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Few's history » Marabi's history   Marabi's journal   Fan Dancer prestige class   Divine Servant prestige class

Marabi was born Rura Te Lunen. Her father (Berund) is a diplomat and minor noble, her mother (Lunen) a dancer of some renown. She has an older brother (Fezir) who's a dilletante and a troublemaker; her mother died giving birth to her younger brother (Lumas), who has become a court herald.

Berund wanted Marabi to follow in her mother's footsteps (yup, it's a pun) and so childhood was one dance lesson after another. But her father didn't understand dance very well, and so the instructors foisted on her were the kind that noble families hire to make their daughters graceful and marriageable, not those that treat it as an art. Marabi resented the idea that the purpose of her efforts was simply to please suitors and spectators, and so though she was talented, did not apply herself or enjoy the lessons much.

One evening at a court dinner, this all changed. The entertainment was a foriegner named Kanagai, who dressed in his native costume and told a confusing story of some obscure legend from his homeland. It would have been thoroughly boring if he had not "illustrated" the story with a strange, warlike but enchanting dance of rounded movements and sudden lunges using a sword and a fan. Marabi was completely fascinated. She sought out Kanagai after the dinner, but discovered he was not staying on the palace grounds. With some help from Fezir she finally tracked him to a cheap inn on the outskirts of town... and was surprised to find that Kanagai was actually a half-orc.

Aside from an uncomfortable first few moments, that turned out not to matter. Kanagai agreed to teach Marabi this style of dance/combat -- minus the sword, he insisted, as she was not one of his tribe and something or other about the ancestors and it's a man's weapon and blah blah blah. "Fine," Marabi said, thinking there's not really anything special about swords anyway, "just teach me how to use the fan."

Over the next several weeks, they met discretely to train. Marabi learned quickly and practiced dilligently, now that she actively enjoyed it. It did not take long for her to overcome any distate she "should" have had toward the half-orc, and to develop quite a romantic attachment to him. Kanagai did not reciprocate -- again saying something about the tribe, and about causing trouble for her family. (Foreshadowing!)

Fezir began to have visions of greed and adventure, involving a certain innocent-looking ally who could fight viciously when necessary, and gave his sister a few pointers on street fighting. These lessons Marabi readily accepted, but refused to get involved with gambling and the rest of the "scene" Fezir was into.

As Marabi grew into this new form and began to realize its potential and her own, her distate and rebellion towards her ordinary instructors boiled over. Reports of disrespect and misconduct got back to her father, as did the rumor that she was "seeing" a half-orc. Berund was angry, seeing a threat to all the hard work he had put into increasing the family's honor and status. He forbade Marabi from leaving the house or practicing those barbaric dances, instructing the household staff to enforce his ruling.

Marabi, of course, did not accept this. She tried to conspire with Fezir to sneak out of the house. He tried to dissuade her, but she insisted. Finally he reluctantly explained that someone -- no doubt their father -- had paid some of his shadier acquaintances good money to make Kanagai disappear. He was, of course shocked and appalled that any friend of his would do such a....

...when Fezir came to, he had a painful bump on his head and someone was doing a great deal of yelling down on the ground floor. He made his way carefully downstairs, to find his father pacing like a tiger, and a pair of red-faced, swearing guards being bandaged by the cook. They never found Marabi.

And Marabi -- though she's wandered far -- has never found Kanagai, nor any word of his tribe, nor any other practitioner of that style of dancing and fighting. The closest she's come is a bard who knows someone who once saw something like that, and the circumstances of the story sound exactly like the same court appearance where she first saw Kanagai.

She no longer expects to find the half-orc or his people, but some glimmer of hope still survives. More importantly, she has resolved to master the art on her own if she can find no one else to learn from.

She took the name "Marabi" because Kanagai called her that once, teasingly. It's some kind of folkloric reference from Kanagai's tribe about a woman who poisoned the sun to make it sleep half the time. She doesn't understand what that has to do with her, but it's good enough.

She knows that Berund concocted a story that would save the family's face, and though a token reward still stands for information leading to her return, no real effort has been made to find her. She's fine with that for now. She dreams that some day, when she's mastered the art, grown old and venerable, and is well known for establishing the Te Kanagai School, she will make her real name and story known, bringing her father's house to ruin.