Manoka Olabode
 | |
| Manoka Olabode | |
|---|---|
| Biographical Information | |
| Born | 28 March 1983, 35 |
| City of Birth | Ubangi River in Central Africa |
| Blood status | Creature |
| Physical Information | |
| Species | Goblin |
| Gender | Non-Binary |
| Education | |
| School | Other School |
| Class of | 2001 |
| Character Information | |
| Zayzie | |
Manoka Olabode is a proud and confident archivist who works for SSEARCH (multi-Species Syndicate of Expert Artisans Recovering Cultural Heritage). They collaborate with goblin banks, cursebreaking and archaeology expeditions and international antiquities trade and law. They also orchestrate and manage archaeology digs and expeditions to recover, analyze, research, preserve, secure and return/revive (usually African) cultural heritage to its proper culture. Manoka tends to buck tradition concerning modern, European goblin ownership rights, believing it a reactionary adaption of gift-giving culture, but also holds the radical view that certain groups of wizards are always in debt to goblins.
An Ubangian Tikoloshe (Ubangi River Goblin) who has held various Apprenticeships in Central Africa, West Africa, and the Circum-Caribbean
Physical Description
Manoka has downturned black eyes, a round beak-like nose, and pointed teeth hiding behind round, plump black lips set into an indigo-colored face. Face is framed by spiny, lobe-finned ears and short, black fro-hawk that is often tamed back by a red bandana. Long broad shoulders that tapers into a small waist and toned legs and arms that end in spiny, lobe-finned, clawed hands and feet are carried proudly and often adorned with Ankaran prints: high low dress jackets with black tops and bottoms or two-toned capes with a solid-colored side complimented by the other side's colorful prints.
Of course, Keeping with the tikoloshes of legend, Manoka can turn invisible after drinking water, so they're rarely ever seen.
Personality Description
Confidently communicates with gestures and resolute expressions that are mixed with a firm, deep swing of a voice with and a gentle rasp. Manoka has a dark sense of humor and is not above dishing out harsh discipline to employees, especially privileged human ones (considering one wrong move can put a whole living culture in danger).
History
Among Central African natives, Ubangian Tikoloshe are said to have been magically created, summoned or birthed by Obrigwabibikwa to keep colonizers off of mineral-rich Ubangi rivers. Others attribute their existence to having just recently evolved from some unknown type of merfolk or magical marine creature. What is agreed upon is that they stayed relatively hidden from the world and occasionally traded with local Ubangian humans until their habitats were majorly disrupted when colonists began to mine the Ubangi river for carbonado in the 1900s.
What happened next could only be described as a brutal riverine guerilla war that shook both the magical and mundane world. In one world, the Ubangian Tikoloshe became feared as a subversive, territorial and vicious group of goblins who gained an economic death-grip on carbonado and mineral ore trade in the Central African Republic. In the other world, the Mbgena, the goliath tiger fish, took credit for the goblins' fight and got to add a new, merciless saga to their already bloodthirsty reputation as merciless ambush predators. Many Ubangian locals were fully aware of what was going on and did not mind, as it also gave them an avenue where they had the freedom to control and maintain their own self-autonomy.
After the Ubangian cultures organized and managed their own affairs and resources, they united with other indigenous and species-inclusive cultures in Africa and began forming an international group of artisans who work with other cultures to help them preserve, protect, and sustain their cultural heritage. They became known as SSEARCH, multi-Species Syndicate of Expert Artisans Recovering Cultural Heritage, and have become so involved with goblin banks and orchestrating archaeology digs at highly sought after sites that they can easily throw their weight around in the antiquities trade.
Manoka Olabode has just become one of the senior archivists of SSEARCH and studies, researches, preserves and archives African cultural heritage that is often created out of cultural exchanges between humans and goblins. However, Manoka's values and views diverges from peers because they don't always believe that all goblin-made items are goblin-owned.
Instead, Manoka believes the concept of ownership was born out of a reactionary, isolationist response to oppressive wizarding governments and draws comparisons to successful goblin gift-giving or bartering cultures, like their own culture, or even Northwestern American potlatch, where cultural exchanges are more equal and fair. However, Manoka can't deny that wizarding Europe have borrowed, stolen and exploited so much goblin cultural heritage that they are almost always 'in debt', which ia a radical view other goblins don't often voice aloud.
Career
As an archivist for SSEARCH, Manoka is a magical information professional who specializes in the analyzation, research, preservation, recovery, safety, return and/or revival of African cultural heritage to its descendants or cultural practitioners. This often involves tracing something's precise history through cultural exchange, cultural appropriation, and living cultures that may be at conflict, especially with respect to humans, merfolk and goblins. This results in Manoka needing to understand power dynamics between groups and to decide how things should be fairly distributed, but SSEARCH's final verdicts don't always agree with international magical law or certain nations' magical laws, which can be oppressive of other magical species.
Manoka is also often called in, with several other colleagues, to help assist or resolve international artifact disputes. This often results in SSEARCH's collaboration with wizarding governments and goblin banks where cultural heritage, cursebreaking and antiquities matters are concerned.
Through various (usually goblin, sometimes humans and merfolk) apprenticeships between the Circum-Caribbean, West Africa and Central Africa, Manoka has developed arithmancy, divination, potioneering, smithing and crafting skills that are related to magical forensics, mineralogy, archaeology and anthropology.
Manoka also is experienced in international relations, especially when negotiations breakdown, and is known for orchestrating the revoking of institutions' excavating rights or revoking institutions' access to cultural heritage archives that are crucial to cursebreakers' being able to understand and disarm ancient magic. It either prevents other country's cursebreakers from doing their jobs safely or from being able to do them at all.
