Name: Ruvsa Magga
Age: 18
Gender: Female
Craft: Herbal Remedies, Healing, and Soma Shamanism (apprentice level)
In Soma culture, shamanism, herbalism, and the healing arts are all practically one and the same, and practitioners of any one of these three crafts rarely go without developing at least a decent working knowledge of the other two. Consequently, Ruvsa might come across as a witch to most outsiders, but Ruvsa’s "magic" is actually little more than standard healing/herbal knowledge blended with ancient Soma traditions.
Appearance: Ruvsa is relatively fresh-faced for a Soma girl from the northern wilderness, owing largely to her youth and the generally less physically-intensive nature of her craft, and though not exactly athletic, she does maintain a lithe figure and a fair degree of physical fitness. As is typical of the Soma people, Ruvsa has brown eyes and long brown hair, the latter of which is kept in two simple braids, and she wears the Soma’s iconic red and blue garb and hat along with a bright green and blue shawl.
About: The Soma are an indigenous people hailing from the vast northern wilderness, which is effectively considered “unclaimed” as far as the Valmaperäns are concerned. Most of the Valmaperäns, especially those in the upper class, view the Soma as savages whose “outdated” culture must be erased in favor of the “superior” Valmaperän culture. Consequently, relations between the Soma and the Valmaperäns were already tense even before the Gloom came, especially in Stor Ort, which was already slowly but surely encroaching on Soma land and bringing their “cultural reforms” with them. It wasn’t long before Ruvsa, an apprentice shaman, witnessed these reforms firsthand, with outsiders labeling her a witch and forcing her and many other shamans to stay away from the ever-growing Valmaperän territories for their own safety.
However, as bad as things might have been for the Soma prior to the Gloom’s arrival, the Gloom made it all much worse. Not only have expansions into Soma land become more frequent and more aggressive, but now these encroachers have abandoned whatever potentially good (if misguided) intentions they might have had before. Outright violence and discrimination against the Soma has become increasingly common, and ironically, the same upper-class Valmaperäns who once denounced the Soma’s shamanistic traditions as witchcraft are now contemplating harnessing said “witchcraft” as a weapon to serve their own personal and political agendas. A growing number of Soma shamans, herbalists, and other cunning folk near Stor Ort's borders have been systematically kidnapped by Valmaperän nobles and royals for this purpose, as have many warriors and others who might be deemed fit for slave labor. The Soma were certainly not immune to the corruption of the Gloom either, with many Soma betraying their own shamans and villages to the Valmaperäns for money, while some shamans have even resorted to selling out their rivals in exchange for leniency or even for indirect political gain in Valmaperä. Ruvsa only narrowly avoided capture, having been away gathering herbs when her village was raided, but her close call prompted her and the other survivors to migrate to the south: one of several other groups of Soma now fleeing the rampant persecution in the north.
More recently, Ruvsa has settled among a growing Soma community in Bebouwen, which thus far has remained on good terms with the locals by providing much-needed aid in the wake of the Gloom. But although the Soma’s arrival has helped lessen the Gloom’s impact to an extent, the situation in Bebouwen cannot be ignored indefinitely, and neither the Soma nor the locals can withstand its plagues in Bebouwen for much longer.
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