Kana Seiran Xar
Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2011 3:16 pm
Name: Kana Seiran Xar
Age: 22
Race: Human
Physical Description: The first thing most people notice about Kana is that she is covered in tattoos of snakes. The tattoos are of varying size, detail and colouration, mostly dull blues and greens, and wrap around each other in complex patterns trailing up her limbs. Particularly observant people might notice that the pattern changes occasionally, with a snake or two sometimes seeming to change position, although her hands and face are usually free of tattoos. The second thing most people notice is that she is bald. In public, she tends to conceal (or at least downplay) these characteristics with long sleeves and a shawl.
Kana is short, slightly pudgy, and tanned. She has the hardened muscles of a traveller, but none of the scars and blemishes usually inflicted by the road. She wears a long-sleeved leather and cotton dress, a compromise between the leather tunic of her homeland and more general Eyropean fashion. She very rarely wears shoes.
Possessions:
Medicine kit
Kana uses blossoms, herbs, venoms and powders to cause or alleviate various illnesses. All her medicines are naturally derived and non-magical. On the road, this kit is just a small waterproof backpack containing a few painkillers, antiseptics and bloodclotting agents, but when she settles down she expands her collection as quickly as possible. Her kit also contains bandages, needles, and other medical necessities.
The travelling garden
The most precious thing that Kana carries is a collection of living seeds and cuttings used to re-establish her medical garden wherever she settles. It contains fast-growing plants with medical properties from her homeland and those that she has picked up on her travels.
Travelling necessities
As a habitual traveller, Kana tends to keep around things like preserved food and a tent. None of her travelling supplies are particularly remarkable. She carries a long knife that could conceivably be used as a weapon, although it’s more of a general tool, and a wooden, fire-hardened spear when travelling or hunting. She makes these spears herself; they are standard, untipped wooden spears.
Strengths:
Forest survival
Kana is a forest nomad. She can find water, food and shelter in wooded areas. She’s a decent tracker and knows how to make several small animal traps, as well as how to hunt with a sling and melee spear. (She can’t use a throwing spear, and has no experience in fighting with a melee spear, only hunting.)
Totemic serpent abilities:
Drug/disease resistance
Kana is a Child of the Serpent, a totem that grants her certain abilities. The first of these is an innate resistance to drugs, poisons and disease. On average, Kana’s susceptibility to infections and vulnerability to poisons is about 1/3 that of a normal woman of her weight and health. This applies only to physical afflictions; magical effects without a material component work normally.
Healer
Children of the Serpent frequently become healers. This is partly because they have a natural sense for the effects of chemicals in the world around them. By inspecting, smelling and perhaps tasting a new plant or chemical, Kana can estimate what healing or toxic effects it would have on a human. This is a mixture of training and her totemic power. It applies only to nonmagical effects. This ability uses her own body as a template and gives good results for those similar to herself (not counting her natural resistance); for example, she could correctly identify a solution that accelerated bone healing even if not injured at the time, but would not be able to tell that a silver solution would be harmful to werewolves as it would only be mildly toxic to her.
Rapid skin healing
If Kana becomes cut, she can concentrate on healing the injury. It’s an exhausting process. Serpent tattoos near the injury site will come to life, crawling across her skin and lying over the cut, healing the skin and subcutaneous fat. This only works on the skin; bone, muscle and organ damage heals (or not) as normal. Children of the Serpent have been known to kill themselves by being too eager with this ability, by trapping foreign objects in deep cuts and causing infection or healing over damaged blood vessels and internally bleeding to death without realising the problem.
Weaknesses:
Resistance to drugs
Kana’s drug resistance applies to painkillers and anti-inflammatories as readily as it does to harmful substances. Any foreign material that interferes with the body’s natural functioning is fair game. This makes Children of the Serpent difficult to treat when they do get sick.
Illiterate
Kana has a system of knots and beads to mark her medicines. While her people have a variety of physical signals to communicate, they do not use written language.
Unusual dialect/appearance
Kana’s native language is technically Eyropan, but the almost complete isolation of her people for long periods of time has resulted in the development of an unusual dialect and unshakeable accent. The past few years of exposure to other cultures has mitigated this somewhat, but she often has trouble with words and concepts that most people her age could be assumed to understand. Similarly, her baldness, tattoos and slightly foreign method of dress can cause problems in xenophobic places like Marn. At best, she appears an uncivilised savage to more cultured people; at worst, she draws undue suspicion and possibly even hostility. She hides her tattoos beneath long sleeves and plays down her baldness with a shawl when she can.
Breathing problems
Kana was born with a lung defect that affects her breathing. It does not hinder her during everyday light or medium activity, but prevents her from getting enough oxygen during heavy activity. Kana is capable of walking at a steady pace for the hours that any nomad is conditioned to walk or carrying her travelling items without difficulty, but cannot run, leap or even drag heavy objects for more than about thirty seconds without pause.
Pregnant
Kana is currently 3 months pregnant. She worries that her child will inherit her breathing disorder, and most likely die.
History:
Kana was born in a large forest in southern Eyropa, known to the locals as Rakara, in the Rakri tribe of Xar. She was named Kana, meaning Wolf, by hopeful parents wishing for a strong, healthy child such as those chosen by the Wolf totem. Their hopes were in vain.
Kana was born, as her parents had feared, with a breathing affliction well-known to Rakri nomads. She was one of the few such afflicted to survive infancy. Her affliction meant that she was never going to be an accomplished hunter or warrior, or an agile scout; it came as no surprise when her totem ceremony on her sixth birthday named her Seiran, a Child of the Serpent. She received her first totem tattoo that night, and like many of the Serpent’s Children, was apprenticed as a healer. Kana was the second apprentice to her tribe’s Healing Hand, a 40-year-old woman named Una. Una was also a Child of the Serpent, which was a stroke of good fortune for Kana; it meant that there was somebody to guide and teach her to use her powers. The Serpent was far from the rarest Rakra totem, but it was rare enough that having one in the tribe was worth noting and having two a definite stroke of fortune. Una’s main duty, however, was teaching her eldest apprentice, Dori, the skills he would need to take her place as Healing Hand when she died.
As she grew, Kana learned her craft and acquired more tattoos. She watched her younger brother become a Child of the Wolf and develop as a promising hunter, and tried unsuccessfully to save the life of an infant sister who carried the same breathing disorder that she did. When she was twelve, she reached adulthood and pair-bonded with a childhood friend named Roni. They eventually bore one child who, carrying the breathing sickness, died before it was named. When she was thirteen, Una died. Dori succeeded Una as the tribe’s Healing Hand, but he relied on Kana’s totemic talents to keep the tribe properly healthy and fed. Many of the tribe had assumed that Kana would eventually become the Healing Hand based on her traditionally healing-based totem alone, and often treated her as if she was. Kana herself accepted the role that had been pressed upon her, assisting Dori and taking an apprentice of her own, with neither resentment nor particular enthusiasm. She had an important role in her society to perform, one for which she had a rare talent despite being unfit for many other societal duties. Her destiny, it seemed, was straightforward.
Kana was nineteen when, during an organised encounter between the Xar and another Rakri tribe, the Thiern, a seven year old Thiern child took her aside. The child, Bavi, was a Child of the Beaver, one of the rarest totems and known for their insight and tendency to change the world (or at least the part of the world inside the Rakara forest). Bavi explained that Kana’s destiny was not that of a Healing Hand, but a Questing Eye; her duty was to travel into the world outside the forest, live among its people, and return to tell the Rakri about it. It had been too long since the Rakri had had any strong international ties, he explained; their stories of the world outside the forest were incredibly outdated at best, their encounters with non-Rakri people limited to occasional traders and lost travellers for over a generation, and if they remained isolated and forgotten, they would die. Bavi was sending Questing Eyes from every Rakri tribe. Kana, he said, was one of the Xar chosen by destiny for the duty.
It was difficult to argue with the predictions of a Child of the Beaver. Kana said her farewells to her tribe, passed the training of her apprentice onto Dori, and broke her bond with Roni. With two other representatives of Xar, she quested to the edge of the forest, into a world of horizons unblocked by trees. In the nearest town, the first permanent town she had ever seen, she parted company with the last familiar faces she would see in a long time.
Kana’s interactions with the new cultures she encountered were illuminating and occasionally dangerous. She continued to move around frequently, unable to shake the restlessness of a nomad, and gradually learned how to pass acceptably in general Eyropean civilisation. She quickly discovered a purpose in her travels: new areas and new cultures brought new plants and medicines, those never seen in Rakara, with new medicinal properties to discover and explore. Kana began to assemble a living pharmacy.
Her travels to date have been restricted to human-dominated cultures in Eyropa. Most recently, a romantic tryst with a travelling trader ended amicably in northeast Eyropa, and she lost contact with him before discovering that she was pregnant with his child. Through a roundabout route she has found herself on the Sooqui Plane, following the Ofriyu Mar toward Marn.
Age: 22
Race: Human
Physical Description: The first thing most people notice about Kana is that she is covered in tattoos of snakes. The tattoos are of varying size, detail and colouration, mostly dull blues and greens, and wrap around each other in complex patterns trailing up her limbs. Particularly observant people might notice that the pattern changes occasionally, with a snake or two sometimes seeming to change position, although her hands and face are usually free of tattoos. The second thing most people notice is that she is bald. In public, she tends to conceal (or at least downplay) these characteristics with long sleeves and a shawl.
Kana is short, slightly pudgy, and tanned. She has the hardened muscles of a traveller, but none of the scars and blemishes usually inflicted by the road. She wears a long-sleeved leather and cotton dress, a compromise between the leather tunic of her homeland and more general Eyropean fashion. She very rarely wears shoes.
Possessions:
Medicine kit
Kana uses blossoms, herbs, venoms and powders to cause or alleviate various illnesses. All her medicines are naturally derived and non-magical. On the road, this kit is just a small waterproof backpack containing a few painkillers, antiseptics and bloodclotting agents, but when she settles down she expands her collection as quickly as possible. Her kit also contains bandages, needles, and other medical necessities.
The travelling garden
The most precious thing that Kana carries is a collection of living seeds and cuttings used to re-establish her medical garden wherever she settles. It contains fast-growing plants with medical properties from her homeland and those that she has picked up on her travels.
Travelling necessities
As a habitual traveller, Kana tends to keep around things like preserved food and a tent. None of her travelling supplies are particularly remarkable. She carries a long knife that could conceivably be used as a weapon, although it’s more of a general tool, and a wooden, fire-hardened spear when travelling or hunting. She makes these spears herself; they are standard, untipped wooden spears.
Strengths:
Forest survival
Kana is a forest nomad. She can find water, food and shelter in wooded areas. She’s a decent tracker and knows how to make several small animal traps, as well as how to hunt with a sling and melee spear. (She can’t use a throwing spear, and has no experience in fighting with a melee spear, only hunting.)
Totemic serpent abilities:
Drug/disease resistance
Kana is a Child of the Serpent, a totem that grants her certain abilities. The first of these is an innate resistance to drugs, poisons and disease. On average, Kana’s susceptibility to infections and vulnerability to poisons is about 1/3 that of a normal woman of her weight and health. This applies only to physical afflictions; magical effects without a material component work normally.
Healer
Children of the Serpent frequently become healers. This is partly because they have a natural sense for the effects of chemicals in the world around them. By inspecting, smelling and perhaps tasting a new plant or chemical, Kana can estimate what healing or toxic effects it would have on a human. This is a mixture of training and her totemic power. It applies only to nonmagical effects. This ability uses her own body as a template and gives good results for those similar to herself (not counting her natural resistance); for example, she could correctly identify a solution that accelerated bone healing even if not injured at the time, but would not be able to tell that a silver solution would be harmful to werewolves as it would only be mildly toxic to her.
Rapid skin healing
If Kana becomes cut, she can concentrate on healing the injury. It’s an exhausting process. Serpent tattoos near the injury site will come to life, crawling across her skin and lying over the cut, healing the skin and subcutaneous fat. This only works on the skin; bone, muscle and organ damage heals (or not) as normal. Children of the Serpent have been known to kill themselves by being too eager with this ability, by trapping foreign objects in deep cuts and causing infection or healing over damaged blood vessels and internally bleeding to death without realising the problem.
Weaknesses:
Resistance to drugs
Kana’s drug resistance applies to painkillers and anti-inflammatories as readily as it does to harmful substances. Any foreign material that interferes with the body’s natural functioning is fair game. This makes Children of the Serpent difficult to treat when they do get sick.
Illiterate
Kana has a system of knots and beads to mark her medicines. While her people have a variety of physical signals to communicate, they do not use written language.
Unusual dialect/appearance
Kana’s native language is technically Eyropan, but the almost complete isolation of her people for long periods of time has resulted in the development of an unusual dialect and unshakeable accent. The past few years of exposure to other cultures has mitigated this somewhat, but she often has trouble with words and concepts that most people her age could be assumed to understand. Similarly, her baldness, tattoos and slightly foreign method of dress can cause problems in xenophobic places like Marn. At best, she appears an uncivilised savage to more cultured people; at worst, she draws undue suspicion and possibly even hostility. She hides her tattoos beneath long sleeves and plays down her baldness with a shawl when she can.
Breathing problems
Kana was born with a lung defect that affects her breathing. It does not hinder her during everyday light or medium activity, but prevents her from getting enough oxygen during heavy activity. Kana is capable of walking at a steady pace for the hours that any nomad is conditioned to walk or carrying her travelling items without difficulty, but cannot run, leap or even drag heavy objects for more than about thirty seconds without pause.
Pregnant
Kana is currently 3 months pregnant. She worries that her child will inherit her breathing disorder, and most likely die.
History:
Kana was born in a large forest in southern Eyropa, known to the locals as Rakara, in the Rakri tribe of Xar. She was named Kana, meaning Wolf, by hopeful parents wishing for a strong, healthy child such as those chosen by the Wolf totem. Their hopes were in vain.
Kana was born, as her parents had feared, with a breathing affliction well-known to Rakri nomads. She was one of the few such afflicted to survive infancy. Her affliction meant that she was never going to be an accomplished hunter or warrior, or an agile scout; it came as no surprise when her totem ceremony on her sixth birthday named her Seiran, a Child of the Serpent. She received her first totem tattoo that night, and like many of the Serpent’s Children, was apprenticed as a healer. Kana was the second apprentice to her tribe’s Healing Hand, a 40-year-old woman named Una. Una was also a Child of the Serpent, which was a stroke of good fortune for Kana; it meant that there was somebody to guide and teach her to use her powers. The Serpent was far from the rarest Rakra totem, but it was rare enough that having one in the tribe was worth noting and having two a definite stroke of fortune. Una’s main duty, however, was teaching her eldest apprentice, Dori, the skills he would need to take her place as Healing Hand when she died.
As she grew, Kana learned her craft and acquired more tattoos. She watched her younger brother become a Child of the Wolf and develop as a promising hunter, and tried unsuccessfully to save the life of an infant sister who carried the same breathing disorder that she did. When she was twelve, she reached adulthood and pair-bonded with a childhood friend named Roni. They eventually bore one child who, carrying the breathing sickness, died before it was named. When she was thirteen, Una died. Dori succeeded Una as the tribe’s Healing Hand, but he relied on Kana’s totemic talents to keep the tribe properly healthy and fed. Many of the tribe had assumed that Kana would eventually become the Healing Hand based on her traditionally healing-based totem alone, and often treated her as if she was. Kana herself accepted the role that had been pressed upon her, assisting Dori and taking an apprentice of her own, with neither resentment nor particular enthusiasm. She had an important role in her society to perform, one for which she had a rare talent despite being unfit for many other societal duties. Her destiny, it seemed, was straightforward.
Kana was nineteen when, during an organised encounter between the Xar and another Rakri tribe, the Thiern, a seven year old Thiern child took her aside. The child, Bavi, was a Child of the Beaver, one of the rarest totems and known for their insight and tendency to change the world (or at least the part of the world inside the Rakara forest). Bavi explained that Kana’s destiny was not that of a Healing Hand, but a Questing Eye; her duty was to travel into the world outside the forest, live among its people, and return to tell the Rakri about it. It had been too long since the Rakri had had any strong international ties, he explained; their stories of the world outside the forest were incredibly outdated at best, their encounters with non-Rakri people limited to occasional traders and lost travellers for over a generation, and if they remained isolated and forgotten, they would die. Bavi was sending Questing Eyes from every Rakri tribe. Kana, he said, was one of the Xar chosen by destiny for the duty.
It was difficult to argue with the predictions of a Child of the Beaver. Kana said her farewells to her tribe, passed the training of her apprentice onto Dori, and broke her bond with Roni. With two other representatives of Xar, she quested to the edge of the forest, into a world of horizons unblocked by trees. In the nearest town, the first permanent town she had ever seen, she parted company with the last familiar faces she would see in a long time.
Kana’s interactions with the new cultures she encountered were illuminating and occasionally dangerous. She continued to move around frequently, unable to shake the restlessness of a nomad, and gradually learned how to pass acceptably in general Eyropean civilisation. She quickly discovered a purpose in her travels: new areas and new cultures brought new plants and medicines, those never seen in Rakara, with new medicinal properties to discover and explore. Kana began to assemble a living pharmacy.
Her travels to date have been restricted to human-dominated cultures in Eyropa. Most recently, a romantic tryst with a travelling trader ended amicably in northeast Eyropa, and she lost contact with him before discovering that she was pregnant with his child. Through a roundabout route she has found herself on the Sooqui Plane, following the Ofriyu Mar toward Marn.