About Ba’utanFifteen years ago Like so many villages in the Mwangi expanse, the Chelish came and wiped them out. Their finest steel, hard and sharp – their breastplates burnished to shine like the sun. The ‘primitives’ with their blowguns and flint-head spears were no match for their modern arms and tactics. And with no juju shaman to stop the flow of blood, seventy bodies lay lifeless – their deaths meaningless as the motive was nothing more than ‘they were in the way.’ Some would say that the Bekyar flesh-merchants deserved death – but slavery to them was a way of life – not a moral standpoint. There was one survivor, a young boy named Ba’utan. He crawled out from under his dead mother’s body in the dead of night, some eight hours after the men left the village – such was his fear. Yet oddly, his fear was for the living, not the dead. As he spent the next few days amongst the decaying bodies of his kin, he felt no negative emotions. Hatred to the white men, yes – but that was all. So he buried his parents, the Elders and the headman but as more and more animals came looking to feed on the corpses he knew he had to move on. He couldn’t bury all the bodies and he didn’t want to risk a fire – so he decided to leave his home. And when facing the uncertainty of life, he chose to go to the one place he was supposed to fear – the Barrier Wall. The Bekyar are known to actively fear the ruins, speaking of the “dark wings” that sometimes descend from them on moonless nights. The oldest of these ruined cities is Mzali, south of the Screaming Jungle, where a mummified boy-prince called Wakena rules a vast cult dedicated to reclaiming the lost glories of the past. Ba’utan embraced the night and shunned the light. He sought out death and avoided life. And he devoted himself to juju – sure in the knowledge that this brand of magic would have saved his village – if it were worth saving. And he knew that the Barrier Wall held the answers to this way of life. Juju To outsiders, mention of “juju” conjures frightful images of wild abandon: frenzied ritual dancing, pounding drums of hypnotic intensity, blood sacrifice, sinister tools of sympathetic magic—and perhaps most disturbing, the enslaved walking dead. The exotic beliefs and customs of juju have led to many prejudices and misunderstandings. Most common is the belief that juju is a dangerous, savage faith, practiced by bloodthirsty people. The truth is that this creed is as diverse as the varied peoples who adhere to its assorted practices. Its believers can be of any ideal or moral philosophy, and this variation may be what is most utterly foreign to cultures whose faiths are detailed in holy books and whose tenets are written in stone. The doctrines of juju, in contrast, are flexible and growing, adapting to the challenges and dangers of life in the midst of unforgiving wilderness. The foundations of juju are hidden in the ancient past, in lost empires now known only by the sprawling, vine choked ruins they left behind. Mwangi denizens practice their faith in the shadow of these tomb-like remnants; the ruins act as reminders of past glory and the folly of pride. Central is the belief that the spirit world, hana juju, exists in parallel to the Material Plane, encompassing all that we see. It is in the interests of all to commune with hana juju, and this communion is conducted through the wendo, a vast pantheon of spirit beings who seek congress with the Material Plane. While not gods, the wendo are supernatural entities that have no physical form but play an intimate and active role in the day-to-day lives of inhabitants of the Mwangi Expanse. Juju culture is an oral one, rich and flexible, bending to the needs of each community. Though largely unseen, the spirit world of hana juju is tangible to the peoples of the Mwangi Expanse. Spirit ceremonies and rituals are part of everyday life. Families often have various totems in the home, as well as a devoted shrine where they lay out offerings of fruit, grain, and goat’s milk as a welcome to the wendo. It is not unusual for a village devoted to hana juju to have as many as four worship ceremonies in a single week. Worship is a collective affair, and its location is considered the heart of a community. Always held after sunset, rites are conducted around a great bonfire fed with fragrant woods and spices. Led by juju oracles, who are known as wendifa (literally “friend of the wendo”), these ceremonies involve ritualistic drumming and the music of f lutes and stringed instruments, chants and singing, ecstatic dancing, and animal sacrifice. Ceremonies are sacred affairs, and non-believers, sometimes knownas ben kudu (“lost ones”), are strictly forbidden from witnessing them. If intruders are discovered, the ritual stops as the attendees seek to capture the person or persons defiling their ceremony. Manipulation of spirits and dead bodies is not taboo in the juju faith as it is in most other religions, but typically good wendifa avoid creating the undead,while evil wendifa indulge in creating undead servitors and spreading fear. Ba’utan Like many Bekyar, Ba’utan is exceedingly tall – almost 7 feet in height – with dark brown skin and wiry hair long but fashioned into elaborate coifs. His armour is fashioned from animal fur and skin (to provide protection like leather) and it is adorned with various bits of animals (and presumably human) bones and teeth (which no doubt perform the same role as studs). His body is adorned with ritualistic scars and a number of piercings – although his face is untouched. Unlike most juju oracles, he is nomadic rather than attached to any village – his drive is to do the will of the wendo – to fulfil the destiny he was chosen for the day the Chelish came. BA’UTAN (Mwangi)
DEFENSE
OFFENSE
STATISTICS
Feats
Skills
Oracle Curse
Traits Armor Expert (Combat), Ghost Sight (Locate) (Faith) (When you were younger you suffered a brush with death. You can see beyond the veil, able to see ghost and spirits and detect the taint of the undead. You receive a +2 trait bonus to Perception checks when trying to locate undead, and can attempt to locate ethereal undead) Languages Abyssal, Common Spells Known
Spells per Day
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