Y'cak Bloombright, Badger Handler

Y'cak Bloombright as a young girl.

 Y'cak Bloombright is a elven badger-handler who lives in the city of Absalom.  Y'cak was born in the Chelish colony of Sargava in 4602 AR.  Her parents were elven scholars and brightness-seekers who came to Sargava to work for the colonial government.  When the death of Aroden in 4606 shook Chelish power in Garund, Y'cak's parents sided with the natives in a failed revolt, and were killed by the devil dogs of Cheliax.  The infant Y'cak was smuggled to Absalom in a pickle barrel, where she was adopted by an aging human wizard with a fondness for pickles.  It is oft joked that her disposition was formed from her journey in the brine.

     Y'cak grew up in the market stalls of Absalom, selling her adopted father's mechanical birds, picking pockets and pretending to smoke pesh cigarettes.    She took a job waxing badger harnesses in order to woo a young man, and took to badger handling quickly.  Sadly, the young target of her affections was petrified after an unfortunate encounter with a cockatrice, but Y'cak stayed on at the badger handling shop, since she had been getting bored with him anyway.

Another satisfied customer
at the Fierce Stripe.

     Y'cak can generally be found in the yard of the Fierce Stripe, Absalom's premiere badger handling establishment.  There she trains badgers as guard animals and pets, and specializes in the crafting of fashionable badger saddle bags.  She is occasionally called on to remove a badger from a business or residence, since the harming of a badger is strictly against the law in Absalom.  She is a young elf with the grace of a well-strung puppet, with skin ruddy from the badger-yard.  Though tall boots and thick gloves work better for tricky badger extractions, Y'cak tends towards business attire, with a taste for scarves and shrugs from the markets of Katapesh and Jalmeray.  When she came of age, she got a magical animated tattoo of a badger, named Nina.  Usually on her shoulder, Nina sometimes wanders down her arms or on to her face.  She drinks fine Dwarven mead in small amounts, though after a bad day at the yard Y'cak has been known to over-indulge in Taldoran wines, which she thinks are fancy and has often found herself cleaning from her bed linens.  Though she has frequent suitors, she is holding out for a gnome, man or elven princeling who works outside of the animal handling and tack professions.    

Jesus, Galadriel, look at the size of that badger!  Run along and tell your mother to  call Y'cak!