[TBND] dracocervid demonprince

The offspring of two extremely powerful infernal heiyao creatures, who defied the high heavens by taking the ancient prerogative of the Ensouled Folk for themselves and siring a son together. His early life is shrouded in mystery—the way he tells it, a Divine Emissary appeared in his quarters one day and offered him escape from unending misery and a chance to make a life apart from his progenitors, but even his friends suspect the truth is a little more complicated. Having disowned his heiyao origins and escaped with his life, he now moves among the Ensouled Folk, residing in their cities and trying his best to keep a low profile.

Origins aside, he is soft-spoken and conflict-averse, and quite gentle in disposition. He enjoys working with and befriending animals, playing musical instruments, and decorating his living quarters to perfection. As a perpetual outsider he craves the sense of safety offered by any place he can truly call his own, seeks belonging among those who won't judge him, and is happiest when living in the here and now (such that he is able, if only briefly, to forget the horrors of his past). He is always pleasantly surprised by how welcoming the ordinary folk around him tend to be, and how many close friends he's made.

He is despised by many of the tianhunren as a being whose very existence is an affront to the order of creation. His father takes the form of an enormous, heavily muscled creature vaguely resembling a boar or elk, its many stout legs tipped by sharp hooves, its thick grizzled hide covered by countless, nigh-indestructable hooks and spikes, its 'head' a long-snouted skull within which resides a mass of flesh which can be protruded into myriad fanged jaws and mandibles for tearing apart its foes. His mother is a vast serpentine creature, many pairs of leathery wings arrayed along her length, each end of her body boasting a maw surrounded by dozens of long, bone-tipped tentacles used to lash out and impale or ensnare her opponents.

Exactly why he is not physically the sort of grotesque, unspeakably horrific abomination his parents are is not known, but those qualified to hypothesize think that it is because his young soul has not been twisted by aeons of evil and rebellion against the celestial dao. He has another, far more menacing form which he can take on (and which he barely acknowledges), but even that form resembles far more the majestic yeguai-creatures than the nightmarish things that birthed him.

He is extremely reluctant to fight, even in the most dire circumstance, not only because he hates violence but because he knows he is being watched. The [draconic highlord] has made vague noises in the past about putting him down before he becomes too powerful, but has been too preoccupied or otherwise unwilling to act. He is aware that there also exist powerful advocates among the tianhunren who seek to protect him, but their identities and objectives are even more shadowy, and he can't bring himself to trust them.