Xistina — Roleplayer Guild

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post this but time has been against me. This is still a work in progress. I'm only posting it because I want you to know that I am still very interested in this RP and so that you can review what I have and decide if you want me to make changes. I only need to complete how magic works, as I noticed you changed the CS.

Name: Ooko
Alias: Madakam
Age: 18
Apparent Age: 20
Height: 6’0”
Weight: 155lb (Medium Frame)
Eye Color: Black
Hair Color: Green
Physical Identifiers: The first thing one notices about a Madakam is their (painted) green color skin and how tall they are, but the most peculiar feature is the kinship mask on their face; The Madakam wears a mask made from bone, cartilage, flesh and sap. They are not born with this mask, but every Madakam at the age of 12 partakes in a rite of passage - it marks the transition from childhood to adulthood, in the course of this time the kinship mask is grafted into their faces. These are living masks and act as the face of a Madakam for the remainder of their lives. For a Madakam the mask is a reflection of their soul, their passions, their feelings, their fears and hopes. (Kinship Mask, see defining moment)

Appearance: Ooko is a typical young Madakam, tall and fit, and keeps her skin and hair painted green. Most Madakam distinguished themselves by adorning their mask with assorted colors and intricate tattoos, some even add amber drops or colorful gemstones in their designs but not one mask looks the same - Ooko painted the Madakam symbols of harmony and balance on her mask. She wears ‘light armor’ made of the natural resources of the jungle, in intricate designs that help her blend to her environment - the minimal gear covers private parts and protects limbs. This light armor is flexible enough for the rigorous day to day tasks. 

Equipment/Personal Possessions: Amplifier Gloves (Amps): are used as an energy enhancer, it allows a magician to build up the sap energy, for a stronger more powerful spell. Magnetic Amber: magnetic ambers are used to travel, by locating a magnetic rainbow, it can be activated to teleport an individual across great distances. Harvester Pick: used to dig the ground for materials. Hai-Phong, a bag to stuff with materials and resources. (Though most of these items are in her pet-mount inventory.) Her most valuable possession are the jewels that adorn her limbs and garments - these are magical and offer protection against magic and her ecosystem. 

Pets/Companions: The Bawaab is characterized by its green scaly skin and flat hammer head with an eye at each extremity. The bawaab has pillar-like legs, large feet and moves at a surprisingly speed. This herbivore is a timorous creature occurring mainly in the jungle lands. Madakams breed these animals and use them as mounts.
 
Tribe/Village: The Madakam/Mora

Titles/Occupation: Expert Jungle Harvester/Magnetic Cartographer/Defensive Magician/Jeweler Apprentice/Healer

Languages Spoken: Taki Madakam: Their language consists of two essential parts. The actual speech, the spoken word used in daily communication, and the sacred writing, the Madakam pictograms.

Languages Written: Taki Madakam: Pictographic writing does not have any references to time of day or the season of the year. The Madakam people use pictographic writing to record the most important truths, the mantras that are often repeated over and over again to form ornamental patterns on buildings or weaponry.

Opinion of the Ruse: The Madakams believe that the Ruse are the living embodiment of pure energy (Ma-Ruk, see religion) on the planet sent to stand vigil over the plant kingdom and ensure that no one may destabilize the fragile equilibrium of the planet. The Madakams believe themselves to be chosen children of the Ruse because it is they who have most retained the pure energy. Ruse worship has become part and parcel of Madakam existence - by giving them offerings and doing them favors they impart their magic to them.

Opinion of Outsiders: The Madakams see outsiders as barbarous tribes as they witnessed them hunt down and kill primitive primates, and rip the lands of valuable resources destabilizing the fragile equilibrium of the planet they cherish. Outraged and horrified at such display of barbarity Madakams set up outposts through the lands of Witherings keeping endless watch, and veering barbarians from entering the Villages of Intuition and the sacred temples. Only those people who respect their laws of conservation can merit of their knowledge of magnetism and magical skills.

Hopes and Dreams: Dreams of retrieving the knowledge lost during the Great Swarming and open the doors to the secrets of the past. Hopes to be reborn as a true child of Ma-Ruk and reach the ultimate bliss. And for all peoples to join forces in their crusade against the Goo to make this world a better place. (Goo, see magic) 

Likes and Desires: Likes to hone her harvesting skills, to be close to nature and roam free in the jungle. And desires to put her skills to good use and help rebuild her civilization.

Fears and Dislikes: Fears losing her identity, her culture, her way of life, and the ever growing Goo menace. She dislikes that her healing abilities are yet too weak to combat the Goo. And though she never experienced the Great Swarming that destroyed her ancestors lands, the stories are horrific enough, that she fears it may happen again.

Secrets and Regrets: Ooko’s mother told her the story of her family; Ooko’s great. great, grandmother was a High Priestess, a Celestial Guardian, a wise woman with great knowledge of which local plants could serve as medicine. Her family have always practiced Medicine very extensively, as a side-effect of their everlasting struggle against the Goo. She lived in a time when ancient Madakams scoured the jungles for all the different kinds of plants they could find and mixed them into balsams, and managed to find combinations of plants that help goo-afflicted wounds heal better. 

As the Madakam came into contact with the other civilizations, they also started scouring the other ecosystems for more ingredients to experiment with, and even brought back knowledge from many cultures. And through time the Madakam perfected their balsam-recipes. In order to preserve what they know, the Madakam came up with a new medium to preserve their Knowledge. Exploring the properties of amber, crafters fashioned amber cubes, inside which knowledge can be stored.

But all that changed when the Ruse started teaching the Madakam magic. At first only a few Madakam merely dabble in magic, barely able to create a spark, but over time magic became more widespread and more powerful. Balsams, that took great effort to create and only healed injuries slowly became obsolete, when any magician could just cast a healing spell and heal the same injuries instantly.

Over time, healing magic overtook the practice of traditional medicine, Healers replaced Medics in Madakam society, and the knowledge of bandages and balsams only remained in old documents and the minds of a few traditionalist. No surprise then, that after the Great Swarming that killed most of the Madakam and destroyed all of their libraries, there was nothing of this knowledge left among the surviving Madakam refugees.

But her great, great grandmother managed to save an amber cube of knowledge from the old lands containing knowledge of the Medic occupation. She passed this knowledge cube to Ooko’s great grandmother, who then passed it down to her to her eldest daughter, who passed it down to Aoko - Ooko’s mother.

Recently scientist studying the Goo have found hints that the use of magic speeds up the expansion of the Goo. This gave rise to a movement of people against the use of magic, a small handful of Madakam that have denounced to follow the Ruse, and demand the higher spheres of society go back to old traditions and practices that have nothing to do with magic and the cult.

Ooko, stole the amber cube from the family vault, wanting to help reinstate the Medic occupation and put a stop of Madakam’s dependence of healing magic. She gave the cube to Chiang, an old and influential guru, not knowing he was infected with the Goo and was slowly becoming insane. Chiang was quickly deposed and to this day nobody knows what he did with the cube of knowledge - and Ooko has never told anyone that she gave it to him.  

Personality: Ooko is a bit of a wanderer and a dreamer. She aspires to accomplish many things, and will try to do them all but never finishes them on time. Her sister thinks she is frivolous and immature, and credits these faults to her age. She is always encouraging Ooko to stay within the city walls, and not to explore beyond the Witherings, something Ooko has begun to ignore. She respects her sister but as her magic skills grow so does her confidence. She claims to have an explorers heart but has never seen an outsider or been to other lands beyond the river or the Great Wall. She has a strong love for nature and her peoples beliefs that a balance must be maintain - one should reap of the land only what one needs. She abhors cruelty to animals and the senseless killing of animals for food, when natural food is more nourishing and abundant.

Religion: Over time the Madakams, in their search for spiritual enlightenment, have grown close to the mysterious Ruse entities whom they regard as higher disciples of Ma-Ruk, The Life Giver. A Madakams very nature is calm and spiritual, their holy duty is to ensure nature’s equilibrium and to fight against the Goo, the plague of the Jungle. They are keen to share spiritual awareness so that all peoples may attain eternal bliss. Their religion teaches the harmony of the body and soul through meditation and prayer; spiritual accomplishment can be gain through the wisdom of Ma-Ruk.

Ma-Ruk (The Life Giver): The Madakams worship a superior life energy which created life, Ma-Ruk. They do not see this energy as a superior humanoid being but as an energetic entity free of body that presides over a kind of nirvana. Ma-Ruk manifests her presence on the planet through the Ruse who watch over her creation - it is through them (the Ruse) that Madakam will gain merit to accede to full enlightenment. 

Relatives: Najab, her sister, who after the death of her parents has become her guardian. She pushes Ooko to be more independent yet safe, and tries her best to steer her in the right direction. Though the latter isn’t always successful.

Friends: Chu, the boy that makes her heart skip a beat. Her mentor and teacher, Ja-Zun Gei, who has become more of a parent than anything else. He teaches Ooko the skill of harvesting, and how to locate the resources of the land. She is often traveling with him and other harvesters gathering materials to bring back home for crafting and trading.
 
Enemies: The Antiruse; a fanatical tribe of Madakams who fiercely reject the worship of the Ruse, and violently oppose the Madakam government. Because of their loathing of anyone who worships the Ruse, they will attack any Madakam wearing a Kinship Mask, mutilating their faces, often removing them completely assuring a certain death. And other worshipers of the Ruse had better stay away too.

Defining Moments: The most defining moment in her life was Kinship Day, the day she received the Kinship Mask. She remembers the ceremony vividly. It was the first time she saw a  Ruse. The meeting was followed by a big celebration, the adoption celebration. It was a great moment of joy and communion. 

The celebration lasted six days and on the six night the Ruse take the children. The Ruse teleport themselves with the children into the Eternal Tree. It was a wonderful place where an everlasting sap spring reigns and animals live in peace; Ooko still remembers the raguses that played with her, and it still shocks her to see how the Goo has corrupted these once timorous animals in the wild.

The ritual is composed of four ceremony steps.
First is the step of separation from the materialistic world to the natural world; each child sheds themselves of all belongings, these items are placed in a Hai-Phong, a bag weaved by his/her family. 
The second ceremonial step is purification; each child is bathed under the sap spring to purify the body on the outside, followed by the consumption of pure sap for an internal purification. It is then that the Madakam’s skin is first tainted green.
Then comes the step of connection to magic; the child is thought to meditate, learns how to focus their mind, how to control the sap within themselves, and how to draw power from it. Only then can they link with Ma-Ruk. 
The last step is the step of rebirth; each youngling is taken to the chambers of dreams, hidden deep into the roots of the Eternal Tree. They stay there for a few days, deep in trance that enables them to initiate harmony with Ma-Ruk. During this sleep like trance, the Ruse give each child their kinship mask. When the child regains consciousness they are back in the jungle, not far from their village and are no longer a child but an adult and will wear his/her kinship mask forever.

A Typical Day: Like most Madakams Ooko works hard in honing her skills, skills that will help the village as whole, but also teach her to be independent. It is of no surprise for a Madakam to be knowledgeable in more than one occupation and skill. 

A typical day begins with the collection of moss from slaveni plants. These plants are all around the village, young magicians learning the rot spell practice on them. Slaveni plants are magical, they have a defense spell call shockwave, and they use this spell to pushback their foe while retreating underground. But the rot spell weakens the plant and dries up killing it. The plant is then pulled out of the ground, the moss is collected and brought to the stable to be used as food for the animals, and the bud is collected for replanting and for jewelcrafting. It only takes a season for the plant to grow back. Jewels crafted with slaveni buds give their wearer some resistance against the shockwave spell.

After collecting moss and buds Ooko goes to meet with the Overseer. Typically the overseer provides tasks - Ooko often chooses delivering materials to local crafters around the Villages of Intuition. It gives her the chance to leave her village and to ride her mount, but also to learn which materials are used to craft as each crafter has their own recipe mix. She stores the materials inside a Mektoub Packer - a placid plant feeding pachyderm with a long and powerful trunk, which it uses to collect food, convey water to the mouth, for smelling, and for lifting. It has dexterous feet with large bulbous toes enabling it to radiate heat. These animals are tamable and widely use as mounts but more ideally as pack animals. 

Traveling from village to village she delivers the valuable resources. The roads between the villages are fairly safe, it isn’t strange to find other riders along the road. Sometimes the occasional ragus animal roams on the road. Ragus are canine-like creatures with retractable claws, rasping tongue and five eyes, which allow it to see in all kinds of light. They are hyperactive fast-moving omnivores, that used to be social animals in the old lands, but the goo has corrupted their minds. These animals often travel in packs. If she comes across one her only option is to outrun it on her mount, often sacrificing the mek-packer and resources.

Along the way Ooko is joined by Chu, her best friend and secret crush. Chu is the son of her mentor, Ja-Zun, a harvester trainer that has taken a liking to Ooko. It isn’t yet clear to Ooko if Chu has feelings for her, but she hopes that he will claim her for a wife during the next spring pairing ritual. He often accompanies Ooko during her deliveries, and when that is done they ride together to meet Chu’s father for a harvesting expedition.

Ooko loves the daily expeditions because they take her outside the city walls into new territory, often into regions of the jungle she has never seen. And though traveling to these regions is often riddle with dangerous animals and goo-creatures, the event is adrenalin driven and adventurous, and the abundant resources gain is often worth it. The expedition is quite large, a group of 20 men and women traveling together. The animals killed along the way are omnivores, and only their hide and bones are quickly quartered to craft weapons and clothing. Nothing is wasted. Madkams don’t eat meat so this part of the animals is left behind for other animals to eat. It is their way of keeping a balance.
 
Her favorite activity is harvesting, because it allows her to explore new areas and give back to her people. After the expedition the resources are divided, people take what they need. Often people trade what is crafted amongst themselves, anything left is then given to the Overseer to be delivered to other villages for trading.

Upon their return home the peoples prepare for the Feast of Gratitude. It is the most magnificent feast that includes super and giving thanks to the Ruse for providing the resources collected. Every villager gathers and forms a circle around the Ruse Totem. Those whose life were lost during expeditions are prepared by their families and wrapped in giant silk-like leafs of sap and oil, and laid before the Ruse. When the Ruse appears their bodies are pushed into the void to be joined with Ma-Ruk in eternal bliss. This sacred ritual follows the eating of food, music, dancing, and the recounting of today’s expedition. Those whose lives were taken are depicted as heroes, martyrs, so their death have greater value to the whole. Often the greater stories are told by those with master skills whose expedition takes place in the Prime Caves. 

Ooko is a an Expert Harvester, she still needs to learn and hone the skill further to become a Master Harvester. Master Harvesters can pull-up supreme materials from the ground, supreme materials are found in the Prime Caves of the old lands. Only master skills people are allowed on expeditions to the Prime Caves. The old lands are dark and eerie, and home to all sort of beastly creatures, monsters and bandits, and also hold the secrets of their ancestors. Its marvels are equaled only by its dangers, an area of enchantment steeped in legend and mystery, where one can discover both magical places and the face of death itself.

Tribe/Village Detail: It is not known exactly when the Madakams settled in the continent of Witherings south of the river Ti-ain, but it was sometime after the great swarming 300 years ago. The Madakam have always had an innate sensitivity to magnetism. Before they ever called it magnetism, the prehistoric Madakam tribes were built in areas of the jungles that held good energy. Madakams who have a greater sensitivity to good energy, can follow the magnetic lines and track down places of high magnetism. 

The first Madakams set up camp in the jungle when a tribe of them came into contact with Ruse entities. With a natural penchant for the sublime and given to mysticism, the Madakams built up magnetic temple cities centered around the worship of the Ruse, where grand ceremonies are orchestrated for spiritual enlightenment. This was made much easier when the Ruse taught the Madakam magic, which seems to be related to magnetism in ways that aren’t quite understood yet, but knowing magic made it easier to sense magnetic fields.

They named this place of high magnetism Moran, built in hollows in the bark of massive trees to allow protection from goo-infected animals and defense in anticipation of attacks. Through the years other temples of worship were built and as the population grew these villages united to form a dynastic guild. The region cleaned of goo and made relatively safe is now known as Villages of Intuition.

They established a Theocracy, lead by the Great Sage. They value Spiritual Achievement: to gain merit for one’s soul to reach enlightenment by fortifying an individual relationship with the Ruse. Wisdom: to better serve the Ruse it is important to learn about oneself, your people and the planet. By gaining knowledge one will learn how to better defend the planet, the Ruse and the peoples against barbarity. Respect for Nature: Madakam culture is built on a deep respect for nature. Madakam people guard against over-exploitation and fire, and at all costs fight against the goo.

The Madakams have established their enchanting village in the jungle where the Sap flows in abundance and nourishes the thriving flora. Despite the welcoming and colorful labyrinth of plant life, the perils are manifold. The jungle in many areas is beset by the pestilent goo - a cancer that nibbles inexorably at the life ravaging habitats, plants and bearing forth hideous monsters. And the climate is variable, the perfect tranquility may be suddenly broken by the clash of thunder and raging storms.

Every Madakam plays a role as spiritual leaders, but in society they are expected to be warriors to defend their territory. Crafters to produce everyday objects and weapons; and harvesters to gather the raw materials for food and manufacture. And magicians to enchant crafted items, protect harvesters, and heal warriors in combat and keep the enemy in check.
Xistina Member

Status

Recent Statuses

Bio

Most Recent Posts
