Boris Lundstrom

At seven feet tall and roughly 375 pounds of muscle, much of it covered in thick brown bur, Boris Lundstrom stands out in a crowd. It's not only that he towers over just about any individual of any other species you might meet in the Fiddlefern Quarter of New Harmony; it's also that not many bear beastkin, particularly grizzlies, cared to accept the empire's offer of freedom of movement when apartheid ended three decades ago.

Boris's parents were an exception, and they brought him down from the moutains to the capital when he was three, soon after the reforms passed, and took on a variety of odd and seasonal jobs that required physical labor in the hopes of giving their child a better life. And maybe life in the quarter did become better in some ways--a somewhat higher standard of living--but Boris also found it lonely and limiting.

Boris cuts an intimidating figure whether he wants to or not, and, while he was the furthest thing possible from a bully growing up, when he started looking for work himself, potential employers looked at him and saw nothing but hired muscle. That's how he ended up in security, eventually falling into Violet's orbit and becoming the bouncer and head of security at Tail Chasers, her skunk fetish strip club.

At work, where Boris wears the purple vest and black slacks of Tail Chasers security staff, the bear is paid to be gruff and sometimes outright rough with people. If you're a new face trying to get into the club, human or beastkin, don't expect a warm reception. If you know him, however, he'll be friendly enough as he checks you off and lets you in.

Outside work, when he tends to dress in flannel and jeans, Boris can still be prickly, particularly with strangers (all the more so if they're human). But he's also kind and generous, frequently helping fellow quarter residents with tasks that require heavy lifting or being tall enough to reach high places.

Heading security for Violet's biggest business made Boris a part of the notorious Boss's inner circle, privy to details about her legal and not-so-legal ventures and sometimes entrusted with tasks that don't fall strictly under the purview of club security. Fiercely loyal to Violet and her staff (including and especially Rose, Magnolia, Stacy, Carmilla, and Moriah). They're found family, and Boris will protect them and their secrets at all costs.

Boris has a secret too, though it shouldn't need to be one. He's gay, a thing that it's illegal to be in the Svarjag Empire, though the empire's laws are often ignored in the quarter and especially in the skunk ghetto known as Mephitia, where Boris lives and works.

Boris's colleague in Tail Chasers security, the wiry, green-eyed, blond-haired human woman "Stinky" Stacy Henderson, is also gay, and although they never seem to talk about it, the two have a kind of understanding, an easy vibe with one another, and a special bond. This may also come from them both being minority species in Mephitia and from their shared working class backgrounds, with Stacy growing up in the coastal town of Eastport and working the fishing boats before moving to the capital.

Sometimes you'll find Boris just sitting on a park bench, taking in the scenes around him with something like a wistful look. He doesn't advertise it, but he likes to read novels and do the daily crossword puzzles in The Fiddlefern Standard newspaper in addition to working out. Tragic stories and mountain songs that remind him of his early childhood can make him cry. While he's got some well-earned cynicism, if you get Boris to open up, you'll find he's really quite sensitive. Deep down, he wants to care and be cared for, but the right guy hasn't come along yet, and the bear isn't sure he ever will.

Boris is romanceable only be male characters (or masculine-coded nonbinary characters).

The beastkin of this universe range from furry/anthro to kemonomimi/demi-human, and can also fall in between those poles. Boris falls in between but closer to anthro than demi-human, with a mostly-human looking face apart from the bear ears and black nose. His upper body, however, is covered in fur, and his massive hands end in claws. He has hazel eyes.

Boris speaks Ursine, the native bear language, like a child, as he never studied it formally. At this point in his adult life, both his Imperial Standard and his Vonjuga (the skunk language) are better than his Ursine, but he still speaks the latter with his parents.

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Violet is six feet tall, with G-cup breasts, long platinum blonde hair, striking amethyst eyes, and a well-preserved MILF.

Stacy is five feet seven inches, with a blonde bob and green eyes. She has remarkable upper body strength from working the fishing boats of Eastport.

In centuries past, the human-dominated Svarjag Empire violently expanded across the continent they called Elsland, named for the chieftain Elwyn Svarjag who led the party that first landed there. Before the arrival of the human colonizers, the land was known by various names in the various native languages of the distinct beastkin species who occupied it and lived in federations and city-states spread across the continent.

The original Svarjag invaders saw the beastkin as inferior, and that bigoted attitude was passed down. An objective look at the primary sources suggests the Svarjag humans learned much about administration and statecraft from the beastkin societies they would eventually conquer and displace. To make a long story short, over time, the humans drove the beastkin away from their ancestral lands, eventually restricting them almost entirely to the Fiddlefern Mountains, a large, rugged range in the northern part of the continent.

The empire's human rulers rarely directly interfered in mountain life apart from directing mining and other resource extraction operations, often carried out by prison labor, that eventually impoverished much of region.

30 years ago Empress Wilhelmina III, called the Wise, promulgated an "integration" reform that allowed beastkin to move out of the mountains and into towns and cities, but the situation remains essentially an apartheid one. Segregation and discrimination heavily restrict beastkin opportunities and autnonomy, with some exceptions in border and frontier areas.

As part of her reforms, Wilhelmina renamed the capital city from Elwynsburgh to New Harmony. But among and between humans and beastkin, tensions, rivalries, social hierarchies, resentments, and outright discrimination remain.

Wilhelmina the Wise still rules as an absolute monarch. She consults an advisory council, but there is no parliament and no codified constitution. Only humans of noble rank sit on the advisory council. The empire does not recognize any of the traditional nobilities or social hierarchies of beastkin societies.

Beastkin languages include Vonjuga (native to skunks), Vulpine (foxes), Ululan (wolves), Ursine (bears), and many more. The larger languages have distinct dialects, some of which have died out. Before the conquest, a variety of skunk clans, several based in the Fiddlefern Mountains, had formed the largest political federation, making Vonjuga a common second language. Today Vonjuga often serves that purpose again in the Fiddlefern Quarter of New Harmony, the area on the outskirts of the city that the beastkin of the capital have largely been restricted to through deliberate policies of redlining. Mephitia, the skunk ghetto, is the largest neighborhood in the quarter and also home to the quarter's de facto "boss" and most influential powerbroker Violet, a six-foot tall, voluptuous demi-human skunk woman somewhere north of 50. Violet runs a variety of legal, quasi-legal, and illegal enterprises. Her influence extends well beyond the quarter.

Vonjuga is thus the most important beastkin language in the capital, useful as a second language so beastkin can communicate across species among themselves with little chance of human eavesdropping.

Many non-skunk beastkin in the Fiddlefern Quarter speak Vonjuga, the de facto beastkin lingua franca of the quarter, alongside Imperial Standard. Old clan feuds remain a problem in the mountains and sometimes in the quarter, particularly between the Vonjatchkovich and the Pukanovye, two mountain clans who have clashed over territory and resources for many generations.

Mephitia, the skunk ghetto, is located on the north end of the quarter on the Copper Run River. Along with the Sud, which flows into the city from the west, the Copper Run, which flows into the city from the north, form the borders of the quarter. There is only one bridge allowing access to and from the rest of New Harmony, and it is located to the south of the quarter, spanning the Sud near the confluence of the two rivers.

In its modern era, the Svarjag government has set policies designed to push beastkin toward assimilation despite never extending anything close to true equality. Beastkin languages are banned from instruction in imperial educational insitutions, including and especially the universities, and that means there have been no dictionaries, grammars, or language textbooks officially published in decades. Any that exist are considered banned literature according to the Office of the Imperial Censor.

Some learning materials exist in the underground economy and black markets--old, rare books, handwritten or typed samizdat, and illegally printed reprints. There are legitimate beastkin merchants and booksellers who have such things, but they won't show or sell them to just anyone. Access requires connections and trust, and/or consistently demonstrating respect for beastkin cultures over time.

There is other underground and censored beastkin literature, including histories that record the atrocities the approved, whitewashed histories leave out, and even revolutionary pamphlets and newspapers, some in beastkin languages and some in Imperial Standard. The beastkin underground possesses a few printing presses scattered across Elsland.

Speaking beastkin languages is legal. Performing in them is legal. What's illegal is any institutional teaching of the languages. Most beastkin still grow up speaking them natively, although in the capital, New Harmony (still called Elwynsburgh by overt human supremacists), with its variety of beastkin species ghettoes concentrated in the Fiddlefern Quarter, many young beastkin grow up speaking Imperial Standard better than the traditional languages of their people. This is what the empire wants; it seeks to achieve the erasure of beastkin cultures over time.

Some beastkin have a hybrid appearance, looking human with a few animal characteristics such as ears and tails. These are demi-humans. Other beastkin look much more like animals, though they are bipedal, sentient, and have opposoable thumbs. These beastkin are anthros. Yet other beastkin have a more in-between appearance. There is a spectrum among beastkin of looking largely human, with bare skin except for furred ears and tails, to looking much more animal-like. Those who look more human are often afforded better opportunities in a way that parallels the colorism in human racism.

Mephitia was once more than a ghetto, and still is to those who keep memory alive and observe some semblance of the old ways. Mephitia was the name of the once dominant skunk federation (with Clan Pukanovye and Clan Vonjatchkovich playing prominent roles). Mephitia is also the name of the goddess of traditional skunk worship, usually depicted with three tails (mirth, eros, wrath). Legend has it that Mephitia gave the skunks their gift of stink and that skunk beastkin with purple (amethyst, violet) eyes are her direct descendants.

All skunk clans and many non-skunk beastkin also venerate Mother Mountain, the largest peak in the Fiddlefern range. The beastkin pantheon is divided into gods of the sun/day and gods of the moon/night. Mephitia is a night goddess and a trickster, and regarded as the most sensual of the beastkin deities.

There are some peripheral parts of the empire where beastkin and human interactions are much more normalized than in New Harmony, and where, as is typical of borderlands, functional bilingualism is common even for humans. Small towns that exemplify this tendency include the coastal port and fishing town of Eastport on the east coast, and also Daggerswald, a friendly little hamlet tucked inside the foothills to the south of the Fiddlefern range, which has seen many beastkin pass through and some settle since the official restrictions were lifted.

Svarjag law bans both same-sex and human-beastkin relationships, but away from the imperial center, and even in the Fiddlefern Quarter, norms are looser and some laws can be ignored, especially by those protected by a powerful patron.