Zunden NPCs

Gydeon - Male Griffon (Bearded Vulture)

	A former thief and pirate hailing from Aris, Gydeon came to Animus after a wing injury grounded him and forced him into an early retirement. When he first arrived and Zunden's boarding house, he was finding his food via scavenging in garbage cans for chicken bones and the bones of whatever dead things he could find in the streets, causing concern to both residents and the guards, who were ready to apprehend him and toss the scavenger out of the city. Zunden sheltered the outcast at his home and provided him with meals (leftover soup bones) on the promise that Gydeon would get a job and quit digging in trash cans. While it took him a few months of unsuccessfully taking internships at bakeries (accidently splitting open a bag of flour was not a high moment in his life) and a gig at graveyard (while he has a rule about not disturbing buried people, it didn't prevent him from disturbing visitors), he managed to get a job working for a mob boss. While Zunden had disapproved, she did concede that Gydeon likely found a job he would be productive in: crime scene cleanup. Gydeon is paid to show up to murder scenes, and as long as the corpse is gone, he gets his wages. As the griffon puts it, 'he's paid to eat dinner'.
	Despite his diet and former job, Gydeon abided by Zunden's rules and, on Zunden's request, never brought his job home with him. His unique plumage often lead to younger troublemakers picking fun at him, but they never dare do it to his face, lest he snap at them with his beak. He mostly keeps to himself, ignoring alcohol and other vices. When not working, he tends to stick to the balcony or corners of bars, peering over crowds eerily for no more purpose than to pass the time. He doesn't embellish sentences with extraneous information, usually responding to queries with one to three word replies, the exception being when speaking to Zunden. He doesn't express gratitude outwardly, but he is a griffon of his word and tries to return a favor when he can.



Moonstone - Female Crystal Pony

	Moonstone became a resident of Zunden's boarding house after becoming victim to an uncommon condition unique to crystal ponies - stress cracking. When under long periods of stress with little rest or time to recuperate, crystal ponies' bodies can start to form crack patterns, and eventually begin to shatter. The severity of stress cracking usually depends on the area affected and the amount of stress it had been under, from simply being cosmetic to parts fully becoming unusable, or at worst, death. Moonstone herself fell victim to stress cracking after being coerced into working for two weeks straight stock brokering in the capital of the Dominion. While her work ethic was unbreakable, her body was. By time she had become aware of the damage to her body, a large crack had formed in the center of her forehead and another riding down her back to her right hindhoof. Moonstone soon lost her job as she began to experience migraines nearly every other hour, the constant pulsing pain cripping as long as she was on her hooves. Moonstone's mind entered a dissociative fugue state as a coping mechanism, spending two months on the streets of the Animus believing to have been a refugee from Litharge, having escaped from being sacrificed by craven idol worshipers. Zunden of course took her in and managed to acquire salves that helped with the headaches, and in exchange Moonstone agreed to make the beds and clean the sheets of the boarding house as payment. When asked, Moonstone accounted tales of her narrow escape from the odd world of Litharge, her fantastical accounts (which were all true in her head) aided by the already grim perception of Litharge citizens of the Dominion have.
	However, memories started to come back slowly but surely, the story her mind was telling her becoming less and less coherent. She confronted Zunden as her two lives began to muddle and broke down in Zunden's arms, crying and distraught about how the life she was living was a lie. Zunden comforted her, and stayed with her through the night. While having a reasonable bank account to fall back on and family in the central district of Animus, Moonstone had come to love the people in the boarding house, and asked Zunden if she could remain and continue her job there. While she could've paid for better housing, Moonstone opted instead to use what was left of her bank account to help Zunden keep the boarding house running, the two becoming good friends in the process.
	Moonstone's ability to function is quite limited to the herbal salves Zunden helped her acquire, the splitting headaches returning if she doesn't have access to it. She's never since regressed to another fugue state, nor is she likely to, but she's since kept a journal to keep track of her life (with references starting to trust the contents of the journal even if they don't seem correct). Her voice is soft and she's naturally shy, but she's willing to make friends with anyone, despite appearances. Her cutie mark of the tail-side of the Dominion-standard Bit, however on her right half the stress crack has split the coin in the shape of a crescent.



Boot Leg -  Male Pegasus

	A resident of the slums of Animus from birth, Boot Leg never strayed too far from the nest. Born to a door-to-door salesman and a lady of the night, he was taught as a child how to market a product. That being said Boot Leg never held an interest in selling slightly-used mattresses nor did he have the body to sell any of his... other assets. However, one thing Boot Leg was fond of was arts and crafts. As a colt, he took to emulating the objects he saw in day to day life, learning to copy signatures, taking up sewing, and purchasing large amounts of wax paper to make sketches to trace over art books with. These skills honed with age, and now can make forgeries that are just as good, if not more realistic, than the original object. He's released countless fake paintings into the art scene using his father's lessons to sell them to gullible aristocrats, and has outfitted harlots with clothing that looks to be worth more than their monthly paychecks.
	While he never lived in the boarding house himself, after a few encounters Zunden had wizened up to his dealings with her residents, and barred him from making any sales in block's distance of the boarding house proper. Still, he often checked in to the boarding house to keep in contact with some of his friends who lived their, and the relationship between him and Zunden is more or less friendly. He speaks fast and offers little time to interrupt when he's really focused on pitching something, but his wording is concise and has a relatively large vocabulary for someone who grew up in the slums. His cutiemark is two identical paintings, one in front of the other.


Grady - Male Griffon (Brown Snake-eagle)

	A griffon child no more than 8 or 9, Zunden came across the young griffon one night after hearing the child wailing outside her boarding house. After chasing down the moving noise, she came across Grady, having ran themselves into the corner of an alley, crying and claws covered in blood. After she had taken him in, washed him up, and put a warm towel around the shaking child back at the boarding house, she set out to investigate where the child had come from. Asking discretely and through other contacts, she found the boy had ran from his home, apparently having killed his father (an alcoholic, abusive whose wife had long since fled for greener hills) in self defense.The father had come home drunk after losing a great deal gambling, and had taken a bat out to beat his child in his anger. Instinctively, Grady retaliated by flailing his claws, a stroke of luck (or misfortune, depending) causing his claw to strike his father's throat and cutting a major artery. Quickly succumbing to blood loss, the corpse toppled onto the young gryphon, coating him in blood and traumatizing him.
	Learning of the child's plight, Zunden took him into the boarding house and provided him his own private room (a rarity), making sure he had good food, a comfortable bed, and whatever he asked for. This proved to be little to nothing, as since the incident Grady has spoke less than three to four words total, and development has been somewhat stunted since. While he trusts Zunden a little, he shys away from any touch or loud noise, and seldom left his room in the boarding house. Moonstone was entrusted to take care of him incase anything ever happened to Zunden.



Rakshesha - Female Felid (Tiger)
	Rakshesha is a felid taller than most ponies, but still shorter than Zunden by a few inches. She is manipulative and conniving, and is able to work her way into organizations and gangs and quickly gain rise the ranks by the spreading of rumors and causing bad blood between members. She takes an especially large amount of pleasure causing rifts between friends, standing in the background profiting from infighting and ensuing brawls. This was not apparent to Zunden when she first allowed her into the boarding house, as Rakshesha herself maintains a job as parcel-runner as a cover for her secret dealings. As months went by and brawls in the boarding house became more prevalent, Zunden became highly concerned and asked a select few close friends to keep an ear to the ground for what was really going on. After some investigation, Zunden confronted Rakshesha in the back alley of the boarding house and told her to stop her actions or leave the house permamently. Rakshesha responded by pouncing on Zunden in an apparent attempt to kill her, wanting to silence Zunden for knowing too much of her secret actions. Zunden survived only due to her thick scales preventing the Felid's claws from reaching any major artieries, but she was bloodied by time a resident found the situation and aided the saurian in running Rakshesha out of the alley.
	Rakshesha vowed vengeance on Zunden and slunk to the shadows, making two more attempts to sneak into the boarding house and each time being routed by Zunden's friends, kept from harming Zunden again. She since has slunk to the shadows, causing discourse when she can to cause trouble for Zunden and her boarding house. This has ranged from paying hooligans to break windows or spread word of Zunden robbing residents as they slept, to even tipping off guards of the locations of other criminals who Zunden lets live in her establishment. This contempt and manipulation well hid in an outward persona of a trustworthy friend to those she gets to know, letting individuals get comfortable around her before feeding them poisonous ideas and rumors, leaving them to think Rakshesha is the only real friend they have.


Lumberjack - Male Minotaur
https://pastebin.com/w50rS4vm

Lumberjack is a large muscular minotaur with the mind of a child. Having picked a fight with a chaos magi from Litharge, he was cursed with the intellect of a 7 year old. Those that pick on him soon regret it, as he easily dispatches 'bullies' with ease. He frequently refers to Zunden as 'ma', even though she is not a fan of the labeling. Since he has trouble holding jobs to account for his mental age and tendency to get in trouble with the law (due to the former), Zunden has him fetch firewood in order to help around the boarding house.