"God is calling for me to be with my dear wife Nargis. Peace be upon her soul, as I suffer through this journey to be at her home in spirit with her."
Name: Musharraf Azar Khan
Age: 55
Race: Anthro, snow leopard, Pashtun
Origin: Jalalabad, Nangarhar, Afghanistan
Occupation: Farmer, traveller, spiritual medium, ex-Mujahideen fighter
Religion: Nominally an Ismaili Muslim, but also holds a number of shamanistic beliefs as well. He is devout and considers his Islamic faith to be the highest form of authority and guidance, but is still tolerant of believers of different religions and non-believers too.
Skills: Marksmanship, raising livestock, farming, cooking, scavenging, crafting, climbing and balancing, and a keen perception of danger.
Appearance: As an anthro snow leopard, he is technically a human with animal features. His head is very much like that of a snow leopard's but retaining humanoid features like deep brown eyes, a strong squint to his brow, the capacity to make humanoid facial expressions, medium-length black and slightly greying hair, and a thick beard. Other than that, there's just the tail and fur of a snow leopard. He wears a dark blue turban over his head and face, a pair of ski goggles and a thick black winter jacket suited for mountain climbing and cold weather, khaki cargo pants found during a scavenging trip to Kabul, and a pair of Soviet-issue army boots kept since the Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. He also has a large rucksack, with which he carries what he needs to survive and travel with.
Relationships: He had 3 sons with his now-deceased wife, who now tend to his farm for him as he travels on his spiritual journey. Although he faces lots of discrimination as an anthro man, he tries to maintain a pacifist stance as part of Pashtun traditions of hospitality with everyone he's able to get up close and meet with, but knows how to keep his guard just in case the people he meets during his journeys have less than noble intentions. Aside from his native Pashtun, he is also fluent in Dari Persian, Arabic, Tajik, Uzbek, Urdu, and Russian, and is able to speak English to a certain degree.
Personality: He is calm, soft-spoken, hospitable, and does not enjoy violence, even though he often has no choice but to fight for the sake of survival. Despite his age, he still has intense determination, and and will fight and struggle against the odds as much as he can to get from Point A to Point B. Once he gets to know someone, he is very loyal, and he will treat them as though they are his family. He is honest and expects nothing but honesty in return. He gets very deeply offended when others are dishonest with him, or when they disrespect his culture, family, friends, or religion, and his pacifist nature often gets him in more trouble than he'd like. Bringing up the Taliban and the Soviet war in Afghanistan are also major triggers to him. He is also very hard to have an informal conversation with.
History: Azar Khan was born a regular human in Jalalabad in 1959. Things were quiet during his childhood, up until King Muhammad Zahir Shah was deposed by Daoud Khan, a cousin of the king, in 1973. Azar Khan was only 14 at the time, and had only started helping out his father at his farm. Azar Khan was forced to drop out of school around this time as well. When the communist PDPA launched their revolution against Daoud Khan in 1978, father expressed his support for the new government, and had Azar Khan enlist in the army. He trained with instructors sent down from the Soviet Union to aid the new communist government of Afghanistan, and was then sent up to Tashkent in 1979 to undergo anthropomorphization at the age of 20. Now an anthro snow leopard, he was sent straight into action fighting the Mujahideen rebels rebelling against the new Soviet-backed communist government. However, on his first engagement with the mujahideen, he was captured as a POW. And lo and behold, his father was a mujahideen fighter as well. It perplexed Azar Khan how his father ended up going from supporting the communists to fighting against them, but then came father's reasons. The government had taken their ranch and all of their family's belongings with them. Father had no choice but to join the Mujahideen to try and find new hope for his family by fighting against the Soviets and their puppet regime. Even with Azar Khan being anthro now, father still loved him as his son, and kept any possible discrimination against him by other Mujahideen fighters in check. With his father, Azar Khan fought for the mujahideen with nothing more than his grandfather's old Lee-Enfield rifle, dating back to the 1910s, when the British still controlled Afghanistan's foreign affairs. During this time, he also learned how to make and recycle ammunition, as .303 rounds were in short supply. By the time the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, Azar Khan had fought in numerous skirmishes, but he didn't enjoy all the violence that happened during those 10 years. Azar Khan became more spiritual, and sought a stronger devotion to the Ismaili faith for the sake of healing the scars in his soul from the Soviet invasion. He did not enjoy killing at all.
Azar Khan married in 1991 with a Tajik woman, another anthro snow leopard, from Ishkashim. They had 3 sons together over the next 5 years, up until the Taliban took control of the country in 1996. Azar Khan was forced to flee with his family to his wife's home in Badakhshan, where the Northern Alliance held control against the Taliban government. Father had become senile by then, and was killed by the Taliban. For the next 5 years, Azar Khan was back to fighting with his Lee-Enfield rifle, just as he had with his father during the Soviet occupation. When the US-lead Coalition invaded in 2001 in wake of 9/11, it was the first time Azar Khan interacted with any English speakers. He offered his hospitality to the foreigners when they requested it, and whatever else he could do to support them in hopes of getting rid of the Taliban once and for all. In 2004, 3 years after the Taliban government fell, Azar Khan returned to his farm near Jalalabad, where he, his wife, and his 3 sons lived in peace. Up until the Change of 2013, that is.
His wife died during the chaos, but Azar Khan and his sons were able to keep their home and farm, despite all that was happening. They were lucky, but Azar Khan was hurt once again by his wife's death. He sought further spiritual guidance, and put his sons in charge of the farm while he went on his spiritual journey to Ishkashim, to be with his lost wife in spirit where she was from. It's been a chaotic last year, but he pulled through, and he has just arrived on the southern outskirts of the region.
Equipment:
-Lee-Enfield No. 1 Mk. III, .303 British
-36 extra rounds of .303 British
-AK-74 bayonet, for melee combat
-1980s Soviet gas mask, just in case
-Small plastic bag of dehydrated wild goat meat
-2.5 litre water canteen, 3/4 full
-A sleeping bag as used by mountain climbers
-10 meters of rope
-Pair of ice axes
-The Quran
Goals: To be with his deceased wife in spirit where she was born and raised.