Nizu Sala

"It's funny. Many of our agents are surprised to learn that the Dragon hosts an entire wing of plunderers, as if bee-kissed bandits only wear purple or blue.  You'd think more of them would remember their ride in the butterfly van.  When the Dragon needs, it doesn't ask, it simply takes." ― Nizu on thievery

=Character= Nizu Sala is a member of the Golden Bee Clan, an isolated Mongolian civilization occupying the hidden Agarthan oasis of New Xanadu. She is an appointed liaison to the Dragon, who utilize a wing of her people's palace for storage and study of various texts and relics. Her role is best described as part supervisor, part recruiter and part treasure hunter.

Appearance
A bit taller than most women, Nizu sports the limber and lithe physique common to many thieves and tomb robbers. Her facial features reflect her Mongolian heritage, though unusually, her eyes are a vivid green. She is seldom seen without heavy eyeliner, and her short black hair seems to exist in a permanent state of mild disarray. As identifiable by her bearing as she is by her features, she adds a touch of theatrical flair to her stances and mannerisms, whether standing in contrapposto with arms akimbo or greeting her associates with flourishing bows.

For combat regalia and casual wear, Nizu favors clothing in various East Asian styles. She has particular fondness for the color green. While she wears a variety of different ensembles, nearly all of them incorporate calf high, flat heeled boots. She never wears high heeled footwear.

Personality and Demeanor
In many ways, Nizu is archetypical of the strictly matriarchal society from which she hails. She is bold, charismatic, optimistic, hard-working and physically adept, traits commonly associated with women of the Golden Bee. While friendly to nearly everyone who is friendly in kind, her cultural bias against males sometimes bleeds through, usually via backhanded compliments like "you're pretty strong for a drone." She is sometimes seen as boastful, and while she's empathetic to friends and loved ones, she doesn't always understand their problems.

Exceedingly forward and flirtatious with other women, Nizu presents herself as a debonair scoundrel (in TV Tropes terms, the Handsome Lech) and employs a vast array of terrible pickup lines. Despite this, she's luckier in love than many would assume. Some find charm in her over-the-top, eyebrow-waggling advances; if nothing else, it's at least a change from common courtship routines and stereotypical gender roles.

While most would call her a good person, Nizu does have her darker traits. In particular, she has no real qualms about kidnapping, as the Dragon seems to engage in such quite often.

Strengths and Weaknesses
Where bee-bestowed strength is concerned, Nizu has one trait that far outshines her others. Her threshold of physical endurance is downright ridiculous -- she's able to sustain strenuous activity for far longer than most, a talent often utilized by the Dragon for prolonged recovery missions in difficult environments. For practical talent, she is well schooled in the particulars of treasure hunting, including basic stealth, disabling traps, cracking locks and making clean escapes. As a supervisor of New Xanadu, she is a fairly adept negotiator as well.

Offsetting her incredible stamina, Nizu's other anima-based skills lag significantly behind those of her peers. She is average at melee and magical combat, and only then with hammers and chaos foci. She performs poorly with any other form of weapon, and her overall speed is underwhelming. Her isolated upbringing is likewise a source of difficulties; despite being trained since childhood to serve as a Dragon liaison, she frequently fails to comprehend cultural nuances or societal expectations. Rather than apologizing for a faux pas, she'd more likely opine how "things are different where I come from."

Perhaps Nizu's greatest Achilles heel is addictive behavior. She has had severe substance abuse issues in the past, and while she's managed to remain clean for a few years, the temptation is always there.

Likes and Dislikes
While she's gone cold turkey on drugs and alcohol, Nizu remains a stalwart sybarite in many other respects, seeking out many of life's finer indulgences. She's particularly fond of expensive clothes, gourmet foods, exotic fragrances, well-prepared tea (always with honey, never milk), and of course the company of beautiful women. The traits she values in others vary on gender lines -- she has greater respect for women who are assertive and powerful, and men who are domestic and demure.

As a dedicated pleasure-seeker, Nizu is often annoyed by social customs that deliberately delay the enjoyable results. On this topic, she offers pearls of wisdom like "anyone who claims anticipation trumps reward isn't enjoying the reward properly" or "Winnie the Pooh might think the moment before eating honey is best, but that's because he's a closet masochist." She is particularly vexed by Western culture's fixation on dancing as a necessary rite of courtship.

Nizu is quite fond of cats, as her homeland hosts a type of sand cat that is often domesticated. Her least favorite animals are the sort with eight legs; she's a terrible arachnophobe due to traumatic childhood experience with a well-known denizen of the Gobi.

Reputation
To her higher-ups, Nizu holds the same reputation as most Dragon operatives -- her traits are valued because her behavior can generally be predicted and made to serve the society's overall goals. Opinions vary among her peers, though most would agree that she is qualified to hold her current leadership position. Members of other societies can easily guess her affiliation by color scheme alone, but as New Xanadu is a secret held close to the Dragon's vest, little can be learned by spying on Nizu in cross-faction territory. Most would write her off as a low level agent and shameless skirt chaser, nothing more.

=History= One of fifteen Gaia-chosen members of the Golden Bee Clan, Nizu has been affiliated with the Dragon since birth. Her history is best divided into three periods: her isolated upbringing before receiving her anima powers, her rocky start as a Dragon agent, and the years following her recovery from substance abuse.

Life in New Xanadu (1985-2003)
Nizu was born in the autumn of 1985 to the stonemason Sari Sala and her stay-at-home husband Safu. Being a bold, energetic and sociable child, she quickly caught the eye of clan members serving as appointed liaisons to the Dragon. Seeing her as a possible successor, the liaisons recommended her to the reigning Khatun as a candidate for liaison training, which began at a very young age. The Khatun agreed, decreeing that Nizu would be trained in tandem with her regular schooling.

At the age of six, Nizu began to receive instruction in the English language, as well as extensive education on the culture and history of lands beyond New Xanadu. The lessons continued until the age of fifteen, at which point she was accepted by the active liaisons as an apprentice. Working out of New Xanadu's stately palace was a source of great excitement for the young woman, but also great distraction; she was busted on multiple occasions for spying on the royal guard as they disrobed in their barracks, as well as pilfering a few bottles of wine for her own enjoyment. Still, she met the expectations of her mentors, and her apprenticeship continued for two more years.

<p style="text-indent: 15px">It would have lasted longer still, but on a lazy afternoon in the spring of 2003, one of New Xanadu's many honeybees chose to crawl between the lips of the seventeen-year-old Nizu as she slept beneath a tree. She rose from her nap brimming with energy -- quite exceedingly so! It was clear that she had been chosen by Gaia, joining the tiny handful of clan members able to pass through the Agarthan portal. Following several weeks of emergency measures to get her powers under control, she assumed the responsibilities of her higher calling ... not merely a provincial liaison, but a full-fledged agent of the Dragon.

Departure and Addiction (2003-2008)
<p style="text-indent: 15px">Already included in the Dragon's calculations as part of New Xanadu's operations, Nizu was assigned tasks that were natural extensions of her previous role. Teamed with operatives specializing in recovery, she began assisting in efforts to pilfer treasures for the pleasure-dome. Unfortunately, while she started out as a model operative, things gradually turned sour.

<p style="text-indent: 15px">Within the boundaries of her homeland, Nizu had eagerly embraced the epicurean tendencies of her people. She carried on with her hedonism beyond the portal, but in so doing, she failed to consider a critical difference. The outside world offered many more sources of pleasure, some of which were far more destructive and dangerous than anything she'd sampled previously. Complicating matters, the blessing of the bees meant that overindulgence probably wouldn't lead to death, providing ample opportunity for the tendrils of addiction to worm their way into her.

<p style="text-indent: 15px">The downward spiral was slow and painful. One year after receiving her anima powers, Nizu's chemical dependency began to impact her work. Two years later, her performance had plummeted significantly from her promising start. Three years later, she was a complete wreck. After jeopardizing several critical missions, she was pulled from the field by the Dragon and locked away. They had not seen this outcome in their predictions, and had no immediate solution; after all, one cannot simply throw a broken secret worlder into rehab, lest her powers be exposed to the rest of the world. Destroying her was likewise not an option, as the bees would simply resurrect her again. Thus began a revolving-door process in which various doctors, counselors and magical healers of the Dragon attempted to salvage their agent. Sadly, conventional wisdom holds that you cannot help someone who refuses to help herself. Nizu had enough difficulty getting through the days without a fix, never mind mustering the strength to accomplish anything greater.

<p style="text-indent: 15px">Strength finally arrived in the form of a dream, its message brief and meaning clear. As Nizu gazed upon the verdant reaches of her homeland, she heard from far ancestral voices prophesying war. Dark and horrid creatures stormed the protected paradise and tore it asunder. Having squandered her gifts, Nizu could do nothing but stand and watch. She woke from the nightmare in a cold sweat, but only after she'd seen enough to make a lasting impression.

<p style="text-indent: 15px">The next day, she began to turn her life around.

Fallen Bee to Busy Bee (2008-Present)
<p style="text-indent: 15px">As the road to recovery is walked with slow and deliberate steps, Nizu's return to duty was not immediate. However, a fire had been lit within her, and she was strongly motivated to make reparations for her failures. Before long, the Dragon began offering her simple assignments to reestablish trust. Over the following year, she clawed her way back up the proverbial mountain, and while she did pause to glance over her shoulder a few times, she eventually succeeded in reclaiming her previous standing.

<p style="text-indent: 15px">Nizu has since remained drug and alcohol free for three years. Having sworn off recreational substances, she manages to avoid temptation when visiting locations like the Horned God or Darkside. It is perhaps no coincidence that she dialed her amorous advances up to eleven after her recovery; she often quips "I'm still a hedonist, I just focus on a smaller set of vices." She juggles several roles in her involvement with New Xanadu, keeping herself thoroughly busy between safer indulgences. She has grown close to fellow Dragon operative Souhi Mian, a woman whose strengths impressed Nizu to the point of offering her a supervisory position.

=Trivia=


 * While it's rare to find her in an angry mood, Nizu has been known to get snippy with secret worlders who treat Agartha like a playground, as the World Tree figures strongly into her people's spirituality. Ditto for any harsh words said about the bees.
 * Despite the Dragon's focus on chaos and causality, she still finds value in carrying a good luck charm, a small stone version of the Golden Bee Emblem. Carved by her mother Sari from stone of the Gobi, it's also a comforting reminder of home when responsibilities keep her away.
 * She has passable talent for playing the shanz (sanxian).