Nalla

Note to readers: the following is constructed from anecdotes recalled decades after the fact. I've corroborrated data with official records where I can. Any remaining uncertainty is confined to minor details.

Elan

Nalla was a member of the Dissolvers from the very beginning, one of the young Castuvol cousins who were grounded on Galtern after a large wake critically damaged their mother ship. As the fleet's medic and chemist, he handled the substance that allowed their saboteurs to carry out missions undetected.

Nalla Ex Castuvol- Uscard, In Dissolver

Aside from the usual blood and flesh lines, Nalla's full legal name includes the marker "Ex", indicating that he was no longer tethered to his family ship, and is followed by "In" and the blood name of the family that he joined. The Dissolvers never were a truly blood-related family, but this is how he was known in the Unity's records.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

A Tiderider

The Castuvol family's Mother Captain wanted to witness the historic first conduit boat, scheduled for New Year's Day of 2000 Vol. She severely underestimated the boat's weight and speed, and held the mother ship White Wings dangerously close to the conduit. Nalla, by virtue of being small and nimble, had wriggled to the front of the rigger deck to get the best possible view. He saw the massive wake coming and took the quickest escape: straight down. Nalla swam away from the ship for safety, but got caught in the secondary wave and was thrown onto the deck, dislocating a shoulder.
The White Wings was damaged beyond repair, barely able to get to Galtern. The family members who couldn't fit on the replacement mother ship were granted shelter and put on a waiting list for housing and citizenship. As an eight-year-old child, Nalla was too old for priority placement with a parent but nowhere near old enough to be listed as an individual, so was placed at an orphan farm along with Delu and the other Castuvol youngsters of similar age.

An Orphan

At the farm, Nalla refused to do "island" chores. As a compromise, the youth supervisors allowed the young Tiderider to assist in the farm clinic, but stuck him with undesirable shifts as a consequence of low valuation made worse by being uncooperative.
Nalla was ambivalent about Delu's plans to escape the farm. He hated Galtern's rules, but was reluctant to leave his mother and other close members of the family. Whether out of conscience or nerves, he told his mother about the plot and asked her to join them. She could only promise to keep quiet about it, but gave Nalla her permission to go whenever the opportunity arose.
After five years in the orphan farm, that opportunity came in the form of a passenger ferry bringing sick crewmembers to a Galternene hospital. Delu offered the Ex Castuvoli as temporary replacements, promising to stay until the regular crew were recovered. Instead, the cousins left the ferry as soon as it made a stop at Scaetra.

A Dissolver

A few years' work in the Scaetra shipyards and boat crossings earned them enough to buy a small mother ship secondhand. By this time there were only three Ex Castuvoli left, leading Delu to invite other tetherless Tideriders to join them. Before long they were calling themselves Dissolvers and performing sabotage on conduits and conduit boats.
When rumors began to circulate that the Uniter was employing a Water Seeker to help protect the conduits, the Dissolvers had to adjust their plans. Taking advantage of recently-discovered properties of keetwood, Nalla developed a formula that, when swallowed at the right time, would make a person undetectable to someone with water sense.
After the downfall of the Unity many Dissolvers considered their objective met and left the organization, but Nalla stayed with Delu. They had pledged to end attacks on the conduits, but didn't really believe that the new pan-island advisory council had either the power or the intention to fulfil its promises.

A Mystery

Nalla has not been seen since the 2044 Vol Aktergean Evacuation. He was aboard the White Ducks when it took the crippling hit, but was not among the reported casualties. He may be in hiding, but given the age he would be and the inherent risks of the work he chose, it's more likely that the odds have caught up with him by now.

Employment

Despite his rocky start at the farm, Nalla earned enough credit as a clinic assistant to attain a non-negative valuation. In the Scaetra shipyard he worked as an assistant repair carpenter, though his medical background made him the go-to person for on-the-spot injury assessment. He filled both roles as a Dissolver, fixing boats and people.
The Dissolvers' leadership core were careful to keep their secrets separately in case any of them were captured and interrogated. Nalla was sole guardian of the stealth recipe, while meticulously avoiding any knowledge of the Dissolvers' plans.

Failures & Embarrassments

To be considered full members of a crew, Tiderider children must perform five flawless self-rescue dives. Nalla had done only three before the disaster happened. Thanks to the intervening decade he had to re-learn the dive training from scratch, and was 22 before he passed the dives and was allowed to stand on the deck of the White Ducks without a babysitter.

Mental Trauma

In Galtern's social-value economy, non-Galternene always start with a slightly negative valuation which then adjusts based on personal interactions. All the Ex Castuvoli had a difficult time with Galternene rules and etiquette, leading to a continuously declining social value. Although Nalla eventually made up the deficit, he still nursed a quietly seething grudge over the constant criticisms and bullying of his first couple of years in the orphan farm.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

Although Nalla's injuries weren't as bad as Delu's, he was equally anti-conduit. They shared a resentment of islanders' policies that seemed to intentionally cut Tideriders out of their traditional role in trade and passage across the Inside Sea.

Vices & Personality flaws

Nalla was chattier than a person should be who keeps dangerous secrets. He countered this flaw by compounding it with another: inconsistency. By repeating stories but changing details, his listeners could never be sure exactly what the truth was.

"Because I had medicine to take three times daily, I heard Nalla's stories more than anyone else and got to know them rather well. Over the years I spent with the Dissolvers I'm fairly sure I figured out what parts happened and what didn't."

— Sage Alcendis Varenonde

Current Status

Nalla is assumed dead.

Ethnicity

Tideriders

Year of Birth

1991 Vol 79 Years old

Aligned Organization

Dissolvers

"I first met Nalla when I was rescued after [Zaiyev's] volcanoes erupted. He was very sympathetic to me because our situations were so similar. Victims of disaster, separated from our parents, and at the time it seemed I was destined for an orphan farm myself. I was even the same age he had been.

He was different, though, when I joined the Dissolvers several years later. More distant, even though I had to see him regularly. Still kindly, but not caring."

— Sage Varenonde