Character Concepts: The Wandering Witch Doctor

Available

Uda Nuburan, The Wandering Witch Doctor:

*African Human. Male. 87yo.

*5’9. Hunched over. Brown-black skin. Bald. Covered in purple, blue, red and orange tattoos. Large totem mask. Shoulder belt of bones and feathers.

*Powerful hexes (paralysis traps, magnetic auras, nature/weather magic). Curses (temporary blindness, fatigue, sickness) that interfere with perception, and strong enchantments for equipment. Illusions (flames, walls, shadows, lights, figures, mists) and tricks (jars of spiders, wasp nests, smoke bombs). His tattoos imbue him with the strengths of the leopard (speed), elephant (wisdom/insight), spider (web), buffalo (strength), snake (venom), frog (high jump), antelope (agility), and bat (sonar). Briefly summons spirits to help him. Poisoned knife. Can take a strength from defeated opponents. Herbal knowledge.

*Hexes require flat surfaces for sigils, curses require DNA of the intended target(s) and blood, both require large amounts of time to set up, as do enchantments. Hexes and curses that are interrupted backfire, can cause serious damage. Can only have one animal strength active at a time. The illusions are harmless in themselves, but can cause indirect death/injury. He wears no armour; main toughness coming from the adaptability of his animal strengths. His movements reflect that of the animal strength he is using.

*Totem mask. Vadu (Voodoo) doll. Bone knife.

*Seeks new tattoos, new strengths, gained by ritual after defeating an opponent.

*A large portion of the workings of the witch doctors of Earth are unknown, even to the Arak’Fay, and Uda Nuburan is the strongest that has ever lived. A wise and intelligent man, he is also strong willed and decisive. A strategist and guide as much as a witch or doctor.

[Backstory: Uda Nuburan is the strongest practitioner of strange and powerful magics that have defied explanation by the Arak’Fay, and perhaps even the Basalisks, since they first became aware of its presence on Earth, the world with the only known users.

Born to a normal family in a small tribe on a mountainside in the very centre of the continent of Africa, there was nothing apparently special about the young Uda Nuburan. He survived childhood, learned to hunt and gather, to build and to mend, to farm and to herd. He was blessed with a strong physique, a strong mind, and an even stronger spirit.

The night before his coming of age trials, a triad of witch doctors appeared took him to a hut far away, and left him with an old wise-woman, who trained him in the arts of the witch-doctors.

A long time later, after many years of being a doctor to the local tribes, he sensed a severe disturbance in the spiritual realm and became worried. After making sure it was not a one off, he set off to meet with the other doctors and discuss what he had felt. However, on the way to the meeting, he fell into a watering hole while drinking, and awoke in a strange cavern.

After a strange journey through what he guessed was the mountain he lived on, during which he acquired snake, spider, and bat tattoos, a bone knife, a Vadu doll, a mask, and an an image of a figure in blue, white and black armour, he emerged from a cave to find himself at the top of an unfamiliar mountain in the middle of the ocean.

After asking a whale to help him, he began his long journey home to find out what had happened to the world, unaware of the passing of the Third Apocoalypse].

Author's Note

Another of my favourites, though for a different reason. The beliefs and customs of tribal Afrika interest me greatly, and the medicine men/women and mysterious Witch Doctors are one of the facets of their culture that has fascinated me almost to the point of obsession.