Meryem eir Halilović
| Nickname(s) | mashka, roro, |
| Gender | cis female |
| Age | twenty-six |
| Ethnicity | bozja-eschvan |
| Sexuality | gay (closeted) |
| Residence | ul’dah |
| Occupation | trade & disputes factor |
| Background | 'refugee' (ex-frumentarius) |
| content warning | familial suicide |
Personality & Themes
Hardworking & diligent; dutiful & reliable; collectivist (community-driven, interdependent, and family-focused); hamstrung by dignity and pride, and yet kept afloat by it; stubborn; used to love riding horses, but chocobos are okay now too; gets drunk on rakı and sings old folk songs about soldiers and countrymen, smugglers and thieves, brothers and mothers and lost lovers; ashamed of her provincial background and so tries hard to have as clean and educated an accent as possible, whether in ul'dah, nhalmasque, or other; pretty good with numbers and people, but only when it's built on false or pragmatic pretences (gets cold feet and ruins most meaningful ones).
Eschva? No, effendim. Daughters of no country with a dog-tongue, them. I speak the Imperial standard and divest myself of my wolf coat. So, now: let us dance instead and find comfort with our whole heart. It's all the same caravanserai, anyways.
Histories
From girl to cossack to spy to question mark; a thousand miles from a home that hasn't been home since before she was born; an entire new life built on a lie but when the exigence for that lie crumbles to dust, what does one do?A family chronicle built on dissatisfaction, broken dreams, and 'real redneck stuff'; has an uncle who killed another uncle by smashing a watermelon over his head; an aunt with a dozen 'strike-it-rich' schemes at any given moment; a mother with a drinking problem and enough love to crush, to suffocate, to bury you; a father who couldn't handle it all and found solace at the end of a rope; and the twin sister she lives with and served alongside - her world entire; and a whole family back home that she's not ready to return to; 'i'm sorry, annecim, we'll come home soon.'
Things i love
brainstorming & gushing about character stuff together
headcanon and worldbuilding
family tragedy & trauma, imperialism, ten tonnes of Chekhovian heart, regret, nostalgia, and stories that hurt
maturity, kindness, and enthusiasm
being 23+ irl preferred; i don't care what your character's age is, but it might understandably limit the ways emily interacts with you depending on that age
Please, no
ooc capitalists/libertarians, fascists (this includes being pro-Israel or pro any current government really), misogynists
ooc/ic transphobes (there's just no ic basis for this, so one probably implies the other)
i don't usually engage with tech, but since this character is very clearly inspired by the early 1900's and has had access to garlean magitek, there might be some early 20th century stuff: candlestick telephones, bolt-action rifles... bakelite? bunch of magitek gizmos too, probably
Miscellany
i'm culturally turkish and i've taken inspiration from bosnia under the late ottoman empire and a smattering from other eastern european, balkan, and slavic countries for bozja and turkmens, seljuks, oğuz, cumans, and (very faintly) sephardim for the nomadic eschvan (i know some people play them as romani, so this is just a personal choice); can easily coexist with other eschvan headcanons as simply the nomadic subgroup mine belongs to
also, i plan to play meryem in three different 'timelines': the current day as-is; historically back when she was a soldier; and in an alternate timeline where the end times hasn't happened and the war is still ongoing; happy to play any of these but will always default to the “as-is” timeline in public rp to avoid confusion
be nice to me, it's the law