[hider=Nel Hopkins][center][h2][u] Nel Hopkins [/u][/h2][/center]
[b][center] “Just Hopkins, please.” [/center][/b]
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[center][h3][b] 23 | Human | No Mage-Eyes [/b] [/h3][/center]

[h3][u]P E R S O N A L I T Y            [/u][/h3]
[indent]❖ Prickly
❖ Quiet
❖ Level-headed
❖ Distrustful
❖ Cautious
❖ Curious
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Nel Hopkins is an archaeologist.  He likes dead things, and things that’ve spent the last few decades—preferably centuries—covered in dust.  They cause much fewer problems than people.  Hopkins is the kind of person who would keep his head down while the world burned around him; [i]don’t get involved, mind your own business Hop, just don’t worry about things too much.[/i]  Though he often speaks with the kind of politeness you’d associate with a youth just apprenticed at their first job, Hopkins can become quite prickly and snippish when pressed too far into social interaction.  No, I’m good, why I don’t I just leave, maybe you can find someone else to talk to.  Thanks.

[h3][u]A P P E A R A N C E            [/u][/h3]
At only a few inches above five feet, with a narrow, gawky sort of build, Hopkins is perfectly sized and perfectly built to maneuver through the crooked and crumbling ruins of the old world, where he spends most of his time.  As a result, he is somewhat unhappy in wide open spaces, and prefers the clutter of ruins, cities, and forests.  A bonus: he is perfectly sized to go generally unnoticed and overlooked through much of Invernier—short enough to be dismissed, but not too short to be mistaken for an elf or some other untrustworthy fae.  

His body has a certain soft, spideriness to it—the careful movements of someone who is used to handling things that break easily between his long fingers.  His black hair is shaved pragmatically short, so as to not snag on anything old or malicious.  His expression is, by default, rather serious and unrevealing, with a button nose, large blue doll-eyes he finds annoyingly attention-grabbing, and pale, neutral lips.  His clothes are tough, all-purpose gear; you can’t afford to have fancy clothing when you’re sandwiching yourself through hard, dirty stone all the time.  

He normally wears a long brown cloak that covers his entire body, with a dark hood for travelling.  Perhaps out of pride in his work, pride in himself, or superstition driven by his time in those dusty, twilit ruins, Hopkins has inscribed onto the hems of his clothes several wards and symbols he had discovered during his forays through the old world, meant to encourage luck and ward off misfortune.  Though this bears the obvious risk of causing him to be mistaken for a magician, Hopkins is apparently too attached to these fruits of his studies to care.

[h3][u]H I S T O R Y            [/u][/h3]
Hopkins had a rather simple, standard childhood.  He grew up in Inger Biot, the last great City of the Sisters to still bear a crown.  It was a busy, bustling place.  He grew up on narrow, incoherent streets, constantly moving back and forth across the great bridges of the Red River, ducking between shouting merchants and vengeful hagglers and all the strange sorts a tide will wash in to a port city.  He was the youngest child in a large family, and, while maybe things were different with different parents and different circumstances, Hopkins was mostly left to his own devices, and rarely troubled by family or friends.  He never really knew the closeness of parents or siblings, despite knowing the closeness of great crowds and aggressive salespeople, and maybe it was no surprise, then, that as he grew older he gravitated towards solitude the way rain gravitates to the sea.  

With some saved up money, Hopkins would take one-off history lectures at the House of Wisdom, where the silence comforted him, and eventually take up with a traveling scholar who came in on a boat from the distant Labyrina Islands.  He had the kind of life where he could say goodbye to his family one day, and leave them forever, and this was, by and large, a trend he kept up for the next six years of his life.

Old connections in Inger Biot’s National Museum gave Hopkins a profitable way of safely storing and selling the ancient artifacts he might uncover, and the research he made.  He grew used to the old country scattered all around the Great Southern Road, and spent a good deal of time in the old castles of the Helm, and the dungeons of the Brujeria, and has even made one or two forays into the Hangwood.

In recent years, Hopkins has begun the long trek to the old country of the Vanities, intrigued by the old civilization of Vence, possibly the mightiest empire to rule Invernier since the Sisters, yet so often forgotten and dismissed by modern times.  He hopes to establish contact with one of the remaining Vencish clans, and arrange for passage into the old ruins—though first, of course, he must make his way safely through the Tempesta.

[h3][u]I N V E N T O R Y            [/u][/h3]
❖ Machete
❖ Rope
❖ Climbing Gear
❖ Annotated Map of Invernier, Including Ancient Ruins
❖ Archaeological Digging and Cleaning Supplies
❖ Sacrificial Dagger
❖ Oolasheene Divining Top


[h3][u]O T H E R            [/u][/h3]
Hopkins enjoys old-school adventure novels, and carries a few old paperbacks with him.
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