Kou

From Egs Mayhem

Name: Kou
Species: Evolved Great Horned Owl
Gender: Male
Age: 11
Appearance: Pretty much like any other great horned owl, albeit a little larger than average.
Height: 2 feet
Weight: 3.5 pounds
Powers: Intelligence and speech
Magic: Strong Geomancy (see below)

History: Before Ragnarök and the second light of the Eye of Odin, Kou was a normal Great Horned Owl in the Quebec zoo. After the end of the world, he managed to escape into the wild. He spent a year coming to terms with his new-found intelligence, and another half-year figuring out what to do with it. He figured that it must be a gift from nature, and he decided to return the favor by doing what he could to protect it. While he started off with mundane traps and trickery to drive away superstitious folk who would cause harm, he soon discovered his talent for Geomancy, which allowed for more complex traps (such as what he did in his introductory story). He was later discovered (by accident) by the GCC, who he now works with, mainly to keep tabs on the Jotun and enforce environmental laws, but he wouldn't be opposed to other missions that would be beneficial to the natural balance.

Personality: A slow thinker, he tends to ponder all possibilities before taking drastic action. He also looks down on most humans, generally seeing them as greedy creatures who value themselves over others and nature (although he has been proven wrong on a few occasions).

Quirks:

• Kou was renamed Kaepora by the zoo a couple years before Ragnarök in an attempt to make him more interesting to video game nerds. He hates the name, but will answer to it.
• He claims to be able to commune with Nature and the Earth itself. This has yet to be proven, but his insights can be eerily accurate sometimes.

Geomancy

Either as a gift from Gaia or just by a strong bond with nature, Geomancers (also called Druids) can control nature through force of will, although they are limited by their environment and what they can reach. A druid standing in deep snow could cause the snow to quake, melt, or harden; a druid touching a tree could control the limbs, cause new growth, or even affect other nearby trees; a druid willing to reach into the flame could spin it into a raging inferno or quench it completely. A geomancer can affect almost anything, but how much control he has depends on how much it has been altered and controlled by man: the more advanced it is, the less power he has over it. He would have less control in an orchard than he would in a true forest, but he would still be formidable. In a building, he would be able to warp wooden floorboards, but it would take considerable effort to even budge the steel frame, and a computer system would be completely off-limits to his powers.