Red (Fantasial Freeze)

Red (Fantasial Freeze)

Languages	Common, Thieves Cant
Affiliations	Unravel (Begrudgingly)
Aliases	Red 'Hare'ing - 'Red' for short
Place of Birth	The Burrow, Central Osugbo
Species	Harengon
Gender	Male
Height	5'0"
Weight	70lbs
Eye Color	Hazel

Red (Fantasial Freeze) is a Rogue Harengon Performer

Physical Appearance

A Harengon with black fur that transitions to a dark brown at his underside and towards the tip of his ears. The tufts of his fur at the end of his ears are dyed a dark red. His nose a soft pink that stands out amongst his dark fur.

Regrets and Desires

Red wants to get out of the Unravel after having been an "Acrobat" for so long. When he arrived in Ravel, he found himself mixed up with this underground group due to a misunderstanding. Having nowhere else to go in Ravel, he felt stuck and often towed the line of his own morals to get by. While the Unravel aren't inherently bad folks, they taught him how to survive after all, he has seen first hand how the groups overall selfish behavior has impacted Ravel.

Red also wants to return to his old burrow and save the many hibernating friends and family who rest buried underground, which in turn is buried under dozens of feet of snow.

Personality

ACT 1:

When Red isn't doing one of his daring street performances he is something of a wall-flower. When his lines aren't rehearsed a hundred times he can struggle to give his thoughts and feelings a voice. During his performances, which involve impressive acrobatics and defying feats of gravity, escaping from many manner of bindings, and even the occasional hustle at Three Card Monty - when he needs to make some extra coin - he exudes a confidence that he rarely feels in any other situation. He tends to go with the flow and, should things not stray too far from his morals, he's usually content to observe and let others make their own decisions. He's typically not the first to extend a helping hand, as these things are none of his business, but should others around him join together he doesn't hesitate to lend his aid however he can.

ACT 2:

He feels mostly like a witness. Time and time again he has witnessed horrors and tragedy within the ice that covered the land. Further still when the freeze finally began to thaw. While he feels he had his uses during these travels, he never quite felt like he could do enough to aid the people around him. He watched as people sold their souls for power, sold souls they had no right to just to gain an edge. He had seen, what he knows now as, the Haar twist people into versions of themselves that were driven to hate and violence, drowned in anger and grief.

And yet, those same individuals could still be reached by compassion and love. Reminding them of their humanity could help them regain their own mind, for a time at least. Long enough to help them cleanse the Haar is some cases.

He wants to be of more use to those around him, to the people of Manquel, of Ravel, of all of Osugbo. He doesn’t want to leave all the fighting to others. A witness he will be no longer. No longer will he wait to extend a helping hand. He will do what he can at every opportunity.

History

Red’s mother calls him by the name August, his siblings like to call him Augy. When he arrived in Ravel, he was given the moniker Red, it was going to be a stage name of sorts, a play on the phrase Red Haring on account of him utilizing sleight of hand and getting people to pay attention to something else while something more important is happening on stage.

Red hails from a small town in central Osugbo simply called ‘The Burrow’. The Burrow is composed almost entirely of Harengon, who built their homes into the sides of the rolling hills that surround the area. If one knows anything about hares and their ilk, it’s that they are quite adept at multiplying. The families in The Burrow are quite large and Red’s is no exception. He has no fewer than five brothers and seven sisters… at least when he counted last. He is among the eldest of his siblings, having only two other litter mates.

The Burrow is quite self sustainable and its residents experience quiet and peaceful lives (as peaceful and quiet as it can get with-who-knows however many kits running around the hills, that is). Most folks grow their own selection of crops that they share with their neighbors. The entire town works together to ensure that they can take care of each other's needs, some families choose to become crafters or trades-folk. If there wasn’t someone in the family who could do a task, there was surely a neighbor who could.

It’s not that Red didn’t enjoy this kind of life, he just… yearned to see more. He wanted to see what was beyond the hills of The Burrow. Traders rarely made their way through and the opportunities to learn more about the wide world outside his home were few and far between.

One peculiar summer, when he was about eight years old, a traveling caravan of entertainers found their way to The Burrow. Scarcely had the denizens had many experiences with others who weren’t among the animal folk, simply their presence was enough to leave an impression on them, not to mention the show they put on! The children of The Burrow were especially dazzled, even more so due to the leader of the troupe being a white furred harengon. If this troupe leader could travel the world and see what’s out there, beyond these hills, then surely it was possible for Red to do the same.

He had begged his parents to let him join the troupe, to learn to be an acrobat and perform to inspire others. Thinking back on it now, what parent would let a child do something so reckless at that age? At the time though, he was only crushed when he was denied over and over by his father during the troupe's short stay at the town, never mind the fact he hadn’t even asked the troupe themselves if he could join. His father had said that he could travel when he was older, so… Red practiced what he had seen performed during the troupe’s stay. He read any book he could get his paws on about mundane ‘magic’, mostly though he found books about performers and plays. When he wasn’t reading about tricks and ‘magic’ he was practicing them. The part of the show that stuck with him the most were the acrobatics. He spent most of his time practicing these sorts of dexterous feats.

As the years went by, the line he had to cross before he was ‘old enough’ to travel kept moving further and further out of reach. Any time he asked about it, his father would make up any excuse as to why he couldn’t go just yet, not even if they went together; that he had thought Red would’ve stopped all this by now. It became clear that his father never truly intended to give his blessing for Red to leave The Burrow. While his Mother encouraged him to continue what he enjoyed doing, she would only ever send him to his father when he asked her if he could go on a trip.

One night, when he was 16, he and his father had gotten into a particularly heated argument. His father had just told him that starting the following week, Red would be starting an apprenticeship with The Burrow’s blacksmith, that it would be good for him and still require a deft hand, which he had acquired after all that ‘wasted time practicing those silly tricks, at least this would be beneficial in supporting the town’. Red was absolutely furious, all the time he had spent was not wasted. He had seen what he wanted to do first hand 8 years ago, he wasn’t going to be trapped in these hills forever, living a life he didn’t want. When the day came to report to the smithy for his first day, Red didn’t show up. It turned out that the apprenticeship was Red’s way out of The Burrow after all. A caravan delivering ore and other hard to find materials to the smithy happened to be departing at dawn on the same day. Red had helped the caravan load up the goods The Burrow had traded for the ore and materials, and packed himself away amongst the supplies.

The caravan made its final stop in Ravel before they were bound for the harbor. Red wanted to travel, yes, but leaving Osugbo seemed too daunting to even consider. Besides, when he saw the artistry of the city, he felt like he was in a dream. He could see himself actually putting what he had been practicing to use! He even found posters that said there was going to be a gathering of acrobats! If he was lucky, maybe he’d be able to join them and hop right into it. That would really show his father, not even a full week in a completely new city, and he would’ve landed on his feet already.

Little did he know… in Ravel, an acrobat didn’t mean exactly what he thought it did.

Languages

Common, Thieves Cant

Powers and Abilities

Red tends to do most of his fighting from afar, throwing blades into the fray at a distance. He'll move around the battlefield with the finesse of an acrobat, weaving, diving, and climbing to find the best vantage point. Vertical surfaces mean nothing so long as he can find a stable hand-hold or make it to the top in one go.

Cairn Stacking: After returning to his home, The Burrow, he learned how to align purifying energies through the stacking of precarious stone structures from a Harengon named Hallowfoot. Should Red be able to successfully stack a cairn, it creates a 10-ft radius aura of purifying energy. This has been seen to protect those within from the Haar, as well as separate the souls that are possessing the bodies of others. The fragile nature of these structures is what gives them their power, thus as quickly as they can be built, so too can they be destroyed.

Attacks and Weapons 

He is a performer at heart and prefers not to fight if he doesn't have to, though the Freeze doesn't leave him much of a choice. Throwing blades keep him safely out of harm's way, but when he needs to get up close and personal with an enemy, he favors the scimitar (if he gets up close and personal). He recently changed his tactics to favor the crossbow, to maintain his distance and use his mobility to best support those that are stronger than himself. He is quite aware of his limits.

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