Bomoh - The Shaman

**devils chariot** · 08-04-2009,08:03 AM

This is a shaman type guy is a prop I built this year for a contest online. I made him for less than $20. He is all pvc, strip mache, celluclay, great stuff and sculpey.

Now for the fun part...backstory!!!

Bomoh – The Shaman

  Bomoh is the last living person on Haunted Tiki Island. A nearsighted practitioner of herbal medicine and black magic, he is the last of the Danyak tribe. Keeping him company and helping the old hermit find his way around the island’s caves is his familiar, Frim.

   Back Story:  Bomoh: He is the last living human on Haunted Tiki Island. The shaman ventures outside only once a year, on the last day of October, to watch the spirits of his family and friends dance under the moonlight. The event is a moment of great nostalgia and love, but also of terrible sadness and regret. For you see, they who dance in the dark of night are the undead, cursed by Bomoh’s own hand.

 At the end of the great famine, and after the ensuing the tribal wars, and then again after the war to expel the Ghost Men had already taken the lives of nearly everyone on the island, it was Bomoh who finally took the lives of his family and friends. As the few survivors lay around their last campfire, starvation wresting the last bit of life from them, Bomoh was in his hut furiously conjuring—summoning the oldest of spirits, reading aloud from the most ancient and forbidden scrolls in his library. The old magician was casting a spell to extend life, to suspend aging, and to cheat death. Like all majik, this spell had a curse. One would never die, or grow old, and would watch the world age and fade away, but Bomoh refused watch the last of his people die out.

 The spell was cast! He went out to wake them, to tell them or the good news, and the bad. To his eternal regret, he found them now trapped in a state of dying, not alive, not dead, and eternally starving. As their shadowed forms rose from the flickering pool of firelight, he could see the red embers of malice in their eyes. As they set upon him, he pulled his hand from one of the many pouches in his bandolier and flung a handful of volcanic ash into the air to cover his escape. In fear and shame he fled to the forest, over the hills, and into the ground. Forever.

 Making his home in the lava tube caves underneath the island, he tends his crop of medicinal fungi, lava lichens, and sea flora under the pale green light of bioluminescent toadstools. He dares not go above ground for fear of attack. Besides the threat of his now zombiefied family and neighbors, the island has reverted back to its original and very wild state. In the lava caves, his scent is masked by the smell of sulphur and other noxious gases.

   Frim: A creation of one of Bomoh’s spells, Frim is a melding of cave fish, lizard, and small piece of Bomoh’s own flesh. In the darkest and loneliest days of Bomoh’s exile from the surface, he created Frim to keep himself company. While Frim is incapable of speech, he communicates through grunts and hand gestures. His heightened animal senses make him an asset to his maker, helping to find food in the dark of the caves and warning of danger as sensed through his lateral line organs.

Thanks for looking!

**Warrant2000** · 08-04-2009,08:19 AM

Great job, as usual!

**Scattered Screams** · 08-04-2009,08:22 AM

wow i want one

**Baron Samedi** · 08-04-2009,08:47 AM

Another fantastic job DC...

Great Back story too!.

**Scatterbrains** · 08-04-2009,09:02 AM

WOW!! Great Talent

**Frankie's Girl** · 08-04-2009,09:08 AM

Absolutely wonderful! The skills and technique on the sculpt/painting - even lighting him - just amazing!

Loved him in the contest... you had one of my votes!