Keskodai grew up on Verces. The child of a priest of Hylax, Keskodai always felt a deep connection to the divine, yet chafed at the idea of serving the same god as his parent. Exactly which god he’d serve instead remained unclear, until the coming of the Gray Shakes.
Believed to be the result of a biotech experiment gone wrong, the plague called the Gray Shakes burned through the city like wildfire, turning shirrens’ chitin gray, rotting off their antennae, and eating away at their telepathy and motor functions, leaving them awake but unable to communicate until they finally expired. In the weeks it took the government to find a cure, thirty percent of the city’s shirren population died.
In the midst of this horror, a young Keskodai first encountered priests of Pharasma. Somberly, the Pharasmins walked among the afflicted, offering healing where they could and comfort to those too far gone, whispering to them of the Cycle of Souls and the new worlds that awaited them. The beauty of their ministry moved Keskodai, and he quickly joined their hospice work, leaving home to study at a temple in the Ring of Nations once the plague was safely contained.
After years as an initiate, Keskodai returned home a full priest of Lady of Graves. He quickly fell in love with and married two members of his congregation, a female-host couple. Yet part of him remained unsatisfied. He began to wonder if he’d made the right choice in coming home. How could he know if he wanted this when there was still so much out there that he’d never experienced? The desire to explore continued to grow, until at last, after the birth of their first son, he and his partners agreed that Keskodai would leave and see the galaxy, taking their child with him to expose him to the same new experiences. Once the child was old enough to leave his cradle-jar, Keskodai would decide whether he’d seen enough to return in good conscience, in which case both of them be welcomed with open arms. If not, the child would return alone.
In his effort to see as many worlds as possible, Keskodai signs on with freelance adventurers. While capable in combat, he prefers to act as the ship’s medic, patching up broken allies or blessing them on their journey into the Great Beyond. The cheerful manner in which he talks about death often disturbs those under his care, yet anyone who spends much time with the shirren quickly learns that his evenkeeled, fatalistic approach to life and death makes him an excellent healer.
As with many shirren, Keskodai is a team player and a social butterfly who loves meeting new people. A crewmate once called him “the galaxy’s friendliest death priest,” and he wears the badge with pride. Though fond of option bars and other artificial means of stimulating his choice centers, he’s careful not to let himself overindulge… usually. He’s intensely proud of the aesthetics of his gear, his collection of trophies, and his mustache (which he thinks lends him an air of gravitas). His greatest pride, however, is his son Chk Chk, still in his larval stage. Like many shirren parents, Keskodai carries Chk Chk around in a heavily fortified cradle-jar designed to let the child learn about the world from relative safety. While Chk Chk isn’t old enough to truly speak, Keskodai holds conversations with him regularly, with Chk Chk tapping on the glass to answer.
