Name: Yuri Byrgenkirk

Age: 39

Gender: Male

Appearance: Yuri is a small man with a wiry build, with a tight, muscular frame and posture generally reminiscent of a weasel. His face is lined and drawn, and his hair has gone prematurely white, and so he appears much older than he truly is. One of his eyes is bright blue and alive with the spark of madness, and the other is clouded over with milky cataracts. Even when adventuring he wears spotless white robes overtop a grey jumper, giving him the impression of a doctor or priest of some description.

Personality: There isn't much left of Yuri's sanity, but what he has left he makes great use of. Despite his constant, delusional rambling, he is still quick-witted and pragmatic, traits that have kept him alive as an artifact hunter. He has the focus and determination reserved for the ranks of the mad, and when presented with a project he finds intriguing, he will pursue it for days on end without food or rest. While he is gregarious about sharing the asinine goings-on of his delusional mind, he stays tight-lipped about his past and his personal research.

Brief Backstory: Much of Yuri's early history is lost along with his mind, but it is known that he grew up in a city in the hinterlands of some great forest that was teeming with magic-infused beasts. He aspired to become a magical researcher from an early age, and became a respected name in his field. For a time, he worked directly with the Legendary Sage Hargrave the Enigmatic, but it is said that some cataclysmic accident both ended Yuri's apprenticeship and robbed him of his wits.

Since then Yuri has worked as a freelance artifact hunter, specializing in the most arcane and bizarre artifacts. While he doesn't mind selling off most of what he finds, he withholds certain artifacts in his possession viciously. Despite his insanity, he has proved surprisingly competent as a hunter, and has designed several tools himself to aid him in his adventures. He seems set on tracking down more bizarre artifacts to aid him in his private magical research, but to what end this research will hold, none can say for sure.

Skills: Even though he's lost his mind, Yuri is still an expert in magical artifacts, and has extensive knowledge of their construction and functioning. He's a capable artifact hunter, adept in exploration and combat when it is called for. He is also a capable engineer, and has designed some gadgets of his own to aid in his travels.

Abilities: Yuri has a knack for activating the most exotic magical artifacts that few others in the world could get to work. This includes the artifacts in his possession, the secrets to which he guards jealously.

Equipment: Yuri carries a variety of bizarre tools and arcane artifacts on his person, along with general-purpose hunter equipment. His primary weapon is the "Aspergillum," a chemical dispersal weapon of his own design. The Aspergillum can be loaded with a variety of chemical agents, such as incendiary fluid, liquid nitrogen, or an aerosolized toxic "quicksilver" concoction that Yuri also designed. These chemical fuels can also be loaded into grenade-sized bombs, which Yuri affectionately refers to as his "cocktails." Yuri's secondary weapon is more straightforward, an electrified mace with a spiked head, wreathed in blue sparks when activated.

The artifacts Yuri carries are among the strangest of their number seen in this world. He calls his most-used artifact the "Moon Augur," which at first glance does not appear to be an artifact as much as a small, magical creature. Its appearance is misleading, as it is an artifact that opens a portal only a few inches wide on activation. From this portal, one to a half-dozen powerful, sticky tentacles will emerge, which Yuri can direct mentally to grab things, push things away, or pull them closer to him. The portal only stays open for a few seconds at a time, after which it and the tentacles vanish. Sometimes small objects get stuck to the tentacles and get pulled through the portal; where they end up, not even Yuri knows for sure.

Yuri's other artifacts include the "Celestial Chorus," another creature-resembling artifact that creates magical projectiles that home in on enemies before exploding, and the "Heavenly Eye," an eyeball-shaped artifact that Yuri has replaced one of his own eyes with. The Heavenly Eye can be activated with great effort by Yuri to produce an arcane missile similar to those summoned by the Celestial Chorus, but cannot home in on enemies and is much more exhausting for Yuri to use.

Faction: None, freelancer. Formerly a student of Hargrave the Enigmatic.

Name: Nadre, of Clan Blackfang

Age: 26

Gender: Male

Appearance: Being snake-kin beastfolk, Nadre possesses a blend of humanoid and serpentine characteristics. His yellow eyes' pupils are vertical slits, his mouth is filled with fangs, barbed predator's teeth, and a long, sensitive tongue. Nadre keeps all of the hair on his body shaved or waxed, his build is lanky but muscular, with dark skin and patches of black scales along his limbs, back, and belly. A short, black-scaled tail juts out just behind his rump, but typically stays tucked in his clothes. Knowing how mistrustful humans are of beastfolk, particularly the snake-kin, Nadre usually dresses in public in loose-flowing dark robes, including a hood and mask that cover his face.

Personality: Among those he is unfamiliar with, which is essentially anyone outside of his extended family, Nadre comes across as a stoic, humorless individual, with all of the unflinching pragmatism, predatory cunning, and wild-born brutality that the snake-kin are renowned and loathed for. Privately, Nadre is a voice of reason among his kin, open-minded and full of curiosity about the world outside his forest home. He loves his family dearly and would go to great lengths to ensure their protection. Nadre is also deeply spiritual, and is greatly reverent of his family's ancestor spirits.

Brief Backstory: Nadre, like most of the snake-kin beastfolk, was born and grew up in the Black Forest, a forbidden expanse of untamed wilderness at the outskirts of Fuso territory. Terrible creatures lurk within the Black Forest, and Nadre is one of them. He was brought up as a member of the Blackfang Clan, monk-like snake-kin who were trained from a young age to be the defenders of the Black Forest and their kinfolk within it. He and his brethren would hunt down and kill any interlopers into their territory, typically foolhardy artifact hunters, in order to keep their kin safe from persecution, and preserve the sanctity of their people's sacred artifacts.

For most of his life, Nadre was content with his role, keeping his family and their limbless kin safe from dangerous outsiders. However, the Black Forest has begun to face a new threat that Clan Blackfang are unprepared for: the dead have begun to rise within the Black Forest, including the bodies of scores of intruders that have trespassed over many years. None of the shamans or priests among their people could explain the phenomenon, and the crisis has resulted in many of Nadre's kin being injured or killed, despite their defenders' best efforts.

Determined to solve this problem, he has set out on his own (mostly) to either find the source of the sudden rise of the dead in his home, or to find some way of stopping it. He was entrusted with his clan's most sacred artifact for this mission, and has journeyed to Fuso to find out what can be done to stop the endless tide of the undead.

Skills: Nadre was trained as a killer from a young age, and can track and hunt down any warm-blooded animal with ease. An expert in the arts of stealth and subterfuge, Nadre prefers to hunt from the shadows and strike when his enemy least expects him. A skilled ambush-predator, Nadre has been known to set up intricate traps and diversions to confuse and terrify his foes before he silences them with his blades. Additionally, he is a master poisoner, able to devise toxins for a variety of purposes from both his own and his kin's venom, as well as toxic foliage and other animals.

Abilities: As one of the snake-kin, Nadre has many inborn abilities associated with snakes. Like all snakes, he is cold-blooded, making him difficult to track. His senses are different from that of a human, as he can not only hear, but also sense vibrations in the world around him, which gives him a preternatural sense of his surroundings. He typically communicates with his kinfolk through complex pheromone signals, which allow them to communicate in complete silence. He also can sense heat sources in his environment with the thermal sensory pits hidden in his nose, allowing him to track prey in complete darkness. Since his nose is given over to his thermal sense, Nadre can taste the air with his forked tongue, and can detect a variety of subtle traces and chemicals with it even hours after the source has dissipated. Nadre's fangs are functional and venomous, with a small doses able to induce crippling pain, and large doses capable of causing cardiac arrest.

Nadre has also trained himself to wield some of the spiritual magics of his people. With concentration, he can turn any of his bodily fluids to caustic poison, ensuring he is never without a source of poison for his blades. Given enough time and great effort, he can also summon his people's patron spirit, a gigantic snake capable of swallowing a man whole in an instant. However, the summoning is difficult and does not last long.

Equipment: Concealed in Nadre's robes are a variety of blades, darts, and needles, as which serve as delivery systems for the wide variety of different hand-made poisons Nadre also carries on him, concealed. He carries many poisons for different purposes, including deadly poison, paralytic poison, hallucinogenic poison, and poison that makes one lose control of their bowels, among several others. He also carries such tools as smoke bombs, rope, climbing pitons, and antidotes to some of his own poisons.

Nadre's most treasured possession is the artifact entrusted to him by his Clan for the duration of his mission: an ancient and deeply cursed blade. Nadre typically keeps it sheathed and tied to his back, but will wield it in dire emergencies. The sword is a two-handed, single-edged weapon called Bloody Shadow: Malakir, and its cursed blade inflicts a magical hex on whoever is cut by it. Wounds inflicted by Malakir do not clot, close, or heal unless by magic, making even a small cut from it a risk of exsanguination. However, the blade is hungry and curses even the wielder, as Malakir cannot be sheathed after being unsheathed unless it has tasted blood.

While not "equipment" per say, Nadre also typically carries tucked in his clothes several of his limbless "lesser kin," semi-intelligent venomous snakes. He can communicate with his diminutive partners using pheromones, and they are willing to assist him in his mission in exchange for food.

Faction: None, he only claims allegiance to his family in the Black Forest.