The Branoc Exorcist

Exorcist: one who purges demons, spirits and souls from unwanted places. One marked by the veil, shunned. A dirty thing to be. To be able to seize evil presences, one must be able to touch them, and for one to be able to touch evil, well, surely they must be its kin. Branoc: black-feathered folk. A Hylian word for Rito possessing dark plumage, a word of superstition and prejudice.

Hatched to a Rito tribe from the northern plains, this corvid calls himself neither of those words. The Branoc Exorcist is a boogeyman, a spooky fiction. Those who truly know him call him only by his name: Hosa. And the thing he most wishes other people would understand about him is that the ability to see and commune with the dead does not an exorcist make. Still, percieved through a lens of taboo everywhere he goes, the reputation clings to him like his own shadow.

The Rito are a nomadic people, and so it is in Hosa’s nature to be a wanderer. Unlike Rito travelling customs, though, Hosa wanders alone. He’s reclusive and anti-social, and spends as little time around people as possible, and not just because of the stares he gets in public. One can only go so many years surrounded by ghosts only they can see before they start to feel haunted themselves. Hosa tries to use his gift for good, but sometimes, on clouded nights under the new moon, invisible against the ink-dark sky, he wonders if this gift is really a curse.