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Name: Marta Kowalski
Gender: F
Appearance:
Human: Marta is rather short for her age, standing around 5'4'' and easily passing for a girl six or seven years her junior. Her slight build doesn't help with this, though if one were to witness her carrying her various tools and toolboxes around, one would realise that she is nowhere near weak. Her short black hair compliments her vividly deep blue eyes, one of the only outward signs of her true nature as a basilisk; her eyes are far too vividly deep for a normal human. Her general attire is quite utilitarian, with plain, albeit comfortable work clothes designed not to stain or scuff too much while working with metal and magic. The only concession to comfort is the familiar white cotton shawl wrapped around her shoulders, a small reminder of the culture she left behind. She also wears leather gloves to hide the green scales across the backs of her hands, and the shawl to hide the scales around her neck.

Basilisk: Her basilisk form is far larger, drawing itself up to a height of 7'8''. Her scales are a vivid emerald, shimmering in the light akin to gold, and are hard and cold to the touch, akin more to scale armor than mere skin. Marta's eyes are a solid deep blue, seemingly piercing through to one's very soul. Her neck ribs are similar to that of a cobra's, allowing it to expand into a giant 'hood', with golden, ornate patterns akin to those found in ancient jewellry. Their fangs are surprisingly small for a snake so large, but no less sharp and no less venomous. A crown of bone sits on top of their head, appearing as kingly and regal as any crown of gold and rubies; this, along with their regal hood, their vast size for a snake and their piercing eyes, makes Marta's basilisk form have the presence worthy of the name 'King of the Snakes'.

Personality: Marta seems rather quiet and calm, tending not to make much of a fuss despite herself. Even when aggravated, her annoyance normally takes the form of a stern look and a harsh rebuke, and nothing more. Her great love lies in the world of mechanisms and gears, and she has a head for engineering, often coming up with contraptions her dreaming mind creates. Marta is industrious, and enthusiastic about her work, often working on projects by herself late into the night and sometimes being found asleep at her work table, tool in hand and plans for some wondrous device underneath her head. Marta is also friendly, albeit not overly so, trying her best to seem open to others; as a result, she can be polite to a fault, albeit with limits that can be tested. Although she does not shy away from a fight, it is nonetheless not her preferred course of action, and she often prefers to talk her way out of a situation if possible. One of the few things that can truly anger Marta is to slander the race of Basilisks in general; of course, her preferred response to her opponents tends to be a demonstration of basilisk history and why their reputation is misplaced. Beyond her work, she enjoys a good book, or some good food, though none of this ever compares to her great love of mechanics.

Backstory:
      "The Basiliske may take the forme of a vast reptile, clad in scale with the worth of a king's ransom and harder than the skin of Nemean lions, possessing the power to turn blades and arrowheads alike without scratch or scuff. The Basilike stands many heads above a normal man, and their lizardly bodies are equally lithe and muscular, capable of crushing the lives from men and flowing through the grasses without crushing a single blade of grass. Their hoods show great designs the envy of dwarven smithies anywhere in the known world, resembling whorls and spires of gold beyond their wildest dreams, and the crown of bone that sits upon their head is perfectly formed, being better in proportion than the crowns of human kings. Their most dangerous power however is the ability that these creatures had to smite one dead on the spot with a mere gaze, akin to an imperious god peering upon their foolish subjects. For this reason, and for others, most adventurers would do well to avoid them. The Basiliske deserves no less a title than 'King of Serpents', and no lesser caution than their most dangerous opponent."

The basilisks were an insular, reclusive people, keeping to themselves and generally avoiding too much contact with others. Nonetheless, in olden times they kept themselves prosperous through the possession of great natural resources, and maintained a great and rich culture the envy of even the elves. They were also great friends of adventurers of all stripes, often providing the fortunate adventurer who found a settelement of theirs great gifts. Indeed, there are old legends of humans finding injured snakes wearing crowns of bone in the woods and taking them in to help them recuperate, only to discover they asssisted a basilisk and are thus rewarded with love, riches or power. Before their reputation fell to pieces, basilisks were a highly respected people, worthy of the name 'King or Serpents'.

The cockatrice is a reptilian monster often found in dungeons, taking the form of a giant crowned snake, with scales as hard as armour and piercing eyes. Their similarity to the reptilian forms of basilisk is to be noted; the difference is while a basilisk possesses higher reasoning and is in fact identifiable as a person, a cockatrice is more animalistic, lacking a human form and acting wholly on instinct. Moreover, they possess the ability to kill a person with a glance and sufficient time, as many unfortunate adventurers discovered before learning to avert their glance. However, their venom is just as potent on its own, rendering cockatrices some of the most dangerous monsters an adventurer could ever encounter.

The insular nature of the basilisks, combined with their resemblance to the cockatrice, caused adventurer-chroniclers such as the famous Carabas to conflate basilisks and cockatrices. Slowly, as the world began reading these writings, they mistook the benevolent basilisks for their reptilian doppelgangers, and began to purge those they could find. Settlements were pillaged and burned and basilisks lynched where they could be found. Bounties were put out for basilisks, as people feared being slain with a glance, and their people were forced to flee, scattered to the four winds and taking up residence in hidden alcoves or wherever sympathetic admirers woud take them. The only thing left of their culture remained in what they could carry with them and what remained in their minds. Though cooler minds and sound words prevailed, and the good reputation of basilisks restored somewhat, this did not come without cost. The once stellar reputation of the basilisks lay in tatters, and the world as a whole distrusted them.

Marta grew up in this world, in a settlement that had been sympathetic to their plight. There were occasional clashes between the basilisk population and the other citizens, but on the whole, Marta and others grew up in a peaceful environment. As a child, she often sat in the shop while her parents, merchants by trade, specialisied in appraising the gadgetry that more technologically-minded adventurers brought in for sale. Marta loved tinkering with these gadgets, spending countless hours working on them. Slowly but surely, she grew from tinkering with other works, to making her own, small pieces that simply made life more convenient; she sold these to neighbours, to fund her buying more materials for her own. Her first real work was a magitek blunderbuss, hewn from fresh oak for the stock and cast iron for the barrel. Surely, she thought, if she could make something great and the envy of all the world, she could convince the world to look kindly on basilisks again as they had once done.

Eventually, Marta was invited to be educated in one of the city's best schools, learning to create better gadgets easier. Her mind was filled with the knowledge of the best engineers and inventors, and grand dreams occupied her sleeping hours. However, this would not last long; soon, in one of the more violent riots between basilisks and the other citizens, the mayor and his government were overthrown by a group of virulent anti-basilisk citizens. Slowly, they turned the city against the basilisks, first sequestering them to a small sector of the city, before slowly taking away the rights they had been afforded under the old government. Discontent filled the air, and something had to give.

And give it did.

One night, an angered mob stormed through the basilisk sector of the city. By this point, many of the residents who could flee had fled, leaving only the poor and the old behind- and Marta herself, who stayed to keep her new shop going even as her family fled for greener pastures. As the mob advanced through the sector, shops were destroyed and some basilisks lynched on the spot. Others managed to flee, including Marta herself, who had long seen this moment coming. Fleeing with her tools, clothes, plans and her beloved blunderbuss, Marta took off for the one place she knew she could go, a place she had heard of once during her education; the adventurer academy.

Through this, maybe the world would once more respect basilisks, with the advent of an adventurer from their kind.

Age: Mid 20s.
Species: Basilisk
Initial class selection: Healer.

Name: Leona Kalaasi
Gender: F
Appearance:
Human: Leona is rather tall for a woman, being around six feet even. Her hair is long, sleek and black, reaching down to her waist, and her build is slender, but toned. Leona barely wears clothing, due to the culture of her people, and pieces of armor are the only clothing she wears, consisting of a steel cuirass across her chest, two pauldrons and a skirt of light steel plates. Bandages around her hands and wrists, and wrapped around her feet with small leather sandals are her only other protective pieces of clothing, exposing her light skin. Aside from pointed canines and golden eyes, there are no other signs that Leona is in fact a Kaijin, thanks to the Glamour she employs.

Native: Her native form is far less attractive, resembling that of a monstrous, demented tiger. Her body is now covered in reddish-orange fur with black stripes, and her head resembles a demonic tiger's head, with large golden insectoid eyes and small bone horns erupting from her forehead. Her hands and feet are clawed with black talons, and her striped tail is tipped with a spiky club. Her build is far more muscular in this form, with visible bulging arms and shoulders; this, in combination with the fur and her increased height- by almost half a foot- leave no trace of her human form intact.

Personality: Leona is pleasant and rather calm-seeming, confusing those who have heard that she is a Kaijin. She tries to be polite, even in the face of idiocy both of the racially-motivated and the general sort. However, repeatedly pressing her buttons, so to speak, would bring out her other side; a short-tempered, hard woman who does not suffer fools gladly. She does try to make amends quickly, so long as the unfortunate victim of her wrath apologises quickly too. She also has a taste for blood (metaphorically), loving a good fight; this side, understandably, only comes out in a real fight as Leona makes her best efforts to remain calm. She is also rather industrious and studious, borne from a life of studying the ways of the civilised to avoid falling into the trap that befalls the rest of her kind. However, to assume that she is not proud of being a Kaijin is a false assumption; being the fool who derides her race will most likely get you punched through a wall.

Backstory:
      ".....the Kai-Jin, as these creatures refer to themselves in what little I have discovered of their vile tongue, prefer to dwell in the abandoned halls of mankind, taking over these ruins in much the same way as a weed grows on abandoned stones. They are of foul countenance, taking the form of beasts both familiar and unaccounted for in the records of civilized man- yet somehow, these creatures are capable of speaking, understanding and thinking like civilised men. Their greed is unrivalled, and their love of jealously guarding stolen hoards of treasure seen only in the likes of dragons in the far mountains. What little contact adventurers have had with the Kai-Jin has involved a mutual distrust and hostility, and there have been reports that barbaric practices such as the devouring of corpses and the taking of garish and gruesome trophies from their victims is practiced among their peoples, and their dwellings are marked often by the rotted offal of their previous victims. Their temperament is cruel, and the Kai-Jin are strangers to reason. There is no doubt about the barbarism that separates them from us. The wise adventurer would do well to avoid contact with the Kai-Jin. The astute adventurer would avoid their haunts entirely."
The Kaijin became quickly infamous for their cruelty and their love of remaining in dungeon ruins, being perennial hazards for adventurers who dared to venture down into them. For three decades after Nathaniel Cousland barely escaped a troop of Kaijin who killed the rest of their party, it was generally assumed that the Kaijin were purely and simply barbaric savages. Adventurers were taught to avoid them, or only engage one in small groups. Not helping this reputation was that Kaijin sightings were only made in the dungeons adventurers loved to venture into, leading to the perception they dwelled in the ruins and abandoned strongholds dungeons generally were made from. Overall, it was believed that there was no such thing as a reasonable Kaijin; even with their clear intelligence and ability to form a civilisation of their own, they had no interest in negotiating with outsiders.

Leona hails from a small clan of Kaijin who broke off from the rest of their people. This clan, along with several others, broke off from the greater Kaijin people after a dispute amongst those who wanted more contact with civilised peoples and those who wanted to continue being isolated, before scattering to the winds and latching onto small areas where they could eke out a living. Some kindly adventurers, taking pity on the Kaijin, assisted their flight and helped fend off the other Kaijin who hunted their own kin down for treachery. To attempt to hide better, the Kaijin took on affectations from the people who had helped them, including names that were more than snarls or job titles, as well as beginning to speak a language beyond snarls or their own.

As for Leona, she was a guard in her village, working as a farmer when her strength was unnecessary. From a young age, she dreamed of heading off to become an adventurer, just like the ones who had helped her kind settle somewhere safe. To this end, she studied books that she'd found or the village had been loaned by well-meaning older adventurers, learning as much as she could about the trade. One day, she resolved, she'd be an adventurer like those who had saved her kind, helping others in her own turn. However, as the years drew by and she learned more about the world and her own kind, this wish slowly faded away, and Leona became content to simply protect her village. After all, there was no way that they would ever let one of her kind become an adventurer.

Fortune, however, smiled upon Leona. Her village elders, one day, to celebrate and settle the debt they owed and to finally establish a relationship between themselves and the rest of the civilised world, decided that a student must be sent to become a great adventurer, to possibly gain fame and renown throughout the civilised world and reclaim the Kaijin name from the disgrace and terror associated with their fouler kin. None of the rest of the village, however, wished to leave, out of fear that both other adventurers and their own kin would surely kill them. Hearing this, Leona remembered once more what her dream was, before volunteering to be the village's student. Packing her bags that night, she set off that very morning, to learn how to become a true adventurer, with joy in her heart and determination in her mind. In this world, she thought, she might seek her fortune.

And maybe, just maybe, fulfilling the dream she once had.
Age: Mid 20s.
Species: Kaijin, a race of monstrous humanoids who take forms reminiscent of demonic perversions of familiar animals. Kaijin have access to Glamour, allowing them to hide their natural forms with more attractive guises, as well as higher strength and durability than normal humans. They also have access to a limited heightened regeneration factor.
Initial class selection: Warrior.

Name: Charlotte zu Asha
Gender: F
Appearance: Charlotte is of average height for an adult woman of her age, being about 5'5''. Her hair is a deep pink, caused by working with Grimbjorn faeces for most of her life- though it's mistaken for some sort of temporary hair dye at times. Her build is lightly muscled and athletic enough to keep up with the monsters she helps tend to, but not overly so; after all, her monsters protect her from harm, and if not that, her rather large mace- a plain affair, with a simple iron club head and a nice wooden handle, with a metal neck- does. Said mace is a bipartite weapon, with the butt extendable to turn it into a riding crop for mounting monsters to use as rides. She also wears a belt with various baits, whistles and trinkets used in the trade of raising monsters, in order to lure the creatures she raises towards her or to reward them for good jobs done, and a large satchel containing various devices, baits, treats and traps to assist her in taming monsters.

Personality: Charlotte is rather industrious, as required by the trade of raising and tending monsters. Her knowledge on the general raising of monsters and animals is impeccable, along with her ability to adapt to raising and tending to other, more specialised monsters. Although generally nice, her temper can sometimes get the better of her, especially when she is mistaken for a complete pushover due to not being a warrior like her peers. She also has a fascination with monsters and other such fantastic creatures, albeit not to the extent of risking her own life to protect an obviously dangerous one. However, it is clear that the trade of raising monsters, to Charlotte, is a source of pride that should not be underestimated by anyone- as anyone who makes fun of her line of work finds, especially if they end up on the wrong side of her acid tongue. Charlotte also has a motherly side, shown both to the monsters and creatures under her care, and to her allies and friends.

Backstory:
Since over a century ago, the trade of monster taming has grown steadily. The first taming ranch was established about a century ago, by a particularly foolhardy elven adventurer who lost his arm trying to tame a dragon, but the trade originates in particularly savvy adventurers who figured that raising the monsters that they found in dungeons to help fight with them was a far more profitable venture than just killing them and selling their innards; also, it saved on having to hire bodyguards when you had a loyal one who was paid in food and had fire breath or venomous fangs rather than dingy steel axes and maces. When they figured out that selling these tamed monsters to other adventurers was even more profitable, monster husbandry came into its own as a true industry.

Charlotte's family has been well-established in the trade for generations, ever since setting up one of the first ranches back during the birth of the trade. The village of Asha -once a small farming village up north in the wintery mountains before the family's patriarch moved his ranch there- owes much to their trade making them a popular destination for adventurers looking for a companion to accompany them into the world of dungeoneering. The family specialises particularly in the raising of Grimbjorn, large bear-like monsters with bone plates acting as armor on various areas of their bodies and the ability to breathe fire, as pets and companions for adventurers who can afford to buy them and know how to handle creatures like this. The family is also just as renown for their skill with monsters; some even, whether jokingly or seriously, assume they must be part-monster themselves.

Charlotte was born into this family, and predictably showed the same kind of aptitude for raising Grimbjorn as the rest of her family did, even adopting a cub as her own and dubbing him Hansel. She grew up almost entirely in Asha, barely venturing far beyond the village limits, usually raising the bears she sold to adventurers as guard animals. and grew to be a skilled tamer. As she grew older and blossomed into a beautiful young woman, however, she began to wonder about the world beyond Asha; the world that the adventurers who passed by Asha told stories of, a world of treasures beyond measure, beasts that would make the earth shake with a roar and sear forests apart with a breath, and the heroes who stopped them. Slowly, but surely, Charlotte fell in love with the world beyond, wondering at the great things to be done. She wished to become an adventurer herself, one just like the people she sold Grimbjorn cubs to, and told stories every night to Hansel as she dreamed and dreamed.

Her chance came one day, when her brother Bruno decided that, in lieu of leaving to seek his fortune outside Asha, he would return to help their family run the farm. Charlotte's father, having seen the look in his daughter's eyes as she looked morosely at the backs of leaving adventurers, gave her his blessing to venture out to become an adventurer. Overjoyed, Charlotte happily hugged him and, after saying farewell to her family and Hansel, now a full-grown Grimbjorn adult, the young monster tamer set out on the road leading out of Asha, waiting for the next caravan of adventurers to return to the city where the academy was, with a bag containing all her belongings in the world and a pack containing everything she used in her trade of monster taming. Huddling her coat to herself in the brisk mountain air and her face rouged with the cold, Charlotte couldn't help but smile to herself.

For her, this was a dream come true.
Age: Mid-20s.
Species: Human
Initial class selection: Healer.