DISCLAIMER: This is a Role-Playing Character.  All information contained herein should be considered both fictional, and out-of-character knowledge ONLY.  Storytellers wishing to weave any of this information into a storyline are welcome to, provided you ask first.

Though by all accounts this person is extremely talkative, open, and unsecretive, his origins are bewilderingly murky. Using our Arts, we have been able to trace his birth to a nameless village of less than 40 persons, located on the slopes of Ongakeyama ("Mountain of Music"), in Nagoya prefecture, approximately 100 miles West of Tokyo.  His precise parentage is unknown, though we suspect Irish bloodlines due to his red hair, fair skin...  and certain other factors, which shall be discussed later.  He was orphaned at or before the age of 1 year old, and thus has no memory of his parents.

The next five or six years are exceedingly murky; one might even venture to say opaque.  It can be easily surmised, however, that the boy's early years were not easy ones.  His foreign appearance would no doubt have made him an outcast in the insular society of Japan.  His own earliest recollections (and our Tracings) place him on the streets of Tokyo, begging and scrounging, at what would seem to be eight or nine years of age.  The turning point seems to have come when he found a discarded, junk guitar in a dumpster and began to teach himself to play.  His income grew, his meals became more regular, and his confidence improved, until one day he was noticed by a Japanese businesswoman, Yukio Mori.  Ms. Mori is a patron of music and theater in both Japan and the Bay Area, and she took the boy under her care, arranging for his placement in the San Francisco School for the Arts.  (It may be worth noting that the street-corner minstrel at this point has no name other than the one he has chosen for himself.  As a street-rat, he was merely "gaijin," or "akai," 'red one'.  The name on the passport provided by Ms. Mori was "Akai Koji" - "Red Orphan".  And he has as much as admitted that "Kit" is a private joke.)

 
 
Using the name "Kit," our minstrel has settled quite happily into the San Francisco street scene. Apparently groomed for more formal musical endeavors at the School for the Arts, he turned his back on classical music and now plays bars, clubs, street-corners and Rennaissance Faires.  He came to our attention after Lady Kasumi ap Tyrr of House Gwydion, holder of the freehold Club Reverie, took him as a formal vassal.  He has done numerous small services for the commoners of Goldengate, and gets on rather well with them, especially the Pooka and Eshu.  His strong fear of violence is quite well-known, as are his romantic preferences; he has been known to take home a different young man every week.  He seems to prefer black-haired men with blue or grey eyes, who are taller than he himself is.  

The question remains, What is he?  Most of the commoners of the city seem to feel he is either Pooka himself, or kinain of Pooka ancestry.  While Kit seems to know enough of Fae ways to further this misperception, the facts do not bear it out.  There is a report that he has transformed himself into a fox on at least one occasion, and he tends to be found in too many odd circumstances, surrounded by Prodigals, for mere coincidence.  He has extensive contacts in more than one Prodigal community, and seems unafraid of moving between normally hostile camps.  The minstrel is prone to odd lapses, similar in some ways to symptoms of Bedlam, in which he addresses companions by names other than their own, and uses markedly different speech patterns - in one case, he spoke fluent Latin and Welsh, neither of which he has any basis for knowing.  His Banality is so low as to be nearly non-existent, comparable to that possessed by our own Kinain, the shapeshifters, and insane Magi.  We have ruled out the possibility of his being Kinain; current speculation is that he is either some type of shifter that we have had no contact with, or perhaps a Magus on the verge of breakdown.  Alexander ap Liam, apprentice lorekeeper, has proposed that perhaps the minstrel is one of the mythic hengeyokai of Japanese legend, but since there has been no sign of the hengeyokai since before the Sundering (and even then, reports were doubtful) such speculations must remain, at this point, mere theory.

                                 Respectfully submitted,

                                 Sebastian ap Eiluned,
                                Lorewarden for the Duchy of  Goldengate