Nikhila

Basic Information

Birth Name: Nikhila Gounder

Aliases: N/A

Place of Birth: Pondicherry Tamilnadu India

Age: (real and apparent) 53 appears 37 (Born in 1953 gifted at 21)

Male/Female: Female

Current Occupation: Professor of microbiology coming to Nachton to be Dean of the Stafford Academy

Past Occupation: (If different from above) traveler and student

Appearance

Hair Color: Very dark, black brown

Length and Style: Long, to the small of her back, straight. Often worn lose or lightly pulled back at the temples or in a single braid.

Eye Color: Dark brown with some gold flecks

Skin Color: dark dusky brown

Height: six foot one inch

Weight: 137

Nationality: Indian (native of India)

Race: Werewolf

Body Type: Willowy, long and lean

Gifted Form (Werewolf): Perfectly snowy white, no other colors or markings

Description (if an NPC) or name of your creator(if a PC) ( Please be as specific as possible, who your creator/gifter was, why he chose to change you, where is he/she now?): Aidan Xephier witnessed and rescued Nikhila from a potentially lethal wolf attack. Afterwards he was apparently impressed with her as he offered her the option of gifting, which she accepted. He currently lives in Nachton.

Personal Questions

1. Describe your character's personality.

A majority of the time Nikhila is reserved and relatively formal. She doesn’t presume familiarity with people. She tends to be respectful of others regardless of their position. She can be perceived as reserved as quiet and observant.

She is extremely patient and meticulous, excellent qualities in a teacher and scientist.

Beyond that, she is very caring and generous willing to assist however she can in most situations.

Nikhila, however, is also more than capable of handling herself, while she isn’t violent or overtly aggressive or stubborn she is quite able to travel alone through the world and to negotiate the occasionally cutthroat world of academics. She tends to assert herself through a combination of patience and determination.

Nikhila also has a strong belief in the balance of the world and tends to be non-judgmental. That being said, however, she also has little tolerance for abuse of any kind.

She is also very adaptable and able to cope with new situations with little or no information.

2. Describe how your character would appear to a stranger (I.E. typical dress, way they carry themselves etc.)

Quiet reserved and polite, friendly if you take the time to speak to her. She always dresses appropriately, neatly, but not overly expensively and prefers classics to trends. She also nearly always managed to look neat and put together.

3.What does your character like?

Camping, travel, reading, teaching, running, cooking, movies

4. Dislike?

Being confined, being unable to contribute, the color purple, pizza, closed minds, rock music (more particularly heavy, hard or very loud rock music), cell phones and having to check her luggage.

5. (For humans) Describe what abilities you see your character having if they were turned. N/A

6. What are your fears?

She has a fears being the victim of violence. Between her mother’s murder, being beaten by her brother on several occasions, and then being attacked by the a small pack of wolves Nikhila fears again becoming a victim.

Being a burden to anyone. After running away from home Nikhila was very reliant on the charity of strangers and feels that she took advantage of them, they gave her things (money food etc) that she won’t ever be able to repay because she doesn’t know who they were. It has given her a great feeling of responsibility and drive to be useful when she is part of a group, especially where the Pack is concerned.

Spiders. While camping, not long after being Gifted, Nikhila woke one morning with a very large tarantula, not on her face but clearly beginning to explore it. Waking up to long hairy legs on her face made quite the impression and she makes sure she is well up on local species of spider before camping anywhere.

7. What are your character's strengths and weaknesses? At least three of each

Basic survival skills. Nikhila could give an Eagle Scout a run for his money. Even without changing, she is able to build a basic shelter, read a compass, start a fire, find food and water etc. She trekked through number of extreme environments and has learned enough from each that she could hold her own with very little help.

Teaching. Nikhila is extremely knowledgeable, but more than that wants to help and loves to learn. She also possesses a great deal of patience and has a knack for conveying her enthusiasm to others.

Organization. Traveling often, and frequently on short notice, and very light Nikhila has become extremely organized and efficient and that translated to the rest of her life as well. She knows where everything goes, where to find it, what needs to be done when so as not to hold anything else up and what to do if something unexpected should occur.

Travel. Nikhila really cannot just stay in one place. One of the nuns said she was born with sand in her shoes, restless. Unless given very solid, very specific goals she moves frequently. It makes her a very good visiting professor or guest lecturer but makes it rather hard to establish a career, among other things.

Closter phobic, its an odd Closter phobia she hates elevators after about three floors, gets twitchy and uncomfortable in big cities (especially tall big cities) but feels better when she’s in a building and doesn’t feel them looming over her. Doesn’t deal well with tents and no matter how cold it is will insist on some part of them (window door) being left un zipped. She also becomes very agitated or nervous on long flights. She is, however, relatively at home in a small room (thanks to her time at the convent) so long as there is a window. Over all, though she does make a conscious effort to avoid environments that make her feel closed in.

Extremely Empathetic for all her scientific background and logical thinking Nikhila often makes decisions based on how others will feel about them. She has been known to keep inept assistants in the lab so they wouldn’t be hurt by her letting them go. If pushed into making a decision where her own needs take precedence she goes to great lengths to soften the blow to those it is effecting negatively.

Hobbies & Skills (for more information, read here)

Gardening, if she stays in one place for any amount of time Nikhila likes to keep a small garden, generally it is just a few plants in pots but she does keep them and has a fairly green thumb.

Travel, it’s a way of life and a need for Nikhila but if there is a place on this planet she hasn’t been she wants to go there. She can also pack for anything and get it all to fit in one bag.

Movies, she doesn’t own many but Nikhila is a movie buff, often the only place she will take in during an over night layover is a movie theater and given the amount of time she has spent on planes, and the fact that she cannot sleep on planes, she has seen numerous movies, although thanks to the airline industry a lot of them are heavily edited.

Cooking, Nikhila believes a lot about a culture can be learned from its cooking and she has made it a point to learn several dishes when ever she spends an extended period of time in any region and enjoys re-creating them at other times the smells often bring back fond memories.

Three Bachelors degrees, microbiology, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry; two Masters, microbiology and organic chemistry and a PhD in microbiology

Near fluent in Hindi, Chinese, English, Kurdish, French

Reads Latin and Sanskrit

Is learning Farsi and is passable in a few other dialects of her native country

Abilities
Human in wolf body – 10
Deft touch – 2
Grace – 2
Marathon runner – 2
Spirit sense - 2
(1 remaining)

Flaws
Passive – 2
Dog person – 2
Aversion to closed spaces – 2
Restless Dreams - 2
Fear of spiders – 5
Giant size – 5
(1 remaining)


Cosmetic Traits Two bite mark scars. One very pronounced one on her right shoulder where she was attacked and a lighter series of puncture wounds in an oval shape, like a bracelet, around her left wrist from her Gifting.

Quirks and Habits worthy of mention She has mixed feelings on vegetarianism and makes a half hearted effort to keep to her former diet but she can’t quite keep it up although she does try (often unsuccessfully) to limit herself to fish.

Always keeps one bag packed and ready to go should the urge to travel strike.

Carries a Swiss Army knife with her a majority of the time.

Personal History Nikhila is the third child of seven and the only girl. Her father, Khwaja, and mother, Chandrakanta, both came from very wealthy families. All seven children went to the best of schools where Nikhila excelled, especially in her science classes, which she enjoyed a great deal. The excitement of discovery and the logic of the scientific method appealed to her greatly.

Life in the fine house went on smoothly and uneventfully for years. Her parent moved in the right social circles and it was assumed that Nikhila would eventually marry the son of another equally influential family. She over heard her parents in talks arranging a marriage for her more than once, but nothing solid was ever set. Nikhila, however, never thought to protest or object to such an idea. It was what would be expected of her and she would not disappoint her family.

When she was twelve life changed drastically. In a fit of jealously one of her father’s business contacts murdered her mother for repeatedly refusing his advances. She was stabbed to death in the family’s home while the children were at school. It was Nikhila and her fourteen-year-old brother that found her body. The murder had been particularly violent and gruesome and the discovery greatly traumatized both children. Although they both responded to the trauma differently.

The murder of his wife deeply effected Nikhila’s father who became extremely moody and aggressive. He never physically harmed the children but he wasn’t able to offer them any emotional support after his wife’s murder. At best, he left them to fend for themselves, at worse he mentally and emotionally abused them. Her three older brothers took the worst of it as Nikhila did her best to shield the younger ones, with limited success. It was her brother Makhesh, who had discovered her mother with her, who was scared the worst. Between the shock of his mother’s death, being one of the first to find her body and witness the full force of that horror, and his father’s emotional poison he became unstable, leaning towards violence. Nikhila was often the focus of his violence, although she didn’t understand why.

In the two years since their mother’s murder, he beat her, quite badly, two times. Each time he apologized sincerely, with tears in his eyes and both times Nikhila accepted his apology whole-heartedly and believed his promise it would not happen again. The third time he beat her, she was fourteen. She was also unable to contain her rage at the injustice of his violence and fought back. By pure luck, or unfortunate circumstance depending on how you look at it, she broke his arm and forced him to stop.

Horrified at what she had done Nikhila immediately stopped her assault and apologized to her brother, escorting him to a hospital. Within the space of several hours, after leaving Makhesh with the doctors she ran home, stole what money she could from her father and ran away from home.

It took months but from their fine home in Pondicherry she wandered some times able to afford train fair but more often on foot camping or sleeping in the streets until she reached Dharamsala. At this point what little money she had taken had run out, and she was out of ideas. Slightly more than a days travel outside the city, she found a small Buddhist convent where she begged for lodgings for the night. The nuns sheltered her without question and eventually it became accepted that the convent was Nikhila’s home. She lived with the nun’s for seven years doing the same things they did but everyone knew she would never become one.

While living high in the mountains, she took to wandering lost in the wilds for days at a time. Her wanderings were often aimless but once she decided to follow a pack of wolves, a small pack of five. She lost them but was determined to locate them and spent considerable time doing so, oddly enough, she could only find them at night, but finally decided to give up, thinking she had failed. Returning to the convent under the light of the full moon, she found them. Or rather, they found her, attacking her obviously with the intent to kill. She was, however, rescued by an extremely large russet colored wolf, a man. Dr. Aidan Xephier.

Having dispatched Nikhila’s attackers very efficiently, he returned her to the convent. He returned once and after long discussion, including the possibility she might be infected with a particular virus offered her a home within the Pack. After careful consideration, she decided to embrace this turn of events and requested he Gift her.

Since then Nikhila has wander around the world and back, not staying in any one place for longer than necessary. Usually the time she spent in any one place was determined by how long it took her to gain funds and earn a degree. Several years after being gifted she found out her father had died and she did inherit some money, not much enough to allow her to seriously concentrate on completing two masters and her PhD in Microbiology. Since then she has taught at numerous universities around the world, often filling in for professors who are on leave for one reason or another.

Her most recent job seemed to place her on the track for tenure, and so the university insisted she take a sabbatical and do more research, write another paper to enhance her reputation and theirs as well since she is on their staff. Fortunately about that time she also got a letter from her mentor tempting her with the position of Dean of a small university. As the offer was extremely tempting, and she has a very hard time refusing, any request made on be half of the Pack Nikhila immediately accepted and has come to Nachton.

OOC Checklist

Player name (online is fine) Mike
Other Characters you play Pak, Val, Ambrose, Reign
How you came to SA (Other board, friend, etc) been here a while now
Have you read all the Rules? Yup, always
Do you understand that this is an adult board with adult content (sometimes graphic and violent in nature)? yup
This board is adult only. Are you over the age of 18? yup