❂ Kedean

[Suhuba]

(Lines by The Only Black Uke, Color by kaname423)

|| Stat Page ||
Updated: Apr/02/18
Experience || 105


Inventory

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Weapons

Simple Gauntlets

Items
None

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

Name: Kedean Aku’a

Stage: Stage Two (Guard > Berserker [Gauntlets]) || Connection: Finnufarinel

Race: Fire/Oban (Pure)

Gender: Male

3 Base Traits: patient, private, principled

Personality: Kedean rushes nothing. Life comes quickly, but in the end each of us is only given one, and Kedean believes wholeheartedly (and practices what he preaches) that the best way to take it is as it comes, appreciating and making the most of each minute. So far as he can tell, the people most focussed on getting things done quickly miss out on appreciating the process—and the process is everything. Life is the process. But that isn’t to say that he does not work hard or is not often busy. Quite the opposite, Kedean cannot afford to waste a minute and doesn’t, he is simply methodical and ever-careful as he goes.

In line with this, Kedean is incredibly disciplined. Because he cannot afford to waste anything, every decision is conscious and every moment is used: he wakes in the dark, cleans, cooks, exercises as the sun rises, washes, eats with whomever he is sharing space, and then begins his ‘real’ work for the day by the time the sun is half its height up from the horizon. He keeps most personal matters to himself, and though he is friendly, few of his friends can say they know much about him other than his cordiality and status as a ‘good listener.’

Though few know it, Kedean is also a man of deep faith—if not in quite the traditional sense. He believes, loosely, in all of the Oban gods and while in Oba may refer to them by name, but only if in conversation for the purpose of communication with whomever he was speaking to. On a personal level, he gives the gods no names and instead believes in more of a collective spirit of forces beyond the purview of the mortal world. Be they many or a single entity, he doesn’t much know or care, but that some energy connects all things living and past seems a given to him. In keeping with his faith — that all things are connected and that his purpose in life is to play a role in that balance for whatever ends he sees fit — he holds himself to a form of unofficial moral code which he hopes will make his impact on the world, however great or small, a positive one closer to bringing order and stability in a place so naturally chaotic.

Kedean is also stubborn, reserved, and self-assured. His rigid habits sometimes make it difficult for him to see alternate paths for himself and reluctant to stray from what works. His formality and private nature keep him from putting too much of himself on display, and yet, success in the paths he has chosen have given him confidence and great assurance that if nothing else, he can always rely on himself. Though he may fail his mother, father, brother — everyone he cares most deeply about and more — and though all he wants is the strength to take care of them, the only person he has flawlessly managed to take care of so far is himself. He hopes to improve on his track record with regard to others.

Description: Kedean is a massive man. Big as a child, he only grew larger with age, always being mistaken for older than he is, and at his full height he reaches the upper cusp of earthling height expectations, such that it is sometimes joked he might have alkidike blood (he does not have a drop and is within earthling range of height, but as tall as they come). Beyond this he is not only broad shouldered, but broad bodied, thick with muscle and built like a brick. His skin and hair are dark brown (hair slightly darker than skin), and he keeps his hair in long, thick dreads, usually tied back with a simple leather strap to keep it out of his way. Against the rest of his features, his eyes stand out as strikingly pale by comparison (reddish pink, light end of the spectrum). His crystals are on his back and mid-light orange.

Clothing: Simple, practical, brown/tan/black/red.

Accessories: n/a

Quest

 

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

History: Kedean never knew his birth mother, but this was never a large issue in his life. In his earliest years, he was raised alone by his father, Sabar Aku’a, too young still for memories of his own. By the time he was of an age to actually remember, his father had been taken with a young Sautian woman, Elissana, far from home. Beautiful, adventurous, and ‘exotic’ for the Oban scene, Sabar was smitten, and though there were surely outside tensions present at the time, Kedean’s memory of that early relationship is rose-colored and pristine. His father married the woman who had become his mother-figure by then, and when Kedean was seven years old, she gave birth to his little brother and only sibling, Zyric.

Despite the internal happiness of the small family, however, they were not immune to outside circumstance, and though they had enough to get by, it was never more than that. Thus, when Elissana took ill — whether due to the reluctance of Oban healers to treat an unwelcome foreigner, the inability of their family to gather together the coin to persuade them to do so, or simply her body’s ill-preparedness to fight off strange desert diseases — her condition did not improve, but in a painfully steady progression, worsened to critical condition. When Zyric was six and Kedean thirteen, she died.

Their father never fully recovered, and in its own way her death left ripples that still have not healed over. After the loss of his wife, Sabar regressed into a withdrawn, sullen drunk. He never became physically or emotionally abusive with his sons, but despite his love for them could not seem to pull past the depths of his own depression. He continued to work—or try—but by crippling himself and his functionality through alcoholism it became more difficult for him to hold onto anything for long. The task of caring for his brother and his father was settled on Kedean’s shoulders—and he was not prepared.

Still, he tried. He matured quickly by force of necessity, but never quickly ‘enough.’ It seemed for that first flurry of years following his mother’s death that the moment he worked his way through one catastrophe or dilemma, another three took its place. To add to the matter, losing Elissana meant losing the last bastion of whatever ‘validity’ his little brother had to begin with. Though race tensions had been there prior, her presence at least had seemed to act as a refuge and a deterrent simultaneously—her arms a place Zyric could run and see his blonde hair and his sea blue eyes and understand he was not alone or as alien here as it sometimes felt. Without her, he was a strange, strange boy with foreigner’s traits who would never fully be welcome despite sharing his father’s dark skin and crystals. And no one let him forget it.

Kedean had been — and remained, to whatever extent he could — a pacifist, never out looking for a fight, but as it happened he never needed to. They came to him, and he lost track of how often it amounted to that. Literal physical scuffles over his brother’s differences, and he could only consider himself fortunate that his body seemed intent on building itself for that task whether he asked for it or not.

Zyric became his foil: loud and brash where Kedean was quiet, rebellious and antagonistic where Kedean attempted to keep the peace, and carefree, spirited, and fun-loving where Kedean always felt the looming, ever-present weight of self-imposed responsibility and the burden of guilt that came with being convinced if their father died due to his addiction, if Zyric were lost or fell astray down some dangerous path, or if what remained of their family fell apart for whatever reason—that was his fault to bear.

But in the meantime, there was work to be done. Being located on Oba’s coast with his family all his life, Kedean did primarily dock work, and was well suited for it. Fishers and traders were always especially eager to have extra quick sets of strong bodies to manage the near endless stream of loadings and unloadings needed—and later, as a wall of protection for themselves, at least in the case of traders. Though reluctant at first to involve himself in anything that would lead to violence, it was difficult—and then impossible—to avoid the inevitability in a poor desert district wherein most everyone had little to nothing—but trade and travel meant coin was changing hands and sometimes, extravagant amounts of wealth were on display in fleeting glints as merchants passed through. It was a recipe for conflict on any number of fronts, and as it became the case with regards to his brother and the fights involved in defending him, so too did it become impossible not to take a side in the stakes.

Kedean sided with order—and coin. For any lawful — or ‘semi-lawful’ if he’s pinched for money — merchant trading company, city guard corps, or sea captain in need of anything from heavy-lifting to protective enforcement, Kedean became a man for hire. His earliest jobs were, of course, whatever he could get as an untrained young man desperate for employment, but those trained him quickly in the truest and quickest form: by demanding performance. Learning by doing. Fortunately, Kedean was a quick study. His body took to fighting for masters — for, though they never for him took such an official form as the masters which owned matori slaves, that was still what they were to him: owners of his time and body because he needed their coin for his livelihood and they knew it as well as him — it took to it like it had been designed for this. As though the gods had shaped him and his life to be the answer to other men’s problems, for the right price.

He was not sure how he felt about that, but since he had little choice in the matter if he intended to support those he did care about, he let the issue rest in his mind, never explored with too critical an eye. He couldn’t afford otherwise.

Connection: Kedean has had a rough life, but he isn’t the only one. While Kedean was growing up on the desert coast of Oba, taking fights for his brother and training himself into a weapon for other’s aims, on an island just across the sea, Finnufarinel was just beginning a very different—but even more embattled path in life. At the cusp of stage two (for his stage two quest) Kedean’s younger brother, Zyric, will run away from home (or ‘disappear’), triggering Kedean’s guilt (he blames himself for Zyric running away) and a reluctance for him to go anywhere in life (while he is on the lookout for his brother, he doesn’t want to stray far from familiar paths in case Zyric comes back looking for him). This leaves him basically in a guilty rut.

Meanwhile, across the sea Finn has just been reunited with his brother after years of separation and having assumed Tacrith was dead—and he’s not impressed. He’s angry, he’s disenchanted with the world, and to top everything off, he’s a walking time bomb of magical capacity as of yet untapped, waiting to go off if the fuse is lit. And Finn’s fuse is soaked in kerosene. He has no filter, no shield, little to no concept of his own power (and certainly no sense of control), and no love for humanity. Disenchanted with the lies of the man who abused him, the untrustworthiness of society, and a brother who apparently lived a soft, cushy high life while he was being starved, Finn is about to leave Yael.

He will arrive on Oba’s shore much as he left the shore of his homeland: dangerously thin, filthy, angry, and ready to eat anything. But foreigners are not always welcome on strange soil, and dirty, dangerous poor are rarely ‘welcome’ anywhere. It doesn’t help that Finn itches for a fight like an animal for fleas, and like other things before it: fights again in this case seemed inevitable. Kedean, though, unlike many of his brethren, has a special space in his heart for those whom society sees and does not accept because they look different. Finn is perhaps one third of the size of Zyric, if that, and he is strange to Kedean’s eyes: with his matted purple hair, his eyes which at least at first emit an eerie silver glow, and the inky black of his crystals and sclera. But perhaps because he is so small, or because Kedean fancies himself a defender for those in need of one, or because his life has made him especially positioned to take the side of those society turns a wary eye on—whatever the case, Finn arrives on the docks that Kedean frequents and their needs, on enough levels, overlap so as to bring their lives together in a number of unplanned for ways.

Finnufarinel is an explosion waiting to happen in need of a pillar to anchor him. Kedean is that anchor, in need of a little shaking up. Finn will be a catalyst in Kedean’s life, forcing him to reconsider how regimented and ‘stuck’ his life has become, as well as how much he has let himself be an instrument for others as opposed to pushing more of his own life choices.  

[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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[Miss Chief aka Uke]

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