Tenzin Kazankai

Human / Druid

Submitted character story

Tenzin had an ordinary childhood in Mitsori, growing up on the fringes of a wild forest, and always drawn to explore it. The foothills on the way to and beyond Mistine became increasingly wild. The Khetran mountains themselves were the scene of a conflict many generations ago between the kami and an unknown force of corruption. The kami were victorious, but pockets of corruption still survive and sometimes manifest to be rooted out. Tenzin encountered one of these deep in the woods, exploring at the age of 17, already apprenticed to one of Mitsori’s shamans, though not the greatest of students. A large arachnoid corruption had ensnared a tiger cub, and Tenzin, inexperienced as he was, ran to defend and try to cut the cat loose. The monster, however, was faster and stronger and flung him away into a tree trunk and knock his wind out. Before Tenzin could recover - and before the monster could press its advantage on either him or the cub, the tiger’s mother leapt on its back with ferocious roar and vicious claws. Monster and tiger battled, and Tenzin recovered enough to free the cub and move them both to cover. 
Arachnoid and great cat fought to the edge of death, the mother tiger mortally wounded by the unlucky slash of a poisoned mandible. The monster was weakened, but caught and seized the advantage, and was going to win. Small and inexperienced as they were, Tenzin and the cub, without thought - or with something beyond thought - left their shelter simultaneously as the creature reared to deliver a final, fatal blow. They came at the monster's head from two sides, one with a hunting knife, one with small but sharp claws, and together all but blinded it. Rolling away as it lashed out in pain and fury, Tenzin and the cub came up against a tree trunk; Tenzin was dazed by his second jarring impact of the fight, but both saw and felt saw the cub tensing against the trunk to spring back at the monster. In an instant, though the dirt, and roots and trunk, and very air of the woods around him, Tenzin felt the first tapping into the conduit of life of the wood - of the world. The line of vitality and power extended through the contact between himself and the cub - Zeya - and back to the natural forces that he could just begin to see, to dream of shaping one day. No, it was time to shape them right now.  The instant before the cub launched itself a second time, Tenzin pushed something sharp, something lethal not into Zeya, but *to* her. The arc of her claws trailed glittering spikes of green, like the sun through holly leaves,  as the cub's slash severed the head of the creature from its body.
The victory against the corrupted aberration was almost instantly forgotten as Tenzin approached the fading mother tiger. There was nothing he could do to save her, but she returned his gaze with her own, then looked to her cub standing next to him before closing her eyes. Tenzin touched her great head, and Zeya nuzzled her as she breathed her last, leaving the two of them together.
Tenzin and Zeya were inseparable from that point onwards, which caused no small amount of difficulty on their return to Mitsori. Tenzin didn’t want to distress his family or community over much, and spent more time than ever in the woods, where he began to learn how to deepen his connections to both nature and his new companion. Within a year, the shamans of Mitsine had heard about the “Brother Tiger” and summoned him, and Zeya, for real training in the ways of the Kami, or as Northerners call them, the Druidic arts.

After training, Tenzin were drawn by the call of the Silver Arch to battle what may have been the ultimate source of the corruption that once ravaged the land. He and the Brotherhood have traveled to the shadows' source in search of a way to put a final end to the centuries old threat