Kali'da Wedo's page

Kali'da Wedo is a mwangi Juju priest (also known as a wendifa). She's from an isolated tribe who has made the ruins on an ancient temple complex into their home. Despite the usual isolation of her tribe, her and wendifas from neighboring tribes gather annually to discuss issues of religious and local importance. Quite often these devolve into social gatherings.
She is used to being the boss and in control of any situation, a trait that stems from her position as a religious leader in her community. She will be the first to admit she enjoys the prestige being a wendifa comes with, however she is fully committed to the spiritual health of her community. She often places the needs of her tribe over her own.
Taking a lighthearted approach to life, Kali'da never takes anything (or anyone) too seriously. Taking things to seriously, according to her, causes illness of the mind and a rottenness in the spirit. She never gives straight advice, always preferring to allude to solutions through cryptic messages instead.

Kali'da was forced out of her comfortable life by Bekyar slavers after they massacred and captured most of her tribe. Once these slavers got their human cargo on a ship headed for Sargava, they discovered the wendifa among the others. A superstitious and Wendo-fearing bunch, they quickly put Kali'da off the ship despite her ferocious protests. How was she going to free her tribesmen if she wasn't with them?!
Not to be deterred from her heroic quest, Kali'da picked up passage on the first ship out and now intends to chase those rotten slavers down if it's the last thing she does.

Kali'da can't remember a time when the spirits didn't speak to her. Oh sure, it wasn't a verbal speech, but she could feel them. Their influence seemed to seep into every aspect of her life. Everywhere she looked she could see their omens and portents. The old wendifa saw this gift in her and apprenticed Kali'da, prepping her for the day she would take on the mantle of wendifa herself.

Of course, there was more to being a wendifa than simply acting as a medium between the spirits and the material world. There was a certain amount of responsibility towards your tribe that went along with it. She had to learn to mediate conflicts, aid the sick or wounded, and, most importantly, how to be a leader of your community. However, this wendifa had some questionable practices. He would solicit inappropriate favors in exchange for services, sell cheap placebos to desperate families instead of real remedies, and blackmail others into holding their tongues. Kali'da learned through a rough hand what happened when you questioned the ethics behind it all.

Her training stole much of her younger years. While her peers were running amok with very few cares in the world, she was practicing Juju rituals that heightened her awareness of the Wendo. She rose with the sun, but often worked under the stern gaze of her mentor until the stars were twinkling in the black of night. Time seemed to drag on, and the stress on her young body took a toll. She became prone to fainting spells, headaches, and her skin took on a sickly pallor.

But the wendifa pushed her still, assuring her that these symptoms were evidence that she was getting closer to the Wendo themselves. Years passed and her health diminished slowly over time. Eventually, when she had finally come of age, a fever set in and in her she began hallucinating wildly. Bright lights and colors swirled in her vision, half-formed faces danced in the corner of her eyes, and drums beat in a wild rhythm that pounded in time to the throbbing of her now constant migraines. Some say she spoke in an unintelligible gibberish through the nights to unseen visitors.

Three days later, when she finally broke free from her fevered stupor, she awoke with cloud filled eyes. The wendifa claimed the fever had caused physical damage, as fevers were wont to do, but Kali'da shut such claims down.

"The Wendo cloud my vision so they may guide me. They have spoken to me," she announced, her voice calm and commanding. "They have saved me from a sickness in my mind. One you have put there. You are a poison, wendifa. A poison to the tribe. The people do not have to fear you any longer. I will guide them, and I will speak for them." The wendifa scoffed at the notion. "The tribe will never follow you. You are unskilled. Weak. The Wendo would never respect you as they respect me!" he proclaimed.

But the tribe had had enough. They had found a new spiritual leader now, one who was not afraid to speak out against the tyranny of their wendifa. Support for Kali'da poured in, and anger built up from years of abuse and manipulation bubbled to the surface. The wendifa was forced to flee the tribe, or face the unbridled wrath of a community scorned.

And so it was that Kali'da was proclaimed the new wendifa. It was not really a title that had to be given, as it was clear the Wendo had chosen her. It marked the beginning of a new era for the tribe. It was as if a dark, heavy cloud had lifted from their community and the sun was finally shining through again. That's not to say life was without incident. Kali'da ran into her share of adversity. As it turned out, there had been some who had benefited from the corruption of the last wendifa. Trades of power and secrets had come to an end and those involved were none too happy about the change.

The ones who had been displeased with the new wendifa seemed harmless enough. They attempted to spread wicked lies and tales of the new wendifa, though her supporters hardly gave such lies a second thought. When it became clear that they were not going to root her out of her new position, they fled. Some folks said they followed the old wendifa, others said that it had actually been the Wendo who had taken them to punish them for blasphemies, and the local lunatic swore he saw Kali'da eat them like a frog eats flies.

None were right. In all actuality, they were putting together a much more sinister plot. Bekyar slavers were not uncommon within the Mwangi, and it did not take them long to locate a tribe participating in such activities. The disgruntled men and women from Kali'da's tribe offered to give up the location of their otherwise isolated community in exchange for a certain amount of power. Of course, they didn't want the whole tribe captured and sold off into slavery. Just a few key members that would cripple the tribe and pave the way for them to place themselves as the new leaders. The Bekyar agreed, and the location of the community was handed over.

But a promise is only as good as the people making it. Rather than provide the power promised to them, the Bekyar captured them and packed them on the first ship to Cheliax before turning their attentions to the target rich tribe.

The tribe was easy enough to overwhelm. Their numbers were small, and the Bekyar had the advantage of surprise. Almost every member of the tribe was captured, and the few they could not capture were slaughtered like animals in the streets. The attack was over in minutes, though to Kali'da it seemed to last an eternity. Watching your life crumble around you, those you care about being taken away as prisoners, loved ones being beaten into submission... Her heart broke into a thousand pieces that day. She didn't fight being taken. She wouldn't have stayed had they let her. If her people were being taken, she would go with them. She could do no good if she did not.

Cages, manacles, and rope used in creative ways Kali'da could never have dreamed of kept the tribe in line as they followed their captors through the jungle. Progress was slow with such a large group, and sleep was hard to come by. It took days before they finally broke the treeline and found themselves in the grasslands.

They made a stop at a rather rundown looking home in the middle of what seemed to be nowhere, where the captives were transferred onto a convoy of large covered wagons. The speed of the procession certainly picked up at that point.

A little over a week of traveling later, they found themselves in Bloodcove, one of the few civilized cities in the area. A quick exchange of gold bought the closed eyes and silence of the dockmaster as the human cargo was loaded onto a ship headed towards Sargava. The ship was crewed primarily by more Bekyar tribesmen, however a few Chelaxian faces were mixed among them.

As Kali'da was loaded along side her people, she looked at her captors with sad eyes. "You are broken men," she said solemnly. "Broken men with broken souls. I know your people. You twist the Wendo into something wicked. And so wicked you have become. I see it. You cannot hide it from me." Kali'da's words seemed to strike a chord with the Bekyar. A few looked nervously around, looking anywhere but at her. One scuttled off, but returned moments later with who she could only assume was their superior.

"They say you speak of the Wendo," he said in a deep, booming voice. "Are you these people's wendifa? Do you speak to the Wendo?" Kali'da straightened up as best she could in her bindings, chin high and proud. "I am," she announced proudly. The man jerked his head and two of the slavers looked nervously between him and Kali'da. Apparently, they would rather face her than their boss, because moments later she was being hauled out of her place. "Take her away, keep her off the ship. We don't need any trouble on the ocean," the man said with a sneer as they took her past him.

Kali'da had not fought captivity until that point, and now she was fighting freedom. "No, you can't do this. You can't take me from them!" she shrieked as she kicked and thrashed against the ones taking her away. The other captives followed her lead, suddenly all bursting out into violent thrashing and clawing against their bonds. "Silence her!" the boss man yelled. She felt a sharp crack on her head and darkness crept into her eyes. The last thing that filled her vision was the sight of her people being beaten into submission once again, then everything went black.

When Kali'da awoke, she was in a strange and unfamiliar alleyway. The smell of stagnant ocean water and garbage filled her nose and the bright light of day blinded her eyes before they adjusted. Everything about her was sore and achy. She stumbled out of the alley and into the dockside street. A boat. I need a boat. I need to follow them. Follow who? It took her a moment to recall the previous nights events clearly to the front of her mind.

She paced up and down the docks, speaking to every person willing to stop when she approached. "A ship to Sargava? I need a ship to Sargava." She must have asked one hundred people on the docks for information on any ships possibly stopping in Sargava before one old sailor pointed down the docks. "Aye, a ship headed that way just over there. Heard they still have a spot or two for a passenger," he had told her. She exclaimed her thanks as she ran off in the direction that he had indicated.

Jenivere was the name of the ship, and the captain readily accepted a small gold medallion she had managed to keep hidden from her captors as payment for her passage. Once she was securely on the ship, she finally took a moment to think. Everything was unfamiliar to her. Sure, she had left her village before to act as a diplomat during a trade or two with larger settlements in the Mwangi, but this was squarely outside her comfort zone. She wanted to go home, but there was no home to go back to. She scolded herself for such thoughts. Home was where her people were and currently, that was on a boat headed to who knows where.

+2 to Concentration gained from spending time learning from Jask