Character 99 - Mkpulunma Usweko

Picking a class for this week’s character was difficult. Although the high charisma screamed some kind of charisma caster; Bard, Bloodrager, Oracle, Skald, and Sorcerer all had magic that in the Mana Wastes would be unreliable at best and dangerous at worst. This goes to show that although the stats may lean toward one thing, background information may dictate another.

I was originally thinking that she would be some sort of charisma-monkey rogue. Then I remembered that constitution was the core stat for the kineticist from Occult Adventures. In looking through their archetypes I found one for specifically for changelings out of the Blood of the Coven book called the Arakineticist. Upon further delving I also found the Overwhelming Soul, which replaced con as the core stat with charisma. The fact that they stacked was just the providence I needed to make this character.

Mkpulunma Usweko

The Mana Wastes is a barren place, but life can be found here and there amongst the mutants and monsters. In many instances, these small towns and village fall along what few trade routes pass through these desolate lands. In one of these towns is where Yafeu Usweko made his home after leaving the jungles of Mwangi with his first wife and son.

Yafeu was a merchant among his people and used what money he made to expand his business upon his arrival in the Wastes. Just as his career grew, his family did as well. His late wife bore him one more child, although she passed before her youngest son even turned ten.

It took a few years but the merchant eventually remarried. The woman reminded him very much of his first wife. The married quickly and within a year she produced a daughter. But on the night of their child’s birth, the mother mysteriously disappeared leaving Yafeu to raise the child alone. The coming of a daughter and the loss of a second wife was bittersweet.

Mkpulunma grew the youngest child with two overprotective brothers. Even if she was only their half-sister they still loved her very much. As she grew up, the young girl exhibited a certain unnatural beauty that attracted many of the boys in their town. Nothing ever lasted and she often used her brothers to help her break off a romance that she decided she was over so as to protect her ego from the pain of being broken up with.

When she was spurned for another girl by a young man who she took a fancy to she became exceedingly jealous. She used her position as the daughter of one of the more prominent tradesmen to humiliate the young girl, who she felt stole the affections of the boy she wanted. Again her pride would not let her be hurt in this way.

Things began to change for her when Mkpulunma was sixteen. Aspects of her true heritage began to show themselves. The curse of her mother’s bloodline began to overwhelm her body with negative energy. The blood of a hag almost tried to kill her and those around her as she began to lash out with blasts of entropy and decay.

The young changeling began to hide from the world; her ego could not allow for those around her to see her so vulnerable. In her quest to remain unseen she turned to the lady of veils. She begged to be made invisible to those who would seek to know her. She also took up the wearing of many veils to cover the green hair and different color eyes that gave her away as the daughter of a hag.

The Mana Wastes are full of chaos. Magic has gone awry when it even works at all. Those who exhibit some of these wild talents do not go unnoticed. Although Mkpulunma’s abilities were neither divine nor arcane in nature they were still seen to some as a symptom of the anarchy of power in the region. One such person to take notice was the hunter Heracrix.

Heracrix’s powers came from the discordant nature of the land around them. His wild soul infused with the beasts of the land, but not so much that he could manage true druidic magic. As a member of one of the few druid groups in the region who looked to heal the land, he chooses to do so by helping others with wild talent to find some sort of balance within themselves.

The Hunter took Mkpulunma under his wing as her mentor and trainer. He found her strength in the force of personality she exhibited and helped her to learn to use that to control the power of her curse. Although it lessened what she was able to accomplish, it did keep her constant production of negative energy from eating away at her physical being.

Through years of constant study, learning to force her mind over her body, Mkpulunma eventually gained control of her curse. She still wanted very little to do with others, lest her fragile pride be hurt. She decided to leave all those who knew her in the past and make her way in the world where the new her was the only her people would know. What that will bring she is quite unsure of.

With that I give you a complete background but what class do you think this character would have become? Who was her mentor? Why was she jealous enough to humiliate someone? Where did her worship of Sivanah come from?

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Character 38 - Pashani Graveson

A group of stats and some random information. A Garundi man from the mana wastes, one of three brothers, a twin. He’s physically quite capable but a bit of a simpleton. His true power lies in his force of personality. His good looks, his quick tongue, and the x-factor of good charisma. At his core, he is a man who is true unrepentant evil and a follower of the Demon Lord of lies, envy, and murder, Shax. But how does this all link together? What is the story behind these rolls? This is the story that I found hidden in this information.

Pashani Graveson

Alkenstar may be the most well-known settlement in the Mana Wastes but it’s not the only one. A handful of lone homesteads and small villages dot the blasted wasteland. Many of these villages don’t even have a name. The residents of these places are hiding from something or descendants of those who have run, everyone an outcast of some sort.

In one of these over glorified mud holes lived Hamanbari Screamingfall formerly of Rahadoum. Hamanbari fled with his wife from the atheistic county and its pure legion for the crime of having faith. Taking Sarenrae into his heart, the true believer was also a minister to a small secret flock of worshipers of the Dawnflower. He became little more than a subsistence farmer trying to survive the horrors of the Mana Wastes.

Blessed with one boy already when Hamanrabi found his wife pregnant again, this time with twins, the Garundi man was overjoyed. With three sons his family could make something more of the piece of land they had claimed near a small village. The midwife, also a medicine woman, was not so optimistic and told Hamanbari that something would go wrong with the birth. She told him she could feel it in her bones.

When the twins arrived one of them was still born, or so the midwife said. What really happened was the witch woman sensed a great evil in the child and strangled it with its own umbilical cord. The body of the nameless child was laid to rest in the ground behind the small farm house.

Late In the evening of that first night, after his wife had cried herself to sleep, Hamanbari heard crying coming from outside. He followed the sound toward the small grave, thinking of course he was just imagining it in his grief. When he arrived at the burial site of his stillborn son, the child was laying atop the mound and crying to the heavens, beside a hole from which he must have dug his way out of the ground. Hamanbari considered this a great miracle and the work of Sarenrae for his dedication.

Sarenrae, however, could not always look out for the family and the Mana Wastes are a dangerous place. Hamanbari died during an attack by one of the many mutated creatures that roam the wastelands. The three brothers Omanju, and the twins Neshari and Pashani moved with their mother to the city of Alkenstar. The boys’ mother, Immari, died a year later on the exact same day as their father, which also coincided with the birthday of the twins.

Omanju was young, but old enough to care for his young brothers. Taking up the dedication and faith of his father he worked at the church of Sarenrae and felt the touch of the Dawnflower in his heart. His training as a cleric left ample time for the twins to get themselves into trouble. The other priests always chalked it up to boys being boys.

Neshari was bright, some would say a genius, but more than a little naïve. Pashani on the other hand had problems keeping his numbers and letter straight, but he could still talk his twin into doing anything. The two seemed to always be up to something although Neshari usually received the blame as there was no way Pashani could come up with such ideas. As they aged Neshari’s intelligence caught the eye of Aleknstar City’s wizard and he began training, leaving Pashani the only brother without a path to the future.

Pashani continued to cause trouble through the city, although being a simpleton got him off the hook for most of it. What most people didn’t notice was the maliciousness in the young man’s eyes. One might even say the things he did were downright evil, but it was always brushed off, as he was perceived as too addle-brained to know better. His masterpiece was convincing a city guardsman that he should kill the man who had eyes for his wife. He would have gotten away with it as well, if his own twin had not seen through his charade.

Neshari helped capture his brother and helped the courts convict him of numerous crimes on the promise Pashani would be held as insane. This was a betrayal that Pashani would never forget, could never forgive. Swearing revenge, Pashani knew his time in prison would be short. He had secrets that even his twin didn’t know. Pashani had survived birth because he was ridden by a demon servitor of the mighty lord Shax. He had command of mystical abilities he never revealed that allowed him to twist the minds of others. His blood coursed not just with the taint of the abyss,  but with the wild magic of the Mana Wastes imparted by being buried in its soil.

Pashani bode his time in the insane asylum, surprisingly finding a like mind sociopath in one of the other inmates. When the time came he and his lover Isham Stoat, a multiple murderer, walked out the institution’s front door. They left a trail of dead guards and orderlies in their wake before vanishing into the city with plans to one day even the odds with Pashani’s twin.

This is the tale I came up with, but what was your tale? Who was this man? What are his goals? Why does he do what he does? Tell us your tale in the comments.

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