Yoshi Solistari

Overview
Full biography found here.

Appearance
Hair: Long, black and straight

Skin: Asian, on the lighter side (mixed heritage)

Eyes: Dark brown

Height: 1.80 m

Weight: 67 kg

Markings/Noticeable Features: Yoshi takes great care of his appearance and unless there has been an accident in the lab, he makes sure to always be spotless, well dressed and clean-shaven. Although it’s not exactly in fashion with most gentlemen, he keeps his hair long and considers it his pride. In public, he conforms to Steamhaven’s fashion standards, but at home he sometimes enjoys oriental style robes, channeling his mother’s heritage.

Personality
Yoshi is the perfect combination of absolutely sweet and a little deranged. Thanks to his mother’s influence, he has been raised to kindness and politeness, which, combined with his pleasant, soft looks can easily win people over. He moves with an unassuming elegance and approaches others in the same manner. In high society, he does the small talk and never forgets to thank for a favor. When dealing with individuals below his class, he doesn’t appear judgmental and treats them like his equals. Beyond this exterior, though, is a young man that can be sarcastic under the right conditions, incredibly passionate when it comes to science or love, childishly excited when he sees a small animal, and opportunistic when presented with an interesting offer.

Science is Yoshi’s passion, his one true calling, and there isn’t much he wouldn’t be willing to do in its name. His mind is always working on creating a new, glorious invention, but what actually lies behind this addiction is the age-old desire to understand everything about the world, human nature, life and death... To discover the secret of creation, master the process and enhance what nature - or a deity, should one believe in any - bestowed upon us. Whether some of his practices are humane, or how much collateral damage should be allowed, is open for discussion, but it can safely be said Yoshi is not a mad scientist - yet.

Surprisingly enough, when it comes to personal life, Yoshi is quite shy and insecure, which probably comes with being homosexual in a society that largely disapproves of it. While his father knows about his preferences, he still keeps them a secret from his mother, who would be entirely heartbroken to find out. In Steamhaven, he intends to stay deep in the closet as well, especially because he is well aware of his aunt’s opinion on the matter. As long as she believes he intends to get married and start a family one day, he can enjoy the benefit she offers. However, with this approach, it is downright impossible for him to find love, which he desires very much.

Abilities & Proficiencies
Yoshi‘s main strength is science, both on the theoretical and practical level. He is highly intelligent and well-studied, capable of creating unique inventions, some of which breach the border between living organisms and machines. Rather than heavy machinery, he focuses on mechanisms that require a lot of detailed work, such as clockwork automatons. Channeling his family’s interest in music, he is most famous for his “Mechanical Muse”, a life-size automaton with an incredibly realistic voice, which could outperform every opera singer. Rumour has it that the secret of this masterpiece lies in the use of real human vocal apparatus, and while Yoshi simply dismissed them with a smile, it is not impossible. Another excellent piece of work is his own pet, a half-flesh and blood, half-mechanical ferret called Sir William Florence- literally a "roadkill" that has lost the hind legs and part of its body in a chariot accident and was nursed back to health by Yoshi, equipped with mechanical legs, tail and spine.

His other inventions include, among others, a selection of mechanical animals with practical use – an owl that can record messages, a cat with deadly claws that pisses acid, a mechanical firefly and a couple of spiders that can open any non-magical lock. He‘s also well-versed in upgrading and maintaining weapons, and can use them, too. (At least when it comes to long range weapons, because he certainly wouldn’t win a knife fight.)

A talent in biokinesis assists Yoshi in his experiments. Although he doesn’t use it very often, aware of its harmful effects on his overall health, some of his best works have benefited from combining science with magic and fusing mechanical parts with living organisms in a way he never could have achieved otherwise. Some might argue that a couple of these inventions should not be allowed to live/exist, as they are abominations, but for Yoshi, his work is merely progress, extending the possibilities of nature, magic and machine.

History
Yoshi is the second son of Cornelius Solistari, the black sheep of this famous house of artists, poets and musicians. In his youth, Cornelius bet all his abilities and finances on a project involving wind instruments that amplified magical spells and abilities associated with air, which failed quite spectacularly. And so did the next attempt, and the next. Having blown his entire fortune, Cornelious reached to less favourable ways of funding his experiments that bordered on crime. Eventually, with a suspected murder and severe debts on his account, Cornelius fled Steamhaven in hopes to resume his work elsewhere.

During his travels, the now outcast family member got by pursuing odd jobs, until he finally got lucky - not with his pet project, but with a lady. As the Solistari are famously pretty and charismatic people, he managed to charm a wealthy heiress from a land so faraway that she had never heard of him or his little problem before. And, knowing he had to take what was offering itself to him, Cornelius quickly proposed. The couple had three children together that are not kept on the records of House Solistari, yet still bear the name: Takeshi, Yoshi and Mitsuke.

Being the middle child, Yoshi rarely had the full attention of his parents - it was either his older brother and family heir they focused on, or his little sister, who was sickly as a baby and spoiled well into puberty. But he never lacked anything when it came to his material needs and the lack of pampering allowed him to focus on what he truly liked. At five or six, he was already excessively curious about how everything in the world worked, and as he began tuition, one could always find him looking at something under the microscope, putting some kind of primitive mechanism together, drawing fantastic, flawed but very imaginative blueprints and... examining insects and other small creatures, much to his parents’ disgust.

His father was supportive of his pursuits and over the years, they’ve built up quite a nice relationship - probably because Cornelius himself had never quite finished the invention he’d dreamed about and was living vicariously through his son. Meanwhile, Yoshi began to show some real talent, winning awards for young scientists left and right, and just like his father, he wouldn’t stop in front of anything to make his dreams come true. Not all of his inventions were a success and several notable accidents happened in the family’s basement, one of which flooded the entire mansion with crickets during a Christmas dinner, another almost caused a small cave-in. Yoshi’s mother suffered through it all and insisted on teaching the boy some manners to counter the influence of his father, which didn’t meet with much resistance. To Yoshi’s dismay, however, she would never stop giving him his older brother as an example - he never caused trouble as a child, and as soon as he grew up, he married well, made one good investment after another, owned a popular opera house and began spawning one perfect child after another.

In attempt to please his mother - since in her culture, family meant everything and respecting one’s parents was a must - Yoshi tried to rein in his passion for a short time and even learned to play the piano, his mother’s favorite instrument. And began to date a girl from a good family. Within half a year, however, he made two very sad discoveries: he wasn’t interested in piano, and he wasn’t interested in girls. Dealing with the problem in the “Cornelius” way, he applied for University in a different town, which gave him a polite reason to break up with the young woman and fully delve into what never disappointed him: science.

Over the years, he gained quite a reputation in the science circles and next to respect, his inventions slowly began to earn him some money as well. Yet at the same time, the number of inventions too macabre to present to the world was growing too. That had a lot to do with the fact that soon after his eighteen birthday, Yoshi discovered a dormant talent for biokinesis that a fellow university student and aspiring mage helped him develop. Using the power usually left him weak and in unspecified pain for days, but it was worth it, as with it, he could truly bring his projects to life. One of them, a half-mechanical ferret, remained as his pet, while another, a two-headed dog whose heart had been replaced by a mechanical one perished after two months.

While quite callous when it came to science, Yoshi was rather naïve in the question of love. He couldn’t prevent falling in love with a fellow student, an aristocrat two years his senior, called Samuel Wallace, yet failed to notice that Samuel was merely in the phase of experimenting many students went through when far away from home. After the most intense year of Yoshi’s life, Samuel graduated university and left for home without so much as a word. Desperate, Yoshi looked up his address and sent him a letter, but instead of him, it was Cornelius who got a reply: from Samuel’s father. It was a request that his son is never contacted anymore, along with a thinly veiled threat of exposure. Several emotional telegraphs later, it was agreed that the matter would be discussed at length during the summer break, but Yoshi’s mother would be left out of it; a situation that never really changed.

Two years later, Yoshi graduated with honors, his final project being the famous Mechanical Muse, and began pondering where to go next. His career, he felt, was only about to really begin and needed a boost. Unexpectedly, an opportunity came from Anise Solistari, an aunt he had never seen, and who - as he knew, because Cornelius stressed it over and over - hated his father. Apparently, she was afraid that the House would remain without a male heir, as her daughter was firmly in a relationship with another woman and there were no other children that could produce prospective grandkids, and was now reaching out to distant relatives in despair. The official version of the letter Yoshi received failed to mention any of that: it simply offered him a chance to pursue Doctor’s studies at Steamhaven Grand Academy for the Arts and Sciences, teaching younger students and primarily working on his own inventions, which were to be funded by the University.

Given the prestige of the institution, it wasn’t an offer he could refuse, even though his father warned him of the obligations that would be attached to it, because -he- had received quite a different letter. But, whether he would be trying to avoid an unwanted marriage here or there didn’t really matter to Yoshi, and besides, he was excited to live in Steamhaven, a place where his career could truly grow, as well as eager to meet his relatives - ironically, mainly Suki. More over, seeing as his branch of the family had been cut off by the House, it was his duty not to give up on an opportunity to restore honor. And so it didn’t take long for him to appear on his aunt’s doorstep.

His entrance into the local elite went quite well, he is settling down at the university and even found another source of income: Horace Moore’s clock shop, which he found very fast. After the closing hours, other useful mechanisms than mere clocks are being traded there, and Yoshi is quite good at working with those. The future is looking optimistic for him right now. However, that is always a subject to change...