- Joined
- Aug 8, 2008
- Messages
- 4,119
- Reaction score
- 142
“Souls can no more see the origins of their thought than they can see the backs of their heads or the insides of their entrails. And since souls cannot differentiate what they cannot see, there is a peculiar sense in which the soul cannot self-differentiate. So it is always, in a peculiar sense, the same time when they think, the same place where they think, and the same individual who does the thinking.
Like tipping a spiral on its side until only a circle can be seen, the passage of moments always remains now, the carnival of spaces always sojourns here, and the succession of people always becomes me. The truth is, if the soul could apprehend itself the way it apprehended the world—if it could apprehend its origins—it would see that there is no now, there is no here, and there is no me.
In other words, it would realize that just as there is no circle, there is no soul.”
- R. Scott Bakker, Prince of Nothing
XIR'KÛRIMA
Faction • Independent
Homeworld • Umbara
Gender • Male
Height • 1.95m
Physique • Muscular
Eye color • Black
Force-sensitivity • Positive
Rank • Force Adept
Current Location • Mid & Outer Rim
Desires • Power over life itself
BREAKDOWN
[TD]
[/td]
Beasts show the white of their eye only in terror.
Men show it always.
[TD]Men show it always.
The Tsonos tribe traces its origins to the chthonic early days of the Umbaran race, when they were the first to emerge from the subterranean world to tame the planet's surface. The Tsonos have always been renowned for their cultivation of an incredible physique and a philosophy that links vitality to spirituality. Xir'kûrima, their last scion, is no different.
Xir's age is indiscriminate. It is known that among the Shadow People, some tribes exist which have inherited a curious longevity, and indeed despite their ruin the Tsonos are an old bloodline.
Xir'kûrima's face is sculpted and sunken: high cheekbones and black eyes that glare from deep within his skull. There are tattoos beneath his eyes in an ancient script that is not Umbaran; elsewhere his body is perfectly hairless and without mark. A single black stone is set into his brow above and between the eyes. He is withdrawn in his gestures, rarely moving without purpose, and his facial expressions are often curiously overblown by human standards: his laughter, though rare, is thunderous, as are his sorrow and glee.
He is fluent in Umbaran, Basic and Huttese - the languages of kin, culture and commerce, respectively. In the tongue of the Shadow People, his dialect is lilting and musical, a relic from when the Tsonos were a noble tribe. In Basic and Huttese his pronunciation is perfect but he could never be mistaken for a native speaker, and his words are curiously devoid of passion. Despite his size, he is incongruously soft-spoken and gentle, even in cruelty.
On formal occasions Xir'kûrima wears a magnificent shadowcloak, doubtless an ancient heirloom of the Tsonos. To human eyes it varies from white to gray or dull blue, but on the ultraviolet spectrum it shifts from the color of a cooling star to a supernova, onsible to nusp. Beneath it he wears a black bodysuit with an organic motif.
PERSONALITY
If we're nothing more than our thoughts and passions,
and if our thoughts and passions are nothing more than movements of our souls,
then we are nothing more than those who move us.
and if our thoughts and passions are nothing more than movements of our souls,
then we are nothing more than those who move us.
The minds of the Shadowfolk are less human than they appear. To men and other species, manipulation is a sad necessity of politic, the unintended way to play the game. On Umbara, manipulation is the game itself; the byzantine web of their caste system actively rewards those who, through wit and cunning, destroy enemy, ally or onlooker. It is the Way. Since time immemorial, the only way to survive the predatory shadowlands of their homeworld has been an extraordinary willingness to sacrifice one's brother to further oneself.
In this, the Tsonos were like any other tribe: players of the game. In the mad struggle to reach the hallowed caste of the Rootai, the Tsonos were not fully successful but nonetheless flourished. Unfortunately, their excesses led them further and further astray; more and more, they cut at themselves, giving wherever necessary, sacrificing son and sire alike to preserve the Tsonos lineage -- preserving their lineage, and their forays which led ever deeper into the galaxy's deepest darkness.
The tribe was broken when Xir'kûrima was born, and the broken tribe raised him. His fascination with the occult was his birthright. From infancy he inherited the terrible hunger of the Tsonos, the hunger for knowledge not theirs to possess, for power purchased at a price all too steep. He learned from his father the arts of science and chemistry, from the observation of his experiments among the blighted towers of the stronghold that had once been their glory. His father, himself the last son of the last son of the Tsonos, was pleased with his offspring's aptitude.
But more than a natural acuity, Xir'kûrima was born with a far more important and far rarer aptitude. Traditionally, the Tsonos were a Force-sensitive tribe, and Xir'kûrima was no different, but the burden of the Tsonos was also his to bear. For generation upon generation they have been tormented by nightmares, dreams of the lives of they who came before and of other beings, in other places, of spirits and landscapes never seen by Umbaran eyes, dreams of utter terror... So it was that the Tsonos came to know the Force through one of its darker faces.
The obsession to better understand the scope, the powers and limitations of the Force led to the ruin of his house, and perhaps one day it will lead to his ruin as well.
Because of the dreams, Xir'kûrima sleeps very little. Most of his rest comes from prolonged meditation.
In demeanor, Xir'kûrima is given to bouts of utter calm interrupted by fits of passion. Good ideas give him titanic joy, but often their consequences lead to long periods of brooding contemplation. His wrath is terrible. Recreationally, he synthesizes and consumes spice to warp his consciousness and view events from other perspectives, and has a taste for fine wine and culture. In social situations he is charming and skilled at manipulation, but nonetheless manages to strike slightly incongruous, giving off the vaguest sensation of menace.
Ultimately, Xir'kûrima is the latest and last in a line of tragic figures. The Tsonos, whose ingenuity and mystical sensitivity could have led them to great heights, were undone by a curiosity that led them deeper than they should ever go into the galaxy's mysteries. The dreams, their great curse, gave them the hunger that has become their meaning, and the poison that has become their destruction.
Every day, Xir'kûrima drinks another drop to slake the thirst he will never quench.
HISTORY
History. Language. Passion. Custom.
All these things determine what men say, think, and do.
These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.
All these things determine what men say, think, and do.
These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.
Indeed, the Umbara have long celebrated the tradition of espionage: what does it matter if they are seen as weak, so long as they know the king's favorite wine and the slave that decants it for him? Secrets are power on Umbara, and it has been this way for many cycles.
It was then inevitable that the Tsonos should seek to explore the applications of their natural gifts to the game of caste-climbing... inevitable that they should peer into the Force, strain their minds in lunatic introspection to gaze deeper and deeper into the darkness and try to discern from it visions of their brothers in their most hidden moments, try to wrestle pieces of the future into the present, try to dominate the game... and it was inevitable that they destroy themselves in the process.
Things holy became mere versions of things unholy, as though they could be exchanged as easily as the two faces of a coin, and the Tsonos became dread merchants in a commerce that withered their souls and poisoned their minds with dreams of utter terror. For a time they were successful, gaining status and power through fear of their gifts, and the favor of those who appreciated their disdain of scruple.
It was not a viable strategy, however -- their exists a proverb on Umbara: If soot stains your tunic, dye it black. This is vengeance. Memory has a way of recollecting hate, and the Tsonos began to hoard jealously the hatred of their brothers, till days of greatness gave way to ruin.
The Tsonos fell from their status as shamans, plummeting down the social ladder into the dregs of the caste-menials, ostracized by the other greater tribes till they were reduced to little more than peddlers. As students of the occult and lovers of excess, their role became that of middlemen, purveyors of fine spice and rich shadow-wine, agents able to acquire exotic artifacts and cater to strange tastes... yet even this fate evaded them, for their obsessions warped the few remaining sons of Tsonos, driving them to flirtations with dread powers, flirtations which have ended in their extinction.
It is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing.
Thus we shall define the soul as follows:
that which precedes everything.
Thus we shall define the soul as follows:
that which precedes everything.
Again the dreams had come.
Swirling scenes of terror, faces like his own reflected across a thousand broken mirrors. His mind plunged through the recollected deaths of his hundred fathers, into cataracts of detail so overwhelming that he felt an astronaut astray in the vacuum, images upon images impressed into his mind. The hollow-eyed corpses of his kin lay abandoned in fields once ripe with grapes for shadow-wine, the dead strewn carelessly about the ruined stronghold of the Tsonos, itself little more than a knuckle of blasted masonry forever buffeted by the wind of a barren hillside.
In a lunatic way the dreams reminded Xir'kûrima of his identity.
He fiddled over the microscopes, analyzing again the changing structure of his experiments' cells, cutting away cancers and making careful alterations. He was close to a breakthrough, Xir'kûrima knew, with passionless certainty. Close to an answer.
Yet for each answer he cut from the galaxy's darkness and held up to the light, a thousand questions hid in its shadow.
Xir'kûrima recalled the words of his father, Son of Tsonos. You will go among them as one awake. You will possess all circumstances, seize their secrets, shelter in the hollows of their ignorance and make of them instruments.
Xir'kûrima reflected upon his journey thus far, upon his pittance of answers compared to the questions they prompted.
But Father, he wanted to say in these moments of weakness after awakening from the dreams, the Way is too narrow. The Truth is too far.
And yet he remembered...
Son of Tsonos.
You will go among them as one awake.
Last edited:
