HAWK PRESS

  • Birthday: April 4, 1986
  • Height: 6’6″ and growing
  • Species: who even knows
  • Hair: its natural color, he swears
  • Cursed with a terribly appropriate name and a permanent frown. The middle child of the Press-Kiski siblings, Hawk is if nothing else extremely determined and enduring. Probably he is also on a wanted list now.

LILIYA KISKI

  • Birthday: September 27, 1990
  • Least favorite food: mushrooms
  • Attitude: yes
  • Special ability: surprise uppercut
  • The youngest of the Press-Kiski siblings, and ostensibly the most sensible. She asks a lot of questions. Despite being an admirably well-grounded teenager, she’s having a little trouble adapting to her new home in Aetheri.

EMRY PRESS

  • Birthday: old
  • Favorite pastime: 8-bit video games
  • Weakness: Classic folk-rock
  • Secret: former nerd
  • The oldest of the trio of siblings, and Hawk’s senior by thirteen years. He brought his siblings up from toddlerdom on his own, and is responsible for almost everything that they are, for better or worse.

TEIGE CARROLL

  • Birthday: May 1, 1981
  • Family ranking: favorite child
  • Former ambition: school counselor and/or horror film screenwriter
  • Pet peeve: It’s like ‘tiger’ not ‘beige’ and not ‘teeguh’ and you’re spelling it wrong just look
  • A pooka, apparently, who seems a little too cheery given his circumstances. He somehow ended up in Port Siena with nothing but a wallet full of cash and the clothes on his back–all the way on the other side of the country from where he intended to be.

HELYGEN (aka HELLY)

  • Birthday: Sometime early spring, possibly over 2000 years ago
  • Occupation: semi-retired healer and nanny
  • Favorite hobby: reading fantasy novels (completely unironically)
  • Pronouns: Ne/nem/nir/nirs/nemself
  • Helly is a semi-retired healer and a longtime friend of Cynn Numair and his parents. Ne has traveled long and far in nir years and seen a lot of strange and sometimes terrible things, but ne is still a gentle old soul who really just wishes everyone would get along.

YOSHI

  • Birthday: December 8, 1988
  • Construct name: Huukuu
  • Special talent: bookbinding
  • Place of birth: possibly Illinois
  • Despite seeming like just a rather shy stablehand, Yoshi apparently knows a lot of higher-up people around the Palace at Escalus. Yoshi's apparently from Earth originally, but left too young to remember much of it.

CYNN NUMAIR D’ESCALA OF AETHERI

  • Birthday: October 10, 1689
  • Degree: Artifact Studies and Construct Engineering
  • Ruling philosophy: Government is at the service of the people
  • Sleep Schedule: Erratic at best
  • Cynn Numair has been on the throne since 1989, and has tried to stay out of the public eye ever since–as a result, he’s a figure shrouded in mystery. Really, though, he’s just been too busy to chat.

VLAD DU RUSSI

  • Birthday: August 14, 1687
  • Last band he saw live: Sly and the Family Stone
  • Job title: Resident, Bestiary Studies
  • Nervous habit: tapping his fingers
  • An amiable spirit with a habit of smiling rather widely, Vlad offsets his boss’s caustic attitude. Despite having an old Aetherian family name, he spends a lot of time dressed in Earth clothes, listening to Earth music, and using Earth cell phones.

SHINOBU

  • Birthday: that’s rude, you know, to ask a lady her age
  • Current project: the Most Complete Bestiary
  • Technology level: old-timey typewriter
  • How to pass her class: study, don’t bother her outside office hours
  • A professor of Bestiary Studies at the University at Escalus, Shinobu is a kitsune with a habit of stepping on people’s feelings, often without realizing it. She has a massive soft spot for Yoshi–her adopted child–and, it seems, not much else.