- Name: Lillie Vardah
- lillie: English variant of "lily," a common species of flower.
varda: Hebrew name meaning "rose."
Blood colour: #438F1F ████
Gender: Feminine.
Symbol: A simple flower symbol!
Profile: Lillie considers herself first and foremost to be a gardener. She keeps a lively plot of all kinds of plants just outside her hive, both nocturnal and diurnal. Her favorite type is any flower, but she also grows a healthy vine or two of edible produce to keep herself sustained beyond what her lusus brings her. She's not quite sure if she wants to make a business out of it in the future, because she's just a kid, darn it! But gardening is something Lillie could see herself doing for the rest of her life, hands down. Most every night, this greenblood spends her time tending her plants - watering them, admiring them, and just generally checking their wellbeing. Sometimes, she goes hunting for wild seeds wherever she sets her mind to having her lusus take her.
Even if she comes across as high-strung, Lillie would say that she spends most of her time smiling in wonder about the world. She loves the miracle of life, and feels that every interaction she's had with another person is equally fantastic. Generally getting along with most things that aren't trying to ruin her flowerbeds, she tries to learn everything she can about trespassers from books her lusus has appropriated, from the smallest weevil to the loudest birdbeast. Even if they're a pain, they're still something that spawned life here on this planet, and that's enough to Lillie to think they're worth learning about.
She's not entirely without bite, having learned early on from her lusus' ardent protection that the world is not a friendly place. While she's not in a place in the hemospectrum where she's horribly in danger, Alternia can be dangerous if she's not careful. She doesn't take well to being stolen from, and more than once has this greenblood defended her plants from roaming beasts or hungry trolls. All you have to do is ask, she'd told those trolls, giving them a few of her berries before sending them on their way with a shake of the nearest spade or rake she had on hand. She has yet to encounter a real threat to her life that her lusus hasn't handled, but she thinks she'd be ready if she were truly in danger. Probably.
If there's ever a troll that wished she were in a place in the hemospectrum where she could see daylight, it's Lillie. She knows from some research through various books that most of what plants need to live involves sunlight, so that time feels very special to her. But unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Lillie never wishes to be blinded, and she has always stayed diligently within her home at the proper hours. As far as being a greenblood goes, Lillie is comfortably middle class. She fits the role of a greenblood well, being a hard, resourceful worker and an organized individual. In a public setting, such as when she goes out to buy or trade for garden supplies, she deigns to submit to those of a higher caste. Although she doesn't fully agree with the concept of the hemospectrum, she knows that those of a higher bloodcaste tend to demand more respect, and acts accordingly. In her hive or garden, however, is a different story - she considers herself to be in charge in those particular places, and feels the hemospectrum does not extend to her home. This is how she is able to justify being territorial toward any troll that crosses through - she owns the place, and it's hers!
Lillie is a perfectionist about her gardening, which she considers at the moment to be her life's work. When it's time for her to inspect the plants, not a leaf goes unturned in a search for any sign of injury, pest, or illness. And if one of these signs are found, she acts immediately to the best of her ability. While she doesn't really come across as "observational," because Lillie focuses so closely on one subject at a time, she does have a specific regime that she sticks to with very little variation. She likes to keep a journal outlining the status of each of her plants - on graph paper for ease of visualization, using shorthand symbols that she herself has created to keep track (they're mostly stars and smiley/frowny faces, nothing too fancy). That journal also functions as a to-do list planner that is entirely hand-drawn (think bullet journal), and she considers the upkeep to be a hobby in and of itself.
Beyond her life in the garden, her knack for organization shows its real dedication when inside her hive. Although it's a small home, Lillie has very few belongings that she hoards, finding that she prefers to keep only what she needs. Everything has a place in her hive, everything filed in little boxes or documents three-hole-punched into binders. Her home is devoid of dust. She has a tiny little closet that's full of her gardening equipment, but her wardrobe is sparse, and her belongings are sparser. The only thing Lillie has an abundance of is botanical books, all filed away in alphabetical order on a ceiling-high bookshelf. She considers that shelf to be her "library," and she takes a great deal of pride in it, almost as much as her garden.
Strengths:
- Organized: Lillie is a meticulous planner and cataloguer of her nightly activities. Her hive is incredibly clean and organized. This ensures that she is both prepared for everything she might need at a moment's notice, and that she knows where anything is within her home. She also has all of her tasks budgeted throughout the day in to-do checklists in a hand-written planner, and when she really needs to get nitpicky, the time of night she needs to get the tasks done are written in small print beside each checkbox. Unfortunately, it can sometimes mean that she is far too set in her schedule. If she strays away from that schedule, it could be disastrous for her productivity.
Biophilic: Not quite optimistic, "biophilia" is a word that literally means "the love of life." Lillie doesn't necessarily like other things or trolls because she is an empathetic person, but because she literally adores the idea of things that are living, walking, and breathing. This is what gives her a willingness to speak to others, to interact with them, and to attempt to create relationships. It is also what keeps her diplomatic with others. It is through this trait, rather than an inborn empathy, that Lillie has an entry point to make connections with others. She might act a little strange when concerned about other trolls' well-being, being more focused on their survival or the status of their body (are they currently bleeding?) than on their emotional health, for example. However, once she learns that there are other trolls who have an appreciation for the things the world has produced, Lillie will be much more open to developing relationships based on that.
Physically Fit: Lillie is more powerful than she looks. She earns her strength mostly from carrying around dirt and water and fertilizer, sowing and reaping the bounties of her harvest, and spending the off-days walking through the garden and checking everything for quality or health. She has a small stature, of course still being a child, but Lillie can pack a punch that's surprising to the offenders who deserve one.
Flaws:
- Territorial: Lillie is incredibly possessive over what she believes to be hers. Unfortunately, this also extends to things she thinks should be hers. If she has a desire for something that is available to be hers (i.e., on sale, free, a prize), she will fight tooth and nail to retrieve that thing for herself. Much of this sort of thing includes seeds for her garden, or various garden tools, or a book about gardening, or maybe just something she thinks is cute. If she doesn't receive a thing she really wants, she'll be very disappointed and mopey about it, and would probably be willing to duel a troll for it.
High-Strung: Despite having a laid-back lifestyle such as gardening, Lillie seems to do anything in her power to make her life stressful, being hyperactive in her tasks. She keeps a close eye on her garden, and feels that any little tresspass - if she can even barely tell another troll has been there - is a threat. She's on edge a lot of the time, and often demands apologies for those who offend the few rules she's set in her mind for those around her to follow. These rules are: 1) don't touch my plants, and 2) don't touch my things. She thinks those rules are pretty reasonable. Furthermore, having an inability to truly relax means that Lillie is bustling from waking up to sleep. By the end of a night, she's exhausted simply from the tasks she had set out for herself.
Set in a Schedule: Those who have just met Lillie might find her conformity to her planner to be severely irritating. She ambles through her daily life, performing the tasks she has set out for herself, and can only fit casual time with you in, well, maybe three weeks from now. She's also exceedingly grumpy if she's ever forced to stray away from her schedule, something that doesn't exactly fill quadrants.
Weapon: Lillie finds that her tools for her nightly hobbies are just as valuable when it comes to combat, particularly her handheld rake. A three-pronged menace, it works functionally for both stabbing and scratching.
Appearance: Like most trolls, Lillie has grey skin and orange horns. Her black hair is fluffy, but not quite wavy, and chin-length, with choppy bangs that lay right above her brow. She's found some clips, mostly flower-shaped, that she's clipped on those bangs or on the hair hanging down on each side of her face. She wears a dark grey spaghetti-strap tank top with an applique of her symbol in the color of her blood sewn on, and tops that off with a pair of black jeans and some galoshes perfect for gardening in any weather. Sometimes she likes to wear light and fashionable scarves in her blood color, for those nights that are too chilly for her taste. She has some braided flower stems that have long lost their green hue tied around each of her wrists, reminders of her favorite harvests.
Crudely drawn horn shapes under spoiler!
I drew these in 2 seconds with my trackpad but I think they get across the shape alright.Home: Lillie lives comfortably in the woods near Four Fronds, finding the rural area to be exciting and the soil to be fertile. The outside of her hive is crawling with vines, vaguely camoflaging it into the trees around, although the vines have not yet had time grown all the way up the side of the hive and have left the top of it untouched. The most obvious feature is her garden, which stretches for a few yards in every direction from her hive, and is often growing the most sweet-smelling flowers or fruits.
Her hive has a very basic layout with only the simplest accessories, as she spends most of her time outside. However, she does have a great amount of white and grey organization shelves, stacked with books and boxes of whatever Lillie finds worthy of keeping. Her favorite collection, on a shelf in her respite block, is that of completed planners. Lillie's hive is devoid of clutter or dirt, as she cleans it diligently, wanting her personal space to be as clean as possible. One could probably tell what her stress level was by the number of individual objects on the counter in her nutrition block.
Despite being clean, Lillie's home is not devoid of personality. She prides herself in the potted plants she keeps on each of her windowsills and her less-than-humble collection of botanical books, most of which her lusus has appropriated from somewhere or another.
Lusus: Lillie's lusus, which she affectionately calls Snappy, is a walking venus flytrap monster (inspiration). Completely white from head to root, Snappy has three enormous heads that all have the same appearance of a venus flytrap, each head outfitted with fully developed eyes. She can also feel vibrations in her body, allowing her to hear some semblance of sounds, although they are not always detailed enough sounds to understand language. Her neck is a long, thick stem that leads down to a body that seems to be the same general size and shape of an Earth lion. Somehow muscular enough to both move herself and Lillie, if necessary, that lower body has four leglike roots that are both functional for walking and some form of precision grip for picking up objects and moving them around. She has a tail that appears to be a braided vine, and sometimes that tail sprouts flowers, depending on the time of year. Despite being a plant, Snappy is physically formidable and the ends of roots of hers are sharp claws, making her a sufficient protector for a young troll.
Snappy taught Lillie a fair deal about troll society through experience, since she is unable to speak, allowing her to watch when she would fight away violent trolls and teaching her to read from intricately detailed picture books. Snappy also developed in Lillie a healthy love for her plant brethren, teaching her to plant seeds and take fare of flora from a young age. Even when Lillie was first small, her lusus would carefully organize her belongings, keeping only what made Lillie cry if she threatened to throw it out, shoving those nostalgic items into a found box and stuffing that onto a shelf. Once Lillie grew up, she didn't feel she could live her life any other way than completely decluttered, and Snappy feels pretty good about it.
