The Jiam
Plucked from the war orphanages of Dhenia as a toddler, The Jiam was press-ganged into the Civappu Maru, a shadow organization serving as the spymasters and court assassins in many Dhenian kingdoms. He was taken to an once magnificent temple in Jighad and stripped of all identity, subjected to the indoctrination by the Masters, renamed The Jiam (The One Who Obeys) he was forced to wear a mask of obedience to not be punished. After a particularly savage episode of language instruction, The Jiam used the skills they taught him to slip away late in the night, and dedicated himself to the rejection of his education. He lived rough for years, learning to steal, learning to beg, learning to avoid the staff, the sword, and the lash.
When he arrived in the coastal hillcountry of Jaimanuvartana, ill, malnourished, wracked by fever, The Jiam attempted to pickpocket Śrī Elay Kicukicuppavar and instead fainted at his feet. Śrī Elay took the child back to his katu or woodland sanctuary, nursed him back to health, and was adopted him as a fledgling druid. He was offered the ability to take another name, to even try to discover his real name, his long-dead parents, what might be left of his family, but The Jiam kept the only name he ever knew as a way to never forget what had been done to him.
Violence and degradation now in his past, The Jiam lived a simple life, a humble life as Elay’s novitiate, learning the plants of the many lands, tending to the Trees of Reverence, exploring the nature of animals, and accepting the deep inner peace of the forest.
When Śrī Elay was dying, the elderly druid invoked Tree Sanctuary for the last time, entombed eternal in one of his madhuca trees. The Jiam had cried for the first time since all tears had been beaten out of him. He tried to hold onto the peace of the forest, his master's peace.
He meditated under the madhuca for several days and several nights before packing a simple sack containing the maru blade he had arrived with, seeds from the madhuca tree, and a walking staff made of one of its fallen branches; leaving the katu to grow as a druid, traveling the land, learning its bounties and dangers and one day returning to take up his place in the circle.
When the slavers took him, he struggled, killed two of them with his assassin skills before they overwhelmed him, shackled him, and took him to the treeless wastes across the sea.
Drugged by slavers and forced to work Senu Desert, The Jiam awakes in the camp of La Compagnia Septentrionale. He is grateful for the rescue, but concerned that he has been forced to eat and sleep with outlanders first by the slavers, and more benignly by La Compagnia. Without other resources, he asks to remain with them at least until they are safely away from Paruhatpa
Physical Description
Identifying Characteristics
Mental characteristics
Education
Accomplishments & Achievements
Mental Trauma
Taboos
- Struggle for Paruhapta I: Groping in Darkness
- Struggle for Paruhapta II: In Xam's House There Are Many Rooms
- Struggle for Paruhapta IX: With Confused Noise
- Struggle for Paruhapta VII: Hard Pressed on All Sides
- Struggle for Paruhapta VIII: Sheepcotes By The Way
- Struggle for Paruhapta X: Spirits More Evil Than Itself
- The Forgotten City IX
- The Forgotten City X
- The Forgotten City XI
- The Forgotten City XII
- The Forgotten City XIII
- The Forgotten City XIV
- The Forgotten City XL
- The Forgotten City XLI
- The Forgotten City XLII
- The Forgotten City XLIV
- The Forgotten City XLVI
- The Forgotten City XV
- The Forgotten City XVI
- The Forgotten City XVII
- The Forgotten City XVIII
- The Forgotten City XXIX
- The Forgotten City XXVIII
- The Forgotten City XXX
- The Forgotten City XXXI
- The Forgotten City XXXII
- The Forgotten City XXXIII
- The Forgotten City XXXIV
- The Forgotten City XXXIX
- The Forgotten City XXXV
- The Forgotten City XXXVI
- The Forgotten City XXXVII
- The Forgotten City XXXVIII
