Shaktar Utathya

Order of Hermes
Scion of House Criamon
Neophyte of House Ex Miscellanae
Student of the Quicksilvered Alitdade
Disciple of the Clear Dawn Chantry

Description


~Shaktar Utathya arrives without a scene. This youthful fellow appears to be in his mid to late 20s. His Punjabi heritage is discerned most readily in his light brown skin tone. As he surveys the area, his brown eyes twinkle with a bright glint of muted merriment. Combined with his quiet attitude, this only adds to his unique and mysterious presence. Shaktar typically wears his black hair loose and long. It's not unusual for him to keep it bound back in a ponytail either. He seems relaxed in his preppy attire -- long-sleeved Polo shirts and light-colored khakis are most common. Over it all, a weatherbeaten gray overcoat shrouds his sleight frame. However, none of his garments conceal his hands. Each finger ends in an abnormally lengthy nail -- a good three inches long. They are not painted any solid color, but instead scribed with minuscule symbols and swirls of strange meaning. Like the hint of tattoos on his back that peek at the top of his neck, Shaktar's strange bodily designs attract curiosity. On the same token, his quiescent mien maintains an air of enigma. Surely those symbols and tattoos mean something. Onlookers just get the feeling that they don't get to ever know.~

OOC: Appearance 2; Arcane 3; Echoes: strange tattoos

"I have already forseen the world collapsing on itself. But look at it this way: there's no better time to collect what we're all due. Do you really want to be on the wrong side of the moon when the day of reckoning is here?"

History


Youth

Sikh-controlled Punjab was once a hotbed of extremist activity. But the separatists were hardly representative of the real people in the country. The Utathya family staked their claim in the small town of Ipsu as lower class merchants of imported goods. Shaktar was the second of three siblings, born twenty-five years ago. His older brother, Tulsa, shared his love of thinking and academia. But more than Tulsa, Shaktar loved puzzles and riddles and enigmatic questions. His younger sister, Drisah, followed her mother's footsteps when it came to fascination with cosmetic appeal. Though the family was nominally Sikh, neither his father Autar nor his mother Somah were "fully christened" members of the faith.

Still, there were certain elements of Sikhism they enforced. For one, they forbid tattoos. While Shaktar was not originally interested in tattoos per se, the youth liked to draw on himself. Fanciful pictures, strange symbols, and old Sanskrit characters he recognized in old textbooks all found their way onto his skin (until his mother washed them off). Meanwhile, Shaktar studied well and scored excellent grades in school. His family was very proud of his intellectual talents, artistic inclinations, and philosophical inquiries.

Awakening

However, things grew odder for Shaktar. As he got older and into his adolescence, Shaktar began to ask fewer questions...and instead tell the future. It was as if, in the course of hormonal development, some latent soothsaying ability was manifesting. The youth grew more dreamy and distant, as if he were paying more attention to some distant plane than reality. On top of that, Shaktar was constantly offering up unexpected and disturbing omens to everyone he encountered. Even when asked to stay silent, the teenager couldn't help but open his mouth whenever the "gift" touched his tongue. His Awakening was never quite a sudden thing, though Shaktar began to really experience these...changes...in early 1999. More worried than embarrassed, his parents contacted the caretaker of their local temple (Sikhs do not have priests per se, like Muslims).

Fortunately, this wizened fellow was very religious. He believed there was something special about Shaktar. So he called upon his own connection: a member of a not-too-distant school for "gifted students". This contact happened to be Zel Nathu bani Criamon, an Adept of the Hermetic Orders. Zel came down to Ipsu, examined Shaktar, and immediately recommended the boy's transfer to his school. Weirded out and concerned, his family readily agreed. Shaktar didn't mind either, intrigued by the scholarly gentleman who seemed to look at the world the same way Shaktar was looking at the world.

The Path Supreme

So instead of college, Shaktar went to the chantry of the Supreme Path. There began his initiation and indoctrination into the ways, beliefs, rites, and studies of House Criamon. The esoterica of it all especially attracted the young man, who promised to blossom into an impressive seer.

And so small were the Criamon that Shaktar had the benefit of a focused mentor. Zel spent almost every day with Shaktar, teaching the boy the complicated metaphysics of magick. Shaktar readily learned that "motion through time" was quite plausible. One just had to look outside the incomplete and ambiguous attempts at defining energy that Sleeper science suggested.

Shaktar's wisdom grew with his mystickal education, too. By 2001, he understood how energy was eternal yet dynamic in form. This was easy to say, but when he peered through his master's cosmoscope and glimpsed the boundless universe, he truly realized this infinite reality. And only a few years later in 2004, Shaktar came to embrace the paradigm of House Criamon fully. His oracular powers were now as inherent to him as the tattoos the order inscribed upon his flesh. He accepted this and dismissed all previous sentiments of self-conscious doubt.

Opportunities Seized

Finally, Zel graduated Shaktar in 2005. Six years of intensive study paid off well. Shaktar was wizened and readied for the vast Hidden World beyond. He was given an extensive list of chantries (including the option to remain at the Supreme Path); some of those chantries received his resume and invited him themselves. But when he learned of the Clear Dawn Chantry way out in the middle of America, Shaktar felt providence open his eyes. Lacking immense personal ambitions like some Hermetic magi, Shaktar wanted to help his fellow man as much as find his own Path. Plus, the smallish size of this Midwestern chantry appealed to Shaktar's humble desires. So it was decided; the Criamon left his homeland after a heartfelt good-bye to his family. He traveled to Missouri and settled into this new chantry, hoping his help would be appreciated.

Significant Other


Shaktar met Monika Barton bani Chyme through their chantry, the Clear Dawn, in autumn of 2005. The two Hermetics decided to play it close to protect their own affairs and interests. Work together eventually doubled with play together. Shaktar persuaded Monika to date him. Their relationship deepened in time, as the cold woman yielded to Shaktar's determined courting and revealed the warmer side of her personality. Although Shaktar moved into Monika's home, the two Hermetics have no plans to deepen their relationship further. Shaktar is quite fine with taking this romance slow. He knows they have plenty of time to enjoy it yet.

Monika

Weakness
Bad Timing


Unfortunately, Shaktar lacks compunction about relaying the "facts" of his dire portents. Anytime, anywhere, to anyone, this Criamon will speak the "truth" about the dark days ahead. This does not endear him to other people, especially since he won't offer little white lies to ease the passage of time to those who suffer.

Likelihood of Corruption


Average.

Though Shaktar deals with bad omens and tends to see the dark side of the future, he isn't really evil at all. On the contrary, he believes the dark times ahead will provide a great opportunity for people to pull together the way they must. However, Shaktar's predilections can be a draw for Nephandi and other forces seeking to corrupt his understanding of entropy and make him barrabi.

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