Sonba'i is the great ancestral sovereign of the western Atoni highlands, at once a mytho-historical founder and the eponym of the paramount ruling house of the interior. In Atoni sacred kingship the Great Sonba'i is the atupas, the 'sleeping lord', who must remain immobile and secluded at the ritual centre; his stillness holds the order of the realm as the sky-lord holds the order of the cosmos, and the fertility of the land is bound to the le'u gathered in his person and heirlooms. Because he cannot act, the day-to-day exercise of rule falls to an executive counterpart. The figure stands at the meeting of legend and history: the name is documented in oral charters of descent and sacred regalia and in the recorded politics of the western Meto states alike.