Soooo proud of my Pandavvasona for the #pandavvarna tag on twitter! 🥰✨
Her name is Ajeng the dhole spirit! (Dholes in Sundanese are called “Ajag” which sound similar to “Ajeng” so I thought it was a funny pun to call her Ajeng the Ajag Spirit basically)
She’s a siluman, which are shapeshifter spirits that appear as animal/human hybrids. While typically they have the same number of limbs and appendages as normal animals, sometimes they can have multiple of those appendages too. So I thought it would be fun to make something inspired by nine-tailed fox spirits from East Asia, but SEA version because Indonesia doesn’t have them! Unlike kitsune, siluman they are not trickster spirits but guardians of nature. Often territorial and refuses to interact with humans.
Ajeng has been around since the very first kingdoms appeared in the island of Java and has passed on her wisdom and knowledge of traditional medicine and magic to the royal families of old. Because of this, she is revered and given high status by the ancient kings, who often seek her advice in times of conflict or disease. As time went on, the kingdoms fell to colonization which introduced western medicine, slowly but surely replacing the old ways of traditional healing.
Nowadays, Ajeng resides beyond the mists of Mount Padang, still offering her services to those who are brave enough to seek her…
