A Year and A Day: Shabti
Changeling: the Dreaming
Homebrew Rules
Character Creation Guide Download: Shabti.pdf
Quoth the Shabti:
“I am here and will come wherever you bid me.”
Kith Excerpt:
While the Mau lie about their bastard lineage, and the Sha persistently search for the other half of their self- the Shabti’s purpose is even more disheartening. In a modern context, they have no name, no history, and no real purpose. Shabti, also called Ushabti, shawabti, ushabtiu or simply “Hey YOU” by their aeons-old former employers, were miniature effigies placed in tombs to aid their mummified masters in the Egyptian afterworld. While never fully living in any sense, they still had lives of service in the lands of the Dead. However, Changes in Duat- the Egyptian Shadowlands, has caused the Shabti to create a new world for themselves in a new understanding
As one of the Fae families in the Empire of the Sphinx- they can perhaps find some semblance to the Phylum of Inanimae known as Mannikins. Yet they have no love for the politicking and drudging gossips that the Mannikins offer. All the Shabti wish is to find their owner and serve as they were created to do. These Created entities instead can find some semblance to the Grecian Automata- Also much like the Automatae of Olympos- the Shabti are capable of Ungodly feats that far surpass the mortal spectrum. They are tireless workers, obedient servants, and bodyguards who would follow their charges into the Underworld itself. Their great tragedy is they are workers with no work, servants with no masters, and bodyguards with no body to guard.
At one time they were retainers of the highest standards, When the Shabti today are born, coming into their own in a paroxysm of a Chrysalis, they quickly realize who their master was all those millennia ago. They also realize that their master isn’t around.. While sudden Freedom may seem a boon, the Shabti aren’t created for Freedom. Now the Shabti are left behind, alone and struggling to find something to serve.
Flavor
“Oh you shabti figure of the scribe Nebseni, son of the scribe Thena, and of the lady of the house Muthrestha, if I be called, or if I be judged to do any work whatever of the labours which are to be done in the underworld – behold, for your opposition will there be set aside – by a man in his turn, let the judgment fall upon you instead of upon me always, in the matter of sowing the fields, of filling the water-courses with water, and of bringing the sands of the east to the west.”
– The scribe Nebseni, the draughtsman in the Temple of Ptah
“Freedom is the possibility of isolation.”
– Fernando Pessoa
