Kaikala Swanson
Kan'ipo
Shihokuto
Description
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 129 lb.
Ethnicity: Mixed (Pacific Islander/East Asian/Black)
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Long simple brown
Clothing: Pink or yellow casual (usually just a bikini)
Comportment/Cadence: Welcoming
Distinctions: Exotic and libertine in beauty and demeanor
Supernatural Qualities: Her vivacious Corpus seems to glow like a star and radiate such fantastical beauty that few may do more than grovel at her bare feet
Accoutrements: Light jewelry, a Chinese opera prop fan
Traits: Appearance 7 (jaw-dropping); Full of Life (3)
"Look, we are all—we were all—human beings. We have to learn to get along."
History
Date of Birth: February 21st, 1961
Home: Kailua-Kona, Hawai'i (Big Island), Hawai'i, United States
Family: Kaipo and Tai Swanson (parents), Hoku (older brother)
Death: Personal Tragedy (lower-middle class family, not wealthy but managing due to labor work for booming realty, spurred Kaikala to join indigenous Hawai'ian movements for restorative justice; long a social justice activist but also a surfing hobbyist, the lovely young woman died doing what she loved when some rich white man's yacht abruptly anchored itself just off-shore where she was surfing one evening, creating a confusing patchwork of rip currents that even with her experience at sea she failed to navigate, and drowned, her body washing ashore and discovered only the next day), 1992
Mentor: Kimo Bitters
The Test: Trial by Influence (to her horror, she found herself stranded in the Sea Which Knows No Sun, perhaps due to her inability to effect lasting change for her people in life; the local Kan'ipo branch took her under wing and taught her how to survive the Underworld while also working for positive change, noting the limited control that foreign ghost factions had in Hawai'i, thankfully)
Comrades: Kimo Bitters, Lorelai Emerson, Sima Pitambar, Zeitaku
Key Event #1: Treachery (she used her beauty, enhanced with Moliate, to act as a lightning rod for the Kan'ipo, attracting and rallying both native ghosts and potential allies, all while dodging what few Stygian patrols made their rounds in the area)
Transition: Victory (she developed a real fraternity beyond the Kan'ipo with the disenfranchised of other downtrodden peoples, including souls lost from Swar or rebels against the Jade Kingdom)
Relics
Wind Fan
Appearance: A delicate-seeming opera-styled prop of Chinese design
Origin: Inherent
Effects: Create light breezes of "wind" in the Shadowlands (no effect anywhere else, even if paired with Embody)
Activation: She must fan herself and speak the word for "mother" in Hawai'ian (makuahine).
The Shadow
Appearance: Kaikala's Shadow is a voice, that voice of self-criticism and despair that things will never be quite right no matter what she does, who she influences, or what she changes—so why bother?
Trigger: Whenever others criticize her.
Significant Others
Names: Sima Pitambar, Lorelai Emerson, 2005
Nature: Romantic; Erotic
Sima
Lorelai
Weakness
Thunder & Noise
Kaikala has always been good at kicking up the dust. She's a vocal critic of neocolonial and imperial behaviors, just as she was in life. But beyond shaking her fist at "The Man", she does little of consequence beyond "bring awareness". At least she's good at gathering allies.
Likelihood of Corruption
Low.
She's sweet as can be and her frustration, usually self-directed, is always relieved everyday when she dips her fingers in the Sea Which Knows No Sun.
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