Tymely News
Character Feature: Cha'da (AKA Eden Nisim)
An image of Cha'da, as Illustrated by Ryan Johnson. Taken form the cover of Dark Moon.
Cha'da is a character I enjoyed writing, because in just about every way, she's caught between. She's a human that was half raised among goblins. She's a pirate by necessity, rather than choice. As a necromancer, she's a medium between life and death. She's from a technological culture, but loves magic. Last of all, she's neither good nor evil, with one foot in the light and another in darkness, choosing to walk the line down the middle.
Early Life of Eden Nisim
Cha'da was born and named Eden Nisim in the Northwestern Empire and is actually of the royal bloodline. Her father was originally slated to become Emperor, but he rejected the throne to marry a commoner for the sake of love. The paranoia of his younger brother, who inherited the throne in his place, eventually caused the man to hire an assassin, because he feared the rightful heir would usurp him. As a result, Eden's parents faked their deaths and the three of them joined a colonization mission under false names, to escape.
They were some of the original colonists to the world that gave rise to Heart Forge (the main city-state that features in The Wizard's Scion), so Eden/Cha'da is actually about fifteen-thousand years old during the events of Dark Moon.
When the empire nuked their colony, her family hopped into a shuttle and hid underwater (imperial colonization shuttles are actually designed to also function as submersibles). They spent most of that time sleeping in suspension tubes, because the shuttle's computer went to sleep and the alarm meant to wake them never went off. Instead, the safety systems of the tubes woke them when power ran low. By that point, the shuttle was stuck in the mud at the bottom of the ocean and her father destroyed the engines in the process of breaking them free.
In the end, they were forced to bail via the airlock and swim for the surface. Eden drowned, but her parents resuscitated her. They spent ages floating on the ocean in a little inflatable raft. When they ran short of food and water, her parents gave their rations to Eden. They died and she survived just long enough to get sick with Mind Fire, the local disease responsible for people gaining magic powers. During the fevers, she was "rescued" by a crew of goblin pirates, who'd originally planned to do rather unspeakable things to her and then (if she survived) sell her into slavery.
Their plans didn't happen, because Eden used magic to defend herself. Recognizing her potential and talent, the shaman of the tribe decided to teach her magic, including necromancy. The old goblin woman renamed her Cha'da (goblin for 'little red') and the two of them had a relationship almost akin to grandmother and grandchild.
Captain Cha'da, Terror of the High Seas
Sadly, the old goblin died and Cha'da became shaman in her place, but the captain of the ship was jealous of her height and challenged her to fight him to the death. Cha'da was forced to kill him just to survive and in the process, she became captain and chief of the tribe, at the age of sixteen.
She could have abandoned the goblins to their own devices, but after years of living among them, she'd come to think of them as family. If you've ever had the misfortune of witnessing a domestic dispute, then you can likely conjure an image of the kind of dysfunction she lived with, though goblins are far worse than that.
In the end, she decided to tame their wild ways, instead of leaving the only family she has left and she really does love them, despite their flaws. To that end, she's a pirate captain, but shes slowly guiding her crew to less violent ways, using selling people into slavery as a step toward getting them to stop thinking of murder as the first and only option. Her ultimate goal is to get them to settle down somewhere and run a tavern, instead of being pirates.
Nature or Nurture? Good or Evil?
In many ways, Cha'da is a result of her environment, but a part of her will forever look to the stars, longing for the home she left behind, fifteen-thousand years before. She wants to return, but doesn't have the means.
The reader of Dark Moon might initially think Cha'da is the villain of the story, but while she is an anti-villain, she wouldn't be the mustache-twirling type, even if she were male. It would be more accurate to say she's deeply pragmatic and has a sense of morals that are less restrictive than most, but she still has lines she won't cross and regrets how hard a woman she's become. She also has a strong sense of justice when it comes to men that abuse women and will go out of her way to punish those that cross that line, regardless of who the abuser may be or how much power they have.
Cha'da is a wild child at heart, who made Dark Moon enjoyable to write, because I wasn't quite sure what she might do next.
Cha'da's Rival
Levi, the primary protagonist of The Wizard's Scion, has a very complex relationship with Cha'da, because they very much got off on the wrong foot. Some of his crew went missing and Cha'da encountered them during her work as a pirate captain.
They tried to kill her with the weapons of their shuttle and she responded with a rather deadly necromantic spell, because that was the only sure way to save herself and her own crew. Had they not attacked, she wouldn't have harmed them.
She's not guiltless in the matter, but neither is she completely at fault and when Levi finally hears her version of events, he's forced to admit he might have done the same, in her place.
Final Words
Depite how she's introduced, Cha'da is one of the protagonists of Dark Moon and this is the first book in which I decided to pit one protagonist against another, which is something I've done several times since, though those other projects haven't been published, yet.
After all, when the hero faces the villain, you usually know what the final outcome will be, but when two protagonists face off, no one can predict the results. It's really fun to watch characters that should be allies beat the snot out of each other, until they realize what went wrong.
That's why I'll always have a special place in my heart for this character, because she helped me embrace a very different style of writing.
I hope you'll enjoy seeing her walk the line between light and darkness as much as I did.