Asubu ya Ushujaa

*“If you can't put a price on it, you simply lack imagination.”*— Asubu ya Ushujaa

## Asubu ya Ushujaa

Placeholder Image [no relation between this character and Marcellus Wallace, Something with Meaning is not affiliated with Quentin Tarantino or Miramax Films, copyright belongs to respective parties]

## Biological Information

### Gender

Male

**Asubu ya Ushujaa** is an influential merchant, controlling black market trading and racketeering across the region of al-Hikman, as well as an expansive international empire that includes the kingdom of Cynedom. Asubu acts in the name of free trade, selling weapons, drugs, slaves, and other questionable goods alike.

## Personality

Asubu is a self-proclamed philanthropic merchant who lavishes in luxury and power. Greedy, gluttonous, and power-hungry, he has no moral qualms in proceeding in dubious trades in order to expand his massive network.

## History

Born into a poor family of basket-weavers, Asubu's society placed low-skill craftsmen and merchants at its lowest caste. His parents were bitter about this, and this passed onto their son, feeding a certain sense of ambition. Their home city, Callhud, being the most diverse place in Vista, instilled upon him a global worldview that served to broaden his ambitions. It also opened his mind, with taboos not being a thing in the poorer markets. His adolescence was marked with him slowly but methodically expanding his family's business.

This was a gradual process that entailed heavily loaning vast sums money from less scrupulous businesses, investing money into expanding his own business, using enforcement methods to eliminate competition, and eventually earning enough money to go to war against those original businesses. In the space of six years, his parents' basket weaving shop went from an alley in a bazaar to a shipping business with its own dock.

While Asubu had been motivated up to this point by providing for the people he was raised with, but by the time he was deep into his holdings, the sense of opportunity eclipsed the scale of his small neighborhood. To solidify this, he created his own bank, which, while illegal for commoners to do so in al-Hikman, was allowed on the Eucarian side. Paying his family's retirement, he moved on unfettered by any sense of restraint. This meant the continuation of his war on the black market with his own private mercenary force.

It came to pass, after years of maintaining his criminal empire, it managed to completely buy out the existing power structure. This created a power vacuum, in which the slave, narcotic, and weapons trade was entirely at his mercy. He took this in stride, and picked up these businesses without question. Asubu would proceed to do what he saw as inevitable: make his business international. By the events of Hourglass, he had outlets for his business dealings in Cynedom, Sanzi, and, impressively, Aspizwe.

He wound up becoming a succesful opportunist, profiting off of the Sandstorm War in Cynedom, bolstering the slave trade in the aftermath of the Sanzian Civil War, and even capitalizing on the exotic Aspizwe by marketing stolen goods from there. His most apparent monument to his greed came when he found an opportunity to deforest and out-mine the Mournwood forest. Before the likes of Lullaby could speak out, he managed to buy and control the poachers, miners, and caravan businesses.

## Abilities

### In Combat

Despite his rotund shape, Asubu is a prolific hunter, and has the stamina and aim of one.

See his relevant Quest and subsequent Rival Battle for more details on his abilities.

### Arsenal

Asubu's strength is in the variation of his arsenal.

### Ego

Asubu's Ego, Parallel, allows Asubu to manipulate objects telekinetically. While they are under the effect of Parallel, Asubu can freely manipulate the objects as if he was holding them himself. This force is permeable, and so affects every single part of the object being moved. Using this, Asubu has developed a way to effectively summon weapons to himself instantly, which is quite useful as a defensive measure where he may plant weapons in his surroundings.