Name: Xewai (code name: Lines, in reference to the fishing lines around his neck)
Stage: Prentice
Race: Water Earthling
Gender: Boy
3 Base Traits:Optimistic "The Sun will always come back after the rain! And why be sad about the rain, the rain brings us fresh water and helps the plants grow! It'll always get better!" There is hardly any doubt in Xewai's heart that life can improve. Not to say that there isn't any sadness or hate that exist; Xewai is just much more inclined to think Positively.
RecklessEver since Xewai was a child, he took unnecessary risks to get what he wanted or to prove himself. From jumping off of boats when he was 7 to prove he could do it, to getting into confrontations while traveling through Oba for the safety of others, he often times made choices that were not needed to be made to get things done. Although his actions do come with the best of intentions, he hardly thinks them through 100% of the time, more often than not putting himself into a difficult situation to spare others from having to be there.
ProtectiveWhile working for the Buhawi he sometimes felt that he held the very lives of the people he helped to guide in his hands. He would easily do everything in his power to protect these people and get them back to the ones they love. As soon as he knows your name, you can be assured that when push comes to shove he'll give his life to keep you safe. Even if you don't want that to be the case.
With how protect he is, when there is a time where his recklessness hurts others, he finds himself begging for forgiveness. It near physically hurts him to see his actions cause anything worse than a 'mild inconvienence', and when that does come to pass, he will not stop until he finds himself completely forgiven. From scrubbing the barracks to working longer and harder hours on the sea, Xewai isn't going to stop until he feels that he has made up for his mistakes.
Luckily, the Buhawi have had enough of an eye on the young lad that none of his mess ups have ended up with more than fist fighting with local enforcement. If there had been a point where someone had died due to his recklessness, he'd be guaranteed to be a different person than he is now.
Personality: Xewai is pure evidence that the world does have a way to turn things around. He always holds onto that belief that life will get better and tries to spread that teachings to everyone he meets. There's a need inside of him to try to convince people that things get better, because for so many people he's met and for himself that was the case!
In saying that, when people are facing depression or despair, he's unsure of how to handle it. He doesn't know how he can make them see what he sees and as much as it hurts himself to do it, he tends to separate himself from them and find someone else to work with the individual. He finds that kinda attitude to be rather off-putting and much rather would leave the person that is under his care to someone who has better experience dealing with that.
As a younger child working for The Buhawi, he saw just how delicately some of the other members were able to handle people they rescued, of how they fought with their blades and arrows when there was danger and he just took to it like a moth to a flame. He wanted to be like them, to be able to protect the people he helped no matter what! So he began to tell that to people he'd occasional ferry between Oba and Maori. "I'll protect you." "You'll be safe, I promise." "There's no way anything is going to hurt you."
Of course that didn't really mean much when he was younger, but now that he's bigger and able to, he gives his free time to being able to care for those who need it. And he still sticks with that. He WILL protect you. He WILL give his life to save yours.
Even if it isn't needed.
For as much enthusiasm he has, he is incredibly reckless. His way of doing things was part of the reason why the Buhawi decided it was best to work in teams. Someone could be there to slap some common sense into the boy! There were times when a situation would seem dire (a master waking up to the sounds of them invading a house, or a guard hearing too much chatter between them), and Xewai was always the first to self-sacrifice to protect the ones he was with. He saw it as a less risky action, still being young and being able to get away with less harm done to him and his people, but it still scared the living daylights out of his team.
And that habit of making a mountain out of a mole of a situation still follows him to this day and branches off to him showing off too. Reckless behavior is considered 'cool' to him, and if it can impress people, why not? Maybe they'd feel more comfortable knowing that he had some sort of ability.
At the end of the day, he still enjoys going back to his roots, back to that quite work of fishing that his mother and father enjoyed so dearly. When times were calm, or if he was given a break from his duties, Xewai would always head to the Sea, to a little Canoe of sorts he built for himself out of driftwood and vines and row out as far as he could with his rod. He would sit there for hours, watching the sky change, occasionally catching a fish and wonder if his family would be proud of what he does.
He was never really one for contemplation except for those times. Being left alone with his thoughts was what brought him to be so optimistic, by convincing himself that there was a purpose to all he's been through, and things will get better.
They always have, and they always will.
Description:*Honey colored Eyes, big and wide, Harboring a smile always! You'd never know how bad he's had it, since he smiles so earnestly and so often. He has one of those contageous smiles.
*Skin up to the artist, probably on the darker side of the color scale
*High ponytail, messy and curly, in the
style like this, and an complimentary green that goes well with his skin.
Clothing: Skintight clothing, think wetsuit, with loose wrappings (think kinda.. Potato sack materials, thin and unwravelling) around his hips and arms. It's meant to insulate him from the waters when they get too cold/gets thrown overboard. And the additional wrappings are just from what he managed to salvage over time, full of holes and worn places.
Accessories: He wears a thick necklace woven from fishing line that his parents used to use (t's ALOT of fishing line, and it's really heavy too). He likes to think of it as an emergency tool, good for traps, for fishing (of course), for capturing foes, for hurting people if need be. It's a great utility tool.
He also has a small green gemstone clip in his hair, potentially made out of
Labradorite shaped like a cyclone, which was what his small group of 'revolutionaries' used to identify one another when out in the field. Even after the war, he still wears it. If the stone does not work, a green shell, spiral shell.
History: Truth be told, Xewai's histrory was rather pleasant while he was growing up. His home, humble, his parents loving and kind and extraordinary on the fishing boats that went out from sun up to sun down. Every so often they would happily take Xewai out on the boats with him, to teach him the tools of the trade. They taught him how to survive at sea, and how to let the water take care of him, floating and treading in it until he learned to trust it nearly as much as he'd trust his own legs to carry his weight. Even at such a young age of three he was swimming around like a pro.
They were a modest family, and proud to be with each other every day. Of course that didn't last forever, a year before the war against the rest of Tendaji began, Xewai's parents were taken as slaves for labor on the sea. They were used to gather food, drying it out, and shipping it to the soldiers as rations for the war preparation.
Though their captors knew he was living there, Xewai managed to flee before he was taken away by diving into the waters near hut and swimming as far out as he could. The young lad found himself alone, treading in the dark waters though the night, waiting out the people who had attempted to hunt him down. When the sun came up, and he made his way to the shoreline, the Fishers whom knew his parents took him in and hid him well until the captors gave up and left without him. They took good care of him as he grew up, teaching the young lad the same way as his parents had taught him.
Still, Xewai felt very alone at times and the bitterness against the Oban Oppressors grew more and more. At that point in his life, he began to search for an answer to this. How can he get his parents back? How can this be stopped? But being a child, there seemed little he could do.
A few weeks had passed since that time, before he found a small group of people called The Buhawi. They all seemed to have the same situation as he had: Their family had been taken away by the Oban and made into slaves, and they managed to escape, fleeing at the instructions of their loved ones. The group was meant to be a rallying of the people, to stop their peaceful ways and rise up against the people who claimed to be their masters.
Xewai readily joined them, though as young as he was, he was assigned to more of a watcher and a supplier of food via his fishing skills than a foot soldier of the revolutionaries (He became well acquainted with nets, and with some adult supervision, he happily went out on boats and fished with them). The group never seemed to get much support, as the people they attempted to rally feared more for their lives than for their freedom, and every resistance the small group put up was met with bloodshed at the hands of the Oban. After a while of discovering that the people weren't ready to put themselves at risk for freedom, the group decided to change their tactics.
Instead of trying to free their people as a whole, which was not supported, The Buhawi altered their mission to rescuing those who wanted to escape their captors and bringing them to the southern most island of Matori where they could not be found. Their efforts met with rather resounding success, with Xewai being one of the lookouts and information traders that traveled between Oban and Matori under the guise of sending messages for his 'master' to traders within his homeland. No one questioned the actions of someone his age, and those he worked for kept an eye on him from the shadows, ensuring his safety if there was a time when he was caught. There was hopes for finding Xewai's parents as well, and that lead Xewai to maintain his optimism.
This wasn't without failures at times, sometimes a master would viciously fight against those who were trying to escape and they were killed in the process. For every dozens of lives saved, there were always one or two who were either killed in the escape, or decided they weren't ready for freedom and returned back to their masters. Determined to keep everyone who was willing to follow the group to their freedom back in Matori, Xewai reassured the people that he was going to be strong and protect them, even if he was just a child. That enthusiasm and blind faithfulness he had in Buhawi often times kept spirits up on the long journeys that they found themselves on.
Then, the war broke out, and Xewai, to his dismay, was no longer permitted by The Buhawi to go into Oba in fear of being captured and forced into the war. Instead, he was placed to where his knowledge of the sea and it's bounty was best suited, which was providing fishing knowledge to the people who were rescued and building up a large stock of food for the organization.
The war came, the war left, and with it, too, slavery. The Organization seemed listless for a while; after all that time working to move people to safety, they had no idea what to do next. That was until it was suggested that they should not move away from their purpose, and continue to reunite families for as long as they can.. His own parents were never found and, though tragic, he accepted this as fact, and found peace with the people he called family within Buhawi.
At this point in time, Xewai and his comrades were determined to rescue anyone who was left in slavery. Those swept away at night and kept in bonds by those in the black market. His younger years were still kept giving whispers of information between the markets of Oban and the Buhawi. Soon enough, the black market died out as well, and the Buhawi found themselves no longer as strongly needed. The requests to find people dwindled down to nothing but whispers of those who were lost forever... The Buhawi, still pushing to guide people safely, switched to escort work, accompanying those who wish to travel beyond Maori.
That's where Xewai is now, working with his team to escort people all around Tendaji.
Note:*Buhawi means Water Spout in Cebuano, and it is in reference to the phenomena of water spouts picking up fish from the ocean and placing it miles away on land, just as the Organization spirited away their people in Oba back to Matori.
*with the way the time lines work, he would have been fairly young between the time the war went on and when it ended. From what I understand, If I placed him at 5 when the war ended, that still gives him between the ages of 3-5 to work with the Buhawi. Realistically speaking, young children of that age are able to identify right from wrong, and develop that type of justice. So... I think that still works.
*If possible, could there be a village on the southernmost island of Matori? I figured it wouldn't be INCREDIBLY big, as it was an ex-slave haven before the war, and then became an area where people could go to find family they had lost. It's probably nearly empty now, sans the few families who have decided to officially make it their home.
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