Tlheun'h Kushiar

Tlheun'h Kushiar (Standard Deysachni pronunciation: [t͡ɬɘɯnʔ͡h kuʃiar]) was the first non-Deysachni to become Modhes, the first Shabdrung of the MPLMoN, and is the patron Saint of convertees, missionaries, Nongba, and the Tun'ilhameng.

Tlheun'h Kushiar
Telun'e Kushi'al/Dën'û Quji'ar
1st Shabdrung
In office 22-5 29 PC – 20-7 44 PC
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Minang Wipsocha
Personal details
Born	unknown, possibly Randal ~21 TT
Died	20-7 44 PC Mandate Temple, Ms'hrongda

Early Life and Slavery

Kushiar's early life is obscure, with the only known details coming from the man himself, many years after the fact. He was born some time in the early 20s TT as a Tun'ilhameng slave, somewhere in southern Nongba, likely as a miner. He never revealed what his birth name was, but there has been some rumor from those who preported to know him prior to his conversion that it was Randal.

Tlheun'h said that his mother was cold and fatalist, and instilled in him from a young age that joy was rare in life, and that the suffering of their people was something he simply had to toughen up and deal with. His father had been more empathetic to the young Tlheun'h, but was also proud to rage, and was known to frequently fight other slaves, leading to his being beaten by the slavers. Kushiar said that in his youth he was consistantly isolated from the rest of slaves, including his family.

Escape and Terrorism

In his mid-teens, Kushiar would frequently attempt escape from slavery, to little avail. His enslavers would often beat him for this, and one, who he refered to as Lopsemo, would take particular delight in bashing him in the nose for this and other offences, eventually resulting is nose being so bloodied and broken that he had to perpeatually wear a cloth sling to hold it in place. He would continue to wear such a sling for the rest of his life, though by the time of at least his death (and likely long before), it was purely symbolic, as nothing remained of his original nose.

Around the age of ninteen, Tlheun'h finally managed to run away into the desert, where he took up with other escaped Tun'ilhameng. He spent the next several years of his life, by his own account, as a violent maurader, living off of robbing and killing Nongbans, often collecting gruesome keepsakes such as severed scalps. He "felt no remorse towards those who kept him as cattle" at that time, and claimed it was a common lifestyle for escaped Tun'ilhameng. Some have casted doubt to the truthfulness of these statements.

Kushiar was involved with terrorism, being part of several predessor groups to the TLP, though he did not understand much political thought, and instead was mostly in it for the violence against Nongbans. During the deportation of Tun'ilhameng to Ronatana, Tlheun'h managed to narrowly escape capture, and by unknown means acquired a small vessel for sea travel. Unaware that Nongba was the edge of the archipelago, he sailed west (presumably from a starting point on the southern coast). As he did not know how to operate a boat, he sailed directly into the storm, coincidentally through the thin patch between semi-calmed Deysachin and the Aarchipelago.

Deysachin, Conversion, and Ordination

Kushiar's ship crashed into the coast of Tlayharscii on 2-3 6 PC, and, according to his later account, believed he had died and entered some lush paradisical afterworld. Villagers from nearby Otuwalbiy found Kushiar that afternoon, wandering through the forest in a state of delerious wonderment. Believing Tlheun'h to be some manner of spirit or creature, the villagers hurried to the local Priest, one Nimob Inaosh'f, who was the first to approach Kushiar. While Tlheun'h was initially hostile, Inaosh'f successfully communicated with him, and came to understand he was a mortal from Nongba, as Kushiar came to understand he was still in the material world. Inaosh'f took Tlheun'h in and cared for his numerous wounds, both from his life as a slave and from the shipwreck.

Kushiar would later state that at this point in his life, he was wayless and confused, but came to see his arrival in Deysachin as a chance to start anew. Lacking any skill with most forms of labor and having little in common culturally, Tlheun'h was unable to integrate into the rest of the villiage, and stayed with Inaosh'f in his employ as a house servant. Kushiar took a quick interest in the Modhes faith, and would frequently inquire to Inaosh'f about his work; Nimob found education to be difficult however, due to his own lack of experiance in missionarywork and their mutual cultural barrier.

After three months in Otuwalbiy, Kushiar left under Inaosh'f's advisement to persue a higher religious understanding. Nimob accompanied Tlheun'h to the provincial capital of Weskunsik, where he would go on to spend the next eight years in study. Tlheun'h formally converted, and took the name by which he is now known, and quickly became something of a local curiousity due to being the first nondeysachni to convert to the Modhes faith since the incorperation of the Ouape Islands. Tlheun'h is known to have soared rapidly through his education; a commonly repeated story states him to have graduated from student to lecturer in one of his classes in as short as a month. Formally ordained on 1-6 15 PC, Kushiar was initially interested in a purely theological role, serving as a monk at the Temple of Saint Qaltiroq for nearly three years. He however came to change his mind, deciding instead that he had a duty to lead other Tun to a path of salvation and redemption.

Following additional schooling in political administration, and the end of The Great Hesitation in 22 PC, Tlheun'h was appointed as the head of Missionary affairs in Ronatana and Nongba, then the High Priest of the Diocese of Ronatana.