Zunuga

Zunuga (41 BE - 16 BE - 6 BE) was a Hasmalan-Omban woman and soldier who is the central figure of Omban theology. The Epiphany of Zunuga in 16 BE is the revelatory cosmological event that inspired the central tenets of the Corps. She is also known as the Breath (among the Voice of the Dead), the Touch (among the Hand of the Dead), and the Curse (among Hulti and other nonbelievers).

Much of Zunuga's early life, and even her lineage, has now been lost. She was born in or around 41 BE, and grew up in southern Hasmala. She was a Hasmalan soldier in fighting between the Omban monarchy and the Hasmalan noble lineages between roughly 18 BE and 16 BE, although she was not of the nobility herself and may have been a conscript. In 16 BE she was killed in battle, her body thought lost on the field. The next day, as her comrades-in-arms searched for her body, she appeared before them, her skin cold and clammy but otherwise seemingly whole and well. She had spontaneously resurrected - becoming, in a sense, the first revenant (shoror).

During her death, she had had an experience which is now known as the Epiphany of Zunuga. Upon her return, she reported wonderful news about death to her colleagues - that it was not to be feared, because it can be controlled. She had returned with secrets - she had seen the Unfolding of human lives and how it could be manipulated, and learned the nature of the Six Kinds. Through her, the Hand and the Voice were first trained in how to make and control bubun, how to speak to ancestors, and how to resurrect the dead as revenants. Her own resurrection was spontaneous, part of some unknown fate or plan to reveal a part of the universe to humanity, but others would follow.

For the next ten years, Zunuga travelled as a prophet and thinker, with her sayings written down by her new followers into a set of teachings known as the Maxims. This was a period of considerable turmoil as the Omban monarchy was extending its reach, and many of the early followers were soldiers. The Maxims were not claimed to be cosmologically inspired as the Epiphany itself was, but nonetheless were taken as fundamental to the religion that would become the Corps. It is clear that not all of the Maxims were spoken by Zunuga herself, but were penned by some of her early followers.

Zunuga's second and final death occurred somewhere in eastern Daligash in 6 BE. Some say she was slain by her own followers, others that she died in childbirth, still others that she spoke two final Maxims and then wandered off into the forest. This time, her body disappeared entirely. The Hand and the Voice, inheritors of her legacy, hold that her second death was the culmination of her Unfolding, her work on earth being complete.