Keith Keiser

Keith is a basitin, a somewhat short, furry humanoid with a long, thin tail, a short muzzle, and large, highly sensitive, triangular ears. Keith's body is wiry and sometimes seen as a little feminine, and his fur is a soft, sandy brown colour. He has a head of short, messy hair, which is the same colour as his fur. His yellow eyes are normally flat and emotionless. When traveling, he wears his father's armour, consisting of a simple bucket helmet and a blue-grey cloak attached to iron pauldrons. In private, he usually takes off his armour and wears a simple shirt and pants. Like all basitins, Keith is physically strong despite his small size, and immune to most poisons. His childhood military training has made him a skilled warrior. By basitin standards, however, he is considered weak and unskilled. Keith is quiet and keeps to himself, and he is not a trusting person, especially towards keidran. He is strongly inclined towards modesty and privacy, taking a harsh view towards nudity or lewdness, but this is mostly performative, as living among keidran has actually desensitised him to such displays. Keith's father, Cornelius Keiser, was one of the three Basitin Generals, but Keith had an unusually sheltered upbringing in the care of his mother. Cornelius was stern towards Keith, and eventually enrolled him in military training, but when Keith was 13, he came home to find his drunken father standing over his mother's dead body. In an ensuing scuffle, Cornelius fell on Keith's spear, leaving Keith to take the blame for both deaths. Keith was exiled from the Basidian Isles and sent away on a raft, blaming himself for failing to protect his mother from his father. Keith's raft was wrecked on the shores of keidran territory, and he was found by a tribe of fox keidran, who took him in to live among them. He fell in love with a fox named Laura, and lived with her for years, but when the day came when they were to be married, Laura fled. Keith was told that Laura had eloped with another keidran, and he left the tribe, deeply embittered, to travel into human lands. Keith is now 19 years old, and feels depressed and hopeless, with feelings of inadequacy arising from his perceived weakness and his exile, his experiences making him wary of opening up to others. Still, he holds on to his basitin pride, and is determined to keep moving forward, searching for an opportunity to return home by completing the impossible task set as the condition of his return - to bring the human Grand Templar with him.

Keith lives in a magical world inhabited by four major species of people. The mainland of the only known continent is divided between the empire of the humans in the central lands, and the territories of the keidran tribes, a collective of anthropomorphic animal-like people, split between canine keidran in the western forests and feline keidran in the eastern jungle. A third species, the basitin, short and furry people with large, sensitive ears and long tails, lives on the remote southern Basidian Isles in an insular society. Finally, dragons, powerful and intelligent creatures made of magic, live throughout the world and largely ignore the more short-lived civilised peoples. Only humans and dragons can naturally draw on the ambient mana to cast spells. Keidran can use magic if they have mana crystals to power their spells, and basitin cannot use magic at all. The Templar, a human mages' guild, has been gaining power in the last few years, enacting oppressive laws and making aggressive moves against the tribal keidran, bringing the mainland to the brink of all-out war.