Unofficial Prospective Player's Guide to Zinrah

by **Ashivirsthargon** on March 25th, 2010, 5:56 am

So you're thinking about making a character in Mizahar. Maybe you're new to the site and have no characters. Maybe you're a veteran player kicking around ideas for your next character. Maybe there are so many posts per day in Syliras that the database will crash if one more person starts there. Life is full of variables.

Whatever the case, I'm writing this guide for you. I want you to know the attractions to playing in Zinrah, the weaknesses to playing in Zinrah, the stereotypes and misconceptions that need correcting, the material available for you to use in coming up with your character concept, and some ideas about characters and RP scenarios to provide some inspiration for your own ideas.

My hope is to show you the rich ground for powerful stories and wide variety of characters that Zinrah offers and, by doing so, hopefully put it high up on your list of places to RP. When I look at the place, I see nothing but potential, and I want to share that with you. If you find that you agree, maybe we'll see you around. If you disagree, sure, go ahead and do something popular, why don't you?

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Because the guide is about how awesome the Dhani and Zinrah are, and because I do mention other races in relationship to them, I want to be clear that Miz is full of great races and places to play. The Dhani and Zinrah are not intrinsically superior to any of the other choices, and you could have a blast with any of them. This guide is about explaining the potential of a specific race and region, not proving that they're the "best." No race or region is the "best" across the board for every single player. Everyone comes looking for something different.

I should also add that, if I accidentally say something Cayenne thinks is wrong, she wins.)

Sections:

List of Edits:
None, yet. I hope I'm not so bad that it needs a major overhaul before my keyboard even cools off.

by **Ashivirsthargon** on March 25th, 2010, 6:42 am

Playing in Zinrah - the Pros and Cons

Some of this will be developed more fully in later sections, but this may help give a bird's-eye view of some of the things to think about when deciding if the region is right for you. Keep in mind, these are my opinions. Other people may have different opinions. For convenience, I will refer to those other opinions as "Wrong" and my own as "The Views of All Right-Thinking Individuals (VARTI)".

Pros:
1. In many ways, Zinrah is just getting started. I was arguably the first Zinrah player (although not the first Dhani). We had no wiki entries and no threads at all. That was not all that long ago. We've just barely begun to play there. There's plenty of room for players to really make their mark on a region - the cement is still wet if you want to write your name it. Or put your butt in it, whichever is more appropriate. I don't know. It's cement, folks. Probably not a good place for your butt.

2. Dovetailing with #1, your character will be getting in on the ground floor of Zinrah's power curve. In other words, people who start playing there now will be the most powerful characters in Zinrah. This assumes, of course, that you're an active player who is diligent with playing in threads, advancing plots, and training regularly (otherwise, you'll be behind the curve no matter how long you've been around). The wave of players that come in at this time and work hard on developing their characters and plots could be the ones who become the warrior chiefs, the high priestesses, and the ruling caste. Assuming you wanted to. Even if you didn't, you'd still be a powerful, developed character - moreso than people who come in later, so when they make fun of your self-imposed low social station, you can beat them to a pulp.

3. Zinrah allows for a surprising variety of character concepts. I'll get into this more, later, but there are tons of ways to have a character in Zinrah either temporarily or permanently. The kicker is that these diverse character concepts will all have unifying factors that tie them into a larger story, unlike other areas (that rhyme with "Flyliras") that are known for a wide diversity but have no inherent, unifying factors.

4. Cayenne is a very active mod and, while she can't focus exclusively on Zinrah (until our population dwarfs everywhere else in Falyndar), she is quite responsive and a hard worker.

5. The Zinrah Dhani are "evil," but it's a rather complex form of evil - the kind of evil you could almost sympathize with, sometimes. If you have a dark side you'd like to express in your writing but aren't comfortable with more basic or traditional forms of evil (or you just find them cliche and silly), Zinrah can provide that for you. Of course, just old school, laughing while you feed your enemies piecemeal to sharks evil works just fine, too. Everybody's different.

6. If you like combat, Zinrah offers you a fast track to get there. We fight with Myrians. We fight with each other. We fight with people who fight the same people we do. This is not vital to every character concept, but if this is something you'd like to do with your character, you need do nothing more than tell Siiri that she looks fat, and BAM! You've got a PvP post, brother.

7. Free love.

Cons:

1. Let's start with the big one, first. Zinrah is sparsely populated, playerwise, especially compared to a few other places. There's not as many people to RP with, there, as there would be if you started somewhere else. I'm trying to change this, but for now, it's just the way it is. We certainly have -enough- people to RP with, but it's still a small number. You have to be the sort of person who can be happy narrating their own threads from time to time and/or someone who gets a kick out of pioneering a new place.

2. You're probably thinking, "Con #1 doesn't really screw me up as badly as I was hoping. Is there any way you could make it worse?" I hear you, and yes, I can.

Zinrah is pretty self-contained. Not only is it underground, all Dhani are under a Myrian death warrant if they poke their scaly heads outside the city limits. This does not make travel impossible, but it does mean it probably won't be a common reality for your character, and finding a realistic reason why your character would travel in the first place is a challenge all its own.

When you couple this with Con #1, you get a pretty solid obstacle. You won't easily be able to just RP with people you want to RP with. They have to come to you, or you have to come up with some reason why you're out and about -and- successfully pull it off. My advice: create alts to play with others and/or some OOC cooperation to work out how you might meet up with them. Once again, this isn't insurmountable, but it's a challenge that many other locations don't really have.

3. You can't really play the nice guy. If you want your character to have lots of healthy relationships and close bonds with lots of other players, I can go ahead and tell you that you want to play somewhere else. There are Dhani communities where that kind of playstyle will work, but Zinrah is not one of them. We're the bad guys. Friendly Dhani in Zinrah often find that they begin to suffer acutely from death.

I know, I know. I can hear all you Drizzt wanna-bes right now protesting that you can pull off the Constrictor with a heart of gold thing, and you probably can in terms of RP ability. My point is that we'd kill you. It's just not a very realistic sort of character to have in Zinrah, unless you're just visiting.

4. As sort of a corollary to #3, there are a lot of things about the Dhani and Zinrah that are well-defined. Some areas and races are much more open to interpretation. Personally, I like this. It takes way more skill to be creative within a set of restrictions than it does to be creative and do whatever comes to mind. You might not like that, though.

That's not to say, by the way, that everyone has to follow the exact same path or archetype. In fact, I'll be demonstrating how untrue that is in posts to come. But I just want to point out that Zinrah and the Constrictors already have a well-defined society, culture, and characteristics, and your character and RP can't ignore that. You have to interact with those things in some way, if even to rebel against them to an extent.

This can be difficult for people who have strong ideas about how their character must be if those ideas don't really integrate well with what has come before. You might want to play a waifish, childlike character who liked butterflies and daisy chains and whose eyes lit up with delight at all the new discoveries that life brought her way. Sadly, the Dhani would eat her. The concept just would not fit with Zinrah's extant society and could not realistically function there without some wildly extravagant circumstances to explain it.

by **Ashivirsthargon** on March 25th, 2010, 6:52 am

What You Don't Know About the Dhani

If you're like me, I'm sorry. You've had a rough go of things. Also, you probably didn't think much of the Dhani race when you first saw it. Were-snakes. Sort of like a bunch of DnD nerds were sitting around drunk in college saying things like, "Dude, dude! You know what would be a cool race? If you had, like, half-orcs... that turned into sharks! With noses that turned into heavy crossbows! That shot out more sharks!" And through this process of evolution and natural selection, eventually the Dhani were born.

I understand the first impression, but let me assure you that there is a wealth of unique complexity lurking under the concept, very little of which has to do with their hallmark shapechanging ability.

Flavors

The Dhani come in three flavors: Constrictor, Rattler, and Viper, representing the holy social trinity of jock, stoner, and nerd, respectively. You can read the Dhani wiki for details, but the point I want to make here is that you can find all three types in Zinrah.

Zinrah wiki wrote:Other Dhani sub-races are -somewhat- welcome in Zinrah. They’re rare - usually ambassadors or other Dhani looking for a brief respite from the Myrians. However, the denizens of Zinrah do not care for freeloading Rattlers and Vipers, especially with the scarcity of food. However, common sense dictates that some level of hospitality is extended to other Dhani - they are all children of Siku, even if the others are somewhat inferior... and most Dhani will lend a hand to another against an outsider.

I like Constrictors, and obviously those will be and should be the most common race in ZInrah by far, but you aren't limited to that. A Rattler "diplomat" from Taldera. A Viper dedicated to Siku looking for a more devout community. Plenty of possibilities. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that a non-Constrictor will -at best- be a second class citizen, and more likely will be treated badly by just about everyone. Some interesting RP possibilities, there.

Religion

The Constrictors of Zinrah are the most devoted to Siku out of all the Dhani. You may choose not to have a religious character, but culturally, it's all around you.

This allows for playing characters along a wide spectrum of devotion. The serpent cult of Zinrah is deep and vibrant, and you can make as much or as little out of that in your character's RP as you like. Right now, very little about Siku's religion has been developed, so the door is wide open to write your own prayers, rituals, holy objects, and holy locations. Even the exact structure of the "clergy" hasn't really been set down, so you have an opportunity to work with Cayenne and other players to really build something, here, if that's your interest.

For character concept purposes, it's also important to note that anyone with a Gnosis mark of Siku is at least going to be temporarily tolerated inside of Zinrah, regardless of race or other affiliations.

Theoretically, you could also make a character primarily devoted to Caiyha, but be prepared to take flak for it. Moreso than the other Dhani communities, Zinrah belongs to Siku, heart and soul.

Ethos

It is true that the Dhani are aggressive, cruel, and sadistic. It is likely these traits are so firmly embedded in both their goddess and their culture that they will always be this way. But you need to understand something.

The Constrictors have been on the receiving end of genocide at the hands of the Myrians.

I have talked with players who view the Myrians as sort of the "good guys" in the Dhani / Myrian struggle and somehow think it's easier or more realistic to RP in Taloba than Zinrah. My personal view is that this is an enormous misconception.

This is not to discourage anyone from playing a Myrian. Siiri is one of my all time favorite players both IC and OOC and, without them, the Dhani experience would be much less interesting and fun. At the same time, it's important to note that the Myrians are not at all "good" people, not even relative to the Dhani.

The Myrians swept through Falyndar and exterminated every non-Myrian race in it, even leaving the ruins of other cities as testimony to their power. The only reason all the Dhani aren't dead is because of a peace that Siku brokered with Caiyha to save her "children." Read the Myrian and Falyndar material in the wiki. Entire races are completely gone from Miz because of the Myrians, and if you read how Taloba deals with the remnants of other races when they find them, you'll see they revel in torture and suffering as much as the most sadistic Dhani.

This is not to say that, ethically, the Dhani are morally better. Nor is it to denigrate the Myrians. It's just that, as I talk to other players, some players think of Taloba as a viable place to visit and RP in (which it is), but they could never make it in that horrible Zinrah place which they perceive as far more dark and hostile. The truth is that Taloba is just as dark and hostile concerning other races.

The other side of this coin is this experience defines quite a bit of Dhani culture. If your own people were exterminated down to roughly the population of your neighborhood and surrounded on all sides by the people responsible with the knowledge that they would just as soon finish the job, how would that affect your culture?

In ZInrah's case, the population is combative, resentful, militant, and subversive. Furthermore, the survival of the species is a thread that runs through everyone's values. This actually serves as a handy moderating force that would keep everyone from turning on each other. You may not like Dhani X, but you can't kill them without serious repercussions. This principle allows for a wide variety of characters on the evil/violent scale. If you want to play a less evil character, value the preservation of the race more, and you've got what you need. Also, the cruelty and oppression of the Myrians provides a nice justification for your dark side.

Culture, Art, Misc.

Zinrah wiki wrote:A lot of ‘art’ enjoyed in Zinrah is usually physical. They appreciate finely crafted items, and they enjoy seeing others move. ... The Dhani can and do enjoy music, and what sort they do like depends on the taste of the individual.

To date, this is one of the most overlooked aspects of playing a Dhani. They're aesthetes. They enjoy art, music, and dance along with combative arts. They enjoy a variety of sensual experiences. They aren't savage brutes. A Dhani sculptor, musician, dancer, etc. or characters with those hobbies are all quite valid character concepts. There could even be small, Dhani bands for all we know.

Furthermore, anything that Zinrah cannot produce herself must be gained from the outside or somehow replicated inside. This provides a wide range of character concepts ranging from hunting/trapping to farming to importing/exporting to thievery.

It's a misconception that everyone in Zinrah needs to be a warrior or a priestess. Think about a small, isolated community and all the moving parts needed for such a community to survive, then add in the Dhani appreciation for the arts (in their own way), and a rather large number of possible roles come to mind.

What there is very little of is commerce. Zinrah is run more like a commune than a city, so there is very little trade within the walls of Zinrah. There are opportunities to RP a trader (who would actually be more of a smuggler what with the Myrian quarantine of Zinrah) with the outside, and hey, if you've got the notion, you could pioneer a more economically-minded character even within Zinrah, itself.

The Matriarchy

Another aspect that can't be overlooked is that women are highly valued in Zinrah and pretty much run the show - sort of like high school. From an RP perspective, this has some pretty interesting implications.

First of all, you have a good platform for playing strong, female characters. Granted, you can do that just about anywhere, but in Zinrah, not only can you be -personally- strong, but it's quite easy to be -socially- strong. You're at the top of the food chain as a woman by default. You're automatically a political power that other Constrictors have to reckon with - at least if they're male. The potential here for alliances and political treachery is immense.

If you play a male, this situation is also an interesting one. You don't have the traditional RP avenues of power open to you, so you have to get creative if that's what you want. You have to achieve it some other way, perhaps by providing a valuable service or creating alliances of your own. Or, perhaps you just want to play a male who is completely submissive to female authority. In Zinrah, that's not an emasculating characteristic - it's a way of life. Our patron deity is female, and that principle trickles down through all of society.

This can be tricky, because in real life societies, there are certain things we tend to define as "masculine" and "feminine" that may not apply in Zinrah. In Zinrah, a proud, upstanding man is one who bends the knee to the women who rule. You as a player might find that kind of behavior overly submissive or weak or what have you, but in Zinrah's culture, that's what a "real man" does.

As a result, the females tend to have more dominant personality characteristics and express themselves more aggressively, whereas the men tend to be more subtle, more quiet, and work in the background. Obviously, exceptions apply on both sides, but that reflects the general culture. My character, for example, is kind of surly and mildly defiant with the ladies, and this is actually a more feminine characteristic as far as Zinrah is concerned.

I don't know about you, but it can be a real RP challenge to try to find some level of consistency with this, and challenge = fun and interesting.

by **Ashivirsthargon** on March 25th, 2010, 6:52 am

The Secrets of Zinrah

What I am not trying to do in this guide is rehash a lot of information you can get from the wiki entries, so if you haven't read the wikis on Zinrah or the Dhani, please do that.

I say that because this section will not be telling you "stuff about Zinrah" so much as unpacking some aspects that might not be obvious, especially as it relates to making and playing a character, there.

Sometimes, a Cave is Just a Cave

In an effort to contradict myself as quickly as possible, I'd like to point out that Zinrah is a complex of caverns. I'll wait a minute to let your eyes adjust to that blinding flash of the obvious.

The reason this is good is that caverns provide a rather large number of opportunities for play. There's nothing that says every cavern system that Zinrah is connected to has been fully mapped out. There may even be connections that haven't been found, yet. What those caverns might contain can provide lots of interesting possibilities.

Maybe someone gets lost while exploring. Maybe some horrible creature lives in the depths and has begun to prey on Dhani who stray too far. Maybe some ancient artifact is down there. Or a lost civilization. Or a new race. Or a wild magic portal that opens up into Satu's boudoir. As always, make sure and clear your cool idea with Cayenne (and possibly the Help Desk if it's going to affect a larger picture than Zinrah) before including it, but at least the materials are there to explore a variety of stories or start up an adventure with others.

Sometimes, a Cave is More than a Cave

The wiki is clear that the Dhani haven't spent a lot of time imposing an architecture in the caverns. At the same time, the Dhani enjoy art - especially of the physically present variety, so it's safe to assume these caverns have plenty of created artistic objects in them, probably many of which enhance the natural qualities of the caverns. I always picture Dhani art as being very strange and tentacle-y. And yet, distinct from anime.

Also, the multitude of caverns of various sizes means you can find something to fit your purpose. The wiki outlines main areas of Zinrah, but obviously those aren't all the areas of Zinrah. If you want a gym or a dance studio or an armory or a shrine or whatever you want for your character or RP, you can pretty much consider yourself to be carrying a Specialized Cavern Area Materializer (SCAM) on your belt. This can allow players to develop a small network of customized and/or favorite places unique to them and their story. There's plenty of potential, as well, to create new areas in Zinrah for all to enjoy - once again, working closely with the DS to accomplish that.

Sometimes, a Cave is a... um... heh

Sex is alive and well in Zinrah. Well, a forum-acceptable portrayal of it, anyway, which typically means that you and another character get hot and heavy making out and, suddenly, you discover that sex happened at some point while you were unaware and you muse on it after the fact. I also just presented to you Kansas' complete public school sex education curriculum. This isn't just a guide to Zinrah; it's a liberal arts education. I'm all about adding value.

Unlike other regions, there is a strong disconnect between sex and intimacy in Zinrah. That doesn't mean sex -can't- be intimate - just that there's no necessary connection. It's like a college student's dream, really.

See, the Dhani are almost extinct. Breeding is a cultural imperative. If two Dhani have time and reasonable cause to do the Tube Snake Boogie, they will, even if they don't particularly care for each other that much. Other criteria do come into play, however. They want the best genes to be passed on, so there is motivation for men to show off their best intellect, strength, whatever. "Breeding rights" is actually a sort of currency in Zinrah - a system of merits and demerits as to who you get to breed with.

The point I'm trying to make here is that romance in general and sex in specific can be dicey subjects when it comes to RP. People have different levels of comfort with those things and usually for very good reasons. Zinrah allows a place where, if you want, you can explore some of those things without necessarily ending up somewhere you don't want to go. Romance doesn't necessarily equate to a physical relationship, and sex doesn't necessarily equate to some deep, loving relationship. As always, if you'd rather just stay the heck away from both things, you could easily do that, but the location does provide some opportunities in this regard that might be more difficult to separate in other places.

This is not to say Dhani players should be banging each other in every thread. But what it does mean is that something that is normally fraught with "danger" from an RP perspective is a relatively normal societal phenomenon in Zinrah that has no particular things attached to it.

NPCS R US

Because of Zinrah's low player population, your stories can easily be supplemented with NPCs. This is both a crisis and an opportunity - a crisitunity, as Homer Simpson put it.

Not to sound like a broken parrot, but anything that would affect Zinrah beyond your personal sphere needs to be cleared with Cayenne, but the fact remains that there is a lot of available space to create NPCs to suit your needs. Family. Lovers. Mentors. Enemies. There's a sense in which playing in Zinrah gives you the opportunity to tinker with a few different character concepts. For some things, you'll want a mod to play the NPCs, but for general interactions that don't have huge effects, you can probably self-narrate and be just fine. There's a very real sense in which people who enjoy self-modding can find a paradise in Zinrah.

Teh Ebil

Zinrah is an evil place full of bad people who depend intimately on each other for their collective survival. Think of everyone you know who has strong political opinions with no good reasons to back them up. Now, lock them in a room, together. Now, put them in a Saw movie. You're getting close to the dynamic of Zinrah relationships.

That's not to say that the Dhani are all emotion and no brains, nor is it to say that all Dhani are overtly hostile all the time. In fact, it's almost the exact opposite. The Dhani are cunning and crafty and have learned to survive through subterfuge, stealth, and treachery. Furthermore, each member of the community is valued even if everyone hates them. They are united by the common foes of the Myrians and possible extinction.

In terms of how they treat other races, it's important to remember that cruelty is part of the national character of the Zinrah Constrictors. Inflicting pain, bloody sacrifice, and indiscriminate carnivorousness are things that virtually every Dhani enjoys and makes them poor choices for dinner guests. Unless your guest list is stacked with people you hate.

At the same time, and I cannot stress this enough, Dhani are not animalistic savages. They understand that members of other races might provide enough value to justify keeping them around or at least letting them live for the time being. This can allow for its own variety of character concepts. A prisoner or slave. A convert to the Dhani cause. A follower of Siku or someone who has earned Her favor for whatever reason. A non-Myrian diplomat. A trader. There are many ways someone can either start in or visit Zinrah as a non-Dhani and make a perfectly viable go of it. The only race that probably would be killed on sight would be a Myrian, and even then, the Dhani have demonstrated a willingness to hear them out if it seems they have something useful to offer. Once again, the survival and advancement of the Dhani race seems to override virtually everything else.

This provides an interesting way to play an evil character. You can pretty much be as evil as you want to be. If you're not big on being a horrible person, you can emphasize the racial survivability more. If you want to be a horrible sadist that puts Ravok to shame, that completely fits as well. And the Myrians, being evil themselves, make for good enemies in this way. It's easier to RP evil against another evil person as opposed to some innocent who has left you alone.

Having said that, I'm still hoping some Dhani jumps into a random open thread somewhere and just starts smacking people around. Especially if the open thread is a tea party. That would be so sweet.

by **Ashivirsthargon** on March 25th, 2010, 6:52 am

Character Concept Ideas

I hope it's obvious that this list isn't going to be comprehensive or detailed. If you see an idea on it that you'd like to run with, that's great. I'd say that helping someone get started in Zinrah is its own reward, but I'm really looking for long messages extolling my many virtues, so keep that in mind.

What's more likely is you will read through these and A) realize that the character possibilities in Zinrah are incredibly varied, and B) if interested, take some of the ideas and customize, build, combine, and tweak them to make them a character that interests you. Think of these more as Character Concept Seeds than templates ready to go. This should be painfully obvious when you actually see the lists.

Fact is, most of these can be mixed and matched, subdivided, reorganized, etc. So don't get too caught up on the specific wording or categorization of the seed.

Zinrah Constrictor Characters

A member of Zinrah's internal police. This group does not actually exist, so you could actually help build it. Would probably operate at the behest of the ruling caste.
A spy sent to infiltrate other regions in humanoid form and report back to Zinrah. Could be a nice excuse to get out once in a while and even pretend to be nice. Well, until your girlfriend finds out who you really are. They always find out.
A jailer who deals with people awaiting trial.
A child of a Constrictor noble family - perhaps even the Queen, herself.
A ranger who primarily patrols the boundaries of Zinrah, keeping her safe. Could be either above or below ground, depending on what sort of threats you were interested in fighting.
A warrior in Zinrah's service. Hey, not everyone can take unique roles. Gotta have 'em. To spice it up, perhaps you study a weapon not commonly studied in Zinrah, or perhaps you even design and build your own Dhani-specific weapon, or your own martial art. Maybe you wear armor. Maybe you fight with shields.
An assassin / saboteur. Not the "for hire" kind, but more of the "special forces" kind.
A bandit. There is pretty much no point to being a thief who steals from other Dhani, but raiding caravans, accosting travelers, or liberating goods from other regions would all work.
A priestess or some other slot in the religious hierarchy. Even males could do this if they were content to be at lower ranks. This has kind of a "default" feel to it for female characters, but keep in mind that most of Zinrah's religious beliefs and practices haven't really been hammered out, yet, so there's plenty of room to make this your own and leave a permanent legacy for other players. Also, be aware that you don't have to be a priestess to be part of the religious orders. There are plenty of logistical and spiritual things that go into the functioning of a religion that get delegated to others.
A diplomat to the other Dhani nests. I have no idea what this would look like, which is kind of intriguing. Something about Dhani diplomacy seems like a huge joke just waiting to happen.
A fortune-teller. Given the small size of Zinrah, you'd probably be THE fortune-teller. I'd suggest being the crazy cat lady, but any cats in Zinrah would probably get eaten. You should be the crazy stalagmite lady.
A hunter responsible for acquiring food for Zinrah.
A trader who takes Zinrah "goods" (probably art and hand-crafted items) and covertly trades them for other things the commune needs. Would probably have a smuggling angle to it. Also a good excuse to get out and meet people and not devour them right away, if that's your thing.
A farmer who specializes in growing crops underground. If that alone is too boring, spice it up by making her a closeted warrior or a pacifist. Or a pacifist who is a closeted warrior.
A salamander-herder who raises the things for food and trains them for guard duty around Zinrah. I don't know. The salamanders are kind of big.
A craftsman, dancer, or artist of any kind would fit right in. Great if you like the idea of working with other players or running some kind of "establishment."
Run some kind of "establishment." The bad news is that you won't make any money. The good news is you can set up in some cavern with virtually no expenses. Even communes need their pubs, their medical centers, their massage parlors (that last one was for me).
A musician, probably heavily employed by the priestly caste but could just as easily be in the service of royalty or just a street performer.
A wizard. Very little has been said of the varied magical arts in Zinrah, probably because there is no real access to training or study. But if you could come up with a way around that, a Dhani sorcerer could be imposing, indeed.
A poisoner. This would involve acquiring your raw materials from plant or animal, making and distributing the poisons to people who needed them. A poisoner would probably end up knowing a lot of secrets.
A weaver who can no longer sense the placement of her hands and uses mirrors to see how to move.
A medic. Most Dhani need patching up from time to time. If House were in Mizahar, he'd be Dhani for sure.

Other Dhani Characters

A diplomat from another Dhani nest. This could be either a temporary visit or permanent residence. Or a temporary visit that becomes permanent residence after said diplomat realizes 15,000 angry Myrians are between him and Endrykas.
A devout follower of Siku who is disillusioned with their nest's more relaxed approach to her worship.
There is one nest of Dhani that worships Caiyha and tries to get along peaceably with everyone. You're sick of this or have suffered some kind of predation that has changed your views, and you've come to Zinrah.
You have heard of the struggle in Zinrah and have pledged yourself to help the cause of breaking the Myrian stranglehold on the area.
Siku herself has sent you to Zinrah for reasons that are still unfolding.
You are a spy sent from your nest to infiltrate Zinrah and learn about her strengths and weaknesses.

Characters of Other Races

You have come to Falyndar searching for ancient sites of power or the pools of Wild Magic. Your search has led you to Zinrah -or- you have sought out the Dhani for protection after narrowly escaping from Myrian patrols.
You have heard of the Myrian genocide and are sympathetic to the Dhani struggle. You have joined it on their side. Synergizes well with a Gnosis mark from Siku, but you could probably live without one if you had a lot to offer the Cause.
You are a prisoner or a slave who has abilities or knowledge that the Dhani use and, therefore, they keep you alive.
You are fleeing something in your own land and have come to the one place you are sure no one will look for you. You will need some way to avoid being eaten, so work that part out.
You have earned a Gnosis mark from Siku for some reason. Maybe you protected some snakes. Maybe you showed an outstanding level of treachery or cruelty that caught her eye. Maybe you killed a Myrian for reasons completely unrelated to Zinrah. But, you have the Mark, and out of curiosity or obligation, you seek out her followers.
You are your region's sole supplier of goods from Zinrah and your life consists of death-defying smuggling runs to bring back a packful of items that get you a ton of money when sold due to rarity.
You are a collaborator - a Myrian who helps the Dhani in exchange for money or some other benefit (they have a hostage you care about, you have a snake fetish, etc.). You lead a double life - very dangerous, but profitable.

by **Ashivirsthargon** on March 25th, 2010, 6:53 am

Reserved

by **Ashivirsthargon** on March 25th, 2010, 2:56 pm

Added "What You Don't Know About the Dhani"

by **Ashivirsthargon** on March 25th, 2010, 6:54 pm

Added "The Secrets of Zinrah."

by **Ashivirsthargon** on March 26th, 2010, 12:54 am

Added "Character Concept Ideas"

by **Rycust Erryt** on March 26th, 2010, 4:32 am

Damn you. You make me want to have a Dhani alt!