Sybal Heim: Loloma

This is my NPC character submission for the group Sybal-Heim. Loloma was a lot of fun to research because he comes from 12th century New Mexico. I learned so much! If you want to read more about his culture online, it's called "Ancestral Pueblo" though you might also find information under the name "Anasazi", which is no longer used because it's a Navajo word meaning "ancestors of our enemies"! Lolo's outfit isn't completely historically accurate because he has lived in Sybal Heim (a city hosting people from many time periods and places) for centuries, so I drew on various influences, mostly in the American southwest but also some of Central and South America. The portrait image is a lot closer to how I imagine him looking than the fullbody, but you get the idea! You can see a more accurate fullbody here. Eternal thanks are due to mellihaeh for her help cropping the image, saving me many hours of pixel-hunting!



Associated Player Character: Nācepiw

NPC Type: Primary NPC

Name: Loloma

Nicknames: Lolo

Age: 786 (as of 1893; entered the forest and the city in 1145)

Physical Age: 38

Height: 5’6”

Hair: Black, with the first hints of grey

Eyes: Brown

Faction:  Disciple

Working as an Initiation Aide with difficult cases, he has had plenty of experiences that could convince him of Sybal Heim’s detrimental effects on its inhabitants. He certainly doesn’t look at the city with rose-tinted glasses. However, he believes that Sybal Heim’s inhabitants have to make their peace with the city. He loves the city’s vibrant cultural life, and as he knows that he would have died if the forest had not opened up for him when it did, he is grateful to Basileus. He tends to view Basileus as an ambivalent, supernatural being, whose actions are above the reproach of mere humans, but he also holds no great love for the Organizer.

Occupation: Initiation Aide

Loloma works as an Initiation Aide to help newcomers to Doxa transition into life in Sybal Heim. He takes his job very seriously and tries to maintain relationships with the people he’s been assigned to, even after they have been officially discharged. When there are no newcomers to take care of, he spends his "work time" learning more of Doxa's languages so that he can help future assignments adjust by speaking to them in their own language. He sometimes supplements his income as a freelance musician.

Sybal Form:  Kokopelli

Loloma takes the form of a lifesize Kokopelli. His skin is a regular texture, but it gives the visual impression of lights floating through blue and green water. This is only an optical effect, however – his anatomy is more or less human. Were he to stretch to his full height, he would stand nearly seven feet tall, but he has a hunchback. The antennae on his head seem to be made of the same substance as the rest of him, but they are much lighter and wave in the breeze. He gains no extra physical strength as a Sybal. He always materializes with a flute, which disappears with the dawn reversion. Like the Kokopelli his Sybal is, ahem, well-endowed, but he also always materializes with a loincloth. The pattern of the loincloth changes each night, depending on what mood he was in immediately prior to his transformation.

Sybal Power: Dance of the Flower

Loloma’s flute is key to his power. By playing the flute, he can manipulate the plants around him. The smaller and less complex the plant, the more effective his manipulation. Different songs evoke different reactions in the plants, and he has to experiment with each new composition to see what it will do. His favourite plants to manipulate are flowers, which tend to prefer sweet songs, and he is known in some circles for his habit of musically weaving flower crowns for ladies he’s trying to woo. Although he never has much reason to use his power offensively, he does know a few songs that send vines and other similar plants twisting around a person’s wrist or ankles. Trees are much more difficult for him, though given his long residence in Sybal Heim he has made some progress in learning how to make them move. It is difficult for him to manipulate more than one plant at once, especially with more complicated movements. When he can control multiple plants at a time, they all must be of the same species and planted in close proximity to each other. Plants have to be within range to "hear" his music, which is a smaller range than the average human; the farther away a plant is, the weaker its response to his music.

While he can make plants uproot themselves and move around, getting them back into the ground would be so complicated that it would be almost impossible. For this reason, any plant he causes to uproot itself almost always dies when his power wears off in the morning. If he manipulates a plant without uprooting it, it will not be harmed, but when his power wears off the plants go limp wherever he left them. In theory, he could compose a song complex enough to evoke the right movements for a plant’s roots to twist their way back into the ground, but it would be very difficult. He cannot change the growth speed of plants, nor change anything about their internal chemistry. His powers are limited to manipulating movement, animating them with song. He must be playing the flute for the power to continue; if he pauses, the plants will go still, though they will remain in whatever position he left them (eg a woven pattern) as long as it does not require them to hold themselves upright. If for some reason his flute is stolen and played by someone else, it will produce music but have no effect on plants. Without the flute, he has no control over plants beyond a feeble flutter if he tries to sing instead. The flute regenerates every night no matter what state it was in the night before. It disappears when he returns to human form in the morning.

Docile or Feral: Docile

Loloma remains in full control of his faculties at night. However, he is more in tune with his desires and will seek out human companionship more frequently, whether in joining a dance or something more romantic. The quiet confidence he exudes at night is much more pronounced than during the day. Probably the biggest difference in his behaviour noted by those who know him, however, is that at night he communicates more with body language than with words, compared to his much more talkative personality during the day. At its most extreme, this can result in a tendency to respond by playing notes on his flute instead of speaking.

Personality: Loloma is a warm and understanding person. He is comfortable in almost any situation, rarely gets embarrassed, and gives off the air of always knowing what’s going on. His high level of emotional intelligence coupled with a gift for calming people’s nerves makes him excel in his work as an Initiation Aide. In general he is pretty relaxed and easygoing, but when the situation calls for it he can be stern and serious, revealing a paternal edge that runs deep in his personality. He tends to say what he means and isn’t someone who likes to beat around the bush. He loves to play music and doesn’t mind strangers joining in. Although he was an aristocrat before coming to Sybal Heim, he has taken on a much more egalitarian worldview after all the time spent in the city.

When it comes to his personal life, Loloma tends to be very fluid about his romantic relationships. Some will last decades – others, only a night. Although in his previous life he never broke from monogamy after he was married, it was always something of a challenge for him, so in Sybal Heim he takes advantage of the freedom he has been given in this regard. He never wants to mislead his partners, though, and only pursues longer relationships with women who are on the same page. He also avoids romantic entanglements with the newcomers to whom he is assigned, but after almost 750 years in the city, there have been a few exceptions.

History: In the American southwest, every road led to Chaco Canyon. This is where Loloma was born in 1107, in a splendid Great House that was home to the various branches of his extended family. They were wealthy and powerful, living at the centre of a vast cultural network that spread out for thousands of miles. For Loloma, it felt like growing up in the centre of the world. He grew up in a rich artistic environment, surrounded by exotic goods brought from faraway lands and the finest local crafts. His talent for music quickly became apparent, and he often entertained the other children and even the adults. Like the other young men, he learned to weave and hunt, becoming particularly skilled with a bow and arrow. His above-average prowess at these skills and his good looks made him popular with Chacoan women.

When he came of age, however, his marriage was arranged for him, to a woman from a family of similar rank. He moved into her family home – another fine Great House – and they soon started their own family. Two of their children survived infancy, a son and a daughter. Loloma found fatherhood exhilarating. He derived great joy from passing on his knowledge to his son (though it was his daughter who inherited his musical ability). Although he and his wife had not chosen each other, they held each other in great affection and had a generally loving marriage. Occasionally he experienced some friction with his wife’s brothers about how to bring up his children, but his easygoing personality made him a good mediator in family disputes.

Their life was one of plenty. When Loloma was about twenty-five, however, drought brought a massive crop failure to the region. The drought was widespread – not only were the Chacoans affected, but all of their satellite communities, and even their trading partners in distant lands. In Chaco Canyon, the wealthy families like Loloma’s made it through the first year with minimal discomfort. When the harvest failed the second year in a row, however, tension started breaking out, with fights over resources becoming frequent. Never one to enjoy conflict, Loloma tried to ease tensions within his wife’s family, but he was met with increased hostility. For the first time in his life, Loloma experienced true hunger, as he and his wife prioritized feeding their children over themselves.

As the drought worsened and famine began to claim lives even in the Great Houses, murmurs about leaving Chaco Canyon behind started to circulate. Some said the gods were angry at how many trees the Chacoans had chopped down to build their grand abodes – they had brought the world out of balance. A few families left early on, but Loloma and his wife thought that they would have the best chance of surviving if they stayed. As the years passed, however, it became clear that the land around Chaco Canyon was not going to get any more productive. Instead of pilgrims coming in through the great roads, the great families left that way, one by one. Chaco was dying. Loloma tried to hold onto it as long as he could, but there came the day when even he had to accept defeat.

So he and a few dozen members of his wife’s family gathered their belongings, sharpened their arrows, and turned their backs on the place that had given them everything. They followed the road in search of water, but all they found was desert. Loloma wasn’t as young as he used to be, and the years of restricted rations began to take their toll. One day they were ambushed on the road by a large group of equally hungry raiders. Outnumbered and hungry, their party scattered, and Loloma got separated from the rest as he tried to outrun two pursuers. Eventually they gave up on him, but by that point Loloma was weak with hunger and fatigue. He collapsed with exhaustion, and when he woke up hours later, he was completely alone. He mustered the energy to stand and wandered around in search of his family, but night was falling and there was no sign of them.

Loloma paused to rest against a rock, watching the sun sink below the top of a nearby butte. Just as he was wondering what he was going to do about the cold night without the family’s fire-making tools, he noticed that the golden orb of the sun had become obscured by treetops. He could have sworn they hadn’t been there just a moment ago, so he ran to the other side of the rock with what little energy he had left. He found a vast forest, dense with ponderosas, spruces and firs. Were these the ghosts of the trees that his family had chopped down to build their great palace? Come to haunt him before the cold and hunger claimed his life? Loloma reached out to see if the bark was real. As he did, he tripped and stumbled into the forest.

The desert seemed to fall away behind him. Suddenly there were only trees. Afraid, Loloma tried to run, but the last of his energy was spent. The last thing he felt before passing out was thirst burning in his throat. When he awoke, day had broken, and there was a strange man beside him, offering his hand.

The weeks that followed were surreal. Sybal Heim was, to his mind, a much grander Chaco. At first, Loloma mourned the separation from his family. However, he was certain that if it were not for the appearance of the forest, he would have died alone in the desert. The city was a second chance for him, like it had been for so many others, so he decided to devote his new life to helping other people feel that way about it too, as an Initiation Aide. He has spent seven and a half centuries drinking in Sybalian culture, to the point where his life in Chaco seems like a distant dream.

In 1878, he was assigned to a particularly difficult case, a stubborn Menominee woman called Nācepiw. He devoted a great deal of time to showing her around Sybal Heim, trying to find something in it that she could latch onto as her own, and at night he joined her Detainment Aides in trying to stop her from frantically searching for an escape from the city. The night she subdued her aides, she knocked him out cold with a sharp punch from her maple fist. She seemed to come to some sort of resolution within herself after that, moving out of the Minister’s Estate and apologising to everyone for her behaviour. Loloma stayed on as her Initiation Aide for the next few months to make sure she settled into her new job all right. Even after her case was officially closed, Loloma has continued to keep tabs on her, since he worries that her heart is only growing harder to the city over time.

Additional Info:

• Loloma is not his original name. He took a new name after entering Sybal Heim to mark the important transition in his life. Although his old name is still an important part of him, he is very private about this information and has told no one in Sybal Heim what it is.
• He is still very good at weaving and tends to make his own clothes. However, his centuries in the city have led him to adapt many different cultures’ styles into his own. He also has a weakness for jewellery - especially turquoise.
  
• His Sybal flute is a nose flute. During the day he plays many different instruments, and he sometimes even performs in concerts alongside other musicians, his favourite venue being the Solarium in Seele. Having picked up on traditions from many different cultures, he has developed a particular taste for the Japanese shamisen and the Andean pan flute.
• He retains from his Chacoan upbringing a great interest in the stars and their movements. As such, he has recently started attending Minister Chaska Palla's Astronomy club. Aside from puzzling over the Sybalian constellations, he is a self-confessed devotee of her deep fried sweet potato cakes, and a less-publicly-known appreciator of the way she glares with those beady vicuña eyes.
• In Chaco he had a pet turkey, making him fond of the Sybalian chickens.
  
• Loloma has spent time in all of the districts. Although Doxa remains his favourite and his home, he loves Seele’s architecture, Heilig’s bathhouses, Ambrotos’s pubs, and Heiros’s art and music. In Heilig, he is sometimes called the Flower Prince because he is known to sit outside Niwa no Yu, playing his flute to weave flower crowns and let them fall on the heads of female Sybals as they walk out the door.