Noah
Noah Mei is the crew’s cook. She was rescued from starvation on the wastes of Mong Bal and trained to be a chef for the Homyn elite on Mons Mirror. Noah is generous to a fault. She willingly shelters a dangerous hungry ghost inside of her in hopes of being able to provide him sustenance.
Noah's cheerful attitude always brightens the Nomad's galley. She somehow makes delicious meals out of the random fish the Nomad catches and what little they can grow in their garden, and always makes sure the crew goes to bed with full bellies. When the Party slays a leviathan, she is the first to dive in with her harvesting cleavers, emerging hours later covered in blood with buckets of meat in tow.
While polite and sweet tempered, those who talk to Noah for a while will catch glimpses of a difficult and traumatic life of someone growing up on the wastes of Mong Bal. Noah has hinted at a youth no stranger to starvation and even cannibalism. It has lent her a certain unflappableness to weather even the grizzliest circumstances with a smile.
She likely would have perished in the harsh desert, as many others do, but she was rescued by a Mong Bal missionary from the Order of the Morning named Koh. In addition to being a daemon hunter, Koh was a gifted chef. He taught Noah how to prepare what little food they found into appetizing meals.
When Koh sent Noah out to gather food one day, she failed to find any, and he died of starvation. As a powerful warlock in the Dream World, starvation twisted Koh's astral form, turning his departed spirit into a Jikininki, hungry ghosts with an endless appetite for food, known to devour the chefs and bystanders when their appetites were no longer able to be satiated.
Noah vowed that day that she would no longer let anyone go hungry again, and that included her mentor's malignant spirit. Rather than fight or flee from the daemon, she willingly allowed it to enter her body. She resolved that she would become the greatest chef in the spheres and do the impossible by satiating a hungry ghost.
Noah took a position in the kitchens of Jin City at the age of thirteen. When she was fifteen, a visiting merchant from the Io East Orbit Company offered to bring her to Mons Mirror to apprentice her to a master Chef.
Noah lived in the tenements of the city relegated to vassal races. She spent most of her income feeding those in the area who could not feed themselves, throwing barbecues and block parties that endeared her to her neighbors. Of course, it also gave her a chance to learn recipes from the myriad vassal cultures who ahd immigrated to Mons Mirror.
Over the course of eight years, Noah held positions in twenty-nine different restaurants, apprenticing under chefs who practiced wildly different culinary disciplines. It was not uncommon for chefs to trade their Mong Bal kitchen staff frequently, but most of her kind found their range exhausted after transferring through a handful of kitchens. While Noah never obtained the rank of master chef in any discipline, she demonstrated proficiency in every cooking discipline the Ioan nobles have thrown at her. Each restaurant where she worked saw a dramatic increase in profits within a month of her employment and a similar decrease in the months she left. Those statistics would be impressive for a top-billed master chef’s arrival. For an anonymous line cook, they were almost unexplainable.
Although, Noah had more motivation to excel than most chefs. If she failed to keep Koh satisfied, he could emerge from her body and devour everything (and everyone) in their path. Noah was more or less able to keep the hungry ghost under control, feeding it a variety of foods prepared with remarkable skill. However, there were a few slipups in the early days, where Koh broke free and caused damage.
Eventually, Noah came in contact with Koh's apprentice, a Homyn named Asher. After discovering her connection with Koh, he was eager to help her and offered to take her into the temple. But Noah sensed a zealousness within Asher for his daemon-hunting profession. She kept the true nature of Koh's death hidden, instead telling Asher that Koh had been killed by a Jikininki rather than having become one.
The Party arrived on Mons Mirror and visited the restaraunt Noah was working at, an upscale seafood establishment called The Azure. The Party managed to sneak inside and grab Noah's attention in the kitchen. However, she initially turned down their offer to join, believing that Mons Mirror was the best place to take care of Koh.
After they left the restaraunt, Asher apprehended them. He'd been watching over Noah over the course of her career and had come to believe that the Jikininki he believed to have killed Koh had come to Mons Mirror in search of Noah. It was not uncommon for such daemons to track chefs like serial stalkers, gorging on their food until the only thing that could satiate them was devouring the chef themselves. Asher had interpreted the Jikininki attacks that occured around Noah as one of the malevolent daemons zeroing in on her.
While he initially suspected the Party of being daemons, they quickly cleared up the misconception and agreed to help Asher root out the hungry ghost. It turned out that the misguided Blade of the Morning wasn't wholly wrong. There was another Jikininki following Noah's career, a half-Mong Bal food critic working for the Balabar Herald named Shen Zin. He'd picked up a taste for Noah's cooking while reviewing restaraunts on Mons Mirror. However, like Noah, Shen Zin had found a method of controlling his cravings. His insatiable desire for food translated well to writing about it, and as a food critic he was able to sample enough varieties of cuisine on a regular basis to keep his dark impulses satiated. Shen Zin sought out Noah, not to devour her, but to "discover" her and assist with her career.
The Party and Asher remained oblivious to this fact, and set about a plan to corner Shen Zin inside The Azure and perform a ritual to draw out the Jikininki attacking the town so they could exorcise him for good. They followed through with their plan, but the ritual had no effect on the food critic. Instead, it drew Koh out from Noah inside the kitchen and caused her to attack the restaraunt in a ravenous rage.
The party calmed Koh by gathering food Noah had prepared and feeding it to him. When he retreated back to Noah's body, a brief window emerged where Asher could still perform the exorcism. He urged Noah and the party to go through with it, knowing how dangerous a Jikininki could be. Shen Zin argued against it, saying that Noah's difficult (if not impossible) task to keep Koh fed motivated her to push her culinary abilities to new heights.
Weighing their options, the Corsairs decided to respect Noah’s decision and allow the Jikin-Inki to remain within her. Now that she was out of a job, Noah agreed to come with the Corsairs on their mission to advance her culinary career in hopes of finding a way to satiate Koh. The group returned to their ship, having one more mouth to feed than they had expected.
Working in close proximity inside the Galley, Noah grew close to the crew's musician, Ezra. He began courting her and even scored a date with her in the ship's movie theater, which Itthis decided to third wheel them. Ezra was quite perturbed, but Noah, being the cheerful soul that she is, was always glad for more company.
Noah's cheerful attitude always brightens the Nomad's galley. She somehow makes delicious meals out of the random fish the Nomad catches and what little they can grow in their garden, and always makes sure the crew goes to bed with full bellies. When the Party slays a leviathan, she is the first to dive in with her harvesting cleavers, emerging hours later covered in blood with buckets of meat in tow.
While polite and sweet tempered, those who talk to Noah for a while will catch glimpses of a difficult and traumatic life of someone growing up on the wastes of Mong Bal. Noah has hinted at a youth no stranger to starvation and even cannibalism. It has lent her a certain unflappableness to weather even the grizzliest circumstances with a smile.
Skills
Cooking1d12
Survival 1d12
Traits & Edges
Master Chef: Prepared meal effects last one week.
Home Cooked Meal: Provides a +1 bonus to Sleep Tests
Chef’s Assistant: +2 bonus to Cooking tests made on the ship.
Early Life
Noah grew up in the harsh climbes of the Mong Bal Wastes, where water was rare and food was a luxury. Consistent--and likely generational--malnutrition stunted her growth, causing her to develop dwarfism that persisted into her adulthood. She stands at a dimunitive height of four-feet tall.She likely would have perished in the harsh desert, as many others do, but she was rescued by a Mong Bal missionary from the Order of the Morning named Koh. In addition to being a daemon hunter, Koh was a gifted chef. He taught Noah how to prepare what little food they found into appetizing meals.
When Koh sent Noah out to gather food one day, she failed to find any, and he died of starvation. As a powerful warlock in the Dream World, starvation twisted Koh's astral form, turning his departed spirit into a Jikininki, hungry ghosts with an endless appetite for food, known to devour the chefs and bystanders when their appetites were no longer able to be satiated.
Noah vowed that day that she would no longer let anyone go hungry again, and that included her mentor's malignant spirit. Rather than fight or flee from the daemon, she willingly allowed it to enter her body. She resolved that she would become the greatest chef in the spheres and do the impossible by satiating a hungry ghost.
Noah took a position in the kitchens of Jin City at the age of thirteen. When she was fifteen, a visiting merchant from the Io East Orbit Company offered to bring her to Mons Mirror to apprentice her to a master Chef.
A Chef on Mons Mirror
Being a hub of culture and commerce in the Homyn Kingdom, Mons Mirror offered many opportunities for Noah make ends meet by developing her culinary skills. The steps of Noah’s career that followed were fairly typical for a Mong Bal immigrant among Homyn high society. She bounced between various restaurants across Io’s moons, matriculating to a new kitchen whenever it would look too suspicious for her current employer keep her on their payroll without promoting her to a sous-chef position.Noah lived in the tenements of the city relegated to vassal races. She spent most of her income feeding those in the area who could not feed themselves, throwing barbecues and block parties that endeared her to her neighbors. Of course, it also gave her a chance to learn recipes from the myriad vassal cultures who ahd immigrated to Mons Mirror.
Over the course of eight years, Noah held positions in twenty-nine different restaurants, apprenticing under chefs who practiced wildly different culinary disciplines. It was not uncommon for chefs to trade their Mong Bal kitchen staff frequently, but most of her kind found their range exhausted after transferring through a handful of kitchens. While Noah never obtained the rank of master chef in any discipline, she demonstrated proficiency in every cooking discipline the Ioan nobles have thrown at her. Each restaurant where she worked saw a dramatic increase in profits within a month of her employment and a similar decrease in the months she left. Those statistics would be impressive for a top-billed master chef’s arrival. For an anonymous line cook, they were almost unexplainable.
Although, Noah had more motivation to excel than most chefs. If she failed to keep Koh satisfied, he could emerge from her body and devour everything (and everyone) in their path. Noah was more or less able to keep the hungry ghost under control, feeding it a variety of foods prepared with remarkable skill. However, there were a few slipups in the early days, where Koh broke free and caused damage.
Eventually, Noah came in contact with Koh's apprentice, a Homyn named Asher. After discovering her connection with Koh, he was eager to help her and offered to take her into the temple. But Noah sensed a zealousness within Asher for his daemon-hunting profession. She kept the true nature of Koh's death hidden, instead telling Asher that Koh had been killed by a Jikininki rather than having become one.
Recruitment
The Order of the Morning weren't the only ones whose attention Noah had attracted. Her largely unseen impact on the culinary scene of Mons Mirror was flagged by the information broker, Clay. When Jin Bei hired him to seek out candidates for his new crew of Corsairs, Noah was an easy recommendation.The Party arrived on Mons Mirror and visited the restaraunt Noah was working at, an upscale seafood establishment called The Azure. The Party managed to sneak inside and grab Noah's attention in the kitchen. However, she initially turned down their offer to join, believing that Mons Mirror was the best place to take care of Koh.
After they left the restaraunt, Asher apprehended them. He'd been watching over Noah over the course of her career and had come to believe that the Jikininki he believed to have killed Koh had come to Mons Mirror in search of Noah. It was not uncommon for such daemons to track chefs like serial stalkers, gorging on their food until the only thing that could satiate them was devouring the chef themselves. Asher had interpreted the Jikininki attacks that occured around Noah as one of the malevolent daemons zeroing in on her.
While he initially suspected the Party of being daemons, they quickly cleared up the misconception and agreed to help Asher root out the hungry ghost. It turned out that the misguided Blade of the Morning wasn't wholly wrong. There was another Jikininki following Noah's career, a half-Mong Bal food critic working for the Balabar Herald named Shen Zin. He'd picked up a taste for Noah's cooking while reviewing restaraunts on Mons Mirror. However, like Noah, Shen Zin had found a method of controlling his cravings. His insatiable desire for food translated well to writing about it, and as a food critic he was able to sample enough varieties of cuisine on a regular basis to keep his dark impulses satiated. Shen Zin sought out Noah, not to devour her, but to "discover" her and assist with her career.
The Party and Asher remained oblivious to this fact, and set about a plan to corner Shen Zin inside The Azure and perform a ritual to draw out the Jikininki attacking the town so they could exorcise him for good. They followed through with their plan, but the ritual had no effect on the food critic. Instead, it drew Koh out from Noah inside the kitchen and caused her to attack the restaraunt in a ravenous rage.
The party calmed Koh by gathering food Noah had prepared and feeding it to him. When he retreated back to Noah's body, a brief window emerged where Asher could still perform the exorcism. He urged Noah and the party to go through with it, knowing how dangerous a Jikininki could be. Shen Zin argued against it, saying that Noah's difficult (if not impossible) task to keep Koh fed motivated her to push her culinary abilities to new heights.
Weighing their options, the Corsairs decided to respect Noah’s decision and allow the Jikin-Inki to remain within her. Now that she was out of a job, Noah agreed to come with the Corsairs on their mission to advance her culinary career in hopes of finding a way to satiate Koh. The group returned to their ship, having one more mouth to feed than they had expected.
Adventures Aboard the Nomad
Noah fit in well with the rag tag crew aboard the Nomad. She always keeps the galley a lively place and proved a useful asset in preparing dishes from leviathan meat and other special ingredients the Corsairs find. On one occasion, she even made Jaime's dead pet seagull, Sweet Prince, into a stew. Although, the one special request she often scrambles to politely decline when Princess Halle offers to "help out" by cooking the ships' meals for a night.Working in close proximity inside the Galley, Noah grew close to the crew's musician, Ezra. He began courting her and even scored a date with her in the ship's movie theater, which Itthis decided to third wheel them. Ezra was quite perturbed, but Noah, being the cheerful soul that she is, was always glad for more company.
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