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Status: In acceptable physical and mental health. No significant injuries to note.
Mood: Apprehensive but excited


Consumables
50 g/ a handful of activated charcoal: Recently made. Useful for producing potable water in the field, although boiling it first is preferable.

Travel provisions: Two or three days’ worth in the form of hardtack, dried or salted meat, and a small brick of tea (or a convincing substitute). All acquired locally, pathfinder rations ran out weeks ago.

Filled canteen: Holds about a quart or liter of water. Slightly battered but very rigorously cleaned.


Equipment
Pathfinder gear is typically built for reliability over raw performance. While capable of withstanding harsh conditions and some mishandling, examples of it are often only slightly better than comparable modern-day equivalents, especially given the kassari’s status as a relatively young civilization.

Handheld ground-penetrating radar: A standard pulsed subsurface scanner capable of detecting small voids, chambers, or cavities behind solid material, or buried objects in loose medium (identified as areas of unusual density). However, its small size and limited power restricts it to a range of several meters at most, and it must be placed in direct contact with a surface to function. Any material shielded against microwave-band radiation, be it via physical properties, enchantments, or otherwise, will render this device ineffective.

Thermal imaging and visual magnification optics: Normally integrated into pathfinder vacuum suits, this piece of equipment was hastily improvised into a standalone headset for the Illos expedition - the same one that led to his arrival here. Although designed with low-light conditions in mind, its ability to detect short-wave infrared emissions allows a user to maintain a level of visual acuity in dense smoke or fog. Usually worn raised above head or around the neck when not in use.

Multi-environment scout drone: A small “+” -shaped autonomous craft roughly the size and weight of a mobile phone. Depending on the environment, the upper arm of the plus sign is one of two modular propulsion units - a cold-gas maneuvering pack and integrated propellant reserve for airless and tenuous atmospheres, or a pair of magnetic ducted fans for denser ones. The lower arm features a central port designed to interface with a docking bracer worn on the user’s forearm, while the ends host a range of sensors and instruments. These include optical cameras as well as miniaturized IRST and lidar units, allowing the drone to both aid in cartographic survey efforts and investigate areas too restrictive and/or dangerous for living explorers.

Signal repeaters (x2): Compact transceivers designed to receive and re-broadcast signals from both the drone and its semi-autonomous external control unit. Scout drone can deploy or retrieve one repeater at a time, allowing it to lay a short “track” that can bypass RF-blocking materials in winding passages to a limited extent.

Dustgun sidearm: A handgun that delivers a solid balance of power and ease of handling, issued to pathfinders for self-defense. The primary component of this weapon is an electrostatic accelerator, firing ferrous shavings smaller than a grain of sand at extreme velocities. To prevent these near-microscopic projectiles from instantly ablating away in an atmosphere, a precisely timed laser pulse aligned along the accelerator ionizes and rapidly expands a channel of air just before it fires, creating a short-lived vacuum for the round to pass through. This two-punch combo delivers combined muzzle energy for each shot comparable to that of a modern battle rifle, for a fraction of the recoil, and the tiny size of each projectile allows for a very large reserve of ammunition. However, the weapon is quite energy-intensive, and the very short duration of the pulsed vacuum channel places a hard limit on range at roughly 90 meters.

Rechargeable power cells (x8): Advanced solid-state batteries that utilize a high-density ceramic electrolyte. They power every piece of equipment listed thus far, making the energy they contain a valuable and limited resource in the field. Luckily, every cell features thermoelectric plates and can be replenished if placed in direct sunlight, or near a campfire.

Folding multitool: Contains a variety of small implements useful for in-field repair of equipment, interacting with mechanical structures, or very cursory sample and object analysis.

Air filtration mask: Another item exclusive to the Illos expedition, where full pressure suits were temporarily shelved to ease logistics and allow pathfinders more time in the field. Protects both the eyes and respiratory passages when worn, but is of unknown effectiveness against magical toxins or contagions.

Bedroll: Bought somewhere nearby. Human-sized, so it doubles as a blanket…cozy?

Collapsible shovel: Fairly small and cast from aluminum to save weight. Still a useful tool in a variety of situations, and a potential improvised melee weapon.
Jiyarin is a citizen of the Wayfarer’s Rest, a large interstellar spacecraft designed to support a modest standing population as an autonomous city-state, while plying the trade of freelance long-range exploration and astronomical survey as its primary service. Though not native-born, outside circumstances resulted in him joining its crew at a rather young age, and he considers the vessel and its people home. Having completed the requisite education and training a year prior , Jiyarin was made a junior surface pathfinder - an exploratory operative tasked with assisting in the mapping of newly discovered worlds, investigating points of interest, and performing preliminary scouting before the arrival of more specialised research or resource extraction efforts.

When the Wayfarer was chartered to aid in the ongoing survey of Illos, an Earth-like planet bearing a mature biosphere, he was among one of the exploratory teams sent to its surface. Said team lost contact with both orbital and surface expeditionary coordinators, following their discovery of an ancient ruin partially subsumed beneath towering lichenous karsts, and the inadvertent reactivation of an unknown structure within. Losing consciousness during the event, Jiyarin awakes isolated and in a world far removed from the one he’d known..

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