Kataru

## Description

Kataru is a humanoid figure wearing an off white undershirt with a brown button-down swallowtail vest, a side cape, black pants, brown leather boots and gloves, a hood and a plague doctor beak. He carries a tin pocket watch.

Underneath the clothes he is covered in feathers, and his appearance is much like that of a corvid.

## About

Kataru has a pet crow named Karasu, which means 'Crow' in Japanese.

## Backstory

A long, long time ago, a couple in an unnamed town committed crimes against their lord. The religion in that region shunned the couple for the crimes and requested the king to banish them from the land. The king refused to banish the couple, and instead turned to their god, a god of curses, to deal due punishment to the couple.

The god’s usual punishment was disfigurement of the body, often fingers or toes, hands or feet, and rarely the face. The couple received their curse and yet nothing seemed to change, the religion was pleased knowing that the god had done something, if invisible, to the couple and allowed them back into the town.

The couple lived for years wondering what the god of curses had done to them, and they never learned until they had a child. The child brought shock to the couple, for he was born with white eyes, was covered in feathers, avian in figure, and with a beak in place of his mouth. The child had the figures of a crow.

The town was thrown into an uproar over the strange cursed child.

As the years passed and the child grew into a toddler, he learned to speak not only the human languages, but that of birds as well, often communicating with chirps and whistles, and repeating the words of others.

His parents had not given him a name, as they were afraid that giving a label to the cursed child may invoke the wrath of their god of curses. As the child grew to school age, the parents eventually decided on a name for the boy, ‘Kataru’, which is Japanese for ‘talk’, after his inclination to copy those he hears.

But as the child aged, they soon realized that his growth was slower than most children his age, and they surmised that because of the curse, his aging was slowed down, a form of immortality. Because of his inhuman body, the boy, even as a teen, struggled to find work into his adult life, but he managed pulling odd jobs here and there for hundreds of years.

## The 17th Century

By the early 17th century, Kataru had heard of people known as ‘plague doctors’, and learning that their dress included an avian beak much like his own, he decided to take up the profession, quickly picking up the skills required for the task.

He was exceptionally good at the job, which included little real medicine, although he tried very hard to cure his patients. His superiors and oftentimes the public were pleased with his work, although he feared that they may one day hate him if they learned the truth of his form beneath the mask.

## The 18th - 19th Centuries

Kataru witnessed the creation of proper medicine, assisting in the rise of modern medical knowledge, creating potions and methods of healing, watching as diseases rose and fell with the work of the medicine he helped create.

But people soon began to question his uniform, as plague doctors became an irrelevant past, he kept the attire, beak, suit and gloves.

## Present

Having dropped out of the medical field to avoid the scrutinizing eyes, Kataru instead took to wandering in search of a new job that would not require as much questioning of his attire.

He found himself in a pub in a land known as Paleteria, in the city of Zeronia, where the barkeep, a being that went by the name of Hannok, offered him a job as a bartender.

He gratefully accepted the opportunity, and was happy to get to serve the people once again, even if it was just over the pleasure of a meal instead of medicine.