[b]31. KAMAINJA "KAM" CACERES[/b]

(orignally made for the Amun Society (Urstyle))
Inspired by: Alejandro Alvaro Aguila de Agustin (ish)

CS: https://urstyle.com/styles/1788708

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𓆅 KAMAINJA CACERES
s o n . o f . q e t e s h

“A savage is not the one who lives in the forest, but the one who destroys it.” (Unknown)

Nickname(s) •• Kam, Kammy, some of the people he met while training used to jokingly call him "ninja" because his name kind of sounds like it
Age •• 23
Birthday •• May 24th
Star Sign •• Gemini
Birthplace •• A Tirió village deep within the northern Amazon (located in present-day Suriname)

Gender •• Male
Sexuality •• Homosexual
Model •• Benjamin Lessore

Dæmon Name •• Aryina
Has their dæmon form settled? •• Yes; she's a stoic, unflappable black panther who has no time for Kam's bullshit. His dæmon form settled quite early, actually, and although some people might have been surprised that his dæmon form was not a toucan or macaw or some other flashy (and annoying!) bird, those who know him well would not have been overly surprised-beneath his cheeky grins and colorful feathers, Kam is actually quite...serious.

Occupation •• Guide and translator, though he also helps his dad and half-sister around the house and in their fields when there's not much other work to be done
Education •• Besides the training provided by the Amun Society, Kam's not had a lick of schooling in his life. He learned everything he needs for his current job from the people in his village (though he would very much like to at least visit a university one day)

Skills/Strengths •• Kam speaks a wide variety of languages fluently, thanks to both his upbringing and his time in training (the most notable being his own native Tirió, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and a variety of Amazonian and Amerindian languages, including Quechua, Ayamara, Nahuatl, Mapuche, and Ki'che'). Growing up in the jungle, Kam has known how to hunt, farm, cook, and live off the land ever since he was a young boy. He can find his way through the dense undergrowth of the Amazon without a problem, and he has made the trip to the Surinamese capital and back to his own village innumerable times. He is also very knowledgeable in regards to the properties of dozens and dozens of rainforest plants, and knows more about the animals of the jungle than some western biologists could ever dream of.

As a child, Kam was very skilled with the bow and arrow-the choice weapon of his tribe, when it comes to hunting-and during his time in training, he expanded into more modern variants, such as the crossbow. He's also a deadly shot with a handgun and pretty decent when it comes to knives, daggers, and other blades. Although he's not as strong as some agents, Kam is quick and agile and flexible, and he knows how to make use of his natural balance, grace, and coordination when he's in a fight. In regards to his magic, Kam is extremely talented-this, coupled with the scientific knowledge that he's gained from aiding biologists and botanists and the like-has made him accutely aware of the conditions in the flora and fauna of his surroundings. Kam can tell you, with an almost uncanny precision, what pollutants are affecting what plants, where, and how long they have been there. Sometimes, when he is alone in the jungle, he can almost feel the very cells that form the air and water and trees themselves.

Finally, Kam is someone who has gotten very good at hiding everything that he truly thinks behind a flamboyant facade, all the while analyzing and observing everything going on around him. He misses very little, and has an eye for detail. Kam can be cunning and manipulative if he wants to, but for the most part, he's content to sit back and watch things unfold rather than directly get involved.

Besides. He's got more important things to worry about.

Flaws/Weaknesses •• Kam's really not very strong, physically-speaking, when compared to some of the people in the Amun Society. In addition, although he is very skilled when it comes to his magic, it tends to be weaker in urban centers, where the air and land are the most polluted. It's also harder for him to concentrate when he's in busy industrial cities, and he finds that his stamina/endurance is lowered. He finds that he feels REAL shitty if he eats over-processed foods, or fruits/vegetables that were doused in pesticides. So he tends to avoid meat altogether when he's away from home, and he's always suspicious of fast food. But dear /god/, fries are good.

Kam's not entirely familiar with certain aspects of twenty-first century culture, seeing as he's spent most of his life in what many people would consider the middle of nowhere. He's no super genius when it comes to computers, or mathematics, and I mean /yes/ he can operate a motor vehicle, but sometimes he forgets to use the turn signal or turn on his headlights. You know, no biggie. Kam knows what wifi is, thank you very much, but sometimes when the wifi's broken and he needs to restart the router-well, whether or not Kam knows what a router really is is...questionable. Kam takes his appearance /extremely/ seriously, and he would never step foot out in public unless he was perfectly put-together, a fact that makes him late to practically everything.

Kam tends to think about things from every possible angle, considering every possibility, so it always takes him by surprise if somebody straight-up says what they think, to the point where he will over-analyze and read way too much into it. His general personality can also piss people off, and it's really, /really/ hard to get Kam to act like he's taking things seriously.

Finally, Kam is /terrified/ that his village will find out that he's really not into women at all. Most of the men his age are already married and starting families, but Kam has not so much as started considering marriage, which has worried his father and caught the attention of the rest of the village. Kam knows that they can't find out about his, ah, /preferences/, but he also doesn't want to marry somebody and pretend like he's in love with her for the rest of his life.

Magical Abilities •• Kam is able to manipulate plant life and induce plant growth at unnatural speeds, as well as communicate with plants and animals. He can sense plant life through layers of steel and concrete and rock, and he draws energy and strength from plants (which is great when he's in the middle of the jungle, but kinda sucks when he's stuck 30 stories above the ground in a skyscraper made of metal and glass). In addition, Kam has an immunity to many plant-based poisons.

Personality •• Kam exudes an aura of airy frivolousness, accentuated by his flamboyant style of dressing (you know that ya boy loves his feathers and paint) and his overly feminine features. He appears dismissively unconcerned about matters that are important to others (such as, you know, the economy) and overly concerned with entirely trivial difficulties (how hard it is to find parrot feathers to decorate his clothes with in the city, for example). Kam can be rather flippant and rarely, if ever, loses his composure-unruffled and unflappable, Kam is infuriatingly calm and cheeky in even the most pressing of circumstances. He has a penchant for creating entirely unfitting nicknames for others that some may find to be excessively irritating. He goes about everything with an air of nonchalance, and people who know him know to never expect him to be entirely serious during the course of a conversation.

Kam is a total social butterfly-his light-hearted and joking manner may be irritating to some people, but it endears him to most others, and he has a magnetic sort of personality that makes him a friend to all. It takes a LOT to truly offend him, and he always, always, always insists on being perfectly put together before leaving the house (which, admittedly, makes him late to many things-but Kam likes to think that he's /fashionably/ late, not just plain old late). He has a reputation for being quite flighty when it comes to girlfriends (and when it comes to most things in general, to be honest); he's had a few flings in the past, but nothing has come out of them-much to the chagrin of his father, who wants him to, and I quote: "Hurry up and get married already!"

Kam is hellaciously vain, placing his looks and clothing (and feathers and paint and all that jazz) very high on his list of priorities. He is also very shrewd, a fact he hides with his outrageous demeanor, and keenly observant-more observant than one would guess. Kam tends to conceal what he's really thinking or feeling with an excess of false, over-exaggerated emotions, especially when dealing with highly personal issues. He has an acute memory and is able to remember specific, random and seemingly irrelevant facts from years in the past; he's also very good at remembering faces and names. Kam's attitude of airy disregard, excessive flattery, and impeccable fashion sense (because come on-even though the cityfolk like wearing European-style clothes, Kam knows that he looks bomb AF no matter what he's wearing, be it traditional Tirió headresses or a suit and tie) have earned him quite a reputation, though it is, in truth, meant to disguise his less-than-conventional views regarding human morality and the environment, as well as his...less-than-conventional education (and his own insecurities regarding his place in the world and the Amun society, of course. But shh. We don't talk about that).

Kam adores gossip of any kind, although he is very tight-lipped when it comes to his sources. He values independence and the freedom to choose-the freedom to choose who he associates with, the freedom to love and marry who he wants, the freedom to gossip about who and what he wants, and most importantly, the freedom to choose what to /wear/. Kam does everything fashionably, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else (including common sense), and he fervently believes that 'outrageous' is oftentimes one's best disguise.

And indeed, behind his outrageous demeanor, Kam is actually quite serious and thoughtful. He can feel the jungle-/his/ jungle-dying; he can feel it sputtering and choking on the world's smoke and smog and pesticides and poisons, and he wants nothing more than to /stop/ this. And to do that, he must catch the eye of the gods, one way or the other.

Biography •• Before he had even known his own name, Kam had known the jungle.

And what a beautiful jungle it was! There were vivid fuschia flowers and woody lianas and funny-looking monkeys that swayed from tall tree branches, and there were eye-poppingly bright frogs (which his father said to never, /ever/ touch) and huuuuuuge butterflies and bitter coca and all the cassava plants they grew, half-hidden by the foliage. It was alive, all around him-chirping insects and singing birds and prowling panthers; towering trees and twisting vines and blossoming flowers.

Kam grew up in this jungle. He'd never met his mother-she died when he was born, they said-and so his aunts and older cousins became his mothers, while his father laughed at the way they would put flowers in his hair and try to get him to wear a dress (and he laughed even harder when Kam /agreed/ to it).

Kam remembers his childhood years with a nostalgic fondness; he remembers his first taste of cassava beer, sitting with his father and two aunts and his older cousin Kajamaro, who is now married and has three children. It was /disgusting/, back when he was five, though he quite likes it now.

He remembers tagging along to hunt with his father, watching him effortlessly shoot a bird through the eye and spear a fish without getting his clothes wet. He remembers his aunt's hands, powdery with manioc flour; he remembers his cousins giving him his first earring, made from parrot feathers. He still has that earring (it's a great earring!).

His younger years were not all sunshine and rainbows, though. In this day and age, Amazonian tribes are fading away, either losing their culture in exchange for a religion from the other side of the world and Western medicine and technology, or being forced to give everything up after conflicts with farmers and loggers and corporations who would claim the rainforest for themselves, or both. Kam remembers hearing the stories from other villages; he remembers how it made his father so /angry/, and how helpless it made him feel.

When Kam was nine or ten, his father re-married. The marriage was controversial in that he married an outsider; a biologist from Lima, Peru who had come to study the plants of the northern Amazon. She had been coming for ten or so years by that time, and Kam was fond of her. She knew so much about all the plants-names in three different languages, and parts and stuff about something called "genes" and "DNA", and Kam was always eager to know more, and she was always so happy to share!  

After much debate, it was finally decided that Kam and his father would go to Lima with Kam's stepmother. The city was a big change-and it was frightening at times-but Kam would only be there a year before the summons came.

Kam's father hid his true heritage from his stepmother, from everyone in their village. Instead, he told them that Kam had gotten a scholarship to go to a school overseas, and that they were very strict on visiting times, and that it was a huge honor, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so Kam went to Egypt, and "school" was freaking terrifying sometimes (to be fair, though, it certainly didn't help that Kam had spent the greater part of his life in a jungle village), but Kam adapted quickly. And he found himself /liking/ it, sometimes, especially when it came to the friends he made.

(And the kohl. Kam /loves/ kohl).

It wasn't until the fourth year that Kam realized he was madly, deeply in love with one of his classmates. He didn't understand, at first, and so he hid it until he could hide it no more, and the two of them were caught "eating their faces off" (as one of the other students so delicately put it) in a stairwell. The other boy was older than Kam, and Kam hasn't seen him since he graduated, which he supposes is a good thing; there was no future for the two of them, at least not in the village. And Kam couldn't imagine spending his life anywhere other than the jungle.

After finishing his schooling, Kam went back home to his village, where he quickly made up for the years he'd missed and learned what his own people had to teach him amidst the screams of spider and howler monkeys and the squawks of red macaws echoing from dense stands of bamboo. He re-discovered the wild papaya and mahogany trees and bananas and palms; the bitter cassava beer that tasted like home and the flora and fauna of the jungle. 

But this time, Kam could /feel/ the jungle, more than ever before. And thanks to his time in Egypt, he could not only feel it, but also manipulate and communicate with it-though he didn't need any of that to know that the jungle was dying. He began working as a translator and guide, bringing researchers and scientists from the Surinamese capital city of Paramaribo through the jungle and to the Tirió villages. He loves hearing about their work; some of them want to cure cancer with plants from the rainforest, while others want to observe the last Amerindian cultures before they disappear completely, and sitll others want to meet with the chiefs and shamans and elders and find a way to stop corporations and loggers and farmers from clearing the land and putting cattle ranches where the jungle makes its home.

From these people, Kam learned about things like nitrous oxides and methane and carbon; he learned about how coastal eutrophication was killing the fish and pesticides were killing the birds and greenhouse gases were causing a hole in the atmosphere that had the potential to kill /people/. And from these people, Kam learned that there was no /time/.

The jungle-no, the /world/-is dying. Kam knows that the gods can save it; he knows that his mother, if he can find a way to reach her, can help put a stop to this. Kam has always revered the gods, but now, when they're his only chance to stop the rainforest from hurting, Kam wants to catch their attention even more. And Kam wonders; do /all/ humans truly deserve to exist, after what they've done to the earth?

Top Three •• son of Qetesh, daughter of Ma'at, daughter of Hapi

Writing Sample •• https://urstyle.com/styles/489855 (scroll down past the ****)

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