Rogue Zigona Shanku

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• Vital Stats

  • Name: Rogue Zigona Shanku
  • Gender: Unknown
  • Played by: Sneeuw
  • Nicknames: Ziggy, Claptrap
  • Race: Human (Fantasy equivalent of Indian)
  • Class: Rogue
  • Alignment: Unaligned
  • Deity: Fate
  • Age: 18
  • Size: Small-Medium
  • Body Type: Lean, toned
  • Height: 5'6"
  • Weight: 145 lbs
  • Complexion: Dark
  • Hair: Black
  • Eyes: Cinnamon brown
  • Handedness: Right
  • Scars: A thin scar spanning along his jaw and chin, a few slashes over the chest and arms. A score mark across the inside of his left palm.
  • Personality: Brash, reckless, energetic, rude, abrupt- In short, about as subtle as a brick to the face.
  • Mannerisms: Has a bad habit of accidentally flipping people off.
  • Likes: Blue jays, turnip whiskey, turnip juice, the smell of turnips, bawdy jokes, warm weather
  • Dislikes: Bed bugs, itchy clothes, being one upped by anyone, people who talk all smart and educated-like, being poor, turnips.
  • Sexual orientation: Asexual

• Classic D&D Stats

  STR	15	INT	13
  DEX	15	WIS	9
  CON	12	CHA	5

• Description

  Zigona is somewhat short, depending on whether you peg him for male or female. The first thing you notice about him, other than his androgyny, is his fierce stare. He manages to look down his nose even at people who are much taller than himself. He has somewhat large, pumpkin seed shaped eyes, which are dark, with gem-like depths of color of a reddish brown shade. They are bordered by thick, black, naturally sculpted eyebrows.
  
  
  His nose is long, straight, and somehow manages to be simultaneously pointed and ovular, with finely arched nostrils and a slender bridge. His lips are average, with the lower lip being slightly disproportionately fuller than the upper lip. His face, if reduced to geometric terms, is like an ovular inverted triangle, his head a bit small, but proportionate for his body.
  
  Zigona's skin is a warm, roasted shade of brown, a clear indication of his race, bearing a mole or two here and there, the most noticeable ones being one directly on his right cheek's dimple, and a lumpy one on his left hand's thumb, at the junction where thumb joins hand. His teeth are crooked and off-white. His hair is straight, the deepest shade of black possible for a human, and somewhat long. He keeps it in an odd sort of ponytail-bun hybrid- it's basically a ponytail except the end is tucked up into a hair band so that it forms a sort of folded loop.
  
  Note about gender/sex: To put things in very simple terms, gender is mental, sex is physical. Zigona's sex is intersex. That's the politically correct term for 'hermaphrodite'- furthermore I tend to make a personal distinction between intersex individuals and hermaphrodites in my roleplay. While in real life a hermaphrodite is the same thing as an intersex person, in roleplay I consider a hermaphrodite to be a fantasy representation of an intersex person- that is, they have a pair of fully formed, fully functional genitals from each sex. In reality, intersex people's genitals tend to be ambiguous and not fully formed, nor are they able to reproduce or function quite the same way as a non-intersex individual's.
  
  Now, about Zigona. While Zigona's sex is intersex, he identifies loosely as male, simply because that's what most people decide he is within moments of meeting him. He is not a girly boy, he is, at heart, genderless. That's all, and thank you for bearing with me through the long explanation.
  
  Race: Zigona is the fantasy equivalent of Indian. By Indian, I mean Eastern Indian, not Western Native American. The reason why I don't have a set name for his race is because I play him in very open, general medieval fantasy settings.
  
  Update: I just found out that many intersex people CAN have children. My mistake! http://www.isna.org/ For more intersex information.

• Biography

  Zigona was born to a farmer and his wife during autumn harvest. He had a family of twelve siblings, including his mother and father. His mother died months after his birth, due to complications arising from reproducing beyond her body's natural capacity. Her name was Riim and according to his father, she was a wonderful woman, who often worked harder than the farmer, helping out in the fields along with taking on the full burden of housework.
  
  Zigona's father, called Yadda, had a specialty on his farm: Turnips. Zigona cut his teeth on turnips, and when he was deemed old enough (age eight) he was allowed to sample his father's region-famous concoction, turnip whiskey. He only took one sip before becoming horrifically ill for days, and yet hit the bottle again once he recovered, impressing his father with his indomitable spirit and affinity for hard drink.
  
  Since he was old enough to walk, he helped keep the house in his mother's tragic, and permanent, absence. When his father finally settled on the idea that what he had was a son, he sent him to the fields to work, leaving the housework to Zigona's sisters.
  
  They were complacent with their lot in life for a time. The Shanku family was never particularly prosperous, but neither did they go without (too often, anyway). That all changed one day when the king of their region decided to portion off their land and give it to a knight.
  
  The knight immediately began to take a portion of their earnings and crops as he saw fit. At first it seemed as though this arrangement would be tolerable, if only just. Then the knight began to take more and more. Finally, being a gambler, he lost the farm in a game, and the Shanku family had to pack up and leave everything they knew.
  
  They had never been wealthy to begin with, but now with their livelihood taken from them, they were forced into starvation and total poverty. They moved to the city where their father sold himself as a servant to wealthy families, but he never seemed to make enough to feed and clothe his children properly. It was not long before the children took to begging on the streets, and then pick pocketing, to full blown robbery. Their father made his disapproval vocal and clear, and yet managed to continually turn a blind eye to their thieving, no matter how many times food inexplicably turned up on the table.
  
  Having not received proper training as thieves, the amateurs were caught numerous times, until the city's governor decided to get rid of the nuisances in one big swoop, jailing the entire family, even the father, though he had not once stolen anything. They were to be kept in jail for an indefinite amount of time- every time they asked about the end of their sentence, the reply was vague. The truth was the governor had no idea what to do with them. He could not starve them to death under the Temple's watchful eye, nor would any neighboring city jails take them, so he kept them until he decided what could be done about them.
  
  Zigona heard rumor from his jail mates that the guard captain in charge at the dungeon was easy to bribe, as long as you didn't have particularly flat pockets. This seemed impossible, because upon being arrested, every prisoner's assets were seized and added to the governor's treasury, and the guards' pockets.
  
  Yet somehow, fate smiled on the dirty ragamuffin called Zigona Shanku. Fate must have had two faces, because simultaneously she frowned upon the older gentleman sharing his cell. The man died and had been slowly decomposing for three days before the guards took notice. They opened the cell to drag the body out- the body was heavy and took two men. His good fortune seemed to border on the ridiculous, as there were only two guards present in the jail that day- the very same ones heaving up the bloated corpse.
  
  Being rather small for a thirteen year old, Zigona managed to slip past the guards. They saw him, but were in a position that did not allow them to drop the corpse immediately without causing themselves great chagrin. By the time they were able to get the rotting thing out of the way, Zigona was long gone.
  
  Life was hard at first. Being on the streets was significantly more dangerous when he went unaccompanied by a pack of armed siblings. Fate seemed to have taken a veritable shine to the lad, because though he had many close calls, he eventually ended up where he needed to be. Really, that sort of thing only happened in stories.
  
  He fell in with a gang of children around his age, maybe older. Formerly a rival gang, they took pity on the smelly youth and invited him into their ranks- after some lighthearted hazing having to do with eating things and dead rats, of course. The young thief passed the test with flying colors and quickly became their favorite scapegoat and decoy- as soon as he was done being deathly ill, anyway.
  
  For a long time, Zigona's purpose was not forgotten, but plumb buried beneath all the struggles and excitement of everyday life, working his way up into the ranks of the gang. Finally, by the time he was sixteen, he became a worthy thief in his own right and had some young children of his own to pull rank over. He was never quite integrated fully into the group, however, on account of his strange ability to range between the genders in his mannerisms.
  
  Just once he thought life wasn't so bad after all, he got into a fight with another gang member. The boy was an obnoxious piece of work who had a tendency to try to one up everyone in sight, unless they were girls, who simply got lectured at or ignored. If there was one thing Zigona couldn't stand, it was being one upped. He suffered one too many blows to his pride, and finally it came to fisticuffs. He bloodied the twit but good. Unfortunately, the twit was tight friends with the leader of the gang. Zigona was kicked out.
  
  The thief dusted off his clothes, stuck his nose in the air, and thought to himself, 'Good riddance!' So began his solo career as a thief. Surprisingly, his skills flourished without the gang to hold him back. He spent some time in the city, but found it too difficult to carry on with his career in close proximity to his former gang. Eventually, he took to the roads as a bandit.
  
  Now he continues to try and scrounge up enough money to save his family, but he is not very lucky. A few times he has had a potential victim turn around and rob him instead. Other times coins seem to get up and walk right out of his pouch. Still, he is making steady progress, but sometimes he forgets about his family when he looks upon a proud noble and dreams of one day wearing his silks.