Rei Woren

Rei is a member of the Woren tribe, a race of people with varying degrees of tiger-like features. In Rei's case, he's got a coat of tiger-striped fur, his hands and feet are clawed, and he has a tail. Most of the Woren are incredibly strong when compared to humans (Rei is about 3x stronger than the typical human). Rei in particular leaned even heavier on speed (about 20x faster than a typical human), and due to his tail, he has the balance of a cat.

Being an orphan, Rei had no stable home to rely on for necessities. He learned early how to pick pockets in big cities. As he grew older, he started actively assaulting people to rob them (by pushing them to the ground/pulling them into alleys to steal things), and later to break into houses and steal valuables. He has the manual dexterity to pick almost any pickable physical lock (technology defeats him, however; it needs to have physical parts to manipulate), and is fast enough to steal items from enemies during battle.

Possibly why his speed is greater than his strength (or maybe his fur just builds up static charge), Rei has an affiliation with the element of lightning, and thus he's able to employ it in battle. He can zap a single enemy with a weak bolt, multiple enemies with a medium-strength bolt, or blast a single enemy with a powerful, sustained blast of lightning. However, his attack magics are less useful than they would be for someone with more magical training.

Rei has picked up a few more magical tricks that tend to be more useful for him in battle. He can temporarily speed himself up (lasts one battle), attempt to slow an enemy down, attempt to silence a spellcaster, or attempt to knock out an enemy instantly. This final spell is of least use since it's a single-target spell and tends to fail against anything stronger than a minion-level enemy.

Unique among the Woren is Rei's ability to transform into a massive weretiger. Upon transforming, he becomes a nine-foot tall mass of muscle, claws, and teeth. He retains his insane speed and his strength increases threefold. However, Rei loses all ability to speak or cast magic in this form, and cannot understand anything but the simplest words. And the longer he remains in this form, the harder it is for him to differentiate friend from foe. However, people with particularly commanding presences may wrangle him into attacking only enemies, though that's about it. Though he's unlikely to attack his own allies at the behest of an enemy.

Rei has been a thief for so long -- more importantly, it has been essential for his survival for so long -- that even when he's NOT planning to rob someone blind, the first thing he does is 'case' a target. Whether that target is a person or a building, the first thing that goes through his head is how he could immobilize the person and take their things, or crack the building open like an egg and get to the good stuff. And yes, he does sometimes "accidentally" swipe small things like food or essentials -- he's needed to do so for so long that he truly does it without thinking.

Rei spent a number of years tracking down the people repsonsible for the "death" of Ryu and Teepo. When he did find out who was responsible, he went to Syn City (a well-known wretched hive of scum and villainy) and released the weretiger, killing many in the process. He also seriously maimed the one who put them up to the theft that got them in trouble, a thief named Loki (and he will instantly distrust anyone with that name). Between this and the guilt of not being able to protect Ryu and Teepo from Mikba's gang (and allowing them to be led astray by Loki in the first place), he's carrying around a lot of guilt. This can lead him into reacting in extreme ways when he sees situations that he perceives as being similar to his own.

Most people won't ever see this side of him. Rei is usually a pretty calm guy who doesn't go out of his way to cause problems. But all it takes is for someone he views as his "family" to get hurt or killed... and this calmness becomes deadly and cold. He is likely to react with EXTREME PREJUDICE when someone he cares for is hurt or killed, and that will just end up adding more guilt to his conscience...

All his life Rei has been an orphan, a thief, a member of the underclass. He's never even SEEN the amount of money that most aristocrats have, let alone ever had it in his possession. He's never known what it's like to not have to struggle to find food, shelter, and warmth. When forced to interact with the upper classes of society, he will go quiet and speak rarely. When he does, it's halting and apprehensive. Only when he's able to see the person behind the crown is he able to relate to a member of the upper crust, and that's always on an individual basis.

For obvious reasons, Rei tends to get nervous around police officers, city guards, and other uniformed, visible territory law enforcement officers. He almost always looks guilty here, even when he's not doing anything wrong. Not hard to see how this can be a problem for him...