Kaj - Zha'Kajin Ma'Akma's page

Zha’Kajin (or Kaj for short) grew up in the githzerai Floating City – religious and arcane center of the githzerai people. (From Planes of Chaos: The Book of Chaos) Although his natural intelligence inclined him towards wizardry, like many others within the Floating City, he instead found his calling among those who would skulk and sneak in the shadows. Kaj hoped one day to join the ranks of Thieves’ Justice, a surprisingly influential thieves guild/militia with the city. To further improve his skills, and to follow the whims of youth, he joined a charismatic githzerai named Saivaa who was recruiting impressionable young githzerai such as Kaj for a rrakkma hunting party.

Despite their inexperience, Saivaa’s rrakkma became quite effective in rooting out illithid influence and cults on prime material worlds. They would likely soon uncover and defeat illithid themselves. Unfortunately, it only took one bad mission to devastate the rrakkma. Saivaa’s mind was devoured by an illithid and most of the band was killed, and Kaj was shunned and blamed for this defeat. No one, Kaj included, speaks of what happened, but the surviving member’s hatred for Kaj goes beyond anger over a mission gone wrong or a mistake of an inexperienced member. After returning to the Floating City, Kaj’s rrakkma compatriots turned him over to the Thieves’ Justice where the group he so longed to join instead banished him to the depths of Limbo and named him Zha’Kajin Ma’Akma – Zha’Kajin the Punished. In the depths of Limbo he would know punishment.

The next period of Kaj’s life is pivotal, but also largely unknown. Cast into the depths of Limbo far from any settlement, Kaj first tried to form a modest home and shelter for himself. His mind was too full of grief, however, and for reasons he won’t discuss, he soon fully accepted and embraced his punishment. With the Maelstorm raging around him, and only as small sliver of land keeping his sanity in place, Kaj let go and let the full chaos of Limbo overwhelm him. He does not know how long he drifted in the chaos. Although it felt like years, it may have been days, or it may have been centuries.

In the vast chaotic emptiness of Limbo, Kaj drifted endlessly, letting the flows send him where they would. In the timeless chaos of Limbo, Kaj was ever hungry but never starved. Ever tired but never slept. Ever thinking but never aging. He accepted that this would be his eternity, and his mind nearly broke.

But even in the vast chaos of Limbo, creatures live and roam. It was an imentesh protean that finally stumbled upon Kaj drifting in the endless maelstrom. It was amused by the half-mad githzerai who did not even attempt to shape the chaos into even ground to stand upon. Thinking the githzerai could surely make some mischief, the protean took Kaj to the nearest portal to Sigil and dropped him through.

Kaj did not wander long within Sigil before he was arrested by the Harmonium as a public nuisance – ranting and raving about the chaos and sent him to the prison.

Within the prison, the regularity of the schedule and the barren cell helped Kaj piece his mind back together. The sparse conditions reminded Kaj of his home and the githzerai monasteries he had visited as a child. Furthermore, seeing the pain and suffering of others – many serving sentences seemingly far beyond their crimes – reached through to Kaj who empathized with them considering his own harsh punishment.

As Kaj analyzed the prison, he briefly considered escape, and thought it quite possible, but instead decided this was the last stage of his punishment, and then he would know redemption and a new life. He served the rest of his sentence willingly, and quite impressed his Mercykiller guards with his acceptance of his punishment. Although it took a while, Kaj was positive he would find a place among the Mercykillers and help enforce the laws in a fair and just manner. As an apprentice investigator, Kaj began to find solving crimes a fitting puzzle to focus his intellect on, and bringing justice and resolution to the victims rather rewarding as well.

Unfortunately, it was not long after he joined the ranks of the Mercykillers that he realized the limitations of them and the rest of the legal triad. The Guvners were fine for conversation and Kaj felt a kinship with them and their methodical minds, but they were too constrained by the law and too rigid in their thoughts to discern the deeper mysteries both of the universe and of the crime within Sigil. Kaj found the Harmonium to be (rarely) useful muscle and nothing more. They are thick headed buffoons more likely to ruin a crime scene than to aid in investigating it. Lastly, his chosen faction the Mercykillers often found enjoyment in the punishing rather than in the justice. So many of them were more legalized thugs than the hand of justice. Although Kaj still believed deeply in justice, he found that many among the Mercykillers were not on that same path as him.

Kaj’s disillusionment was fed even more by another group he found himself gravitating towards – the Revolutionary League. Among them, he could understand so much clearer how the power of administering the laws within Sigil had led the Mercykillers astray. That power had corrupted many (although not all) among them into seeking greater power for themselves rather than serving justice.

Yet the Revolutionary League defied so much and harmed so many in their attempts to bring down the other Factions. Their devotion to tearing down the system was not merely focused on rooting out some corrupt individuals, but destroying all the Factions. Kaj could not find the justice in this either. So he walks a fine line between these groups, devoted to the ideals of both, but yet not fully committed to either.

He finds a great deal of truth within the Mercykillers’ stated beliefs, seeking justice. For he genuinely enjoys (as much as a stoic githzerai can enjoy) solving a puzzling crime, bringing a criminal down, and aiding an aggrieved victim. But too often the Guvners, Harmonium, and Mercykillers support laws for the sake of laws with no regards to the individual. Kaj beliefs laws exist only to protect and help the individual.

From his githzerai heritage, the rebellious Revolutionary League speaks to him as well. As the powerful grow more powerful and crush the weak and poor, it becomes more necessary to tear down the systems that separate the powerful from the weak. However, the Revolutionary League also has become too narrowly focused and only gives indirect lip service to helping the weak but focuses on tearing down those in power as a goal in itself.

Consequently, Kaj has joined the ranks of two Factions. However, whether he is a member of the Revolutionary League that has infiltrated the Mercykillers to bring them down from their perch, or is a Mercykiller who has infiltrated the Anarchists to break up their cells – he does not know. He is far from the path of Zerthimon and does not know himself at all. As with the Rule of Three, Kaj has found himself really drawn to a third Faction – the Bleak Cabal.

Although not an official member of the Bleakers, he often works with them in helping the downtrodden. Also, deep down, he finds his beliefs align the closest to theirs. After a lifetime in Limbo and now living in Sigil, Kaj is quite sure that there is no meaning, and to seek a deep meaning is folly. There is only us. Unlike the other Factions that claim to help everyone – through some grand view of the multiverse – Kaj and many of the Bleak Cabal simply want to help others because that’s all there is. Just them and us, and why not try to help each other through this meaningless mess of existence?

If either the Mercykillers or Anarchists discover his disloyalty, he would quickly find a home within the Bleak Cabal. However, for now, he still believes he can help people by working in those Factions.

Lastly, however, Kaj is githzerai, and githzerai are defiant and complex. There is a 4th Faction he sometimes feels a pull to, but quickly turns away from it. But in quiet moments Kajs intellect and analytic skills can’t help but wonder whether to keep his mind from snapping within Limbo, if he unconsciously formed the stuff of chaos into the appearance of a protean, and of a portal. Then formed what a bizarre city he had only heard rumors of, filled with strange warring Factions. Like the Sign of One but blended with a deep madness, in these quiet moments, Kaj wonders if he is still adrift in the endless Maelstorm and is merely making the illusion of a city and other beings. But Kaj cannot accept this – both because the horror of that he will never escape Limbo and because he refuses to believe those he helps are mere creations of his imagination.