Oba

"Oba come to big village on the water. He must kill the devils that live here, and make all the evil spirits go away." - - Oba

Facts and Figures:
Shadow Name:  Oba Birth Name:  Yemi Tunde Nationality:  Nigerian Height:  6' 4" Weight:  230 lbs Build:  Muscular

Virtue:  Prudence Vice:  Pride Path:  Thyrsus Order:  Apostate Arcana:  Spirit 5, Life 1, Prime 2

*Strikethrough indicates knowledge unavailable or unattained by other player characters*

Introduction:
Venice, noon. A small piazza. Children are laughing as they watch the fish in the canals swim after each other, small waves crash upon the old steps that lead onto the piazza, and pidgins soar overhead. The only thing more out of place than the bustling life in this piazza is a tall, dark man whose muscular form is covered by only a loin-cloth. He eats a fish savagely from the tip of a three-pronged spear, ripping its muscles and sinews apart with nothing but his teeth. The left side of his face is covered by a mask crafted from an animal skull, and he peers off in no particular direction. Every few moments, he makes noises... grunting, hissing... noises that the people around him don't understand.

A young Venetian poliziotto enters the scene. He stops mid-step and his eyes are drawn to the dark man... but it isn't his garb or his meal that the poliziotto finds most strange. No, most strange is that feeling he gets -- as if he had swallowed his heart and it was throbbing inside of his neck... and that man... that man almost appears to be pulsating with the young cop as well, with the crash of the waves, with the flaps of the wings of the birds above them. For a fleeting moment, they are all one being.

The young poliziotto sees this reality... but he denies it. He cannot accept it, for he knows who he is, and he knows how the world works, and he knows that people just aren't allowed to walk around Venice naked with spears. The young cop approaches, ready to reprimand the dark nudist. The dark man calmly raises his head and points skyward. The poliziotto, somewhat entranced, somewhat confused, looks up as well. He sees the birds flying happily about the sky. How beautiful they are in their true home, outside of the city.

The man shakes off this reality once more and lowers his head. The dark man is gone.

Opinions and Personality:
Though it may seem strange to most mages, Oba thinks mundane hubris is just as vulgar as supernal hubris. To name a few of these "mundane vulgarities" here is a list of things that Oba looks down upon:

- Eating food that one did not acquire directly from nature and prepare himself - Wearing clothing that one did not make himself - Living in a shelter that one did not make himself - Playing music on an instrument that one did not make himself - Wearing deodorant - Disposing of urine and feces, rather than using them to mark his territory - Spectating for entertainment (watching movies, sports, tv, reading books, etc.) - Keeping pets as inferior living-mates

...And many more.

Of course in desperate times, Oba will be forced to use vulgar magic, and vulgar... non magic. Life forces us all to make tough decisions. A vegetarian might have to eat a small animal, if stranded in the wild. Likewise, Oba sometimes finds himself performing vulgar magic to save the lives of others, or otherwise preserve spiritual harmony in a locale. After these sins, he usually performs a ritual sacrifice to demonstrate his dedication to the balance of spiritual and magical harmony over his own personal gain.

Background:
Yemi Tunde was born in a small Nigerian village. Survival was rough. Malnutrition, dehydration and malaria ravaged the small community. Still, his parents taught him to commune with the land -- to become one with nature, and nature would reward him. But nature could not reward him.

When Yemi was sixteen, a band of warlords invaded his community. They poached the local rhinos for their horns, and forced the people of the village to work mining diamonds. Taking advantage of his particularly large size, Yemi helped the invaders keep his people in line. In exchange for his work as a thug, the warlords gave Yemi a large house and all the food he could eat. Living in this artificial environment, he long forgot about his commune with nature.

But one fateful day, one of the poachers became ill. Yemi was ordered to help kill the local rhino. The invaders drove him out to the savannah in a jeep and waited until nightfall. Yemi left the jeep, and it wasn't long before he found himself a sleeping rhino.

That's when it happened.

As he crept up on the beast, Yemi's heart began to pound. He noticed the rise and fall of the rhino's back with its breathing, completely in sync with his own heartbeat, and a small silvery strand of smoke left his chest cavity and and engulfed the rhino. He could feel it breathing... feel it sleeping... feel the dirt on its tough hide under its own weight. That smoke soon filled up the entire savannah, and Yemi realized that all living beings were connected to nature together. He couldn't kill the rhino. No house in the world was large enough to persuade him to commit this blasphemy.

But as Yemi turned to leave, the rhino awoke. In a matter of seconds, the predator became the prey. Yemi ran out into the jungle, his heart beating ever faster as heavy rain began to assail the two creatures. The rhino, fast and determined, pursued. Fear tore through Yemi like a lion's teeth ripped into a gazelle. Screams and hisses surrounded him in the black night -- noises he'd never heard before. In his confusion, Yemi fell into a stream.

Then: a blur of confusion, adrenaline, fear and pain. The next thing Yemi knew, he was lying on his back under a rhinoceros the size of a bus in a thunderstorm, rolling around in the mud to avoid being flattened as the rhino tried to stomp him. But there was a stick... a sharpened stick, it's end glowing with hot ember where it had been struck by lightening. Without second thought, Yemi grabbed the stick and plunged it deep into the neck of his assailant. The rhino fell over sideways. Breathing heavily, Yemi got up, and raised the stick skyward, shouting out in victory.

As Yemi carved his name with blood into the Watchtower of the Stone Book, he realized that this was acceptable. Killing the rhino  to survive ... it was just how nature worked. Some must live. Some must die. This is the nature of life. Calling it good or bad just didn't make sense anymore.

But killing the rhino for a big house, or fine clothing... that  was bad.

And so after his awakening, Yemi drove the warlords out of his village. The young new mage dedicated himself to communing with the spirits of nature. He dedicated himself to restoring the spiritual harmony of the fallen world by driving the materialist, industrialist "devils" out of the world -- by reuniting man with nature.

Later, he would also dedicate himself to restoring mankind's harmony with the supernal world, through driving out the hubristic mages who use vulgar magic on a whim.

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