Ukhyhue
Ukhyhue , sela
Ukhyhue was the first successor to Iradae the Lawgiver; along with her successors Stowua and Ieh' she codified many important aspects of leadership, including the seven-year term limit and the importance of the trial by ordeal. It is said that Ukhyhue borrowed the idea from earlier coming-of-age rituals which also eventually gave rise to legend tripping, the central elements of which were venturing into dangerous territory and returning alive with a trophy of particular value. (The early iterations of the Leadership Challenge also claim a link to the Battle with the Stone Menace, chiefly as a form of symbolic recreation of one of the most significant events in Stenza history.)
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Ukhyhue was one of the clan leaders at the table with Iradae the Lawgiver during the Battle with the Stone Menace, where she demonstrated quick thinking by coordinating and executing a strategy based off of the observation that the Stone Menace could only move while being completely unobserved by anyone. She coordinated watches of the creature in order to keep it at bay while the scientists and engineers worked on a means of containing it more reliably.
She witnessed the clear, cold days that allegedly resulted when the children of the Greater Pass ventured into the Frozen Wastes to petition the Snow Warrior for aid, and reportedly traveled to the Greater Pass and offered thanks after the battle was over. (In the most common renditions of this story, the "thanks" are represented by a cup of ale, a cut of meat, and occasionally a piece of cloth.)
During Iradae's tenure as the first leader of the Unified Stenza Clans, she helped advise him on the integration of the clans' military units into a more cohesive fighting force as a preemptive measure against a repeat attack by anything resembling the stone creature. This required her to get deeply involved in the ongoing debates about clan autonomy and the maintenance of traditions, histories, and customs. She kept her personal opinions on the subject to herself but applied the answers to many of the debates to her endeavor.
Her deeds during the battle and her efforts toward a lasting unification led to her being hand-selected by Iradae himself as his successor when he stepped down. (To date, she was the only leader of a unified Stenza polity chosen this way. Her successor, Stowua, elected to participate in the first modern Leadership Challenge to prove her worth for the position, setting a twenty-five-hundred year long precedent.) Her tenure as leader was marked primarily by the long and slow integration of many disparate clans into one chiefly political unit while balancing their individual cultures and histories. This delicate act required the near permanent residence of almost all clan leaders at Strares to debate the particulars, often violently. (This set another twenty-five-hundred year long precedent for legislative violence.)
Following Stowua's successful completion of the challenge, with the return of the head of an as-yet-unidentified sea creature (currently suspected by science to be a mutant or hybrid of some kind), Ukhyhue retired into private life and had since made something of a name for herself as a weaver.
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she/her
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I love that she retired and became a weaver. She sounds lovely.
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I feel like I could write a book set in this time period in Stenza history with all these characters that go on to become part of history.