Kitan Valyra

[Kitan]

Player: Valyr

Name: Kitan Valyra

Age: 19

Race: Shifter (Red Fox)

Height: 5'7"

Weight: 150 lbs

Physical Description: A slim, boyish figure, Kitan Valyra is never seen without his signature giant smile. He has dull red hair, worn mid-length, which flows into the fox ears which sprout from his head. There are a few faint freckles under his large green eyes. He also has a fox tail, which is for the most part covered beneath his tunic. Kitan doesn't like shoes, but his feet are wrapped in white bandages.

Possessions: A quarterstaff, a green tunic and brown trousers. He doesn't like shoes, and wears bandages around his feet instead. He also has a stable income and place to stay from his work as a courier.

Powers or Strengths:

-Kitan has a knack for illusions. He can create an illusion of just about anything, but he cannot make the illusions physically tangible. He has recently met the kitsune Hakujoumi, who has taught him how to add sound to his illusions. The images can grow to great sizes, the largest being almost fifty feet across. Larger illusions suffer a complete loss of detail as Kitan strains to focus on them- the fifty foot example was just a big, blurry ball of hardly visible light. He can maintain a spell for as long as he thinks about it. There is a cost to use of this magic- see weaknesses.

-He can also run very fast, well beyond all but the fastest humans, and can use his speed to jump long distances. He sometimes carries a quarterstaff which he uses mainly for pole vaulting.

-Kitan can climb very quickly.

-His fox ears give him great hearing.

-Kitan is very good looking, which coupled with his innocent nature, often causes others to want to help or protect him.

Weaknesses:

-Every time Kitan casts an illusion, he will suffer from a delusion at a later time. These delusions usually appear within four hours of casting, but have been known to appear up to five days later. Similarly, their duration is highly variable. He is capable of distinguishing the more fantastic ones from reality, but sometimes he misses ones that seem to fit in, such as delusions that look like a person or common object. They do not produce any sound.

-Kitan is extremely frail. His hits don't pack much power, and one blow will likely take him out of battle. Though his father insisted on basic self defense training before letting him go to Marn, Kitan never listened to it and may as well have received none at all.

-Kitan is a very trusting individual. He would be an easy target for scammers, pickpockets and muggers.

-In addition to thinking far too highly of his fellow man, he is also very emotionally weak; if hurt or betrayed, it will send him into a panic as he attempts to rationalize why someone would do such a thing.

-Having been abandoned by his real parents at a young age, Kitan never learned how to properly assume full fox or human form. Nor has he ever been put in a threatening situation where instinct might take over. Think of it as learning a language- easy to learn when young, but difficult when older.

-Standard shifter weaknesses to silver.

-Curiosity killed the cat, and it may one day kill this fox. Kitan doesn’t know when he should really mind his own business, which often gets him into trouble.

History:

Part I: Egotism of Love

Many generations ago Kitan's forefathers, though an abnormally large clan, upheld the nomadic traditions common to their people. One excursion ended a bit differently than the others when exploring a possible shortcut from their usual routes through a mountain pass near the border of Tiang Xia. They were a well travelled bunch and had picked up all manner of useful skills, some of which were farming and hunting, which allowed them to immediately recognize the mountains around them as a veritable haven of fertile ground and abundant wildlife. Still, they were dedicated to their way of life, and prepared to move on.

Yet just before they left the vale path, a glowing true kitsune, with a full nine tails wreathed in pale light, materialized before them and ordered them to turn back, magical compulsion echoing through its voice. Fearful of the being’s power and reverent of their ancestor, they obeyed, providing a small haven for traveling lesser kitsune who were privy to the secretive new existence of the shifters. Eventually, those who knew found other, more practical routes or joined the new settlement, allowing it to fade into a fable amid the misted peaks.

Centuries later, a boy named Kitan was born to a powerful village witch doctor called Hsuna. No one knew who the father was, least of all Hsuna herself. Such things were irrelevant to their society, which the witch had taken advantage of many times when a new passion took hold of her. As for Kitan, he was born in very ill health. Few thought he would survive, least of all his own mother, who was heartbroken when even her considerable arcane power could not save the child. Declaring the spirits to have cheated her of what rightfully belonged to her, she secluded herself from the clan in the forest surrounding them, unseen for several months. During this time, Kitan grew unexpectedly healthy; his mother, on her return, took the child into her arms, whispering sweet nothings while her clansmen whispered in fear and superstition. Over time, the rumors faded in the little settlement, especially with attention diverted by a poor hunting season.

As odd as it sounds on Pal Tahrenor, it was a very safe region, shielded from the outside by mountains and myths. The myths were only strengthened by the fox shifters, whose traditions of illusion magic created beasts of myth magnified tenfold, hydras with forty heads and demons that spat fire and ice. None of these constructs could actually hurt the explorer, but they served to get the region a very nasty reputation. It was almost universally agreed upon the mountains were cursed; some theories even stated a breach of the seal had occurred there, though this was usually disregarded.

Despite the safety the shifters found in their isolation, two years after Kitan’s birth something strange began happening to that village; the shifters, once in control of their illusions, suddenly found their members going mad, tormented by visions only they could see. The society turned on each other, the visions became more coherent while they became more sinister. Only one family seemed to be unaffected entirely- Kitan’s. Their madness was far more subtle.

The six survivors of the massacre left the mountains for the first time in generations. They numbered five plus one, as Kitan remained yet two years old. As one of their number looked back he noticed fire. The mountainside was ablaze.

Hsuna provided a sanctuary, claiming to have found it while wandering in the woods after Kitan’s birth. It was a long, deep cave. There was little chance of smoke reaching through such an intricate system, nor was anything to burn, yet the safety promised a lie. It was here that two years ago the young shifter’s mother had contacted a being from the astral plane in a desperate bid to save her son. Its cruelty had long ago found two simple demands- the sanity of all her clan, save for her family, and the ability to walk in her world. Two more shifters died by the being’s terrible hand in that cave.

Hsuna and two of her cousins left the cave later, the blood on her hands tactfully ignored in the interests of self preservation. Her skills extended far beyond mere illusions.

Unfortunately for the survivors, they did not extend to the spontaneous creation of food. While following the first road they had found, they began to eye Kitan, considering him a burden they would be better off without.

They found it easy to talk Hsuna into the plan. She was tired of being hungry, and soon found a traveler to shoulder their little nuisance. As Kitan and the dwarven wanderer slept, she snuck into his camp, her powerful spells silencing her movements, and left Kitan behind. She has never been seen since.

Part II: Valor of Valyra

The aging dwarf, by the name Drifel Valyra, must have been quite confused when he awoke, but his was a noble soul at heart. When he realized the parents of the child were not coming back, he shared some of the game he had been hunting.

The dwarf was travelling to Marn, and the young shifter plainly had nowhere else to go. The dwarf adopted the child and continued his journey to Marn, where the dwarf built a small shack off the road for the unusual pair to live. Making his meals and living from hunting, he was able to provide for the young shifter as he grew up.

His ancestor’s illusory powers began to develop around age five. Drifel, having grown very fond of the young shifter, became very concerned about the Puradyne elements in Marn and prevented him from coming to the city for quite a while. It was also then that they learned about his delusions. To the dwarf’s chagrin, they didn’t stop Kitan from weaving illusions about the house. Fortunately, Drifel’s dwarven heritage and pragmatic nature helped Kitan distinguish reality from delusion, and many were the nights that a nightmarish creature was held back by his surrogate father’s reassurances.

For all the good the dwarf had done, Drifel’s support occasionally backfired. During one of Kitan’s worst episodes, a terrible figure of flesh and silently screaming maws crawled at him, always lurking just out of sight. It seemed to delight in tormenting the child by appearing for moments, only to vanish once more. When real, tangible hands suddenly clamped over Kitan’s mouth and dragged him down the hallway, the boy very nearly fainted from fear alone. Struggling to get a better view of his captor, it was soon found to be a strange dwarf, a faraway look in his eyes. Drifel turned to the window, opened it a crack to peek out, and then pushed the mortified child gently to his bed.

“I can hear them. I kno... I kn-know they’re out there.” Kitan was too scared to even react, so the drunken dwarf continued. “The souls of the... them dead. Followin’ me. Coming to make me one of ‘um.”

Drifel woke up later, Kitan nervously fidgeting in the opposite corner of the room. Desperate to make it up to the boy, he bought the child anything he wanted and some things he didn’t for weeks on end. Kitan was eventually able to overcome his fear, even feeling guilty for making his father work so hard to make amends. He replaced his dread with a burning desire to never again let his father debase himself in such a manner, a desire he holds onto even today.

But that was an extreme case, a mix of situations, troubles and woes which could have only ended poorly. Kitan’s life was on the whole turbulent but stable, like a ship in choppy waters, and for every adventure he found Drifel provided a lesson. He was educated in morality and forgiveness by the dwarf in a way few of Marn’s children were, through story and wisdom. For a snake he snatched and brought home, there was a story about the treachery of the viper, for every strange rock, a tale of patience and a colorful lecture on dwarven history.

Living out in the wilderness wasn’t altogether bad for Kitan, even if the boy felt paradoxically trapped at times. The isolation, combined with his father’s tales of heroism, instilled in Kitan an incurable optimism which he maintains to this day. It also cursed him with curiosity, a drive to personally see the word’s wonders as they were told in his father’s humble legends. Drifel, aware that he couldn’t hold onto the shifter’s sense of exploration much longer, eventually allowed Kitan to begin going to the city again to sell the pelts the dwarf had hunted. The pair found that buyers responded better to a cheerful, handsome shifter than a surly old dwarf, so Kitan often took the job when his father couldn’t despite the occasional swindler.

Drifel had built a number of eccentric acquaintances about the pubs during Kitan’s seclusion, and one such person, a dark-haired human by the name Nolen Barth, happened to work for Marn’s courier service. Noticing Kitan’s swift feet, he offered Kitan the opportunity to work. Drifel gave his cautious acceptance, trusting in his friend’s integrity and perception.

Kitan knew that Puradynes ran the city, and that his magic was akin to blasphemy, but he was simply so fond of creating as he pleased that he decorated his new quarters with all manner of fantastic illusions. Oddly, it seemed to Kitan that Nolan failed to notice these things at all when the shifter’s clumsy attempts to hide them from sight failed, even acting completely unfazed when Kitan once offhandedly greeted a person who he later discovered had been delusional. Having assumed that no one but Drifel knew about his magic, the suspicious lack of action soon caused him to restrict his use of magic to more manageable levels. He was growing concerned that there might be something more to his delusions than he had first believed.

Neither Drifel nor Nolan ever let on that they might know anything more about his magic, leaving the shifter to discover the truth for himself. While delivering messages between Marn houses, Shim, and everywhere in-between, Kitan looks for knowledge; knowledge of how to shift, how to help his father, the source of his delusions and how to make others cheerful.

Will he like what he finds?

[Stella]

Love it.

Approved.