Ozidi the Elder is the father of the hero and the man whose death the epic exists to avenge. A renowned fighter of Orua, he is drawn into a fatal quarrel when his intellectually disabled brother Temugedege is made king and demands the tributes due to a monarch; resentful rival warriors kill Ozidi the Elder rather than honour the claim. His pregnant widow withdraws to her mother's town, where the posthumous hero is born.