Yuzan the Marooned Champion Lore
Yuzan was always a kind and conscientious man. His love of the world and desire to help others led him to become a physician working aboard ships traveling far from his homeland of Yakai. When not treating sick and injured sailors, he learned as much as he could of wherever he traveled, cataloging and sketching animals, plants, ruins and artifacts. He did this for years, full of life, and was considered a good luck charm by any crew he sailed with.
On his last voyage, this belief proved to be false. Yuzan’s ship was caught in a horrific typhoon. Oars were shattered, sails were torn, ropes were snapped. The vessel was capsized and shattered upon reefs and rocks. Yuzan was awoken on a beach by a gull pecking at his cheeks, surrounded by corpses, broken barrels, and split planks. He sat there for a time, weeping for his comrades. No one else lived, and Yuzan could find no map which might help him understand where he was. He had no choice but to search the island for sustenance. It was a verdant paradise, full of wildlife, as well as numerous, vine-choked ruins he recognized as being from the old Dragonkin Empire. Frescoes and engravings showed rhinoceroses being celebrated and paraded, wearing ornate armor. Yuzan was fascinated.
He did not have to wait long to find a real rhino. One blocked a path, lying down. It was an enormous beast, but its legs were thin and its ribs were showing. Yuzan could tell what illness it was suffering from by the blood around its mouth and joints, as well as the pustules around its eyes and nose, and was surprised that a common malady in Yakai had reached such an obscure place. Normally he could cure it, but this creature’s symptoms were too far gone. He took a blade and drove it in the animal’s throat to ease its passing. That act of mercy made him a Skinwalker.
Yuzan awoke from his transformation in an old camp. The detritus left behind told him it had belonged to Yakai sailors. He was certain this was how the disease had reached the island, and hoped that the rhinoceros he saw earlier was an isolated case.
It was not. Yuzan came across birds, lizards, deer, and more rhinoceroses with the same disease. He gathered herbs and plants for medicine, then captured the animals to treat them, saving hundreds of lives. It was during one day’s search for healing flowers that he came across a Dragonkin shrine adorned with rhinoceros carvings. Unable to resist the temptation, he ventured inside, pulling aside thick vines and cobwebs. Within Yuzan discovered a suit of ornate armor, of the kind he had seen before, that had been designed for the creatures. The panoply included a heavy, ceremonial blade that was still sharp. Yuzan dearly wished to bear the armor and sword for himself. He returned to the shrine several times to delicately clean the wondrous artifacts and study them. When he was finished, he carefully donned the plate and attached the blade.
Since then Yuzan has discovered a shield and crafted himself a hammer from broken Dragonkin masonry. He has resolved no more people will come to his island to threaten its beauty, and devoted himself to the study of his new home’s life and ruins. Sailors now tell of a horned, armored sentinel watching them from beaches and clifftops, and they stay away. The tales have reached one of the Arbiter’s Chroniclers, who now travels to investigate further.