CHARACTERName: Phaedo Katsaros (Fi-doh Cat-sahros)
Age: 47
Species and Gender: Male Fox Faunus
Symbol: N/A
Occupation: Member of the Mistrali Council
Appearance: Phaedo stands at a respective 6’2” and weighs in at 174lbs. Despite having the tedious job of a councilman, he keeps his body in shape. While not as finely tuned as a hunter might be, he is in considerably good health. His neck-length, curly, ginger hair and trimmed red beard portray this, not growing a single grey hair in his many years. Despite that, he does have a weathered look about him. His brown eyes are dull and almost colorless now and his face has an almost constant stoic look about him That isn’t to say he’s emotionless, however.
While he has been seen in casual wear, he is most commonly in his business wear. Being one of the youngest councilmen, he prefers to go with a simple combination of grey dress pants, a white undershirt, and a grey suit vest, though on colder days he will wear a jacket. His shoes, just like his attire, are formal and black.
Underneath the suit and dress shirt and everything, lies what most would not expect. All along his back are signs of abuse. Not just beatings, not just ancient welts refusing to die, but lashings. Almost all of his back is covered in large, redish white scars from a time before he became a councilman, before he was a political leader, before he came to the walls of Mistral, and before he left Menagerie.
Even for a faunus, Phaedo is somewhat bestial. He has multiple traits, unlike most faunus, a fox’s tail red and white tipped tail and red and white tipped ears, but there’s more than that. His eyes are vaguely slit like. More human than animal, for sure, but they have the vaguest hint of being a very wide slits. Along with that, his canines are significantly larger than most human and faunus’, though not to the extent of an animal. While he does keep his nails trimmed, if they go too long without being trimmed, they grow into points.
History: Phaedo was born on the “island” of Menagerie to parents of an old line of faunus in the year 33 AC. Life was considerably harder there, he says, than in the kingdoms. There were little in the form of major walls like Mistral has, there were guards for sure, but they were rarely exceptional. Grimm were an ever present threat, just like all of the small towns and villages around the world. They had one advantage though. They were faunus. Better hearing, better seeing, better at staying hidden. They didn’t survive the Grimm with brute strength, they survived the Grimm through utter cunning.
Phaedo picked up on that early. He says his family one day disappeared and never came back. He says he assumes they’re dead, but he wouldn’t know where to begin to look. After that, he decided that he would live somewhere where people
didn’t disappear overnight, somewhere with walls, somewhere safe. He didn’t get much info about the outside world, but he got enough to know that there were kingdoms, so large you couldn’t see the end of them, so powerful the entire world went to war with each other, so righteous that they banded together after the war, and so intolerable that they hated faunus. He was lucky, though, the faunus war had come and gone, and the White Fang had been formed as a peace group. Things were, by the time he was able to get out of Menagerie and afford passage to Mistral, looking up.
Of course, he had humble beginnings. He couldn’t afford to pay for a trip directly to Mistral. He paid for a trip to a smaller town on the coast of Onuma, then he paid for an escort from town to town until finally, he stood at the gates of Mistral in 62 AC. And it was everything he dreamed of. Enormous. Powerful. Safe... Intolerable. Apparently news of the peace between faunus and humans was a tad skewed when it came to Menagerie. He was, for all intents and purposes, a second class citizen.
This was… disheartening, to say the least. He eventually found a relatively cheap home and an okay job with one of the airship companies, but his true passion was with the currently passive White Fang. If nothing else, he wanted to make Faunus/Human relations just like what he heard back in Menagerie. Over the years, he became something of a political leader, and through that, he was introduced to his hidden talent, politics. He was incredibly charismatic, smart, and willing to provide change for those disenfranchised souls.
Of course, ten years ago, in 70 AC, the Near Collapse came to the city. He was one of the first to advocate the removal of the current council and institute a complete remodel of the system. This was met with some resistance at first, but once the body count rose and the lack of comment on any fixing of the settlements lost from the council became prevalent, the opposition slowly faded. Despite his bestial appearance, he became the face of the council’s removal, and when they moved the council buildings offshore they put the final nail in their own coffin.
The council was entirely removed. Each member shamed, each member’s corrupt dealings brought to light, each member impeached. It wasn’t long before the people voted Phaedo into office. Despite his somewhat vague background, despite his bestial appearance, despite his heritage as a faunus, he was a man of the people.
Of course, five years ago when the White Fang’s leadership changed to the new brutal leader, he officially announced he would no longer associate with them, instead suggesting that faunus band together as one people, not under a common name or group, but as their own race.
Since then, he has seen his ups and downs, though more commonly he’s seen his ups. He seems almost untouchable from a political perspective.
Personality: If there’s one word to describe Phaedo, it’s charismatic. He knows how to talk to people and he knows how people want to be talked to. He can read a situation faster than most other people. He knows exactly what to say and when to say it. Beyond that, he’s a mostly normal person. He enjoys time to relax, though he’s rarely given the time, he prefers the non-violent approach when possible but is by no means a pacifist. Despite his stoic face, he has been seen laughing with his friends when the time is right and he has been seen mourning the loss of those who give their lives to protect the city from Mistral.
In regard to action, he’s very patient, he’s someone whose words always have meaning behind them and he isn’t quick to jump to conclusions without first examining the situation. He always seems to know a little too much about who he’s talking to and what he’s talking about, however. H also has an odd quirk about always wanting to keep his weapons on him as well as storing most of his information on a local server for his Scroll to access.
Aura and Semblance: While he does have his aura unlocked for safety reasons, he does not have his semblance unlocked. That being said, his aura seems to be a dark green color, like a dense forest.
Combat Behavior: He had had some combat training, though his swings are still awkward and uneven. His aim with his pistol is somewhat better thanks to his faunus heritage, but not by much. Despite this, he still keeps his sword and gun.
WEAPON 1Name: Échase Ti Foní (Lost Voice)
Primary Form: A
relatively simple handgun. It is all white with a small laser sight attached to the bottom. It has okay stopping power and can definitely kill someone with no aura, though it won’t do much in an actual attack.
Dust Functions: N/A
WEAPON 2Name: Échase Tin Ilikía (Lost Age)
Primary Form: A
simple, single-edged sword. It’s blade is thicker than most, though it still comes down to an extremely sharp point, and it 26 inches in length. In addition, the blade is curved in such a way that slashes from this weapon carry the same moment a slash from an axe would. The hilt, similarly, is curved oddly. While, it does allow a somewhat comfortable grip, the end of the hilt, where the pommel would be, curves around and almost reconnects with the top of the hilt, leaving a little opening across from where the knuckles would be.
Along the flat of the blade, ancient letters are inscribed in an ancient language. Phaedo says it’s written an old written language his family used to communicate with each other in secret, stolen from an old civilization on Menagerie. To him they’re simply old world idioms from a time long forgotten.
Dust Functions: N/A
History: There is nothing special about this blade or this gun. Though he has an armed escort wherever he goes, Phaedo simply feels safer with a sword and gun by his side. The only thing that might set the sword and gun apart is the indiscernible writing along the flat of the blade. Nothing more than old history quotes, though. Old idioms passed down from generations to generation, written in an ancient language. After all, it's best for one to keep their mind sharp, and what better way than with a sword.
As for their names, Phaedo has stated that there's nothing worse, in his mind, than a lost voice or a lost age and if he were to have to take a life with these weapons, that tragedy would be just as horrible as their namesake.