Shadi
Shadi (a.k.a. Stone-fist)
Shadi is training to be a full-binder warrior, or hania, in the mountain tribe. She lost her right forearm to a corrupted spirit and uses her full-binding with a stone spirit to make a prosthetic of rock.
She's assigned as Washta's teacher and watcher, to help Washta adjust to mountain tribe lifestyle, to guide her in full spirit binding, and to keep an eye on her to make sure she's trustworthy.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Shadi is incredibly fit, muscled and strong. She has great endurance and agility. Her missing forearm limits her only when her full-binding isn't active, but keeping her earth arm intact for a long stretch of time is incredibly tiring, both physically and mentally. She sometimes experiences blindness and pain in her right eye as a result of the corrupted spirit Madog's claws.
Identifying Characteristics
Madog's claws left permanent scars on the right side of her face, pale lines running vertically from her forehead to cheek, bisecting her eyebrow and eye. The scars didn't quite heal right, so it looks like she's constantly scrunching her face up or squinting her right eye.
A thin layer of dirt and pebbles are stuck permanently to her right elbow, a side effect of her full-binding.
Physical quirks
She's dominantly right-handed, but has had to learn how to do things with her left when her full-binding's not active. She's gotten very good at using her left hand, but sometimes she still slips and drops something, or can't perform a certain task well enough to her liking. It frustrates her greatly.
Special abilities
She has a full-binding with a non-corrupted stone spirit. When it's active, her physical capabilities are boosted (the spiritual energy makes her faster, stronger, etc.) and she can control or manipulate as much stone/earth as her spirit can. Because of their extensive training together, they can move rocks roughly as large/heavy as her body. They've also developed a technique allowing for her to create an "earth arm" to replace her missing forearm. She can move her earth arm as easily as any of her body parts, and often trains with it so she can fight with it. It is stronger than a flesh and blood arm would be, giving her a distinct advantage in battle.
Specialized Equipment
Her weapon of choice is her fists, followed by twin knives. She also uses a slingshot.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Shadi had never planned to become a spirit binder warrior, a hania. She'd hoped maybe to explore mountains her people had not yet settled, to find new places for villages and help them get started. That changed on the day she and other novice half-binders--those who half-bind spirits as training and preparation for their full-bind--were on patrol between two villages, where sightings of corrupted mountain spirits had been in the area. It was supposed to be just half-binding training, just practice for the young teenagers to see what being a hania was really like. Deykah hardly ever attacked large groups of people in broad daylight. With two full-binders and one in training, they should have been perfectly safe.
Except nothing is ever perfectly safe in the western mountains.
The deykah that ambushed them was the old Mountain Spirit's own servant, Madog. He went for the weakest first. He bit off Shadi's arm and stepped on her when she fell, clawing her face in the process. She watched as he ravaged their group, killing her friends and brushing off the hanias' counterattacks. Her body moved before her mind caught up, and suddenly she was on her knees, hurling stones at Madog and screaming. It distracted him for only a few moments, but that was all the time the lead hania needed to tackle him off the cliff side. They fell, and the full-binder just barely managed to snag a branch to stop her fall. Madog tumbled down the mountainside, but there's been reports of him since, so he didn't die that day.
Shadi's goal is to meet him again someday, and make sure he does.
In the time that followed the hania climbing back up to the trail and helping the wounded, Shadi discovered something peculiar about her bitten-off arm. Pebbles and dirt clung to the stump of her elbow, and wouldn't budge no matter how she tried to rub or pick them off. It was strange, but it also wasn't bleeding, so she ignored the agony she was in and helped her friends. Only two survived, in the end. One of the hania noticed her arm and stopped Shadi, telling her she needed to be bandaged right away before she bled out. Shadi showed him how the rocks wouldn't come off, and how she wasn't bleeding. He figured it out quicker than she did. During the fight, she'd pushed her half-bind with this stone spirit to a full-binding. Shadi was right-handed. She'd instinctively thrown the rocks at Madog with her right arm, but that was gone. Her bonded spirit had thrown them for her.
Shadi decided from that day to train and become a hania, so that one day she can track down corrupted spirits and kill them, and one day kill Madog too, to avenge her friends and her arm. Since that day, she's trained relentlessly with her spirit, and they can now shape dirt, rocks, and some plant material into a forearm and hand that she can use like a flesh and blood one. It's how she got the nickname Stone-fist.
Gender Identity
Female, she/her
Sexuality
Asexual
Education
The mountain tribe teaches their children a wide variety of things, from farming to survival in the high peaks to sewing to sleeping in a tree. Shadi has extensive full-binding training, and is close to graduating as an official hania.
Accomplishments & Achievements
She survived and helped fight off Madog, the infamous deykah who was once servant to the Mountain Spirit. She's known as an incredibly skilled full-binder, even among higher-ups. Her earth arm is an amazing feat of spirit binding, because it requires so much concentration and skill to form a functional hand, yet she can move it as easily as any part of her body. It's speculated that one day she might be able to make it permanent, not just shaping it when her full-binding is active.
Mental Trauma
Seeing her friends get torn to bits as a teen has left some scars.
Intellectual Characteristics
She has great spatial awareness and sense of direction. Oftentimes she needs only watch something be done once or twice before she can replicate the move almost exactly. Great memory, especially for places and directions, things she can see.
Morality & Philosophy
Her tribe has been wronged and hurt in so many ways. She believes they deserve justice, and strength and stability and peace. No more fear. She's ready and willing to defend her tribe in any way from the evils that still haunt them.
She believes strongly in trust and second chances. As a warrior, she has to completely trust her comrades to have her back in battle, so it's become very important for her to trust and to be trusted. She would never lie to or cheat someone who trusted her, and expects the same from those she trusts. She also believes people deserve the chance to become their best selves, to grow and heal and learn, because when she lost her arm, many people doubted and discouraged her from becoming a hania. She proved them wrong, and she thinks everyone should get to do that too.
Taboos
No harming the innocent, weak, or defenseless.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
She wants to keep her tribe safe. She believes the best way to do that is by killing the corrupted spirits that haunt the mountains and defend her home from the Makkah Nation and their gods. Being a hania is the best way to do that, so she trains hard with her spirit.
Savvies & Ineptitudes
She is an incredible spirit binder and warrior. She's good with kids and at telling stories and jokes. She has a killer arm and great aim, and can take someone out with a single thrown rock--without her spirit's help.
She's bad at horseback riding, stealth, sitting still, and leadership. She tries her best to follow orders but sometimes forgets why they're important and does whatever her impulsive brain tells her to do right then. This usually ends poorly.
Likes & Dislikes
She loves traveling and exploring, going any place new. She likes training physically and spiritually, and loves her stone spirit. She likes kids and loves her tribe and mountains with all her heart. Gardening is the one non-active activity she enjoys, as unlike other "calming activities" like sewing or painting or meditating, it actually relaxes her.
She does not like the Makkah Nation, the High Spirits, dogs, fishing, or eating fish. She hates Madog and all his corrupted spirits.
Virtues & Personality perks
She's very passionate and driven, doing her very best and encouraging others to do the same. She's friendly, generally positive and uplifting, and likes to have fun. Reliable, hardworking, enduring, and tolerant.
Vices & Personality flaws
She can be easily offended and will get angry and defensive if someone insults/attacks something she believes in. She feels things deeply, but hates being anything but happy, so she'll push down and ignore feelings of sadness or anything she considers weak, pretending she's fine and snapping at anyone who suggests otherwise. She hates feeling weak, or being betrayed or lied to, and responds really poorly/aggressively if that happens. It's tricky pulling her out of a dark mood.
She's also a big idiot a lot of the time. She thinks and acts impulsively, and a lot of those impulses tells her to do dumb (but fun!) things, and she won't think twice before doing them.
Personality Quirks
She touches her pebble-encrusted elbow when she's thinking or nervous, and scratches at it if she's angry or restless.
Hygiene
She smells like dirt and sweat most of the time, but her friends and family make her bathe often. There is always, always dirt under her fingernails.
Social
Family Ties
Her mother is a caravan worker, someone who travels around the valleys to collect food and suplies to take to the secret hania headquarters. Sorta like a tax collector, except people give more willingly and she works in a group. She visits home between deliveries, but never for longer than a moonturn.
Her father was Shadi's biggest support when she was recovering from Madog's attack. He never doubted she could become a warrior and helped her train her body and heart in order to do so. They're very close. He lives with her younger brother in a little hut in her home village, tending a garden and raising a small herd of mountain ponies for trade. He was once a hania himself, before a Makkah binder smashed his leg into a dozen pieces that healed crooked and he was forced to retire early. That happened before Shadi was born.
Religious Views
She believes in the Great Spirit, and agrees that the High Spirits are not beings to be worshiped, but she's not big on religion itself, really. She cares more about the real problems her tribe faces.
Social Aptitude
She's extroverted, friendly, sociable and outgoing, confident in herself, sometimes not the most polite or respectful but she tries, and she does have a chill charisma that makes people like her.
Hobbies & Pets
She likes to train, fight, and throw rocks.
Her father raises ponies and has a dog, but she personally hates dogs and isn't fond of equines, so no pets for her.
Relationships
Relationship Reasoning
Shadi was assigned to be Washta's watcher/trainer partly as punishment, partly as reward/opportunity. She'd done something dumb during training the day prior to Washta's arrival, so she got the job of babysitting a glorified prisoner. But this was also her chance to prove herself as a good teacher and trustworthy person, so maybe she could graduate early and become a hania sooner. So, Shadi gave it her all to train Washta well and become her friend. Washta isn't here to make friends. She's a spy for her uncle. Yet she can't help but appreciate Shadi's help with her full-binding. Washta's worried she'll get attached to her, and vice versa, and that'll make everything hurt more when Washta leaves. If. If she leaves.
Commonalities & Shared Interests
They both have full-bindings with stone spirits, they both have mountain tribe family/blood/history, they both love their people strongly and want to protect them.
Alignment
Chaotic Good/True Neutral
Ethnicity
Professions
Spouses
Siblings
Children
Eyes
Dark green
Hair
Red-brown, wavy and big, lots of little braids
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Dark brown
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Comments