A Black Kite (bird) on his left pectoral, sitting on a burning branch.

A paw print of a bear on the right side of his back.

A claw mark on the left side of his head, from a bear, hidden under his hair.

Lichtenberg marks on his left forearm running from the palm to the inner elbow. Looking like a branch of lightning encapsulated.

Knicks and cuts on his fingers from working with heavy woodcutting machinery.

Heavy scarring on the palm of his hand due to impalement with a bladed weapon.

The right arm's bicep is scarred due to a bite from a bear.

The right shoulder has claw marks as well as the left side of his torso along his ribs, from a bear.

Josef wears comfortable clothes. Long shirts, heavy-duty jeans, and heavy boots due to being raised in Palladol.

Though he will adorn this with his tinkerer's outfit. A long leather duster, leather straps crossing his body holding numerous toolbelts, and metal bits.

Boots have logger spikes where the steel toe is supposed to be.

A strange jar wrapped with a metal Faraday cage with glow-bugs within hangs from his belt like a lantern alongside a lightbulb surrounded by a chemical fog.

A strange metal bound glove on his left-hand ticks as if it had a timepiece attached to it, with cables connecting it to the odd lantern.

He is the average height for a Palladol-bred kinsman. Though he is the shortest in his family of self-proclaimed guardians.

Clear blue eyes, and light brown hair that is usually waxed or greased naturally. Smelling of ozone, cedar, and pine.

Clean shaven and mostly covered in dirt as he doesn't find cleaning his outerwear necessary in the wilderness.

A hatchet on his belt.

Josef talks to himself, talks to his bugs, and just talks in general. He doesn't like silence unless he's hunting something.

Josef denies magical nature and talks circles in explaining his inventions, his abilities and even citing the amount of strange things he's eaten or inhaled while experimenting or in the woods.

Cleans his fingernails with his hatchet.

Likes taking things apart, but not really understanding how to put it back together again.

Failing and going back to his Family would be a disgrace. He left his life behind to become a great 'scientist' and nothing will stop him from trying to achieve his dreams.

Dark Waters, he doesn't like it, has a superstition that he'll drown one day.

Josef is a good man who is following a dream. Making him optimistic and forthright. Stubborn to a fault, he will always try to do what is right.

He is friendly and though he doesn't look it, he is approachable and will be as genuine with everyone as he is with anyone. Making no judgments.

Josef is also in denial of his abilities are magical, his Familiar leaves it be and continues to act as the voice in his head. He will adamantly deny all and any claims toward him being magical or that he has a familiar.

His Family in Palladol are big in their circle, for keeping the woodlands safe and being Guardians of the outer reaches where beasts lay in wait.

No one else has come to the big city from his Family.

Guardian-cum-inventor / tinkerer, he is trying to invent or believes he has invented a power source that could help the modern world.

Capturing light itself with a techno-bauble. He also fixes toasters, televisions, and other devices using pure intuition and rote.

Born and raised in the middle of nowhere, Palladol. His Family are rangers, guardians, or watchmen of the forests. Whatever you call them, they lived in the forests, surrounded by animal life and beasts. To the point where technology did not stray too far into the woodlands. This meant that every single generator and technological marvel was repaired, jury-rigged, and stretched thinly in order to keep it running for just one more day.

His Parents, Kelly and Derek Hartland weren't the tinker types, even though Josef was enamored by the idea of machinery running on electrical power. His Grandfather, Jakob Hartland taught him everything he knew of machinery, which wasn't much. But it allowed him to know how to fix a television, and the local generator, and know when something was kaput. On the other side of the spectrum, his Mother taught him self-reliance and his Father taught him how to survive in the wilderness.

Everything was fine and dandy until the day that he went on a hunt with his Father at the age of 16. A bear had attacked someone near the outskirts and they needed to put it down. They tracked it through dozens of kilometers of wilderness until the path split into two. Though his Father tried to deny Josef's claims that it was better if they split up, he could not beat his stubbornness and relented. His Father headed southwest and Josef headed west, alone into the darkening woodlands.

What happened was that Josef snuck up to the bear and brought it down with a shot to the side of the head from a fair distance. What he didn't know was that its mate was bearing down on him. A struggle of life and death occurred. When he woke up, his vision was blurred and his Father stood mauled by the Bear. Josef smiled and told him everything would be fine, as Derek told him to stay still, and that he'd go back for help. Shambling back through the woods.

That was when Josef met the imaginary thing, the hallucination that showed him the light. Literally and figuratively, it was like those little rods that floated across her eyelids when you stared too long at the sun. It whispered kind words and Josef couldn't hardly believe his luck, that he was dying faster than his Father could get help. Hallucinations only occur when significant blood loss occurred. The next time he woke, he was in bed, healers looking over him as he asked his Father about the hallucination of a willow wisp. No one saw anything, confirming Josef's beliefs that it was all in his head.

Too bad the claw to his head damaged him somehow, as he kept seeing this light, this fractal thing that whispered kind words to him. No one else saw it, or at least, it vanished each time others were about. Solidifying in the teenage boy that it was brain damage and that mentioning it anymore to anyone else would probably get him into trouble. This continued over the years as he developed his skills in the woods and took a liking to speak to the mote of light, his inner self. To the point where no one batted an eye when he cracked up laughing or talking to himself. He knew the rumors, but he didn't quite care, even if he was a little off, he was integral to the people here.

Soon his Grandfather became too feeble to keep up the maintenance of the equipment in the wilderness and so Josef took it upon himself to do it. Learning quickly, he built minor things and objects, until one day the voices in his head told him to go far into the forest. On a moonlit night, in a secluded valley pond where a single tree stood. His mote changed into a firefly or a swarm of them, he wasn't too clear on the how or why. Likely the swampy gas that came from the pond from some kind of underground well of methane. He captured this thing and talked to it, receiving an idea to create a contraption to harness the strange bugs for power.

This was where he horribly scarred himself multiple times, playing with electricity and uncovering copper wiring, metal gloves, and albeit crazy inventions. Until he was able to shoot pure unadulterated light that could burn wood. Josef realized his dreams and continued to up his craft until he could save up enough to go to the big city, to show his inventions to the colleges and gain fame or recognition for his work. Little did he know, that this was all an elaborate lie because his mote-made form didn't know how to broach the subject of his denial.