Dapa

Fairly muscular and of middling height, Dapa wears his long light-green hair swept upward in a flat front sweep while the remainder is slicked back, and a short beard runs along his chin. As with every Simurian, a third eye rests on his forehead, and six diagonal red lines, three per side, sit between that eye and his hairline as facial markings. His outfit pairs a long sleeveless purple robe falling past the knee with dark trousers.

Bitterness toward the Deskunte runs deep in Dapa, as it does in most Rumelians, ever since their people were burned out of their village and banished to barren ground. He and his friends worked to wreck Dura Val Bobbidi Mechika's canal, sure the project would only help the Deskunte, and he swallowed and passed along the lie that the Deskunte were paying Dura to build it. Once the elders' council finally backed the canal, though, he joined the villagers and pitched in on construction. His old hostility never erased his regard for Dura's might, and he took pride in retelling Dura's tournament win to Marulu and Cross.

Where Osuki resists it, Dapa favors living alongside Earthlings and shows honest fascination with their ways. He was keen to join the Simurian-Japanese exchange and once got drunk on Earth liquor, and he balks far more than Osuki at fighting or killing Earthlings. One quirk follows him steadily: he tends to nod along with Osuki's orders at first, then voice his doubts a beat later.

A native of the Rumel Tribe on Simuria, Dapa watched Dura claim victory at a Deskunte fighting tournament before the exile ever happened. Some twelve years back, after Rumel was cast out, he and Osuki and a third friend kept undermining Dura's canal effort. One night, smoking in a tent and feeding the rumor that Deskunte money was behind the canal, the group was set upon by Cross, who had come to pay them back for the sabotage.

Time passed, and when the council of elders endorsed the canal and rallied the whole village, Dapa and his friends turned up to lend a hand. Cross then offered Osuki an apology and gratitude for the group's help, and Dapa clapped him on the shoulder, took the apology, and returned his own thanks, later watching Osuki wrestle with building a cage to hold rocks. The canal reached completion a decade afterward. Deskunte's request for a port facility along it, reopening trade for Rumel, sparked a Rumelian celebration, and to that gathering Dapa and his friends hauled in the alcohol. Every Simurian, Dapa included, bears a third eye that sources their rolloluca, weeping at both birth and death, though only Rumelians weep from it at a Kalyan's passing, and the strain of such tears can prove deadly.