About Dakka NobuDakka Nobu
Granted Powers: You are a powerful persuader. A honeyed tongue empowered by divine argumentation sways the indifferent and adversarial to your side.
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Background:
Lashed to that mast in the middle of a tempest everything became clear to Dakka for a moment. That's really what it took for him to understand his family. The agonizingly slow wave of tengu migration northward from the misery of the sodden lands and the chaos of the Shackles has left roosts quietly woven into the overlooked parts of human dominated cities. There tengu try to live as unnoticed and unremarked upon as possible, building
Dakka always understood the wisdom of this. Life is dangerous and unpredictable and so are humans.Do not invite attention, do not court disaster. So it was absurdly frustrating that his mother so often could not do that. She would get by just fine for a while weaving and embroidering, seemingly quiet and focused on work and family. Then she would show up with a bolt of expensive silk cloth, or a bottle of fine wine. Or a human merchant would find his stall had been beset by moths. She was rarely blamed by the humans, and when she was accused she proved to be an amazingly convincing liar. It drove Dakka crazy, why invite scrutiny? She never explained herself. She just said that he would understand. He tried to argue but she would just hum and go about her work. As a young adult Dakka traveled to a new roost in large part to be away from his mother. He wasn't there very long when he was spotted by the first mate of the Water Wyrm. They were in a hurry. They needed to sail for Quent but they had been having a run of bad luck. So acting on the old Shackles superstition the made sure to bring a tengu along for luck. Shanghai is a constant threat in the background of port city life, a lone tengu was certainly not going to be missed by
So Dakka found himself a deeply unwilling swab on a pirate ship. He never got the chance to learn much seamanship however. Black clouds build quickly before them and it was clear they were sailing into dangerous weather. Dakka scrambled to get below decks but instead he was collard by the first mate. "Ye reckon it works below decks?" He asked the captain, shaking Dakka by the collar. The captain shook his head. "Best be safe." He replied. "Put 'em where his god can see him." "I'll fix him to the mast, me'be the bird god won't see fit to carry it off again." Dakka didn't know anything about his bird god. The tengu of the north didn't really talk about Hei Feng. Now he found himself lashed
Then he understood how fragile his life and his plans were, how shallow his sanity had been. This is real life, here in the heart of the storm. The rest of the world is just a slow motion rendering of the same process. The quiet tengu diasapora is a delusion. Dakka had a plan to live a quiet life in the shadow of others. To be a
That's why his mother could never truly conform, she still had some true tengu spirit. Caught up in the scheming of human factions, the role of a true tengu is to expose their folly. To show the
The mast broke anyway, and the Wyrm never made it to Quent. Dakka spent days afterward muttering to himself. The pirates were enraged at his failure to protect them. They decided he was "broken." One of them made as if to slit Dakka's throat and Dakka just laughed at him, fixing him with wide eyed stare. "Let him be." The captain said. "It'll just invite more bad luck." The ship limped into the nearest port and they dumped Dakka off penniless and raving. After that Dakka sought out tengu in the quiet roosts around the inner sea who had unquiet minds. Learning the ways of Hei Feng as he made his way to Absolom. The Pathfinders there were an irresistible lure to Dakka. So full of schemes and plans, but so unruly and so often at cross purposes as well. It's the perfect environment so see who among them truly understands the revelation of Hei Feng and who needs to be shown. Dakka is not a fool or a raving madman, most of the time anyway. His outward behavior is generally reserved, though he sometimes cannot stop himself from mocking those he finds to be overly self important. He does not randomly cause trouble for it's own sake, or seek to ruin anyone's life. Instead he watches and bides his time, waiting for the moment where his intervention teaches the lessons of Hei Feng with maximum effect. He dislikes braggarts and bullies a great deal and anyone he feels is pretending to be more enlightened than they are. |