does have a dress code oddity---glasses, which I doubt anybody in this world would tend to recognize as "glasses"---which is explained below.

And for basic social skills, he is obviously fluent in Cholaeic, and he speaks very nice Gaetani with all the proper inflections, although he has a mild accent.

RELEVANT WEAKNESS:

He was born with a degenerative eye disorder which left his vision severely impaired beginning at quite a young age, and he was functionally blind by the time he was taken in by the order.

After a long period of patchwork aids, Nil was finally introduced into the acquaintance of [insert mendicant Touccian here], who became rapidly obsessed with helping him.

After a year of various attempts, she produced what to us looks like a slightly eccentric pair of eyeglasses, and what to most people around him looks like some backwards sort of ritual head-dress/surgical tool/twin window into the demon dimensions.

They compensate almost fully for his natural disability; in some instances they are very powerful, and in others temperamental. Thus he is very good at estimating thread counts but prefers to avoid bright lights and certain patterns. (Doubtless Perdix’ wardrobe has given him occasional headaches.) They sadly do not give him much peripheral vision, so it is very easy to startle him.

It is not recommended that anybody else try them on. Somebody tried that many years ago at Bethelion, and there are rumors that medical attention was subsequently required.

BIOGRAPHICAL:

As a starter sidenote, his civilian name was very similar to “Nil�; more likely than not he was actually called “Nil admirari� every now and then in a teasing fashion, and his formal adoption of that name was a bit of an in-joke.

He was the last and somewhat neglected child in a gradually decomposing trade family, with which he keeps in dutiful but bloodless contact as they decline, Buddenbrooks style.

He was indeed (unless Matt objects) involved with Loratus Loriatus, but this relationship is widely assumed to be over. Consensus is that Loratus likely did the dumping, and that the breakup was inevitable. This was seen as being part of the general social fallout caused by the Perdix Incident. Nobody had the guts to ask Nil about it.

Other then Loratus, Nil was not much engaged with the other students in his class year, who were all very busy competing with each other. Initially he was a bit of a pet to the older students (Leonis Lenis let him carry his books; one could easily suspect L’il Nil had a crush), but eventually integrated on his own terms.

His relationship with Quartus Oriens, his parens, is widely considered to be a bit spooky and more than a little psychic, yet it is somehow easily forgotten in the absence of the elder party.

SILLY BITS:

He has an impressive collection of very tiny seashells that he keeps in a carved wooden box. He also has a conch shell somehow inherited through his family’s trading, which now suits a particular purpose.

He has published three collections of poetry, mostly stuff in complicated verse forms. One collection is a series of slightly esoteric tributes to the magical verbs, one is a collection of sonnets devoted to the different moods of the sun during the day, and the last is a series of comic poems which tastefully ridicules every single mage and apprentice at or associated with Bethelion during his time there (thus the limerick samples I put up).

These will show up in the Lexicon game eventually, since I would guess Perdix at least would own copies.

Understandably he gets along quite well with both Lemmites and Touccians. But he is very much a Cristoferian, and very much a Derlethian.

THINGS YOU DO NOT KNOW AND SHOULD FEEL FREE TO AVOID READING:

During his time on the Gaetani border the last couple of years, Nil familiarized a very small native snake (similar to a grass snake). Quartus Oriens is likely the only person who knows about this for the time being.

STUFF FOR KIP:

These are my guesses re Perdix.

SHOTIK: pleasant Derlethian conversations on theory, chatting at gatherings, and not much else. Perdix dominating and Nil editorializing.

ABAKOSHI: they went on nice little walks together on a semi-regular basis. She heard more about the Loratus relationship than most others, but would have to leave a lot of crumbs out to get there.

ACCIDENT: Nil was almost surreally civil around neo-Perdix (and even casual, cf limerick), but before this reaction had the time to either solidify or crack, he left town almost overnight. He did not leave Perdix a particular note, although they did find a tidy stack of all the books they’d loaned him outside their door. (or if they also had already left town, it arrived on their doorstep.)