Rafael Ponticello

Rafael is a level 3 dhampir far traveler ranger. His highest stat is dexterity and his lowest is intelligence.

A medium height male human of average build, about 30 years of age, dressed in foreign-looking layers of brown and orange. He stands like a tree, feet planted and not shifting his weight. He wears an explorer's bag and a quiver on his back. Out of the bag sticks the neck of a stringed instrument. In his left hand is a bow. He has dark shoulder length hair, light skin, and gray-green eyes. He has a pet goose called Goosifer.

Rafael is a dhampir—a sort of half-vampire. He grew up the son of a hunter in far away Birmingmack. His family was poor but they lived comfortably. He has a few siblings. He fell in with a bad crowd as a teenager.

He drank a vial of unknown blood on a dare. He concluded it must have been some vampire blood, possibly enchanted. (There is room for another explanation - he could have already been a dhampir, and the blood could have been from a regular person, waking up his dark inheritance (from whom?? A vampire grandfather maybe?)) Regardless of why, that day he changed.

He fled his homeland to avoid losing control and hurting anyone close to him. He thinks he probably killed some people in this time, but his memory of it is indistinct. In his wanderings he heard of Guishanpai (not far from Oro) and revealed everything to the head of the dojo d'Ooh'n'Ooh. Eventually he assigned Rafael the task of raising a goose to adulthood without drinking blood. Goosifer doesn't know he was the eighth goose, the first survivor.

If Rafael goes without blood for more than a few days, his appearance starts to worsen. By about a week his appearance is at its worst: his skin looks somewhat pale, wrinkled and thin. In contrast, when he has "fed" recently, he is an image of vitality. Now he satisfies his thirst for blood by hunting small game, but he remembers the incredible taste of power and wants to find a way to get it without hurting good people.

After he has drunk humanoid blood, Rafael sometimes feels a summons in his dreams or when his mind is drifting—he thinks maybe his tainted blood remembers its original owner. His highest priority is to kill that vampire.

Compared to other people, Rafael is:

His manner is gentle, but it's a mask—the controlled gentleness of someone who uses it to cover their fear and anger. In a crisis or when he lacks control he can be abrasive and selfish.

Rafael keeps a journal of his adventures.