Character Nadia Corvay

[Nadia Corvay]

NADIA CORVAY

Age	Mid-30s
Species	Human
Gender	Female
Height	175 cm | 5'9"
Weight	55 kg | 121 lbs
Force Sensitive	No

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION

Nadia Corvay is in her mid-late thirties, with a composed and watchful presence. Although she is reasonably good looking, she has no illusions about being a great beauty or captivating a room. Her height and her slimness appear to reinforce one another, giving her a kind of vertical statuesque vibe. Her posture is straight and she is economical in movement; she doesn't gesture more than she needs to.

Her face is narrow and intelligent. She sports strong cheekbones, dark eyes, and an expression that defaults somewhere between polite interest and private skepticism. Nadia is not cold, necessarily, but she can be difficult to read. Her mouth can make her look faintly amused even when she isn't particularly amused. She has the kind of face that operates well in silence: observant, reserved, and dry.

Her hair is black or very dark brown, worn shoulder-length. She keeps it simple: straight, smooth, and practical, sometimes tucked or tied back. She absolutely does not wear her hair in a style reminiscent of a pencil; she is unclear how that rumor began.

She dresses in dark, tailored, expensive clothing that is simple -- the luxury being most apparent in the quality of the fabric and tailoring rather than the ornament and embellishment. She wears minimal jewelry. Her usual look is almost like a uniform, but not quite: a structured jacket, a high-collared blouse, fitted trousers or pencil skirt, and polished boots or simple heels, and perhaps one discreet brooch, pin, or clasp. The cut is sharp enough to suggest authority but not so formal that she reads as staff. She avoids bright colors, glittering fabric, and anything that would compete with the more theatrical style favored by her employer Selim Kadir . She might wear small earrings, a ring, or necklace, but nothing that is too garish or which might jingle or get in the way.

INVENTORY

Watch this space.

PERSONALITY AND BELIEFS

Nadia's prevailing personality trait is being calm -- not because of some preternatural serenity, but because of a lifetime of practice. Early in her career, panic left you holding the bag, dismissed, or talked over. She learned to slow down, look carefully, and speak only when she had something useful to offer (and to speak calmly). Histrionics are anathema to her, and catastrophizing is outside of her nature. Nadia is observant to the point of obsessive; she notices whether a guest is left-handed, whether a dealer's smile has gone stiff, whether a room attendant is avoiding one guest, and whether someone is pretending to know (or not know) someone else. She doesn't advertise these intuitions; rather, she files them away.

Her humor is dry and practical and usually quiet. She is not easily impressed, least of all by wealthy and famous people. She is not easily intimidated, least of all by criminals and governments. Starting her life in the housekeeping division of the Canto Bight casino has taught her that everyone eats, drinks, sleeps, and defecates. It is a great equalizer. And she has since learned that every single person has a key that can unlock them, cause them to become malleable. It just depends on what the key is; for some it's feeling flattered; for other's it's feeling frightened; for still others it's feeling wanted.

Nadia is controlled in public; if she is raising her voice where people can see, something has gone badly, badly wrong. She is more protective of people than she admits, primarily her staff. She came up in the service industry, adjacent to the wealthy, well-connected, and criminal elements who treat maids, waiters, drivers, and other staff as disposable NPCs. She cannot stop people thinking that, but she does not tolerate actions that reflect it.

With guests she is polite and firm, giving them enough warmth to avoid insult and uphold the demanding standards of Meridian Station, but not enough softness to invite pushing or familiarity when it is not wanted. By virtue of a lifetime of practice, she is very good at making a refusal sound like a matter of logistical fact. With staff, she is demanding but fair. Competence is a minimal baseline, and she notices sloppiness and indiscretion. She also notices exhaustion, fear, or tension, and still take steps to resolve it. With criminals and other grey-market types that take advantage of Meridian Station's laissez-faire nature, she is matter-of-fact and avoids posturing. Nadia does not employ threats unless she is certain she can arrange the promised consequence. She treats them like difficult vendors: useful sometimes, dangerous often, romanticized never.

With Selim, she is more openly herself. She can be tart, amused, irritated, blunt, and affectionate in a way that she rarely shows other people. Nadia is one of the few people on Meridian Station who knew him from the very start. This allows her a certain freedom with him, and he with her.

STRENGTHS

• Pattern Recognition: If the state of the room, the spending habits, or the toiletries don't match the stated cover story, Nadia will know.
• Resourceful: A lifetime of experience in the industry allows her to solve problems with what is available: a room upgrade, a delayed lift, a quiet word with security, a comped bottle, a staff reassignment, or a favor she is owed.
• Steely: Nadia is brave in an unromantic way. She doesn't look for fights, but can sit across from dangerous people and tell them what is going to happen.

WEAKNESSES

• Failure to Communicate: Nadia can be too willing to keep secrets for operational purposes -- and might withhold information on the grounds that sharing it might cause a worse outcome (even if it could cause a better one, too). There is a certain kind of arrogance to that approach, which she concedes, but it has not changed her calculus.
• Rationalizer: Nadia is far too open to morally dubious methods when she can tell herself that it was cleaner than an alternative.
• Vengeful: She is able to delude herself into thinking that getting revenge on someone is the same as justice. This is often shortsighted.

HISTORY

Nadia began her career as a young housekeeper's assistant at one of Canto Bight's luxury casino hotels. It wasn't glamorous work, but it paid the bills, and she found that the right smile and a chocolate on the pillows, she could earn good tips. She spent years cleaning up after people who tipped well and behaved, who tipped badly and behaved worse, politicians, smugglers, celebrities, aristocrats, corporate leaders, and rich fools who believed that a closed door made them invisible.

It was an education in how people behaved when they thought no one -- or no one of importance -- was looking at them. And it was an education on being observant, noticing things: someone who claimed a bracelet was stolen but left the outline of its case in a travel drawer; a minibar seal that had been lifted and reset; a room that had been searched by someone pretending to clean it; a bloodstain scrubbed with the wrong solvent; a dealer's jacket hidden in a guest suite where it ought not to have been. She didn't make a performance of what she knew and saw. She reported carefully, with enough evidence that managers could not ignore it and enough restraint that they did not feel embarrassed by her.

And she learned what should be reported, what should be forgotten, and what should be used as leverage.

Her first big promotion came after a wealthy guest accused a junior housekeeper of theft. Management was ready to sacrifice the girl because the guest as valued and the housekeeper was replaceable, but Nadia was not interested in watching an innocent colleague go down for something she didn't do. She reconstructed the room from memory and determined that the theft had been staged. The missing item was hidden by the guest himself as part of an insurance fraud scheme. The housekeeper kept her job, and after that people began to come to her with strange problems.

Nadia moved from housekeeping into room inspection, then guest-services coordination, then loss prevention. She learned the formal systems after she had already learned practical systems. She understood housekeeping logs and staff routes, floor schedules and maintenance requests, suite assignments and service lifts, blond corners, guest habits, and the difference between a harmless secret and a dangerous secret.

She met Selim Kadir when he was still a bellboy with too much charm and confidence, and she was still a chambermaid who was too nosy for her own good. They had a rocky start, but eventually became friends, and when one moved on they moved on together, and watched each other's backs, from the Ravelle to Meridian Station. Selim became the public face of the station's hospitality and gaming floor, while Nadia became Operations Liaison. The title allowed her wide latitude to deal with a wide range of issues in Selim's little empire. She became an all-purpose fixer and operated as an informal ambassador to approach not-so-respectable interests and arrange business relationships.