( application | baedal | nuala airgetsnáithe )
Out of Character Information
Name: Liisu
Username: dubonnetcherry
Are you over the age of eighteen? Y
Current characters in Baedal: Dominica Norrington, Martel, Ilde Decima
In Character Information
Basics
Character Name: Princess Nuala ní Balor, Airgetsnáithe
Username: cailisairgid
Fandom: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Played By: Anna Walton as Nuala
Icon: Here.
Canon Character Section
Physical Description: Older than dirt, Nuala appears to be indeterminately maybe twenty-something and roughly 5’11”. Her eyes, nails, and colouring around her eyes are naturally gold, with her skin otherwise absolutely white; her hair is two-toned from white down to gold (typically covering her ears, which taper to a point), and she has some fairly notable scarring on her body, most visibly the facial scars of her brother’s coming of age.
Sexuality: Sexuality is a very minor concern of Nuala’s; she’s mostly heterosexual, a little biromantic, and I could see her becoming casually sexually involved with either a woman or a man mainly as an extension of particularly close and intimate friendship. She’s not a virgin, but her lovers have been extraordinarily few and far between - Nuala has a very young attitude to romance, prone to adorable crushes, but a distinct lack of traditional sexual shame, and it’s not a driving force in her, as a general rule. She will say no if she’s not interested, and if she is interested but you can’t hold her interest, she has no problem kicking someone out of her bed because it ain’t working for her and she’s changed her mind.
Having been presented with her brother’s extreme jealousy up close and personal - as the twins will arrive BLEEDING FROM THE FACE, thanks Nuada - she may develop more wariness about bestowing her affection on anyone, but that does depend a great deal on how things play out in game. It’s a possibility that I’m keeping in mind, and something that I’ve previously developed with her from a different canon point.
(Sidenote on her username: cailisairgid and sleaairgid translate, respectively, to silver chalice and silver lance. Our extremely pretty Gaelic usernames are basically a dick joke, and we’re not sorry.)
History: Please note that TK and I have been playing the twins together for over a year and have thus built a framework of headcanon to fill in the blanks that their pick-and-mix canon left.
Nuala and her brother Nuada were born the heirs to Bethmoora, daughter and son of King Balor ... and the result of a tumultuous affair their father had with the goddess Brighid. Yeah. Brighid's involvement in their family tends to be played up and exaggerated at least amongst the elves themselves; she and Balor were never married, and her visits became less and less until she ultimately abandoned the Bethmoora clan to its own devices during the first great war with humanity, going apart into one of the secret realms where the blood-stained Bethmooran elves could no longer follow...but we're getting ahead of ourselves, here.
The twins were born many years prior to the first great war with humanity; Nuala grew up side-by-side with human children, and though she outlived her earliest mortal playmates, they were merely the first. She lived in pampered privilege as King Balor's only daughter, the gentler of his two children, and she was kept largely sheltered, precocious but always on the edge of independence rather than taking the step forward. She played the obedient and dutiful princess, sitting at her brother's side and then her father's; she occupied her time with her studies, books of poetry, and entertaining Nuada's whims. (She spent a lot of time watching him train and at tournaments, giving him tokens because he'd probably shank whoever else she considered giving one.) There were idle courtships, but few of them managed to outlast Nuada's distaste and she never promised herself to anyone- her lovers over the years have been very few and far between.
As their settled existence began to be encroached upon by war of conquering with the humans, Nuala took up the position of steadfast support and rarely if ever allowed herself to openly question the decisions made by her father or her brother; she came to regret that. The desperation of their situation drove Balor to consent to the construction of the Golden Army, and it was at this point that Brighid - never a close member of the family, caring for her children but coming and going with her own affairs to take care of - washed her hands of the elves, even her devoted twin children, and withdrew from them. The cruelty of the near-genocide that Bethmoora enacted on humanity, regardless of who'd started the conflict, left a stain on their people that Nuala feels keenly even eons later; the realms to which Brighid withdrew are permanently barred to the sons of the Earth, carrying the curse of what they'd done. When they finally broke off the hostilities and reached an agreement, Nuada was disgusted and went into self-imposed exile, swearing to return only when his people needed him.
Despite her best efforts, Nuala felt personally spurned by her brother's actions. They'd both changed during the war, but they'd remained (she'd thought) steady together, and his decision felt a lot like abandonment. Particularly as the magical races began to hide, their civilizations slowly decaying, and Nuada walked among men away from her. Nuala set herself to her books and her quiet rooms, honing her mind as her brother honed his body, and never let herself blame either her father or her brother for their straits - out loud. This is all pre-canon; many centuries passed, during which the Bethmoora clan - the ‘Sons of the Earth’ - passed into myth even among the magical races. They hid themselves apart, maintaining their traditions and ways in secrecy; in essence, they became the fairy’s own fairytale. Their numbers dwindled, their lands slipped out of their grasp, until they were hidden beneath New York (...of all places), and the Bethmooran court was there when Nuada stepped fairly fucking dramatically back into the limelight.
Intent on raising the Golden Army, Nuada had come for the crown pieces held by his sister and father; he meant to declare war on all of humanity. If this movie had been about the elves, he probably would’ve been the misguided hero trying to save his people - it’s what he was, essentially, but his tunnel vision had blinded him to the fact that his chosen methodology would fuck over everybody, including his own people, and probably the entire world because the Golden Army destroys. That’s it, that’s all it does, all it can do, and it will go on and on and on. It stains the earth; there would be nothing left for their people at the end of the slaughter. While Nuala has little love for humanity herself, her prejudices come second to a bit of common sense on that particular issue and she understood as few people are capable of understanding that Nuada is incapable of stopping. If she’s an immovable object, her brother is an unstoppable force, and when King Balor sentenced Nuada to death for what he wanted to do, knowing that he was condemning both of his children, Nuala accepted that as what must be.
Nuada was less enthused, and promptly wrecked the royal guard and killed their father himself, like the badass action-fairy he is. While he was doing that, however, his sister (with the final crown piece) had taken advantage of the fact no one was watching what she was doing and she fucking bolted. She went on the run, but the nature of their psychic bond meant that it was ultimately a delaying tactic while she tried to find a solution (note: really she should’ve just melted down the crown piece, but then it would’ve been a short damn movie, wouldn’t it?) that didn’t involve killing everyone. She knew, however, that there very likely was no other way. She met Abe Sapien and through him Hellboy and the rest of the BPRD, who stepped in to assist her - but her brother tracked her to their facility, as she knew he would, and she had very little time in which to formulate any kind of plan of action. She hid the crown piece from him, but couldn’t prevent a fight between Nuada and a (drunk) Hellboy; he left Hellboy with what seemed like a mortal injury and kidnapped his sister, goading Abe to come after them with the crown piece.
Suspecting, with a sinking feeling, that Abe would do as Nuada bid - against her wishes - Nuala sank her own power into her brother’s escape route and threw his path off, wrenching them out of their own world and into the city of Bete Noire. She knew little about the fabled city of sin but that it would contain him, allegedly; she’d come willingly and therefore could likely leave willingly, but Nuada had not, and in theory the city would hold him apart from their world. It was a desperate act in an effort to buy herself time, and the results were mixed - they were trapped for a time, but became dangerously entangled in the city’s politics. Nuala aligned herself with the Hellsing Organization, joining it as a politically active member of the command team, but her back and forth with her brother repeatedly complicated the situation for both her and (at least once) the rest of the city.
Nuala is taken from shortly after the end of her run at Bete Noire, which closed with her brother kidnapping her. Again.
Powers: Hahah oh god. WELL, let me preface this with 'oh my god I understand that elves are twinky as shit and I can be responsible with this, promise' (it helps that she tends to avoid showy displays of power and is the opposite of a combatant). Nuala is capable of a lot more than she generally actually puts out there; while the twins (with their entwined psychic and physical link) were born with a natural aptitude for psychic ability, she was the one who honed it down to a science. Touch enhances her ability and gives her a channel to focus through, but it's not necessary; she's empathic, telepathic, and given time and inclination, she could probably rip through your mind and leave it broken in her wake! (She's incredibly unlikely to do that, I'm just saying.) Eons of years spent devoting herself to her work and a royal entitlement complex has left her with kind of shitty telepath-manners; while she doesn't make a habit of invading minds, if she feels that it's necessary then she's unlikely to fuck around with 'getting permission' unless it's someone whose goodwill she cares about keeping. (She understands that people like their mental privacy. She doesn't always care.)
More than being a pure psychic, Nuala is - like some of her people are - a gifted enchantress, but this is a more limited ability and relates back to the name Airgetsnáithe. It means 'Silverthread' and you can probably see where I'm going with this: her particular skill is spinning enchanted thread from pure silver and using it to sew spells into fabric, like clothes or cushions or weaving and whatnot. That in particular a very hearth-and-home kind of magical skill and Nuala frankly thinks of it like a hobby. More generally, her enchantments are firmer when she ties them to something physical - a spell to seal a door, for instance, she might tie the basis of this enchantment to a key and a lock.
There are a variety of things that the twins can do through practised ability and innate ~*woo woo elf magic*~, such as glamours and shadow-related teleportation, and they do have the general powers/flaws of the fey. (This primarily comes from headcanon and a lot of research into Irish fairytales and legends. Canon is so pick and mix that we...picked and mixed in order to flesh out the twins and their world.)
Elves heal at an accelerated rate compared to humans - minor injuries will be gone without traces within days - but one of the downsides of being irreversibly linked to her brother is that their bodies are linked in a spiritual way that's reflected by their reality. Put it simply, when Nuada gets hurt, so does Nuala; all the scars that he has, she has as well - this is why she has the facial scarring that she does, it's reflected from Nuada's coming of age. This is a personal weakness and a political one for her brother; it's a lot easier to harm Nuala in order to get at her brother than vice versa. While Nuada honed his body and Nuala honed her mind, they're not as skilled with each other's talents as they are their own - she's had combat training and she's confident enough in her skills to threaten someone with a knife when she needs to, but she's not even remotely on the same level as Nuada and versus a competent warrior, she's a little fucked.
These elves don't react to temperatures the same way that humans do. If Nuala walked into fire ... well, she'd ruin her dress, but she'd be fine. In a minor note on the difference between elf physiology and human, elf-wine would barely register as alcoholic to a human and a whiff of a cocktail would probably be enough to have Nuala finding everything hilarious.
Talents/Abilities:: Nuala is a politician - a princess raised at her father’s right hand, she learned from him statecraft and how to lead during both peace and war, though (it must be said) that she sometimes learned what she would not do herself in the same position. She spins her own thread, has a talent for sewing and weaving, and speaks multiple languages (most relevantly her own native tongue and English). She has some self-defense expertise (with a knife), though she’s not any kind of ~warrior~ like her brother.
Personality: One of the important things to remember when we go into this is that Nuala is not human and she doesn't think entirely like a human would and she should not be judged on precisely the same scale. There are some basic facts about most elves that must be taken into account: their emotions baseline at an intensity that would probably drive a human crazy if they lived like that, they're arrogant as fuck (no, really), they're elemental and capricious, and they are not afraid of you. Even when they should be. If you think of them like incredibly temperamental domestic cats, you're actually kind of on the right track here. Abby once described the twins, for lulz, as like - Nuala is the indoors cat you have to keep inside because otherwise she'll run out and try to make friends with traffic, and Nuada is the outdoors cat that you don't let inside because he'll claw the shit out of everything and pee on the furniture. And this, as well as being totally hilarious, is not inaccurate. Like cats and princesses everywhere, Nuala has been raised in privilege and even through the fall of her society she has been sheltered and cushioned against the harshest realities, leaving her with an entitlement complex to fell nations with and a bad habit of not picking up after herself. (That is what handmaidens are for.)
After thousands of years of the slow decay of elf society, hiding from humanity, and struggling with the separation from her twin brother (including the requirement that she be shielded from him)- Nuala has learned a kind of self-control and deep-seated composure that's actually relatively unique to her and the product of necessity. Her emotions are intense and her moods can change on a dime, but she's a lot better than ... say, NUADA about disguising them when she really makes the effort to do so. In a lot of ways the twins really are emotional toddlers - brilliantly, brilliantly intelligent but sometimes reacting like a six year old that's just been told 'no' - and Nuala is just as bad as her brother in this way. She's very good at reason and logic when she wants to be, and she does compensate for her more temperamental habits by forcing herself to stop and think before she acts, but she doesn't necessarily reason the same way someone else might.
Her nature is mostly sweet-tempered, and having been her father's baby for thousands of years has made her into a kind of ageless ingenue; she was sheltered in many ways and came out of it with a mind that is not unlike a frighteningly precocious sixteen year old. She is much older than that and there are moments when it's very clear that she has eons of experience under her belt and a working understanding of the world around her, but she's equally likely to laugh like a child and be totally enthralled by someone teaching her to play cards. The flipside of this eternally youthful idea is that she also embodies some of the less charming aspects of young women and powerful, temperamental young elf women specifically; she can be petty and spiteful when she's riled, she can be callously cruel simply because she wanted to see what would happen if she did something and didn't consider the consequences for anyone else. She can be incredibly passive aggressive when she's nursing a grudge, and her tantrums are the stuff of legends (albeit typically taking place behind closed doors, often all up in her brother's face).
When she's made a decision and she believes that it's right, she will pursue it with a dogged, single-minded determination that is generally what people are thinking of when they say that the most terrifying person in the world is a true believer. For example - Nuala, in some ways, agrees with her brother. While she's a little more realistic than Nuada is about the part her people have played in their own downfall, she does accord humanity a lot of the blame for the fact that they're dying and she is very, very bitter about the way that the world has turned out. Despite recent centuries putting her in human cities, she's managed to be fairly sheltered from humanity; her experience of them is primarily memories that are thousands of years old and reading their literature. This stark separation doesn't foster a lot of sympathy. That said, Nuada's plan will result in the death of everyone, and even if Nuala isn't the biggest fan of humanity, she wouldn't really be on board with condemning them in a genocide even if it could be done without destroying everything else in the process. She martyred herself for a people she believed would never be grateful to her for it, who she had no personal stake in, who she didn't even like very much - because she'd tried everything else to protect them and she wasn't willing to back down just because she was out of options. In her mind, it was entirely possible she was still condemning her own people to death, and she did what she did because she believed it was still the right thing to do.
This version of Nuala hasn't reached that point yet, but she could - very easily.
On a lighter note, she thinks toes are great and she loves to swim.
Nuada
I think I've already mentioned - or I certainly should have - that the twins are psychically, spiritually and in some senses physically bound together. Although they are two distinct individuals, in a very real way one does not exist without each other; if you kill one, the other dies, and this is a natural connection, not a construct. It can't be severed, because it's a facet of what they are as well as who they are. They are two people, but they are one being and they are linked together in a way that most people cannot begin to imagine, let alone relate to. They were, for a long time, closer than anyone else can even dream of being to another person - and the separation has been long, slow and incredibly painful. This is not the kind of loss that heals. When all the barriers that a telepath of Nuala's skill and power can throw up between them - with the additional support of her father's shielding - can only muffle the link and not dowse it, it's essentially a dull, open wound. For thousands of years.
There is a lot of fandom focus on Nuada's obsession with his sister - which is fair enough, because it's unmistakably obvious that he wants to ride that until the wheels come off, and if you miraculously failed to notice that in the film then Luke Goss would be thrilled to clear it right up for you in every single promotional interview he did, but TK can probably write her own application - but let us discuss Nuala's side of things, since that's what we're here for.
Nuala doesn't think of herself as a mirror to her brother; she knows she isn't. She does think of the pair of them as being precisely what they are - two parts of one whole. It's their life, their fate, their world and the forced separation has been difficult. As ashamed as she can be by the thought that she has to contend with something as unflattering and unpleasant as prejudice - be it irrational or otherwise - Nuala does have a wary distrust of humanity and that's not actually all. When Nuada went into exile, it was because of humanity. He went among the humans as well as having left because of them. All logic aside, he had been the most important person in Nuala's life for her entire life and his voluntary exile felt a lot like abandonment. What she saw in humanity what was dirty, and cruel, and riddled with greed- he'd abandoned her for this? In some ways she understood his decision and empathized with him; she was proud of him for taking a stand about his beliefs. And she believed that he'd abandoned his people when they needed his leadership and faith the most.
They have remained entwined across distances and decades; under pressure their habits shift and trade from one to the other. Nuala will take to straightening her things when under stress, while Nuada (with his soldier's discipline) leaves his bed unmade the way his sister would. At the best of times, they understand and complement each other, work in tandem and present a ruthlessly powerful united front. On their worst days, Nuala isn't above digging her fingers into her own wounds to make him stumble, or to feign an accident and manipulate him with her fragility. (Just for a second imagine how hard it would be to separate small elf children having a slap fight if they can just start hitting themselves to hurt the other one. Go on.)
The point is: you don't have one without the other. They are priority even as adversaries- in canon the twins barely acknowledge outside opponents as legitimate game-players. What concerns them is between them, and Nuala isn't helpless or ignorant in the face of her brother's goals or obsessions. She may not fully realize the extent of his feelings for her (which, by the way, when you consider the fact they are essentially one being - that is the most narcissistic thing, Nuada, you sick fuck); there is no comparative sibling relationship that they're aware of and for Nuala, this is her normal. Her baseline is never truly being alone because she isn't as long as Nuada is alive, and as long as she's alive, so is he. Putting out of our minds all thoughts of inappropriate relationships, a lover could never really compete with Nuala because she cannot actually give of herself the same way that someone who didn't have that existing connection can (...unless Nuada were actually involved, and that is a whole other kettle of fish). (I assume you see what I did there.) She is perfectly capable of romance, of sexual attraction (although I highly doubt it's a high priority for her), even of loving someone- but a truly balanced partnership of equals? Ain't gonna happen. It isn't necessarily that Nuala deliberately ranks her brother higher than anyone else, but more that he is a part of her in a very literal way.
They breathe the same breath and live the same life- all of which makes this contention between them that much more damaging and destabilizing. They each take one basic belief and go in two very, very different directions with it, but their end goals are still essentially the same. They want to take care of their people, and they have wildly disparate ideas on just how to do that. Nuala recognizes faster than Nuada does that she can't change his mind; Nuada has more trouble accepting that Nuala is equally immovable. Nuala's faith is like mountain-rock, and Nuada's more like a forest fire that will never, ever go out. Nuala recognizes and accepts that Nuada has committed to a path and isn’t going to change direction, but Nuada is consistently a little bit surprised when she (repeatedly) defies him.
Object: Nuala's object is the silver hand of her father, King Balor. (Not, obviously, attached to the rest of him any more.)
Reason for playing: One of the reasons that I started playing Nuala initially is that I was interested to see if it could actually be done well - I think she's a fascinating and complex character, but she fills an archetypal role that's really easy to fuck up irredeemably. As interesting as she is in and of herself, she does spend essentially all of canon being treated as a pretty bauble to be tussled over; I think it's fairly clear she's more than that, but her narrative role is incredibly confining. This is true on a broader scale than just 'in the story', I think: Nuala is a woman in a fairly archaic and clearly patriarchal society. She's not powerless - at all - but she is working within social/political constraints that dictate the methods she's able to use to wield that power, to an extent. And so I'm kind of interested in how she does things, how she thinks, and especially in terms of herself and her society not actually being human.
In Bete Noire, I started Nuala on a path that I find fascinating for her - I’d like the opportunity to continue exploring her growth and adaptation in Baedal, where she will rejoin Hellsing and reassume her former position there.
Gods: I am not sure, but I think Ceith, Eliandre or Shada are all strong possibilities?
Writing Samples
First-Person Network Post: Nuala's Bete Noire Arrival.
Third-Person Arrival Post: The first thing Nuala sees when she opens her eyes, disoriented, are words that someone has scratched into the tile before her - don't panic. A smile twists her mouth unbidden, half in spite of the surreality of the moment and half because of it, and following that odd pause she crosses the room to examine what has been left (for her? -well, so it seems) upon the table. Nuada's absence is anxious-making, considering the last she remembers (slung over his shoulder as if she were a sack of potatoes and not a princess-), but she feels the beat of his heart in her own and she knows (as she has always known) that he will come to her in time.
He always does; she only hopes he may come to her before he does himself or the world another ill. The distance stretching between them is an ache that she adjusts to with painful familiarity, though it feels now like an edge pressed to her as she thinks of their conflicts and why it had been so urgent- if he has returned, and she has not-
Her fingers find the edge of the table and not the knife hidden in the folds of her gown. Nuada is absent, but she can feel that others are not, and she reaches for the CiD with a certain purpose.
Third-Person Action Post: Steam rises and there is a sense of the familiar in the warm air surrounding her, a scent that she knows. The heat and oil from her bath mingles with the languorous ache in her limbs and leaves her drowsy, comfortable; the candles burning around her flicker in the shifting wind through a window, die down a moment and then rise and she sighs over someone else’s breath, rolling her shoulders back. Flaithrí is yet sleeping; she hears the bed shift in the other room, smiles without opening her eyes. The wine earlier left her feeling sinuous and at ease, and the loose tug of another mind joined to hers is just as it should be, isn’t it?
Her steps are steady when she rises from the bath, but slow, her hand resting against the marble as the water drains, a rough gurgle of water that mixes with another sound she can’t yet place. There is no handmaiden at this hour to press a towel to her body and wrap a gauzy robe around her shoulders, so she does it herself, the long gold of her hair leaving damp impressions in the fabric at her back, and the air is cool against her body when she slips back into his chamber, the curtain billowing in a crisp spring night-breeze.
A hot, wet hand finds her shoulder as she sinks down in the darkness and the peace is shattered as his death-cries reverberate through her mind.
He lives, still, but only just - Nuala presses her hands ineffectually to the knife-wound that bared his throat, her voice raising in a scream that he can’t vocalize alone, but the palace guard will be too late to witness anything but the stain of a lord’s gold blood on her pale skin, on her hands and on her body when she moves, clinging, no healer and no match for a mortal wound.
The eyes in his mind are hers-not-hers, and it is her brother’s name she shrieks in rage and grief as Flaithrí passes, his flesh as stone under her hands and then dust, streaking through the blood he left on her.
Nuala is as a statue herself, waiting, as the door bursts open and there is nothing they can do.
Misc
Other: As noted, Nuala is herself a demi-goddess, but I don’t anticipate her coming into conflict with the existing divinity in Baedal; she does consider herself in some ways ‘above mortals’, but she also holds a profound respect for the divine and does not consider herself to be among their number. Her willingness to claim responsibility for Sebastian LeMat does not indicate a desire for worship.
Name: Liisu
Username: dubonnetcherry
Are you over the age of eighteen? Y
Current characters in Baedal: Dominica Norrington, Martel, Ilde Decima
In Character Information
Basics
Character Name: Princess Nuala ní Balor, Airgetsnáithe
Username: cailisairgid
Fandom: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Played By: Anna Walton as Nuala
Icon: Here.
Canon Character Section
Physical Description: Older than dirt, Nuala appears to be indeterminately maybe twenty-something and roughly 5’11”. Her eyes, nails, and colouring around her eyes are naturally gold, with her skin otherwise absolutely white; her hair is two-toned from white down to gold (typically covering her ears, which taper to a point), and she has some fairly notable scarring on her body, most visibly the facial scars of her brother’s coming of age.
Sexuality: Sexuality is a very minor concern of Nuala’s; she’s mostly heterosexual, a little biromantic, and I could see her becoming casually sexually involved with either a woman or a man mainly as an extension of particularly close and intimate friendship. She’s not a virgin, but her lovers have been extraordinarily few and far between - Nuala has a very young attitude to romance, prone to adorable crushes, but a distinct lack of traditional sexual shame, and it’s not a driving force in her, as a general rule. She will say no if she’s not interested, and if she is interested but you can’t hold her interest, she has no problem kicking someone out of her bed because it ain’t working for her and she’s changed her mind.
Having been presented with her brother’s extreme jealousy up close and personal - as the twins will arrive BLEEDING FROM THE FACE, thanks Nuada - she may develop more wariness about bestowing her affection on anyone, but that does depend a great deal on how things play out in game. It’s a possibility that I’m keeping in mind, and something that I’ve previously developed with her from a different canon point.
(Sidenote on her username: cailisairgid and sleaairgid translate, respectively, to silver chalice and silver lance. Our extremely pretty Gaelic usernames are basically a dick joke, and we’re not sorry.)
History: Please note that TK and I have been playing the twins together for over a year and have thus built a framework of headcanon to fill in the blanks that their pick-and-mix canon left.
Nuala and her brother Nuada were born the heirs to Bethmoora, daughter and son of King Balor ... and the result of a tumultuous affair their father had with the goddess Brighid. Yeah. Brighid's involvement in their family tends to be played up and exaggerated at least amongst the elves themselves; she and Balor were never married, and her visits became less and less until she ultimately abandoned the Bethmoora clan to its own devices during the first great war with humanity, going apart into one of the secret realms where the blood-stained Bethmooran elves could no longer follow...but we're getting ahead of ourselves, here.
The twins were born many years prior to the first great war with humanity; Nuala grew up side-by-side with human children, and though she outlived her earliest mortal playmates, they were merely the first. She lived in pampered privilege as King Balor's only daughter, the gentler of his two children, and she was kept largely sheltered, precocious but always on the edge of independence rather than taking the step forward. She played the obedient and dutiful princess, sitting at her brother's side and then her father's; she occupied her time with her studies, books of poetry, and entertaining Nuada's whims. (She spent a lot of time watching him train and at tournaments, giving him tokens because he'd probably shank whoever else she considered giving one.) There were idle courtships, but few of them managed to outlast Nuada's distaste and she never promised herself to anyone- her lovers over the years have been very few and far between.
As their settled existence began to be encroached upon by war of conquering with the humans, Nuala took up the position of steadfast support and rarely if ever allowed herself to openly question the decisions made by her father or her brother; she came to regret that. The desperation of their situation drove Balor to consent to the construction of the Golden Army, and it was at this point that Brighid - never a close member of the family, caring for her children but coming and going with her own affairs to take care of - washed her hands of the elves, even her devoted twin children, and withdrew from them. The cruelty of the near-genocide that Bethmoora enacted on humanity, regardless of who'd started the conflict, left a stain on their people that Nuala feels keenly even eons later; the realms to which Brighid withdrew are permanently barred to the sons of the Earth, carrying the curse of what they'd done. When they finally broke off the hostilities and reached an agreement, Nuada was disgusted and went into self-imposed exile, swearing to return only when his people needed him.
Despite her best efforts, Nuala felt personally spurned by her brother's actions. They'd both changed during the war, but they'd remained (she'd thought) steady together, and his decision felt a lot like abandonment. Particularly as the magical races began to hide, their civilizations slowly decaying, and Nuada walked among men away from her. Nuala set herself to her books and her quiet rooms, honing her mind as her brother honed his body, and never let herself blame either her father or her brother for their straits - out loud. This is all pre-canon; many centuries passed, during which the Bethmoora clan - the ‘Sons of the Earth’ - passed into myth even among the magical races. They hid themselves apart, maintaining their traditions and ways in secrecy; in essence, they became the fairy’s own fairytale. Their numbers dwindled, their lands slipped out of their grasp, until they were hidden beneath New York (...of all places), and the Bethmooran court was there when Nuada stepped fairly fucking dramatically back into the limelight.
Intent on raising the Golden Army, Nuada had come for the crown pieces held by his sister and father; he meant to declare war on all of humanity. If this movie had been about the elves, he probably would’ve been the misguided hero trying to save his people - it’s what he was, essentially, but his tunnel vision had blinded him to the fact that his chosen methodology would fuck over everybody, including his own people, and probably the entire world because the Golden Army destroys. That’s it, that’s all it does, all it can do, and it will go on and on and on. It stains the earth; there would be nothing left for their people at the end of the slaughter. While Nuala has little love for humanity herself, her prejudices come second to a bit of common sense on that particular issue and she understood as few people are capable of understanding that Nuada is incapable of stopping. If she’s an immovable object, her brother is an unstoppable force, and when King Balor sentenced Nuada to death for what he wanted to do, knowing that he was condemning both of his children, Nuala accepted that as what must be.
Nuada was less enthused, and promptly wrecked the royal guard and killed their father himself, like the badass action-fairy he is. While he was doing that, however, his sister (with the final crown piece) had taken advantage of the fact no one was watching what she was doing and she fucking bolted. She went on the run, but the nature of their psychic bond meant that it was ultimately a delaying tactic while she tried to find a solution (note: really she should’ve just melted down the crown piece, but then it would’ve been a short damn movie, wouldn’t it?) that didn’t involve killing everyone. She knew, however, that there very likely was no other way. She met Abe Sapien and through him Hellboy and the rest of the BPRD, who stepped in to assist her - but her brother tracked her to their facility, as she knew he would, and she had very little time in which to formulate any kind of plan of action. She hid the crown piece from him, but couldn’t prevent a fight between Nuada and a (drunk) Hellboy; he left Hellboy with what seemed like a mortal injury and kidnapped his sister, goading Abe to come after them with the crown piece.
Suspecting, with a sinking feeling, that Abe would do as Nuada bid - against her wishes - Nuala sank her own power into her brother’s escape route and threw his path off, wrenching them out of their own world and into the city of Bete Noire. She knew little about the fabled city of sin but that it would contain him, allegedly; she’d come willingly and therefore could likely leave willingly, but Nuada had not, and in theory the city would hold him apart from their world. It was a desperate act in an effort to buy herself time, and the results were mixed - they were trapped for a time, but became dangerously entangled in the city’s politics. Nuala aligned herself with the Hellsing Organization, joining it as a politically active member of the command team, but her back and forth with her brother repeatedly complicated the situation for both her and (at least once) the rest of the city.
Nuala is taken from shortly after the end of her run at Bete Noire, which closed with her brother kidnapping her. Again.
Powers: Hahah oh god. WELL, let me preface this with 'oh my god I understand that elves are twinky as shit and I can be responsible with this, promise' (it helps that she tends to avoid showy displays of power and is the opposite of a combatant). Nuala is capable of a lot more than she generally actually puts out there; while the twins (with their entwined psychic and physical link) were born with a natural aptitude for psychic ability, she was the one who honed it down to a science. Touch enhances her ability and gives her a channel to focus through, but it's not necessary; she's empathic, telepathic, and given time and inclination, she could probably rip through your mind and leave it broken in her wake! (She's incredibly unlikely to do that, I'm just saying.) Eons of years spent devoting herself to her work and a royal entitlement complex has left her with kind of shitty telepath-manners; while she doesn't make a habit of invading minds, if she feels that it's necessary then she's unlikely to fuck around with 'getting permission' unless it's someone whose goodwill she cares about keeping. (She understands that people like their mental privacy. She doesn't always care.)
More than being a pure psychic, Nuala is - like some of her people are - a gifted enchantress, but this is a more limited ability and relates back to the name Airgetsnáithe. It means 'Silverthread' and you can probably see where I'm going with this: her particular skill is spinning enchanted thread from pure silver and using it to sew spells into fabric, like clothes or cushions or weaving and whatnot. That in particular a very hearth-and-home kind of magical skill and Nuala frankly thinks of it like a hobby. More generally, her enchantments are firmer when she ties them to something physical - a spell to seal a door, for instance, she might tie the basis of this enchantment to a key and a lock.
There are a variety of things that the twins can do through practised ability and innate ~*woo woo elf magic*~, such as glamours and shadow-related teleportation, and they do have the general powers/flaws of the fey. (This primarily comes from headcanon and a lot of research into Irish fairytales and legends. Canon is so pick and mix that we...picked and mixed in order to flesh out the twins and their world.)
Elves heal at an accelerated rate compared to humans - minor injuries will be gone without traces within days - but one of the downsides of being irreversibly linked to her brother is that their bodies are linked in a spiritual way that's reflected by their reality. Put it simply, when Nuada gets hurt, so does Nuala; all the scars that he has, she has as well - this is why she has the facial scarring that she does, it's reflected from Nuada's coming of age. This is a personal weakness and a political one for her brother; it's a lot easier to harm Nuala in order to get at her brother than vice versa. While Nuada honed his body and Nuala honed her mind, they're not as skilled with each other's talents as they are their own - she's had combat training and she's confident enough in her skills to threaten someone with a knife when she needs to, but she's not even remotely on the same level as Nuada and versus a competent warrior, she's a little fucked.
These elves don't react to temperatures the same way that humans do. If Nuala walked into fire ... well, she'd ruin her dress, but she'd be fine. In a minor note on the difference between elf physiology and human, elf-wine would barely register as alcoholic to a human and a whiff of a cocktail would probably be enough to have Nuala finding everything hilarious.
Talents/Abilities:: Nuala is a politician - a princess raised at her father’s right hand, she learned from him statecraft and how to lead during both peace and war, though (it must be said) that she sometimes learned what she would not do herself in the same position. She spins her own thread, has a talent for sewing and weaving, and speaks multiple languages (most relevantly her own native tongue and English). She has some self-defense expertise (with a knife), though she’s not any kind of ~warrior~ like her brother.
Personality: One of the important things to remember when we go into this is that Nuala is not human and she doesn't think entirely like a human would and she should not be judged on precisely the same scale. There are some basic facts about most elves that must be taken into account: their emotions baseline at an intensity that would probably drive a human crazy if they lived like that, they're arrogant as fuck (no, really), they're elemental and capricious, and they are not afraid of you. Even when they should be. If you think of them like incredibly temperamental domestic cats, you're actually kind of on the right track here. Abby once described the twins, for lulz, as like - Nuala is the indoors cat you have to keep inside because otherwise she'll run out and try to make friends with traffic, and Nuada is the outdoors cat that you don't let inside because he'll claw the shit out of everything and pee on the furniture. And this, as well as being totally hilarious, is not inaccurate. Like cats and princesses everywhere, Nuala has been raised in privilege and even through the fall of her society she has been sheltered and cushioned against the harshest realities, leaving her with an entitlement complex to fell nations with and a bad habit of not picking up after herself. (That is what handmaidens are for.)
After thousands of years of the slow decay of elf society, hiding from humanity, and struggling with the separation from her twin brother (including the requirement that she be shielded from him)- Nuala has learned a kind of self-control and deep-seated composure that's actually relatively unique to her and the product of necessity. Her emotions are intense and her moods can change on a dime, but she's a lot better than ... say, NUADA about disguising them when she really makes the effort to do so. In a lot of ways the twins really are emotional toddlers - brilliantly, brilliantly intelligent but sometimes reacting like a six year old that's just been told 'no' - and Nuala is just as bad as her brother in this way. She's very good at reason and logic when she wants to be, and she does compensate for her more temperamental habits by forcing herself to stop and think before she acts, but she doesn't necessarily reason the same way someone else might.
Her nature is mostly sweet-tempered, and having been her father's baby for thousands of years has made her into a kind of ageless ingenue; she was sheltered in many ways and came out of it with a mind that is not unlike a frighteningly precocious sixteen year old. She is much older than that and there are moments when it's very clear that she has eons of experience under her belt and a working understanding of the world around her, but she's equally likely to laugh like a child and be totally enthralled by someone teaching her to play cards. The flipside of this eternally youthful idea is that she also embodies some of the less charming aspects of young women and powerful, temperamental young elf women specifically; she can be petty and spiteful when she's riled, she can be callously cruel simply because she wanted to see what would happen if she did something and didn't consider the consequences for anyone else. She can be incredibly passive aggressive when she's nursing a grudge, and her tantrums are the stuff of legends (albeit typically taking place behind closed doors, often all up in her brother's face).
When she's made a decision and she believes that it's right, she will pursue it with a dogged, single-minded determination that is generally what people are thinking of when they say that the most terrifying person in the world is a true believer. For example - Nuala, in some ways, agrees with her brother. While she's a little more realistic than Nuada is about the part her people have played in their own downfall, she does accord humanity a lot of the blame for the fact that they're dying and she is very, very bitter about the way that the world has turned out. Despite recent centuries putting her in human cities, she's managed to be fairly sheltered from humanity; her experience of them is primarily memories that are thousands of years old and reading their literature. This stark separation doesn't foster a lot of sympathy. That said, Nuada's plan will result in the death of everyone, and even if Nuala isn't the biggest fan of humanity, she wouldn't really be on board with condemning them in a genocide even if it could be done without destroying everything else in the process. She martyred herself for a people she believed would never be grateful to her for it, who she had no personal stake in, who she didn't even like very much - because she'd tried everything else to protect them and she wasn't willing to back down just because she was out of options. In her mind, it was entirely possible she was still condemning her own people to death, and she did what she did because she believed it was still the right thing to do.
This version of Nuala hasn't reached that point yet, but she could - very easily.
On a lighter note, she thinks toes are great and she loves to swim.
Nuada
I think I've already mentioned - or I certainly should have - that the twins are psychically, spiritually and in some senses physically bound together. Although they are two distinct individuals, in a very real way one does not exist without each other; if you kill one, the other dies, and this is a natural connection, not a construct. It can't be severed, because it's a facet of what they are as well as who they are. They are two people, but they are one being and they are linked together in a way that most people cannot begin to imagine, let alone relate to. They were, for a long time, closer than anyone else can even dream of being to another person - and the separation has been long, slow and incredibly painful. This is not the kind of loss that heals. When all the barriers that a telepath of Nuala's skill and power can throw up between them - with the additional support of her father's shielding - can only muffle the link and not dowse it, it's essentially a dull, open wound. For thousands of years.
There is a lot of fandom focus on Nuada's obsession with his sister - which is fair enough, because it's unmistakably obvious that he wants to ride that until the wheels come off, and if you miraculously failed to notice that in the film then Luke Goss would be thrilled to clear it right up for you in every single promotional interview he did, but TK can probably write her own application - but let us discuss Nuala's side of things, since that's what we're here for.
Nuala doesn't think of herself as a mirror to her brother; she knows she isn't. She does think of the pair of them as being precisely what they are - two parts of one whole. It's their life, their fate, their world and the forced separation has been difficult. As ashamed as she can be by the thought that she has to contend with something as unflattering and unpleasant as prejudice - be it irrational or otherwise - Nuala does have a wary distrust of humanity and that's not actually all. When Nuada went into exile, it was because of humanity. He went among the humans as well as having left because of them. All logic aside, he had been the most important person in Nuala's life for her entire life and his voluntary exile felt a lot like abandonment. What she saw in humanity what was dirty, and cruel, and riddled with greed- he'd abandoned her for this? In some ways she understood his decision and empathized with him; she was proud of him for taking a stand about his beliefs. And she believed that he'd abandoned his people when they needed his leadership and faith the most.
They have remained entwined across distances and decades; under pressure their habits shift and trade from one to the other. Nuala will take to straightening her things when under stress, while Nuada (with his soldier's discipline) leaves his bed unmade the way his sister would. At the best of times, they understand and complement each other, work in tandem and present a ruthlessly powerful united front. On their worst days, Nuala isn't above digging her fingers into her own wounds to make him stumble, or to feign an accident and manipulate him with her fragility. (Just for a second imagine how hard it would be to separate small elf children having a slap fight if they can just start hitting themselves to hurt the other one. Go on.)
The point is: you don't have one without the other. They are priority even as adversaries- in canon the twins barely acknowledge outside opponents as legitimate game-players. What concerns them is between them, and Nuala isn't helpless or ignorant in the face of her brother's goals or obsessions. She may not fully realize the extent of his feelings for her (which, by the way, when you consider the fact they are essentially one being - that is the most narcissistic thing, Nuada, you sick fuck); there is no comparative sibling relationship that they're aware of and for Nuala, this is her normal. Her baseline is never truly being alone because she isn't as long as Nuada is alive, and as long as she's alive, so is he. Putting out of our minds all thoughts of inappropriate relationships, a lover could never really compete with Nuala because she cannot actually give of herself the same way that someone who didn't have that existing connection can (...unless Nuada were actually involved, and that is a whole other kettle of fish). (I assume you see what I did there.) She is perfectly capable of romance, of sexual attraction (although I highly doubt it's a high priority for her), even of loving someone- but a truly balanced partnership of equals? Ain't gonna happen. It isn't necessarily that Nuala deliberately ranks her brother higher than anyone else, but more that he is a part of her in a very literal way.
They breathe the same breath and live the same life- all of which makes this contention between them that much more damaging and destabilizing. They each take one basic belief and go in two very, very different directions with it, but their end goals are still essentially the same. They want to take care of their people, and they have wildly disparate ideas on just how to do that. Nuala recognizes faster than Nuada does that she can't change his mind; Nuada has more trouble accepting that Nuala is equally immovable. Nuala's faith is like mountain-rock, and Nuada's more like a forest fire that will never, ever go out. Nuala recognizes and accepts that Nuada has committed to a path and isn’t going to change direction, but Nuada is consistently a little bit surprised when she (repeatedly) defies him.
Object: Nuala's object is the silver hand of her father, King Balor. (Not, obviously, attached to the rest of him any more.)
Reason for playing: One of the reasons that I started playing Nuala initially is that I was interested to see if it could actually be done well - I think she's a fascinating and complex character, but she fills an archetypal role that's really easy to fuck up irredeemably. As interesting as she is in and of herself, she does spend essentially all of canon being treated as a pretty bauble to be tussled over; I think it's fairly clear she's more than that, but her narrative role is incredibly confining. This is true on a broader scale than just 'in the story', I think: Nuala is a woman in a fairly archaic and clearly patriarchal society. She's not powerless - at all - but she is working within social/political constraints that dictate the methods she's able to use to wield that power, to an extent. And so I'm kind of interested in how she does things, how she thinks, and especially in terms of herself and her society not actually being human.
In Bete Noire, I started Nuala on a path that I find fascinating for her - I’d like the opportunity to continue exploring her growth and adaptation in Baedal, where she will rejoin Hellsing and reassume her former position there.
Gods: I am not sure, but I think Ceith, Eliandre or Shada are all strong possibilities?
Writing Samples
First-Person Network Post: Nuala's Bete Noire Arrival.
Third-Person Arrival Post: The first thing Nuala sees when she opens her eyes, disoriented, are words that someone has scratched into the tile before her - don't panic. A smile twists her mouth unbidden, half in spite of the surreality of the moment and half because of it, and following that odd pause she crosses the room to examine what has been left (for her? -well, so it seems) upon the table. Nuada's absence is anxious-making, considering the last she remembers (slung over his shoulder as if she were a sack of potatoes and not a princess-), but she feels the beat of his heart in her own and she knows (as she has always known) that he will come to her in time.
He always does; she only hopes he may come to her before he does himself or the world another ill. The distance stretching between them is an ache that she adjusts to with painful familiarity, though it feels now like an edge pressed to her as she thinks of their conflicts and why it had been so urgent- if he has returned, and she has not-
Her fingers find the edge of the table and not the knife hidden in the folds of her gown. Nuada is absent, but she can feel that others are not, and she reaches for the CiD with a certain purpose.
Third-Person Action Post: Steam rises and there is a sense of the familiar in the warm air surrounding her, a scent that she knows. The heat and oil from her bath mingles with the languorous ache in her limbs and leaves her drowsy, comfortable; the candles burning around her flicker in the shifting wind through a window, die down a moment and then rise and she sighs over someone else’s breath, rolling her shoulders back. Flaithrí is yet sleeping; she hears the bed shift in the other room, smiles without opening her eyes. The wine earlier left her feeling sinuous and at ease, and the loose tug of another mind joined to hers is just as it should be, isn’t it?
Her steps are steady when she rises from the bath, but slow, her hand resting against the marble as the water drains, a rough gurgle of water that mixes with another sound she can’t yet place. There is no handmaiden at this hour to press a towel to her body and wrap a gauzy robe around her shoulders, so she does it herself, the long gold of her hair leaving damp impressions in the fabric at her back, and the air is cool against her body when she slips back into his chamber, the curtain billowing in a crisp spring night-breeze.
A hot, wet hand finds her shoulder as she sinks down in the darkness and the peace is shattered as his death-cries reverberate through her mind.
He lives, still, but only just - Nuala presses her hands ineffectually to the knife-wound that bared his throat, her voice raising in a scream that he can’t vocalize alone, but the palace guard will be too late to witness anything but the stain of a lord’s gold blood on her pale skin, on her hands and on her body when she moves, clinging, no healer and no match for a mortal wound.
The eyes in his mind are hers-not-hers, and it is her brother’s name she shrieks in rage and grief as Flaithrí passes, his flesh as stone under her hands and then dust, streaking through the blood he left on her.
Nuala is as a statue herself, waiting, as the door bursts open and there is nothing they can do.
Misc
Other: As noted, Nuala is herself a demi-goddess, but I don’t anticipate her coming into conflict with the existing divinity in Baedal; she does consider herself in some ways ‘above mortals’, but she also holds a profound respect for the divine and does not consider herself to be among their number. Her willingness to claim responsibility for Sebastian LeMat does not indicate a desire for worship.