Name: Fife
Race: Namekian, Dragon Caste: Regeneration, Dragon Ball Affinity, Mystic
Alignment: Good
Age: 252
Appearance: He stands a little over seven feet, the standard Namekian frame, lean and clearly conditioned. His skin is the deep green of his people. The pointed ears are long. The antennae are thin and dark, extending outward from his brow before drooping in the way all Namekian antennae do. He keeps his head bare, as his caste does. His eyes are narrow, set wide. The corner of his mouth tends slightly upward when he is settled, which is most of the time.
He wears a light-grey sleeveless gi in the Namekian tradition, plain in cut. A wide blue sash cinches it at the waist. Matching blue cuffs ride his wrists. He carries no weapon. His hands are usually open, at his sides or resting on whatever's near.
His voice is quiet and carries. He breathes audibly when he's thinking, a long deliberate exhale before he speaks. When he stands still, he stands very still. When he moves, he moves with intention.
Background: Fife was born on Namek somewhere around Age 649, during a period the Namekians considered uneventful. He chose the Dragon Caste young, the path of those who create rather than fight. By his sixties, in Namekian terms still adolescence, he had grown restless with Namek's careful agrarian quiet. Too many fragmentary reports came home with other wanderers, and not enough of those reports lined up with what his elders described. He wanted to see for himself.
He left around Age 700 and stayed away for two centuries.
He spent fifteen years on Cold #01, working as a translator in a Changeling brokerage that bought and sold systems. Forty years followed on the Interstellar Market, learning trade law and the quiet hierarchies that governed the moon's lower decks. Mining colonies on the rim took stretches at a time. A decade went to a mercenary contract crew that protected freight lanes through Cold space. He watched two factional empires rise on M-1 and watched both of them eat themselves through the same wealth concentration the brokers in Cold #01 had taught him to recognize. He visited Yardrat and lived among the mystics there. He never went to Earth. By the time he thought to, the Humans had begun their interstellar phase and he wanted to wait until their society had settled into whatever it was becoming.
What he learned, accumulating across decades, was simpler than any of the systems he studied. Advanced societies failed through wealth that hoarded itself faster than it could be redistributed. Simple societies failed through having no warrior tradition to defend what they had built. Namek's pacifism was a virtue surrounded by a precondition: that the universe leave them alone. The universe had not been leaving anyone alone for a long time.
He made his way to Kanassa in late Age 899, intending to study with the clairvoyant elders there. The news came to him on a market relay in his second week on the planet. Namek had been taken intact. The world stood and the people lived, but their quiet was now governed by people who had not built any of it. He stayed at the relay long enough to read past the first reports. Earth was the same. The two homeworlds where his philosophy might most easily have taken root were now both ruled by people who had never built anything they hadn't first conquered.
He stayed on Kanassa, but his study took on a project. He sought out the seers to learn the Mafuba, a sealing technique their clairvoyant elders still teach. The technique is terrible in its cost to the user and capable of containing any opponent regardless of power. From Kanassa he intends to travel to Konats, where the Konatsian swordsmen-mystics keep their spiritual traditions intact. There he will build, in partnership with the people whose ground it is, a sanctuary. A place organized around pacifism that the warrior tradition keeps defensible. Simple because complex societies eat themselves. Merciful to enemies as far as their willingness to receive it allows.
He understands that the project may not succeed. He knows some of the people he will try to change will not change. He has decided that the alternative, joining the executioners, is worse than the failure of trying.
Race: Namekian, Dragon Caste: Regeneration, Dragon Ball Affinity, Mystic
Alignment: Good
Age: 252
Appearance: He stands a little over seven feet, the standard Namekian frame, lean and clearly conditioned. His skin is the deep green of his people. The pointed ears are long. The antennae are thin and dark, extending outward from his brow before drooping in the way all Namekian antennae do. He keeps his head bare, as his caste does. His eyes are narrow, set wide. The corner of his mouth tends slightly upward when he is settled, which is most of the time.
He wears a light-grey sleeveless gi in the Namekian tradition, plain in cut. A wide blue sash cinches it at the waist. Matching blue cuffs ride his wrists. He carries no weapon. His hands are usually open, at his sides or resting on whatever's near.
His voice is quiet and carries. He breathes audibly when he's thinking, a long deliberate exhale before he speaks. When he stands still, he stands very still. When he moves, he moves with intention.
Background: Fife was born on Namek somewhere around Age 649, during a period the Namekians considered uneventful. He chose the Dragon Caste young, the path of those who create rather than fight. By his sixties, in Namekian terms still adolescence, he had grown restless with Namek's careful agrarian quiet. Too many fragmentary reports came home with other wanderers, and not enough of those reports lined up with what his elders described. He wanted to see for himself.
He left around Age 700 and stayed away for two centuries.
He spent fifteen years on Cold #01, working as a translator in a Changeling brokerage that bought and sold systems. Forty years followed on the Interstellar Market, learning trade law and the quiet hierarchies that governed the moon's lower decks. Mining colonies on the rim took stretches at a time. A decade went to a mercenary contract crew that protected freight lanes through Cold space. He watched two factional empires rise on M-1 and watched both of them eat themselves through the same wealth concentration the brokers in Cold #01 had taught him to recognize. He visited Yardrat and lived among the mystics there. He never went to Earth. By the time he thought to, the Humans had begun their interstellar phase and he wanted to wait until their society had settled into whatever it was becoming.
What he learned, accumulating across decades, was simpler than any of the systems he studied. Advanced societies failed through wealth that hoarded itself faster than it could be redistributed. Simple societies failed through having no warrior tradition to defend what they had built. Namek's pacifism was a virtue surrounded by a precondition: that the universe leave them alone. The universe had not been leaving anyone alone for a long time.
He made his way to Kanassa in late Age 899, intending to study with the clairvoyant elders there. The news came to him on a market relay in his second week on the planet. Namek had been taken intact. The world stood and the people lived, but their quiet was now governed by people who had not built any of it. He stayed at the relay long enough to read past the first reports. Earth was the same. The two homeworlds where his philosophy might most easily have taken root were now both ruled by people who had never built anything they hadn't first conquered.
He stayed on Kanassa, but his study took on a project. He sought out the seers to learn the Mafuba, a sealing technique their clairvoyant elders still teach. The technique is terrible in its cost to the user and capable of containing any opponent regardless of power. From Kanassa he intends to travel to Konats, where the Konatsian swordsmen-mystics keep their spiritual traditions intact. There he will build, in partnership with the people whose ground it is, a sanctuary. A place organized around pacifism that the warrior tradition keeps defensible. Simple because complex societies eat themselves. Merciful to enemies as far as their willingness to receive it allows.
He understands that the project may not succeed. He knows some of the people he will try to change will not change. He has decided that the alternative, joining the executioners, is worse than the failure of trying.
