The Epom is a named class-defining forest being of the Adi branch of the Tani peoples, rendered by Claire Scheid as the 'Jungle Lord.' Adi narrative identifies the first Epom as the elder brother of the first human, Tani (Abotani); their primordial quarrel over land, ornaments and living-space sunders the human and wild domains and sets in motion an ancestral feud that has never ended. Thereafter the Epom dwells in the trees at the periphery of settlement and acts as a sinister warden of the natural order, kidnapping or killing those of Tani's line who violate the boundaries of the forest. The figure is at once kin to humanity and its dangerous shadow, the mythic embodiment of the perilous wilderness that hems in the cultivated Tani world.