Merwen is delightful and sweet.

However, her canon is not so delightful and sweet, and involves warcrimes, torture, attempted genocide, and suicide. If you don't want any of this to come up ICly, that's cool, let me know.

Alternately, if you want my permission about something, ask me here too.

Player Information

Name: Jessie
Age: 37
Contact details: sunnjessie @ gmail (dot) com, zerothlaw
Other characters: None

Character Information

Name: Merwen the Impatient One
Canon: A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
Canon Point: About a year past the end of the book
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: n/a
Age: 40

World Information:
Shora and Valedon are twin worlds, settled millennia ago by a great spacefaring human empire that settled and terraformed many worlds before destroying themselves (and quite a few planets) in a war that no one alive knows the reason for. A robotic overlord called the Patriarch now rules from humanity's homeworld, called Torr in this day and age, periodically sending humanoid robots to keep tabs on the colonies, as no one but robots can survive the hundreds of years of spaceflight it takes to cross interstellar distances. Valedon is a patriarchal, capitalist, and industrial world, rich in mineral wealth, but the moon, Shora, has been isolated and ignored for at least a millennium, until in the last thirtyish years the people of Valedon gained the ability to cross space to their moon.
Shora is a world that is entirely ocean. The people who settled Shora opted not to terraform their world, but rather changed themselves to fit Shora, using their advanced genetic engineering skills (an art retained from the old human empire, lost on other worlds), which they call "lifeshaping." The people of Shora call themselves Sharers, and live on floating islands made of a species of aquatic vegetation they call raft trees. Sharers are strict pacifists, have no hair on any part of their body, do not wear clothes, and are a female-only race that use lifeshaping to conceive children. They are communalist anarchists, having no leaders and not even having the concept of a ruler. This is reflected in their language as well as their psychology; in Sharer, it is not possible to give someone an order, only suggestions, and verbs are understood to act equally upon both subject and object of a sentence, resulting in translations like "learnshare" rather than either teach or learn, or "share fear" rather than either scare or be scared of. All Sharer technology is organic; for example they send messages using the songs of the starworms that pull their rafts, or by clickflies, large insects that spin words in their webs. They store their history in the chromosomes of their rafts, and they use lifeshaping for everything from creating strains of attractive fungus to decorate their walls with, to creating custom-made antivirals for a new disease, to regrowing lost limbs.
Sharer names consist of "sea names" that are given at birth, and "selfnames" that are chosen when they come of age; selfnames describe a fault or weakness that the bearer wishes to grow out of.


Personal History:
When Merwen was a child, the first travellers from Valedon arrived. The Valans opened up a cautious trade with the women of their moon, as there was great interest in the seasilk the Sharers wove for a number of purposes, as well as their highly advanced medicine, though the Valans mistook the Sharers' biological technology for a lack of technology. Sharer reactions to the newcomers were mixed, but Merwen was always cautiously interested in them. She grew up to become a wordweaver, something perhaps analogous to a politician or a judge or a religious leader: in Sharer gatherings that occurred when a course of action for their people needed to be decided, she was known to speak wisely and eloquently, in ways that often moved the hearts of those who listened. She and her lovesharer Usha the Inconsiderate One (the chief lifeshaper, both doctor and scientist, of their raft, Raia-el) had three children: Lystra the Intemperate One, Wellen, and Weia. They also took in a girl named Flossa after she was orphaned by a storm that destroyed the raft she lived on.
When Valan authorities attempted to move from trading with to ruling Shora, their efforts were met with confusion and suspicion, as the Sharers did not understand being governed. Merwen, who was reasonably fluent in the Valan language, even went so far as to travel to Valedon, bringing back a young man named Spinel to learn Sharer ways, and to prove to her sisters that the Valans were, in fact, as human as they were. When the Valan presence on Shora became a hostile occupation, the Valans mistook Shora culture in such a way that they thought Merwen was a leader of her people. It is true that she spoke loudly about the humanity of Valans, encouraging her sisters not to break their cultural pacifism in defense of their world, even as they were slaughtered by Valan soldiers and their children were taken hostage. While some argued for lifeshaping a virus that would kill Valans (whose violence identified them as either too sick to be saved at best and not actually human at worst, as far as many Sharers were concerned) and leave Sharers unharmed, Merwen led the opposition, pointing out that she had once been gravely injured by a Sharer serial killer who was "sick" and sought to kill her sisters for pleasure, and that this was a sign that the Valans could not be dismissed as inhuman for this alone, and that if they were human it was wrong to harm them, even in self-defense. She preached compassion and understanding for Valan "sickness," the humanity of Valans, and a policy of non-violence and passive resistance, and ultimately this view won out. Merwen was even taken captive by the Valan governor for her role. Ultimately, their non-violent witnessing of the Valan soldiers won out, and the Valan army ultimately abandoned Shora, demoralized and uneasy in their slaughter of peaceful women and children who refused to fight them. Merwen returned to her home and family, traumatised by her experiences.


Personality:
Merwen is deeply compassionate, someone who finds it easy to empathize with just about anyone. This extends to an unwillingness to eat flesh, something many other Sharers would see as an affectation, but she is uncertain about the blurriness of the line between "animal that is not self aware" and "human with a soul" and has opted instead to just not eat anything with a face, just in case. The first time she saw a monkey, on Valedon, was a bit of a shock. Even so, she recognises this is an arbitrary stance to take, because even plants and seaweed will take steps to avoid being eaten, and in general life eating life is just kind of a part of how the world works so she doesn't engage in lecturing other people to also be vegetarians; Merwen just can't bring herself to do it. She has an impulsive streak that has historically gotten her in trouble, generally by rushing into danger to help other people, but at this stage of her life she's a little calmer about it. She has high expectations for other people, but she holds herself to at least the same standards; for example, Merwen might disapprove of someone's fit of temper, but she would also feel ashamed if she felt she had provoked that temper in any way. She's quick to forgive and quick to apologise, and is generally an optimistic person. Her culture practices "unspeaking," a form of shunning that can be used to gain distance during an argument, to communicate displeasure with an individual or a group of people, or in extreme cases, as punishment for trespasses. Merwen, however, has always hated unspeaking others, and will readily listen to an unspoken sister who is asking for help.
Merwen, like most Sharers, has an almost superstitious dislike/fear of metal or stone; on Shora, the only place to find stone is at the bottom of the ocean, which Sharers only reach in death, and metal (in their language, "coldstone") is unheard of.
Ultimately, Merwen is willing to consider the humanity of anyone she meets, regardless of actual species, and all humans are her sisters as far as she is concerned. She is deeply spiritual, engaging in a sort of casual Earth worship, or really Ocean Moon worship in her case, and believes in reincarnation of souls.

CRAU developments: n/a

Key themes: Sticking with your principles even when it causes you to suffer, responding to cruelty with compassion even when it's never returned.

Main Motivation: Merwen seeks to end suffering wherever she sees it. She loves her family deeply, and frequently adopts people into her chosen family, officially or otherwise.

Skills: Merwen is, ultimately, an aquatic human. Her large nailless webbed hands and feet allow her to swim very far and quickly, third eyelids protect her eyes while underwater, and the purple of her skin reflects the presence of a symbiotic "breath microbe" that stores oxygen. Between the breath microbes and the adaptations of specialized pores in her skin, she is able to stay underwater for a little under an hour. Her people also have the ability to pass into a state they call "whitetrance," where their breathing and heartrate slow greatly, which causes their breathmicrobes to give up their oxygen reserves and the skin to blanch white. In whitetrance, they are mostly oblivious to their surroundings, and it's considered dangerous for anyone other than a small child to try to wake them. For Sharers, whitetrance is frequently used as a way to meditate on trauma, to deal with physical or emotional pain, or just as a way to have some privacy (something they have little of living on the rafts).
Merwen is also good at spinning and weaving, and as "wordweaver" implies she's a very good public speaker. She's a great listener, too.

Item: I would like to request one clickfly. A clickfly is a fist-sized insect, like something between a dragonfly and a large spider, named for the clicks and squeals it makes. Clickflies are lifeshaped to carry knowledge in their genes, and can be instructed (through the use of commands given through tongue-clucks and similar noises) to produce any book or history, which it does by spinning the words into a web of black silk, or to go to a particular place to send a message or deliver a small item, or to tell time, or to record notes for later recall.
It's a living tablet, basically.

Sample: Here

Notes: Technically her breath microbes are slightly contagious and extended close contact with her does have the potential for her new friend to find themselves turning slightly purple (as well as gaining the ability to hold their breath underwater for fifteen minutes even without her specially adapted skin), but the microbes are totally harmless and a round of antibiotics clears it up, even if this would happen. Which it probably wouldn't, without some very unusual CR and some OOC confirmation on all sides. And yes, she will go around naked as much as possible. Clothes are uncomfortable for her. Sorry?