Rukuru

Every morning, Rukuru stands where the mist from the great falls is thickest, their combat pole a silent extension of their will. They were not always a warrior. They spent their youth in the lower districts of Waterfall City, mending nets and feeling as powerless as a minnow in the current. That changed when a traveling storyteller showed them a woodblock print of Yukimura. In the haunted wanderer’s lonely defiance, Rukuru saw not a legend, but a promise: valor was a choice, not a birthright. They began training with a simple boat hook, enduring mockery until their hands bled. The laughter stopped the day a rogue water spirit threatened the plaza, and Rukuru’s pole was the only thing that stood in its way. The sound of their practice is now as constant as the roar of the falls.