The above picture was made by Wilk Fiadh, found either here on FurAffinity or on Weasley.

Physical Description
Standard Build
Raf is a black ferret with a golden mask. The same golden coloration extends to his hair and eyes.

He normally has a slim build typical for a ferret, normally comparable to that of a runner’s build. Raf isn’t as adverse to putting on muscle as Ryan is, but his lifestyle normally doesn’t support it beyond a little bit of beef.

His personal scent, to those species able to identify individuals by scent, is chocolate liquor.

Typical Clothing
Raf’s clothing tends to be practical for the situation, no matter what. When there isn’t something practical for the given moment, the ferret appears to be very lackadaisical about his clothing but in truth Raf sees situations everywhere and calculates appropriately. His color preferences are white and blue.

World Variations
The primary world variation for Raf is on the community of Crimson Flag. Raf is still a ferret there and most of the description still stands... it’s just that there Raf is a toon, meaning he walks around in just his lab coat without any pants and no one seems to mind. The fact that a naked toon automatically sports the Ken doll look probably helps.

Personality Summary
General Attitude
Raf appears to be cheerful at most times. Sometimes this is the honest truth, but often it’s a careful mask. Raf is very analytical and does his best to always put on a facade of being happy out of a desire to no depress other people. That isn’t to say that Raf is really depressed all the time, he just has a lot on his mind...

...a whole lot on his mind. Raf’s baseline supernatural is that he has every possible idea that he could have at any given moment at every given moment. The good ones, the bad ones, and the ones the outright mad ones. The very fact that the ferret can function at all is because he can be analytical and filter out from those myriad of thoughts which ones are Raf. That means Raf is what he chooses to be and not a deterministic output of his life.

Berserker Button
Due to the self determination of Raf’s identity, identity rape is a sensitive issue with the ferret. This creates an ironic situation where Raf will toss his own sense of identity aside in order to stop people who are attempting to strip the identity of others. This state is one of the few times he’ll actively consider the idea of harming other people and, given the nature of his mind, what he decides to do to these people can be outright demonic.

Typical Talents
Mundane Abilities
Raf is a master of almost all the technological skills native to his current setting, and at least adequate in in the technical skills needed to apply them. Master or not, few settings are in need for renaissance men other than the renaissance, so he often applies himself in the most inventive way he can find. Engineer, programing, bioengineering... and agriculture in the event of a very low tech setting.

Above all else, though, Raf is inventive. Given the nature of his mind, all possible ideas he could have at any given moment lies at his fingertips; sometimes you really want to choose something new. New doesn’t necessarily mean clever though; sometimes simple solutions are best and Raf is most likely to miss this simple choices.

Raf rarely has formal combat training, but that doesn’t mean one should discount him in a fight. Every thought possible at any given time means he has a wealth of options, and a lifetime of quick calculative decisions to make up for the lack of reflexes. With that said, he still prefers ranged combat if only for the fact he tends to invent guns more than swords.

As a final note, Raf normally has quite a bit of social training, formal or self taught depending on the setting. This doesn’t make him a savant, but instead makes him just about normal. With so many ideas in his head, it’s hard form him to choose from the correct action at any given time. So instead of choosing, Raf develops protocols for regular social situations and tighter parameters to further limit his filters for choose reactions to irregular social situations. It isn’t perfect, and it often leaves his actions staggered slightly as his mind double checks to make sure he isn’t going to hurt someone’s feelings, but it’s a lot better than nothing.

Power Potential
Raf’s supernatural abilities tend to favor technology. It might seem unusual to consider technology supernatural, but when your focus is quantum wave fronts... well as Raf commonly states, physics disowned him long ago. While skilled in various forms of traditional mechanics and biochemistry, Raf’s SCIENCE tends to be fueled primarily by an ability to take the base code of the universe and reprogram it on a localized level... when the setting allows for the supernatural.

Element wise, Raf is light. He’s as cheerful and sparkling as the stars in the best of times, and as merciless and sundering as the sun in the worst of time. As reflected in his power, Raf’s inventions tend to reflect change, creation, and other constructive forces. When they do reflect destructive forces, they tend to do so in as creatively brutal ways possible.

Creative History
Character Origins
Raf Cian was born in the Napping Cat’s Dream, the setting of a web community created around the Master ZenDoeMeow webcomic. Known as sequentially as the Dream, the community was about characters from many settings gathering together in one hub. There were original characters, supporting characters for the original characters, and the personal avatars of the players themselves. That last part is important to Raf’s story.

Raf was created because I didn’t want to create a personal avatar character, despite my deep love of stories where the meta was a part of the story. I just considered it gaudy, and in one of my many acts of unnecessary and probably false humility, I decided to create an original meta character. Raf was to be a character of development that knew for the entire journey that he was a character. To get him started without developing him too much prejourney, I formed him from a fusion of three existing characters of mine on the Dream: Ryan, Azrim, and Fimnai.

Yes, Raf is an acronym of his three “fathers” as it were. He came into existence as a ferret/cat hybrid with a needlessly complicated fur pattern. He was a lot snarkier back then, and for good reason. He had to be my voice while still trying to do his best to push himself forward as a character. That effort never went anywhere, mostly because I never managed to participate in an RP that didn’t die on me, and eventually he was redesigned. He was allowed the base powers of an aware character in the Dream, if only for flavor, and he simplified down to being just a plain ferret.

Time passed, and eventually the managers of the Dream decided that things had progressed to the point that they had to shut down their dream. There was a one man coding project out there with the goal of recreating a new RPG community with the tools any forum RPer could want... I’m not sure if it ever got anywhere, but it was in preparation for that community that Ryan and Raf started forming their dynamic balance.

For the most part Raf adjusted to be Ryan’s counterpart rather than the other way around. Ryan was already order, and Raf was unhinged enough to be chaos. Ryan was stoic, so Raf became more cheerful rather than snarky. Ryan wielded magic, so Raf would wield technology. The differences built up more over time till they became who they are now.

Raf joined Ryan on the SMT MUCK for a few final years, and I used him as my handle and character to join a furry community known as Crimson Flag. Both helped developed his personality and science wielding persona, not that the snarky guy isn’t in there somewhere, but he’s been properly restrained by social protocols. This development added a new polar dynamic to Ryan and Raf... Ryan’s critical development came front loaded at the very beginning, while Raf’s was back loaded at the end... an ironic dynamic considering that Raf is beginning and Ryan is endings.

But with that said, more and more time passed... but I always have stories on my mind... so many stories... And with growing importance was Raf and Ryan’s story... a story... a world they could call their own. It’s grown to be a lot more than that... it’s in many ways by this point my perception of the universe from a literary standpoint.