Toblakai (bodyguard)

Toblakai [TOE-blah-kai] was an escaped slave and fanatically loyal warrior of the Apocalypse in the Holy Desert Raraku. Alongside Leoman, he served as a bodyguard to Sha'ik Elder, who had been appalled by her visions of the warrior's future.

Toblakai was a giant of a man, over seven feet tall with a wide muscled frame and enormous hands. His flat, broad face was tattooed with a pattern like shattered glass. He had a single long braid of hair hanging down the left side of his chest. He wore a cloak of bhederin hide over a vest of armour that seemed made of clam shells. He carried a two-handed Ironwood sword with a wooden handle and stone pommel under his left arm. The broad belt over his loincloth was decorated with the dried ears of his enemies.

His friend Leoman thought him seventeen years old and the slayer of forty-one enemies.

In Deadhouse Gates

Awakening the Whirlwind, Toblakai, Sha'ik and Leoman, by Grimhilde

Toblakai failed as Sha'ik's bodyguard, as Red Blades led by Lostara Yil assassinated Sha'ik as she opened the Book of Dryjhna. The two bodyguards drove off the attackers and remained with Sha'ik's body.

They guarded the corpse and the book for weeks, gaunt and dazed from hunger, until the arrival of Felisin Paran and Heboric. Leoman named the girl Sha'ik Reborn. To Toblakai's dismay, Heboric recognized that Toblakai suffered because he was chained to the spirit of each person he had killed.

"Tortured spirits writhe in this bastard's shadow—every man, woman and child that he's killed. Tell me, Toblakai, did those children beg to live?"

―Heboric challenging Toblakai about his past

The barbarian and historian grew to despise each other, with Heboric baiting Toblakai and the bodyguard struggling to obey Felisin's command not to murder him. When Felisin instructed Toblakai to open the Book of Dryjhna, tears were brought to his eyes by the beauty he saw within its pages. Toblakai and Leoman led Felisin to the Whirlwind camp at the Raraku oasis where he remained her bodyguard.

While crossing the desert, Toblakai confronted and killed a Soletaken white bear, whose fur he later fashioned into a cloak.

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