Kiy Tanthar

Kiy Tanthar
Кы Танцар
Gender	Male
Born	April 12th 9305
Affiliation	Brazak West
Height	174 cm
Weight	66 kg
Hair Colour	Black
Eye Colour	Grey-Blue
Ethnicity	Laro

Kiy Tanthar (Azbuka: Кы Танцар) is a Cloudgazer from Brazak West, and a protagonist of the Cloudgazer story. He is cool-headed and often detached, although marked by an almost chivalrous sense of doing the right thing. He had a younger sister, Julene Tanthar, though hasn't seen her since her kidnapping by Ganzabar toward the end of the Liberation War.

Background

Kiy was born in Laronor, Great Brazak, before the occupation years to Eugene Branna and Tatyana Tanthar. His parents met as officers aboard the GBC Nushimny, a Tykos Class cruiser, during the Nezzu War. They also had a daughter, Julene Tanthar, prior to the Liberation War.

Tatyana, Kiy's mother, was a member of the clandestine BULF. In what was to be one of the opening acts of the fighting, she (amongst a group of other rebels) seized control of the USK-built carrier Dawnstar, bound for the Ganzabi garrison forces at Nantez. There was an informant, however, that summoned a naval response and the fleeing Dawnstar was sunk, killing both Captain Tanthar and her husband Officer Branna. On hurried instructions from his parents, a young Kiy had made for an escape plane with his little sister Julene, which made it out just before the reactors blew. Unfortunately the plane was detected by Ganzabi forces and the refugees aboard captured. Julene was taken away by the command staff, while Kiy was incarcerated aboard the GMFS Isoria and shipped to Ganzabar. He never saw his younger sister again.

He spent four months in a prison camp at Jonzunstad, where he met a Ziothi named Jans Labeck. Labeck took sympathy with the young Brazakker and taught him all she knew. A later incident forced them to make an impromptu escape attempt, as Labeck revealed her prosthetic arm was in fact a hidden sling. They made it as far as the sprawling capital of Zaropolis, where she bestowed the device on Kiy; having suffered a wound from which she wasn't to recover. Kiy hid the sling away in a backpack of scrap he collected and wandered the streets, begging for scrap to sell on. He began to obsess over the loss of Julene and set about finding her again. After running out of food and looking death in the eye, he chanced upon a kindly old monk by the name of Neb, who gave him shelter.

Kiy lived with Neb in the Gnostic Monastery for most of his adolescence, wrestling with his doubts over Neb's theological assertions and his desire to make the old man -who had become like a father- proud. Things came to a head when Kiy was fifteen and met a young girl in a local pub, name Aggie. They began to see each other, despite warnings from Neb about the impurity of unmarried sex. Kiy reveals the sling to Aggie, promising to take her away from their dreary existence in the city, to live in Azrune. When Aggie boasts to a friend, word gets out and local thugs go looking for the sling, culminating in an attack on the Monastery that kills Neb. Kiy uses the sling to defeat the assailants, but blames Aggie for Neb's death.

Fleeing Zaropolis, Kiy went on to make a living in rural Ganzabar as a Cloudgazer. Over time, his yearning to see home again overcame his denial of the past and he returned to a now-liberated Brazak West. In Brudor, he met Esmerelda Litvyak, who would become his primary work contact; and the Litvyaks' the closest he knew to a home.

Personality

Kiy has a very relaxed and non-committal attitude. He tends to be solitary, but does have a charismatic side when he's in his comfort zone. He has a distrust of aerofoil craft, but it isn't entirely clear why. Despite gaining an early hatred for the Ganzabi after the incident at Nantez, Kiy's consequent years of exposure living there gave him some degree of respect for Ganzabar's people, if not its government.