Old Hunch Arbat

Old Hunch Arbat was a Tarthenal shaman, and among eleven of his race still living within a day's walk of Breeder's Wood in the Kingdom of Lether.Midnight Tides, Chapter 19, US SFBC p.583 He collected refuse from the farms of the Tarthenal Indebted while their mixed-blooded children threw rotten fruit at him and shouted their derision.
He had huge, gnarled and powerful hands, a prognathous jaw covered in bristly hair, and stank of the material he collected every day.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 11, US HC p.274/276 His teeth were blackened stumps from eating Letherii sweet-cakes.Midnight Tides, Chapter 19, US SFBC p.584 He had a habit of talking to himself and referring to himself in third-person.
He lived in a shack in a cleared out area of the woods with a nearby woodshed and an old barn to store his two-wheeled refuse cart. A trail led beyond settling pools to the village proper.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 11, US HC p.274-275
== In Midnight Tides ==
Old Hunch Arbat had been selected many years ago by the Tarthenal to tend to the statues of the Tarthenal gods in a glade in Breeder's Wood. Every month he made rounds to the farms collecting faeces and dumping his cargo on the statues, gradually burying them. He referred to the faeces as gold and the piss that sometimes accompanied them onto the statues as ale. The statues hissed and blackened wherever Old Hunch Arbat covered them.Midnight Tides, Chapter 19, US SFBC p.583-584
== In Reaper's Gale ==
After the deaths of the Seregahl at the Azath Tower in Letheras, Old Hunch Arbat's attention to their statues was no longer required. His fellow villagers were not at all pleased to lose their refuse collector, with a man named Vrager showing his displeasure by repeatedly urinating on the Tarthenal's front door during the night. Arbat thought of walking away from his shack to anonymously join a new village as a harmless old mender of things and healer of people. But a Dream Mask of Karsa Orlong's scarred visage appeared to him in his sleep and drew him to Letheras. He set fire to his home then gathered his remaining possessions in a sack and left for the capital. On the trail he encountered a mob of people led by the Village Factor. They had seen the smoke from the fires and were ordered by a visiting troop of Tiste Edur to extinguish them lest they spread. The Factor tried to coax Arbat to remain on the job with talk of legal action against Vrager for possible arson, but the Tarthenal worked his way through the angry crowd.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 11, US HC p.273-275
Not much further down the road he encountered Yan Tovis and her mounted company. When she learned from Arbat that there were Edur ahead in the village, the Atri-Preda asked if he could recommend an out of the way place for them to camp. He told them of an abandoned homestead that had been studiously avoided by the locals because it was downwind from his home.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 11, US HC p.276
In Letheras, he enlisted Ublala Pung to clear the overgrowth from a centuries-old Tarthenal graveyard on the eve of Karsa's duel in the arena with Rhulad Sengar. During the combat, Rhulad's sword became lodged in Karsa's leg before the Teblor severed his sword arm from the shoulder. Samar Dev freed the souls imprisoned within her knife and they were joined by the souls of Karsa's slain in an attempt to open a path through Chaos to the island of the Crippled God. But it was not nearly enough, so Arbat had Ublala stab him in the chest with an ancient blade. As the Tarthenal lay dying, he showed an army of Thelomen Tartheno Toblakai ghosts their new god, Karsa, and used the power of his blood to show them the way through the portal.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 24, US HC p.800/805-807
==In Dust of Dreams==
(Information needed)
==Speculations==
Ublala Pung told Karsa Orlong of one of the Tarthenal's greatest shamans, Arbanat, whose magic failed to stop the Letherii from conquering his people.Reaper's Gale, Chapter 11, US HC p.302 The closeness of names, Old Hunch's advanced age, and the Tarthenal's skill as a shaman could suggest that he and Arbanat are the same person. 
==Notes and references==
Category:Males
Category:Priests and acolytes
Category:Tarthenal