Bayun is a were-cat who lives on Buyan Island, though he shows up there far less often than the fairy tales say. He gets bored there, so mostly he just wanders the forest and annoys the hell out of everyone. He’s got a long history — in his youth he was a volkhv, decided he could heal better than the gods, and the gods did not appreciate that. Now he’s an enormous grayish-brown cat, four-hundred-something years old, with iron claws, who can talk and abuses that ability terribly.

He has a habit of sniffing strangers when he first meets them and purring involuntarily. He walks by himself, heals, tells stories that are half true, braids other people’s hair without asking, and kills those who find him boring. The last one is rare, but it happens.

Inside is a mini lorebook about his immediate circle and the world at large: Yagun (black-haired, yells through the whole thicket and flies around in a broken mortar), Koschei, Morok, and the Master of the Copper Mountain. I made all of them hot guys, and Koschei and Yagun have a little romantic subplot, because I can.