- Secret Shifter
- Scroll Eater
- Loyal Trouble
Tazarus "Taz" Bernard
Alignment: Chaotic Good
The scroll incident should have ended with a scolding, a ruined artifact, and several long sighs. Instead, the magic took root in him. The change did not make him wise, graceful, or obedient. It gave him a second shape, clever hands, awkward boots, and the horrifying realization that getting caught would mean explaining himself with a mouth that was still much better at begging than lying.
Since then, he has guarded his secret with all the subtlety of a dropped kettle. He shifts when no one is watching, hides evidence badly, and returns to dog shape whenever footsteps approach. His greatest fear is not the magic inside him, but the look he imagines on his person’s face if the truth comes out.
Now he serves as ward, companion, warning bell, and accidental scout. He may not understand the deep magic moving through the walls, but he knows bad smells, wrong sounds, and danger near the one person he refuses to lose. That is usually enough to send him barreling directly into the problem.
Timony Keep
High in the frozen north, where the wind bites and the sun lingers only in memory, Timony Keep looms like a jagged crown upon the cliffs. Its stone towers pierce the clouds, ringed in frost and humming with unseen power. No road leads cleanly to its gates-only paths carved by memory or madness. Yet still, those with the gift, the hunger, or the debt find their way.
Within its halls, magic thrums through the walls like a heartbeat. Runes shift when unobserved. Candles burn without flame. It is said the Keep holds the Great Conduit-an ancient mechanism, perhaps alive, through which all magic flows into the realm. How it functions, none can say. It simply is-because he keeps it so.
Some claim the warden of Timony does not sleep. Others whisper that the title outlives the man, wearing each guardian down until blood, name, and memory blur into duty. Whether myth or warning, one truth remains: so long as he endures, magic remains. And should that change, the world will forget how to breathe.
- Frozen Citadel
- Living Conduit
- Silent Warden
- Instinct-Driven
- Natural Weaponry
- Enhanced Senses
Beastkin
They came from many lines, not one, shaped by ancestry, environment, hunger, migration, and the long pressure of survival. Some learned to endure bitter cold, some to read open sky, some to climb, stalk, guard, glide, scent, or run before danger found its voice. Their bodies carried those lessons forward, turning inherited instinct into culture, craft, and pride.
Their early societies grew around kinship because survival rarely belonged to the lone and careless. Packs, herds, flocks, clans, dens, and other bonded groups formed around protection, food, territory, memory, and shared response. A lifted ear, shifted stance, warning scent, or change in breathing could say what words arrived too slowly to save.
Outsiders often misunderstood them, confusing instinct with simplicity and natural weaponry with savagery. That mistake cost many fools dearly. Their cultures developed rituals, adornments, oral histories, spiritual customs, hunting laws, craft traditions, and leadership systems as varied and sophisticated as any other people, though shaped by different bodies and harsher lessons.
Now they remain a vast and diverse collection of peoples bound less by sameness than by inheritance. They carry ancestral pride in marks, scars, horns, feathers, fur, claws, songs, and stories. Some are peaceful, some fierce, some philosophical, some brutal, and many are charming enough to make danger look like a very bad idea worth flirting with.