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This is Pine Needle, a heroic character hunting down the foes behind the death of his father.


Deep in the snowy forests of the north is a tribe of tabaxi, to which 'Kitten' was born into. As was tradition for the tribe, all the children were called Kitten until they finished their trials - and profession training - to be considered an adult and choose their name. As a member of the tribe, he learned to respect the harsh conditions for the icy landscape and to rely on his fellow tribe members for survival.

At a young age, however, he learned that there was more than just his fellow tribe. During a particularly devastating winter, when food became scarce, a messenger came to his tribe from a human village the dwelt on the opposite side of the woods. They were suffering from a plague, and running low on food supplies, and asked the tabaxi for aid. Aid that was willingly given, despite the tribe's own food troubles. Kitten's father would head the caravan, carrying supplies and medicine in a pack across the freezing, winter woods - through blizzard and monsters - to help the ailing human village. It was on the way back that the caravan would be attacked by a monstrous mutant bear, warped with porcupine quills. Though the bear was defeated, Kitten's father was grievously injured, shielding another from a poisoned quill. He would make it back to the village, but perish from the poison.

Though his father had died for it, this shaped Kitten's life. Help should be given to those who need it. The weak should be defended. Heroes are never forgotten. He trained and learned as he grew until it was time for him to choose his trials to adulthood. As his parents had both been great hunters, he choose to undergo the trials to become a hunter of his tribe as well, succeeding and choosing the name Pine Needle.

Though he served the next few years as part of the tribe's hunters, he grew into a sense of restlessness, longing for adventure beyond the boundaries of the tribe's territory. There was a nagging feeling that there was something the tribe was overlooking, and this feeling intensified as the hunting party he was a part of came across a hole that had not been there before. Within it was the remains of an abandoned arcane laboratory, exposed after years of the harsh environment eating away at the foundations. Within were ruined alchemical compounds, cages full of frost-laden skeletons, and a still-functioning magical item: a glass container. Within the glass container floated a still-living experiment: a mutated bear cub, much like the one that had slain Pine Needle's father. Yet, as well as porcupine quills, this one had bull's horns atop a reinforced skull.

The tribal elders deemed it too dangerous to investigate further, quoting the wisdom that anything that mages do always ends in catastrophe and ruin. They ordered the container and its occupant destroyed, as well as it and the laboratory buried deed into the snow. Pine Needle, however, got the sense that there was more to this - and somewhere out there, the lab's original occupant was continuing their strange experiments.

Despite the warnings of his tribe, Pine Needle decided to set out on his own to uncover the secrets of this unseen villain, taking only what he could carry. His first stop was the human village that his father had once helped before... yet when he got there, he found most of the village in ruins. The survivors told tale of a flying lion who's roars caused madness, and of the sect of mages who watched as it destroyed the village. It was there that he learned the name of his quarry: The Nemesis Conspiracy.

For what reason where they creating monsters - and testing them on the innocent? Pine Needle intended to find out - and stop them.