[img]http://i.imgur.com/9Y36p0Y.jpg[/img]
[sup]art: Unknown by Sung Choi[/sup]

Name: Tonhon

Abstract: A curious ferryman.

Detail: Tonhon grew up at the top of a mountain, in an ancient white temple to the Daemon of Autumn Wind, surrounded by his extended family. It was a busy, loud, playful existence; the mountains rang with the sound of children's laughter. Little Tonhon was perhaps the most troublesome of them all: he was incapable of sitting still for the briefest moment, he was a showoff and a trickster, quick to anger and quick with remorse. He led the other children into very much trouble indeed -- but somehow it was impossible for the adults to stay mad at him, he was so sincerely apologetic every time. He was simply incapable of behaving himself.

In an attempt to quell his exuberance, it was decided that Tonhon would study to become a magus. It was a respectable position -- the magi lived a nomadic existence, acting as healers and wisemen to any village that summoned them -- and Tonhon took his tasks seriously. He studied until his eyes crossed, he forced himself to sit still, he stopped playing with the other children, and he was miserable.

He was fourteen and had already earned his green robes when a midnight storm destroyed the gryphon platforms at the far east roost. A call for assistance was issued, and Tonhon went with a team of his fellow students to rebuild the platforms and bring supplies to the taskers' village. While he was there, he had decided, he would finally meet a gryphon face-to-face.

The taskers were the only people who were allowed near the gryphons; these people had been trained from a very young age to understand and make pacts with the wild gryphons. In the hierarchy of the temple, the taskers ranked at the very bottom: they were essentially ferrymen, responsible for transporting more important people from mountaintop to mountaintop, or in some cases, island to island. Theirs was the fastest and most convenient way of travel for a great many remote civilizations. But without the taskers, the gryphons were dangerous beasts incapable of being tamed or domesticated.

Tonhon escaped the rest of the group and found a wild gryphon on a ledge as it was stripping a deer carcass of meat. It spotted him, it rushed him, and suddenly Tonhon was gripped in its claws and soaring over the mountains. Others in this position had met the fate of the deer -- but in this one moment, Tonhon was able to remain calm and patient for perhaps the first time in his life. He spent a day and a night on a remote mountain in the company of the gryphon.

He rode the gryphon back to the temple, having made a pact with it though he had never been taught how. The gryphon left him on the temple's doorstep, and Tonhon was given punishment for breaking the rules and endangering everyone by bringing a gryphon to the temple -- but behind his back a discussion took place among the elders. Eventually they decided to strip him of his robes and send him to the taskers as a mockery of his transgressions. Tonhon hid his delight.

Under the tutelage of the taskers, Tonhon proved to be very capable with the gryphons as well as with the passengers. His exuberant personality broke through again, and though he got in just as much trouble with the taskers as he had with the priests, he could always run away on the wings of a gryphon. He's grown up since then, and his ferry post has been tasked farther and farther away from his homeland, but Tonhon is still brimming with energy, quick with a laugh and eager to see what's on the next horizon.