Rashidi Newong

Overview

Name: Rashidi Newong
Player: Muskrat
Group Type: Pilgrims
Character Concept: Preacher (Prophet)
Origin: Firstcome
Home System: Algol
Faction: Church of the Icons
Upbringing: Plebeian
Patron Icon: The Lady of Tears
Age: 25 years
Height: 5’4”
Weight: 130 lbs.
Appearance and Demeanor: Rashidi is a young, vibrant woman. She dresses in a desert caftan and wears the shawl and headdress traditional to priestesses and wise women of the Algol highlands where she lives, marking her as an outsider to the more cosmopolitan world of the Third Horizon. She has brown skin and long, black, curly hair. At times, she can be quiet and withdrawn or dreamy and abstracted, as she dwells in prayers and visions. At other times, she can be outgoing—sometimes effervescent, sometimes calm but forceful. She is deeply confident in what she does and does not let more cosmopolitan people’s condescension bother her.
Personal Problem: Rashidi is a bit headstrong—she has great faith in the visions of the Icons she receives and their ability to guide her. Thus, she is often sure she knows the best course of action, even when she isn’t that knowledgeable about the situation.

Attributes (15 points):

Strength: 3
Agility: 3
Wits: 4
Empathy*: 5

• Key attribute

Skills (8 points):

Culture (Empathy)*: 2
Manipulation (Empathy)*: 2
Medicurgy (Wits): 1
Observation (Wits)*: 1
Ranged Combat (Agility): 1
Survival (Wits): 1

• Concept skills

Talents:

• The Lady of Tears (Icon Talent): You can get back up after having been broken by damage or stress, and are immediately restored to 1 HP or MP. Alternatively, you can choose to ignore the effects of a critical injury when you suffer one.
• The Mercy of the Icons (Group Talent): You can cancel the effects of Darkness Points that have just been spent by the GM. One use per session for the whole group (not once per PC).
• Talisman Maker: You know how to create and bless talismans. The process takes 1d6 hours and requires a chapel or an altar. A talisman provides a +1 to one skill test, then the blessing wears off.

Additional Stats:

Hit Points: 6
Mind Points: 9
Reputation: 3

Gear:

Combat
• Long rifle (100 birr): Damage: 2, Crit: 2, Range: Long, Features: Single Shot, Encumbrance: Normal
o Reloads, 10 (50 birr)

General
• Binoculars (100 birr): Encumbrance: Light, Notes: +1 to Observation
• Blessed scripture: Encumbrance: Tiny
• Communicator, personal (200 birr): Encumbrance: Tiny, Range: 10 kilometers
• M-Dose, 10: Encumbrance: Light, A one-use injector for stabilizing wounds or treating poison, disease or radiation damage. An m-dose should be used together with a medkit; on its own it only gives a +1 to medicurgy.
• Reliquary: Encumbrance: Tiny
• Tabula: Encumbrance: Light
• Talisman: Encumbrance: Tiny

Birr: 50 birr
Carrying Capacity: 6
Encumbrance: 3.5

Background:

Rashidi grew up in the backwater highlands of Algol. Many of the people there were native, but others came to escape the oppression of the Consortium. Life in the highlands was harsh, but it was also free—and the highlanders took pride in both. Rashidi’s father Batuk Newong never traveled far from the town both he and Rashidi were born in, but Rashidi’s mother Nissi Shakili was an outsider, from the city of Yasul, where she was born into a Zenithian family, with comfortable positions in the Consortium—something she rebelled against when she learned how oppressive the Consortium was. Nissi and Batuk were an unlikely couple and sometimes their marriage was strained because of this, but they stuck with it. Nissi wanted to make sure that Rashidi had a knowledge of the wider world beyond the Algol highlands, so made sure she read widely about the peoples of the Third Horizon. After Rashidi reached sixteen, they took a few clandestine tips into Algol’s cities, so she could see what life was like there.

Rashidi respected the rebels like her mother who sought to strike at the Consortium, but from a young age, she was drawn to the Church of the Icons. She inherited her mother’s desire to help people, but sought more hands-on ways to do so. She apprenticed to the local clergy, training as a local priestess and wise woman, but felt the tug of mystical prayer pulling at her as well. She eventually began living as a hermit on the outskirts of town, healing and counseling those who came to seek her out for help, spending time immersed in prayer and fasting when she was not. Eventually, she began to have mystical visions, believing the Icons were speaking directly to her.

Rashidi is unsure what it is the Icons are trying to tell her, so she has undertaken a pilgrimage, leaving her home in the highlands of Algol to travel the Third Horizon, seeking knowledge and wisdom. As she goes, she helps people where she can and seeks to encourage people to live according to the tenets of the Icons (as she understands them), counseling others to walk the path of virtue. In seeking to save souls, she is more concerned with the deeds people do than the specifics of what they believe. Her own training in the formal tenets of the Icons’ faith is somewhat limited, given her apprenticeship in a temple in the backwater highlands of Algol.

Rashidi is clearly an outsider to the more cosmopolitan world of the Third Horizon, but this does not bother her. From her mother, she learned enough of this world to have some basic understanding of it and her faith and her prophetic visions give her the confidence to take situations she does not understand or where she is treated with disdain in stride.

Portrait