Dearly Beloved, We Are Gathered Here Today

Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2017 19:24:41 GMT -5

Kalila Omaira Bast
25 - Female - Pureblood - 12/18/1992

Second year Astronomy Student | Barista at The Coffee House

Appearance and Personality
General Appearance: Tall and slender at 5’10”, Kalila casts an imposing figure. She’s not much a fan of heels, to the great relief of her future husband. With an oval face and high cheekbones, she’s a beautiful picture of femininity. Kalila walks with grace and purpose, and dresses in much the same fashion.
Sexual Orientation: It’s complicated, okay? She hasn’t taken the time to think about it. They're marrying me off anyway
Skills: Dancing, Charms, Chess, Astronomy, Arithmancy, Bending her father to her whims (“Except, apparently, my impending marriage.”), Divination, Runes
Weaknesses: “Look, I’m a Bast, and as Papa would say, ‘Bast is strong. Bast is not weak.’” She’s actually terrified of large birds, Her siblings, Her father (she’s sort of afraid of him, in that he’s making her marry a man she barely knows beyond a few hello’s in passing, but she loves him still because he’s her Papa and he really only has her best interest at heart.) Riyad--it’s complicated, because she wants to hate him, but what she’s learned so far has only made her like him and she’s almost afraid that she might be happy with him if she lets herself really know him.
Positive Personality Traits: Beautiful, Graceful, Intelligent, Strong-willed, Health Conscious, Mature, Discerning
Negative Personality Traits: Hard-headed, Stubborn, Imposing, Demanding, Impatient, Irresponsible, Superiority complex
Hobbies and Interests: Stargazing, History, Spending time with her family, Extending her engagement for as long as possible, Reading tea leaves, Running away from serious responsibilities
Character History:

Kalila Omaira Bast was born on a windy December day, but the sun was shining high in the sky, as the family claimed it always did for the true children of Ra--she really can’t be sure if it’s true, but she supposes if you look at the truth from the right angle, then it’s really not a lie. Kadar adored his daughter, sometimes obsessively so, but she was just as enamored with him so Sabirah saw no reason to intervene. That’s not to say Kalila doesn’t love her mother, because she does, but they’re so radically different in personality that Kalila has a difficult time finding things to talk about. As a child, Kalila was easily humored and rarely as serious as her mother; she loved playing outside and often brought home stray animals, which she then begged her parents to let her keep. The only one they allowed, in the end, was a sphynx cat that had been horribly malnourished and abandoned. She proceeded to name him Khalil, with all the enthusiasm of childhood innocence--she was ten, but that’s irrelevant.

When she learned she was going to be a big sister, she was ecstatic, the idea of a younger sibling to teach and play with was everything she’d dreamed of. To her great, childish surprise, Sayyid was small. Too small to play with. Too small to do more than hold. What use was a brother she couldn’t play with? Disgusted, Kalila sat, dejected, with crossed arms and refused to hold him. When Sayyid finally was old enough to play with, Kalila warmed up to him in increments, though she had no small difficulty sharing her toys at first. Then Sabirah announced they were going to have another baby, and Kalila reacted with the immediate disdain of one who has ‘figured out the system’--her three-year-old words. When the doctors revealed there were twins, Kalila was even more upset, but was soon pacified when they discovered the genders to be one boy and one girl. Finally, Kalila would have a sister! Sisters had to be better than brothers, right? Wrong. They were worse. Sisters started just as small as brothers, and Karida cried more than Sayyid ever did, which put a damper on Kalila’s plans to teach her sister everything about having brothers. Obviously Karida wasn’t cut out for sisterhood.

As the twins grew, however, Kalila warmed to them like she had Sayyid, but she was never as close to any of them as she was to her father. Karida was too much like their mother for Kalila to tolerate for more than a few minutes at a time. The thing they all had in common, however, was their mutual love for stargazing, and so the family of six would sit outside for hours, looking at the stars and pointing out various constellations--or making up their own, as was often the case with small children.

She attended Uagadou School of Magic at the age of 11, and she made sure to bring Khalil with her, because she’d hardly let him out of her sight since she found him. Once there, Kalila discovered an affinity for Charms and Arithmancy, and then Divination and Runes once electives were offered. She excelled in Astronomy, of course. In the end, she graduated with top scores in all five of those courses, as well as scores in the top ten percent in three more. With scores like that, she had her pick of careers or universities, though she still needed her father’s permission to pursue any of them. Luckily, her father saw no harm in letting her attend university to study Astronomy, and so she left for Britain to attend Lufkin.

Plots and Politics
What is your character’s stance on the recent takeover of the Ministry by Death Eaters? "The what now?" She was raised mostly in Egypt, so she has little knowledge of what the Death Eaters really are, but she knows they believe in blood purity and she's all for that.

Where did your character stand in the treatment of Death Eaters and their families under the late Minister Durant's rule? She didn't think it was right, especially since they were only trying to purify Britain.

How was your character and their family affected by the reign and death of Voldemort? Totally unaffected. They're pure and reside in Egypt, Kalila only lived in Britain permanently when she began school less than two years ago.

Family

Parents: Sabirah Bast (nee Karayan) and Kadar Bast
Siblings: Sayyid, Karida, Sami
Children: Please no
Partner: Riyad Tariq - Fiance (arranged, also a distant cousin on her father’s side)
Other Relevant Family: So so so many. The Bast line, The Shafiq line, the Zabini line, and various other lines through marriage. "It's a tangled web of intermarriage and minimal outsourcing."
Family History:
The Bast line dates as far back as 3100 B.C., basically as early as written language in Egypt. Records weren’t meticulous, admittedly, but they were clear enough to prove them pure and that was all that mattered. Originally believed to be descended from Ra--and later Horus--the Bast line has always carried with them the knowledge that they were essentially royalty, and expected to be treated as such. The first recorded member of the Bast line is said to have married a daughter of Sobek, the god of strength, and they had many sons. From there the line continued in their third son, who married a child of Khnum, the god of fertility; and their only daughter, who married into children of Thoth, god of scribes. As a result, the records for that branch were much more detailed. At some point, distant cousins married other distant cousins which brought the line back to itself, before it branched out again, and so the cycle went.

After a while, sometime around 400 B.C.E, a Bast son married a child of Set, the god of darkness and evil, and that’s when things went a bit...sideways. From there, they were much more strict about marrying pure, where the line before had only required one son or daughter to marry pure, they now demanded that all did. Unafraid to marry into other countries to achieve their goal, eventually a daughter of Bast married a Shafiq which resulted in the birth of Heydar and his sister, Nasrin. The male line, however, continues in Egypt to this day, currently headed by Kadar and his wife, Sabirah.