Rimas Nolie is a skunk and mage who was born in 510 GD. Her parents are Samuel Nolie, the wolverine, and Francine Nolie, the skunk. She has one sibling, an older sister, Theresa Nolie, the skunk. Her family adopted Marcel Tano in 525 GD, and she treats him as a younger brother despite them being the same age.

Rimas showed remarkable proficiency at the piano from a young age, which encouraged her mother to push Rimas towards taking formal lessons on the piano beginning from the age of 3. Her skill at playing the piano developed rapidly. She performed at her first piano recital at the age of 5, and composed her first original piece, “Tulip Rag”, at the age of 6. This would, for much of Rimas's life, be her best-known composition.

Rimas's father (a known Kaltish revolutionary who opposed and sought to overturn the annexation) was assassinated via cadmium poisoning.

During the final months of his life, Samuel taught Rimas elementary flame magic (which was at the time highly illegal).

Rimas did not take the death of her father very well, and quit the piano the following month. She turned to playing pretend “witches” with Marcel, only stopping when Bruce Tano forbade her from entering his house again.

Rimas took up the skateboard soon after this, practicing multiple days during the week, and every weekend. She inherited her father's old skateboard, and used the same board all throughout her childhood. She continued studying magic in her spare time, secluding herself in the archives beneath Atticleaves and studying the ancient tomes there.

When her mother decided to sell the bookstore in 520 GD, Rimas secretly kept the key to the archives, and attempted to smuggle out as many books as possible. She ended up removing over 200 books from the archives over the following weeks. She was eventually found out by her sister Theresa, who told their mother about what Rimas had been doing, but Francine (reminded of her late husband's passion for preserving old books, and knowing the new owners wouldn't understand their value) decided to help Rimas move more books out instead, but only if she promised to practice the piano again.

Rimas structured her weeks throughout her childhood like this. Weekends were for practicing skateboarding. Rodays and Ludays were for practicing piano. Tuldays and Durimdays were for studying and homework (which is, like all Adenian schools, due on Yendays). Verdays and Yendays were for whatever she pleased (which was almost always magic, but she would sometimes practice skateboarding or play piano instead). Rimas essentially gave up on having a social life or any friends during this period of her life.

In 525 GD, Rimas entered and won first place in the Tolikra Citywide Skatefest competition in the vert category for children aged 13-18. She was the only girl in the top ten, and the other competitors accused her of cheating. She stole the wireless microphone from a reporter who had attempted to interview her and skateboarded away, reaching the platform of a halfpipe and delivering a speech from there.

This is a message to all the girls in this city! I am tiny, gay, and I'm a better skater than all these boys! Don't let the men in your life tell you what you can and can't do! Don't let them enforce their patriarchal fetishes upon you! You can do absolutely anything you set your mind to, and you can do it better than any man! Women are amazing and that's why I wanna marry one! If you're a bad bitch and you live in Tolikra, and you wanna date the greatest skateboarder this city has ever seen, call me, because I am single! —Rimas Nolie, age 15

Her tensions with the other skaters came to a head on an Etsday evening when she was walking home from the skatepark. She was approached by a group of teenage boys who she recognized as the other competitors in the skatefest. They stole her skateboard from her and broke it. Marcel (who was recently made an orphan and homeless) was present in a nearby alleyway and approached to see what the commotion was. Rimas, infuriated at the destruction of her dead father's precious skateboard, was attempting to fight back alone against the group of five boys, but she was too small and weak. As she was about to throw a punch, Marcel grabbed her wrist from behind. Rimas thrashed, attempting to headbutt Marcel, before realizing it was him.

Save your wizard hands for playing the piano and skating. They're too precious to waste on these guys.

— Marcel Tano, age 15

Marcel proceeded to fight the five boys, who were all older than him, by himself. He was tall for his age, already standing at 6'7“, but Marcel at this time was quite underweight for his age. He didn't have much muscle on him. He was weak from hunger fatigue, and he was not a trained fighter. But no matter how hard the boys hit him, no matter how many times, he did not fall down. Marcel eventually landed to manage one clean hit on one of the boys, knocking him down. At this point, the boys fled. Marcel was at this point heavily bruised, covered in cuts, and one of his eyes was swollen shut.

Rimas brought Marcel to her house, where her mother and sister tended to his wounds. After hearing that his father had been murdered, and his mother fled the country later that evening, Marcel concluded that her mother must have killed her father and then abandoned him. Rimas, upon hearing of this, convinced her mother to adopt Marcel rather than letting him to back to dumpster diving for his meals.

Rimas gave up skateboarding after being attacked following her win, and returned her focus to music. She met Lily Thompson the following autumn, upon their return to high school, and she told Rimas she recognized her from her television interview, introduced herself as a fellow bad bitch, and immediately asked Rimas out. Upon learning that Rimas could play the piano, Lily asked Rimas to come over so they could jam together. Soon after this, Rimas introduced Lily to her brother Marcel, and the three performed at a school talent show as a jazz trio called “Cherry Tree”, with Rimas and Lily calling themselves the cherries, and Marcel (due to his height), being the tree. Larry Bridge saw this performance from the side of the stage, as he was also an entrant to the same talent show. Larry ended up narrowly winning the talent show with a solo saxophone performance over some pre-recorded synthesizer music he had composed. Larry approached the trio after the talent show ended and told them he wanted to join their band.

The Velocity Quartet was a jazz quartet consisting of Rimas Nolie on piano and keyboards, Marcel Tano on double bass and electric bass, Larry Bridge on saxophone and flute, and Lily Thompson on drums. They performed at local events, they took gigs, and they performed in places where minors should not have been allowed. Larry and Rimas composed most of the music, with Marcel composing a handful of pieces. Lily was uninterested in composing, but insisted that Larry never use a drum machine again, because of the 'stiff' sound.

That right there is the kinda stiffness an old man wishes he had in bed. —Lily Thompson, age 16

Considering their legal limitations as minors, the band still saw remarkable success, and the four fully intended to become musicians full-time in adulthood.

However, a car accident in 527 GD, near the beginning of their senior year, severely injured Lily and rendered her comatose for the following 12 years. Rimas, as Lily's romantic partner, was the most heavily impacted by this. Rimas turned to the study of healing magic immediately following the incident, but she was unsuccessful in learning any.

With her dreams of becoming a professional jazz musician dashed, with no reason to go back to skateboarding, with her romantic partner comatose, and with magic outlawed in the entirety of the country, Rimas fell into an aimless slump during the last months of high school. Marcel left home soon after graduation, seeking to earn a fortune so he could pay for an expensive medical treatment for Lily one day. Larry went to medical school, studying neurology primarily so that he could attempt to reverse any nerve damage she had from the car accident. Of the three, only Rimas made a habit of regularly visiting Lily. Rimas also began smoking as a way to reduce stress and anxiety.

Rimas gave up on living a fantastical life that summer, and went to a local college to study business administration. During college, she lived on campus, but her antisocial tendencies left her deeply isolated, and having never learned how to make friends “the normal way”, she struggled to date anyone. She tried an online dating service, and was matched with someone who seemed excited to meet her. However, this person was a pervert who didn't care about Rimas as a person, and only wanted Rimas to spray her. Rimas broke up with that person immediately, and was so scarred by the experience that she had her scent glands surgically removed the following year. Rimas quit smoking as well.

She was so deeply traumatized by the event that she developed compulsive hand-washing and cleaning behaviors. She became hyper-aware of her own body odor, showering multiple times a day and using deodorant to attempt to mask her scent. She returned to visiting Lily daily, convincing herself that Lily was the only person who would ever love her for who she was. But Lily remained comatose.

She got a bachelors' degree in 532 GD. She went to work at an office supply company which sold staplers, and she found work as an administrative assistant, where she worked for five years. This was soul-crushing work. Rimas returned to focusing on her magical studies, but eventually she became aware that Marcel had succeeded in earning a fortune, and was now a famous professional wrestler called the Masked Mountain. Seeing her adopted brother succeed so spectacularly while she had (she felt) done nothing with her own life was deeply depressing for her.

In 536 GD, Rimas attempted to kill herself by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills. However, she immediately regretted this, and induced vomiting. She then brushed her teeth five times in a row to get rid of the taste in her mouth and throat. She felt drowsy, which scared her considering what she had just done, so she put on “Silent Wings”, the last album she recorded together with Velocity Quartet, to keep herself awake. However, she soon fell asleep anyway, but the music was playing so loudly that one of her apartment neighbors called the police to file a noise complaint. When Rimas didn't answer the door, the police entered her apartment (being given a key by the building manager) and found her unresponsive on the floor. She was transported to the hospital ER via ambulance, and her stomach was pumped. Marcel visited her in the hospital and covered the bills for the treatment.

Rimas was transferred to a mental hospital, where she spent two months. She learned some meditation exercises, and was encouraged to talk about some of her experiences during group activities. The wing where Rimas stayed had an old, out of tune piano, which Rimas often played during their music activities. Overall, she hated her time in the mental hospital, but found it helpful for her recovery.

Rimas returned from her stay to find that, during her medical leave (which her supervisor had approved) she had been terminated from her position due to “corporate restructuring” which had “eliminated the need for her position”. Rimas found this a convenient excuse for the company to eliminate a visibly mentally ill employee whose performance had never suffered, but as a waiver giving up the right to sue was a necessary part of her severance agreement, and she wasn't ready for a drawn-out legal battle so soon after her stay at a mental hospital, she signed the agreement and took her severance pay.

Soon after this, Rimas genuinely considered asking her mom to move back in with her, but held off, as her severance was enough to live on for a couple of months. She applied for work in a few places, but never made it past the first interview. Rimas accepted gig work as a keyboardist in order to pay her bills for the next several months, but it was rough going with inconsistent pay and no insurance or retirement plan.

In 537 GD, an anonymous donor gave Sal a large sum of money with instructions to purchase Atticleaves with it, and transfer ownership to Rimas Nolie. Sal gladly did so, and Rimas used the remainder of the money to remodel Atticleaves just as it had been in the past. Rimas shifted the direction of the bookshop from the sale of used books and old books to focus more on small-batch releases from local authors. This was a risky move as the reputation of the business had been as a place where one could browse for cheap books and find something interesting at a low price, whereas the business model Rimas was trying to go for resulted in higher cost books from unproven authors.

Rimas made the decision to purchase several pieces of equipment for printing and producing bindings for books, allowing her to produce small batches of these books at a fraction of the cost of using a publishing house. While this strategy was not as effective as simply sticking to what the location was known for, it was effective enough that the location was soon making money again. Some of the old customers of the bookstore returned upon learning that Rimas, the daughter of Sam, was now in charge of the place and had restored it. Rimas hired two people to work in the bookstore. Marble Ryan, who stocks shelves in the store, and Lorraine Stewart, who worked there before Rimas bought the place and kept showing up during and after the transfer of ownership.

In 538, realizing she missed her brother and was tired of never seeing him, she called Marcel and demanded he start visiting her every Yenday. Marcel, by this time, and retired from working as a professional wrestler, and was glad of the invitation.

In 539, Lily was revived from her coma by Jutse Aldwyn, and within a day of regaining consciousness, she dumped Rimas.

Mentally I am still 17. The world has changed. You have changed. This is all too much to adjust to, and you've clearly suffered in the time I've been gone. Let me keep some of my pride by making this decision for you. We are no longer equals. I cannot pretend to be your equal after being comatose for so long while you got to live. But I can, at least, set you free. I will recover at my own pace. One day, I'll be in touch when I am ready. Go out into the world and keep being a bad bitch. —Lily Thompson, age 29

Rimas did not take this very well at all and briefly resumed smoking before Marcel convinced her to stop.

From now on, every time you smoke a cigarette, I will smoke two. —Marcel Tano, age 29