Ragash

Ragash is a member of the Jiinang Som diaspora, a religio-cultural union originally from northwest Yakai. Often referred to by outsiders as ‘Lovers of Purity’, Jiinang Som demand attention to one’s spiritual health as a constant way of life. In particular, a Jiinang must revere nature and abhor the harm of any living thing. Animals must never be eaten, slain, or abused, and their by-products relied on only if there is no alternative for survival. Even plants must be treated with reverence: crops are thanked for their sacrificial sustenance and loggers must ask forgiveness from the trees they cut and make penance by planting more. Their aspiration of universal kindness even extends to insects and tiny mites. However, only innocent creatures are extended this kindness, and it is always permissible to fight against evil. Ragash, seventh of ten children of two devout Jiinang Som, clove closely to this creed from childhood – before his transformation – tempering his natural exuberance and mischievousness with mindfulness and restraint. Jiinang Som and their ways were tolerated until the outbreaks of persecution and malevolence that took place during the Age of Treachery. As the Red Crusade gathered force in Anhelt, the Mikage Autocracy began its ascendance in Yakai. Perhaps perceiving the rise of totalitarian misrule earlier than others, the Jiinang Som began a mass exodus just as the tide of public opinion was turning against them, but before it could escalate into violent purges. It proved to be a wise choice – the cruel Demonspawn-influenced autocrats taking over Yakai would have surely crushed them for daring to place the life of a flea or a cat on the same level as their own exalted personages. From this moment in the tales of his people’s history, Ragash learned the importance of discretion. A fight avoided is a fight already won. The Jiinang Som people braved an arduous journey across the Cloudspire Mountains to escape the growing danger in Yakai. When they arrived on the other side, they found the boglands of the Sorrowlakes not empty, as they expected, but populated by the first groups of non-human exiles displaced by the Red Crusade. As more and more of the Jiinang Som settled there, so too did the trickle of frightened and traumatized Orcs, Ogryn, Skinwalkers, and Lizardmen from the west become a flood as the genocide intensified. The Jiinang Som were now among fellow exiles, rather than an intolerant majority group. But there came friction with their new neighbors nevertheless, for the crowded, tense, and often anarchic refugee camps bred petty conflicts constantly. As a result of occasional violent incidents between Jiinang Som and Skinwalkers, the Skinwalker curse afflicted a Jiinang for the first time in their recorded history, and their culture had to adjust to this frightening, yet to some of them intriguing, reality. It was a similar unfortunate encounter with a drunk and belligerent Skinwalker that first changed Ragash himself. By coincidence or some unconscious generational awareness of the possibility, the Jiinang Som strictures were ideal for limiting the spontaneous rise of Skinwalkers and preventing existing Skinwalkers from accumulating more cursed souls. Their vegetarian diet and taboo against animal killing made it easier for Jiinang Som Skinwalkers to remain calm, rational, and in control of their more bestial instincts. While no amount of prayer or practice can reverse the transformation suffered by the afflicted, they had discovered an ideal lifestyle for a Skinwalker who aspired to drift as little as possible from their original self. Thus, it became dogma that Skinwalkers could be Jiinang Som and vice-versa without shame, and that the positive effect of the Jiinang Som lifestyle on Skinwalkers was indicative of its overall spiritual benefits to everyone. Furthermore, it was resolved that Jiinang Som Skinwalkers would be encouraged to train in martial arts, to take advantage of their enhanced physiology for the good of community defense and the promotion of righteousness. Thus began the tradition of the Konmawt Warrior Monks, named after the place in the Sorrowlakes the Jiinang Som people first settled. Today, the Konmawt tradition is highly refined and enjoys modest but wide-reaching respect. Ragash, who was full of undirected energy even before his transformation, is exactly the kind of Skinwalker that Konmawt guidance was designed for. He became a monk willingly, though cultural pressures would probably have made it inevitable. Warrior monks like him undertake dangerous but necessary missions against monsters, Undead, outlaws, and other threats, as both a form of devotion and also fundraising for their order, since community leaders pay well and gratefully for their heroics. The Nine-Ring Demon and the Beast of Murdgrakgor are two such threats Ragash has famously dispatched with his bog-iron steel claws, and he stands ready to uphold his duty against the forces of spiritual decay that menace Teleria.