Amun Rajiri

[Cadrial-Tiein Mod]

Name: Amun Rajiri

Classification: Human--Gaean

Gender: Male

Age: 32

Appearance: With his brown, shoulder-length hair, tanned skin, and dark, chiseled features, Amun is a ruggedly handsome man with a stoic nature that seems to add an air of mystery about him. This, coupled with his height of 6'2", would make him stand out in a crowd if not for his ability to do otherwise. His muscled body, while also tight and lean from the vigorous activity that living in the wild requires, is a testament to his strength while his tanned skin--almost leathery due to exposure to the sun and nature's elements—testifies to his ability to survive in even the harshest of climates. His large chest is covered by a beaten, brown leather cuirass over top a dark green tunic and a pair of brown leather leggings and boots. Tied around his neck, he wears a dirty, hooded, green cloak which he uses to protect him during storms and high winds as well as cover his face when he enters town, helping him in going unnoticed.

Power List:

• Acute Senses
  
• Gaea Bond
  
• Stealth
  

Detailed Powers:
Acute Senses: Amun has very keen senses of sight and hearing. He is able to see things at much greater distances than ordinary, untrained, humans. His senses of smell, taste and touch have a similar acuteness; however, their range is—obviously—limited to Amun's immediate area. As they are borne less out of 'power' and more out of 'training,' Amun's acute senses are always active.

Gaea Bond: The Gaea Bond allows Amun to communicate with living things in nature, both flora and fauna, mundane and mystical. It also allows him to call to these plants and animals for help in battle, whether it is in pressing an advantage, helping him to defend himself, or facilitating a quick escape. This ability is limited to a few hundred feet unless Amun enters a meditative trance whereupon the range expands to hundreds of miles. However, entering the trance takes time, hinders his Acute Senses, and leaves him prone to physical attack.

Stealth: Amun is capable of nimbly moving along without attracting attention to himself in crowds, towns, and cities. This ability is enhanced when he is out in nature and allows him to become nearly invisible and unable of being heard to the point that a fellow trained Gaean—or anyone else with acute senses—might be aware of his presence, but unable to determine his exact location.

Alignment: New Council

Weapons:
Long Bow: With his steady hand and impeccable aim—aided by his enhanced senses of sight, hearing, and touch—Amun's skill with his long bow makes him a formidable opponent at long distance attacks.
Miniature Crossbow: Amun wears a miniature crossbow on his forearm—with the trigger resting on the heel of his palm—that fires small, poison-tipped, dart-like arrows which serves as his primary 'close-combat' weapon.
Ivory Dagger: While more often used in skinning an animal he's killed, cutting fruit, fashioning arrows, or even just trimming his finger nails, Amun's Ivory Dagger allows him at least a fighting chance in hand-to-hand combat.

Personality: As a priest in the Gaean religion, Amun is a man of few words. Preferring the sounds of the wildlife over the petty squabbling of the castle dwellers, he has few people one would call friends outside his own people or the menagerie of animals that live in Cadrial-Tiein. Much preferring solitude to the bustle of the larger communities, Amun avoids the cities and castles as much as he can and, when he must visit, takes great pains to weave his way in and back out again without drawing attention to himself.

Poised and stoic, Amun 's build and unremarkable clothes project an impression of a dumb, ignorant, un-opinionated oaf. Contrarily, Amun is neither. He is well learned in philosophy—albeit that of his own people, and has a great deal of knowledge of the workings of the natural world and how to survive in it as well as a multitude of battle strategies. He is also very opinionated, especially when it comes to the greed, excess, decadence and pettiness of the castle-dwellers, and more so when it comes to their politics.

Skills: Amun is a skilled hunter and tracker, making him capable of living off of nature for most of his life if necessary. He knows a great deal about the different plants and animals in the natural environment, and is also well-versed in the use of herbs—especially as poisons, ointments and salves. He is also quite skilled in playing a wooden flute that he carries with him, something he does to calm both himself and those around him.

Strengths and Weaknesses:
Strength: Highly attuned to his environment, Amun is a skilled tactician in that he knows how to use the battlefield's terrain to his advantage and to his opponent's detriment. This skill and knowledge, however, is all but nonexistent in cities and man-made fortifications since the unnatural constructs are not in tune with his Gaean training.

Weakness: While he may be able to move through them relatively unnoticed, Amun is extremely uncomfortable in cities and large man-made buildings. Being inside large fortifications and castles for more than relatively brief periods causes Amun to shed his usual stoicism and become nervous, edgy, irritable, angry and—especially if he's in a threatening environment—stricken with panic. Such bouts of claustrophobia continue until Amun is back in the open air of nature.

History: Born in Cadrial-Tiein into a clan of nature worshipers, Amun grew up learning a deep, spiritual appreciation for the land and the multitude of plants and animals that inhabit it. During the early part of his life—while Locust Vrial reigned—Amun and his people were, although not prosperous, allowed to live in relative peace compared to many others in the realm. As a youth, he learned how to hunt, how to fish, which plants were edible and which were poisonous, and how to plant and tend to small gardens of vegetables and fields of grain.

He learned how to care for the plants and animals around him. He learned how to make the most of each kill, using all parts of the animal and leaving nothing to waste. Above all, he learned respect and restraint. Amun learned to take no more than he needed and that excess threw off nature's delicate balance, creating a class of greedy 'haves' and starving 'have-nots' which eventually led to competition, conflict and out-right war which, in itself, would devastate the land even further.

Amun's people, the communal Gaeans, isolated in their forest habitats, felt little of the shift of power between the fall of Locust Vrial and the first council. The Gaeans maintained their ancient custom of remaining detached from the politics of the castle dwellers. After ascending into man-hood at the Gaean traditional age of fourteen, Amun began training in the priesthood as an acolyte with the desire to become one of the Caretakers of Gaea—an order of priests whose purpose is to tend to all life in the lands the people lived upon.

It was during this time that Amun learned the three disciplines that would become the 'powers' he would later use in defense of his people. The first, "Be Aware of the Environment" would teach him to hone his senses and heighten his natural human abilities through careful study and practice and would become his Acute Senses. The second, "Befriend the Environment" would find him learning how to listen to and even speak with the menagerie of plants and animals he could come across and how—by entering a meditative state—to do so from great distances would later become the Gaea Bond through which he communes with the world around him. The third and final discipline, "Become the Environment" would teach him how to move through the world without disturbing its natural order and would become the Stealth skill he uses to sneak up on, spy on, or escape from his foes.

At the age of twenty six, in his twelfth year in the priesthood and the year Amun became a Chosen—those acolytes who are selected to continue their path into the priesthood—his world and the isolation of the Gaeans was shattered with the return of Locust Vrial's son and heir, Leviathar.

In the violent fire that was Leviathar's sweeping return to Cadrial-Tiein, the Gaean clans found their de facto neutrality ignored. Their forest communities were razed, their temples leveled and thousands in their small community slaughtered. After what few remaining people managed to make the trek into the cave shelters in the mountains, Amun and a dozen or so other of the remaining acolytes and Chosen took to the forests, determined to not only seek revenge for the slaughter wrought upon them but to serve as a distraction and turn the eyes of the Vrial Elite away from hunting for the refugees sheltered in the mountains. The Gaeans were at war.

Revenge would come when Lady Naida and Lady Leceure—members of the resistance—succeeded in poisoning the tyrannical new king and the resistance, with Amun and his fellow Gaean fighters among them, drove Leviathar and his allies from his castle, forcing him to retreat. It would be a bitter victory for, despite their knowledge of the land and their bond with it, Amun and the Gaeans were unable to track down the deposed king and his dark allies.

In the intervening years since Leviathar's fall, Amun's people have slowly begun to resettle the forests, settling hidden communities among the trees and enforcing wide perimeters—including some false ones—around their 'borders' to prevent the secret of their location from becoming known to outsiders.

Meanwhile, Amun, with the blessing of the remaining elders, joined with the other Gaeans who had fought alongside him to create the Arrow of Artemis, an order within the priesthood tasked with the protection of the Gaean community. As leader of the Artemisian order, Amun finds himself in regular contact with Lady Leceure, Lady Naida, and the council while they wait, and prepare, for Leviathar's potential return.