Here is the background for Yamui:
Yamui was born to a rural family of farmers in southeastern France in the spring of 1926. His early childhood went fairly well, his family was well regarded in their province, and they had a large swath of land. He grew up a few farms over from the girl who would become his future wife, Fleio. They were close even as children and would enjoy running and hiding in the nearby fields. Even when a great economic hardship hit the region, Yamui’s family was able to live off their own crops, if at a substantial drop in profits, and Yamui was able to spare a portion of his own meals for Fleio and her family, who had holdings far smaller than his own. Eventually, they began to near adulthood, setting aside funds for a family, and discussing becoming engaged once Yamui was able to be financially independent from his own family. Sadly, their dreams would be shattered by the advent of war, which led to Yamui being drafted for the defense of his homeland along the Maginot Line. Not to be deterred, Fleio volunteered as a nurse so as to stay close to her love.
Yamui passed through training with ease as a result of the strength he had developed through working the land as a farmer, and he quickly was sent to the front in a squad with a fellow conscript, Asher, and a volunteer, Matthias, as well as a older and grumpier veteran, Javert. Similarly to Yamui, Asher had a hometown sweetheart who joined up in the local hospital alongside Fleio. Time passed quickly through the winter, until the late spring, where the group suddenly woke to the sound of gunshots nearby. Startled, they quickly filed out of their tents to find an enemy tank division had snuck through the woods during the night and encircled their position. Faced with either an abrupt end to their lives or surrender, they chose the latter, though they later wondered if the former might have been preferable to what was to come.
After days of internment in an enemy camp, they were escorted in the early morning to a decrepit train station, marred with damage from artillery shells. As they were being loaded on board, Yamui spotted Fleio and Lana being loaded into the adjacent car. He called to Fleio, and was noticed, but was beaten back by the guards before he could reunite with his love. Malnourished from the lack of food, and thus frail, Yamui was helpless against the shoves that forced him into the train car alongside his fellow prisoners. The ride was long and the confines cramped, with none possessing the room to sleep, and only meager crusts of bread provided for nourishment.
When the train finally stopped two days later, they wearily stumbled from the train pressed forward by strikes of the guards’ batons. They arrived at a desk and were sorted into three lines, the left containing the elderly, women, and children, the center containing men, and the right an assortment of people for which there seemed to be no underlying factor of age or gender. Yamui and his squad were pushed into the rightmost line, and to their momentary relief, they were joined by Fleio and Lana. The group was then pushed into a series of buildings, through a physical examination as rigorous as any military’s, and finally were ushered into gigantic rooms filled with shower heads on either side. They were each then chucked a crumpled uniform and told to change and clean themselves before proceeding in 10 minutes. When the door they had entered from closed, the shower heads began to turn on, pouring down water so cold that one of the other people ushered into the line got minor frostbite from the water that pooled at his feet. After 10 minutes passed, both doors opened, and from the first entered guards screaming at them to exit through the far end, beating those unlucky enough to be in a state of undress, though occasionally they did…worse. Pushed on by the screams of their compatriots the prisoners trundled forth into a large barracks room. From the left entered a man with glasses and a piercing gaze.
“Hello vermin,” he began, “welcome to your new accommodations. My name is Dr. Mendel, and in coming here, you have volunteered yourself for the trial of some experimental substances for the longevity of life. Should any of you wish to leave, now is the time.”
Hesitantly, a few of the soldiers Yamui knew from other barracks stepped forward, representing maybe a third of what remained of the group of 64 prisoners, or as they would now be known, test subjects. Once people stopped coming forward, Mendel smiled and said:
“Thank you for your cooperation. You will now be exempt from the trials, the guards to my right here will relieve you of your duties. Franz?”
A burly guard from the right stepped forward and escorted the test subjects back into the shower room, closing the door behind them once all were accounted for. He then turned to a panel to the left of the door and flipped a switch. Moments later, Yamui began to hear the screams of anguish that would become his constant companion for the rest of his life, plaguing his dreams with the knowledge of what he had narrowly avoided. Still smiling, Mendel continued:
“In time you will come to envy them, for the rest of your deaths will not be brief in the slightest. You will be fed more than the rats outside, but only to keep you fit for the medicinal trials, which as of present have had no success with the past…” Mendel pauses to check a ledger, “2,692 subjects. Welcome to Dachau. It shall be the last place you know in your life..”
Setting the ledger down he gives you a final menacing glance before exiting the room. The guards in the corners serve as chilling reminders of the fates met by Yamui’s compatriots, and soon they eat a meager but decent meal before retiring to a restless slumber. When they wake they are escorted to chambers, and what takes place within them is beyond description. Suffice to say the mortality rate is never beneath 60 % on a given day, and even those who live suffer, and the experiments take months to refine, until eventually, they begin to work, due to some breakthrough in a separate facility. Yamui, Asher, Lana, Fleio, and Matthias are lucky enough to survive. Javert and countless others are not. When the survivors emerge from the facility, liberated in the final days of the war, they discover their aging processes have slowed dramatically, aging merely a month over the course of each year. Though not the immortality the enemy had sought to imbue in their subjects, their lifespan is far beyond the range of any other mortal man.
As the years tick by, Yamui and Fleio marry and settle near the Franco/Italian border at the base of the Alps, content to live surrounded by the beautifully harsh landscape of the foothills of the ever looming mountains.
(Events of Nino (Revised) occur).
As the days wear on, Yamui begins to question if he had ever seen Nino at all, or if he had imagined merely as an excuse to see his friends again. He begins to resume the walks with Fleio through their remote tract of farmland that had been interrupted by the search for Nino. As they walked, they noticed the lands around them were quiet, strangely devoid of the wildlife that had always been plentiful in earlier seasons. Yet as they started to turn to head back towards their homestead to rejoin Asher and the rest of the group, darts shot from the shadows of the early morning, piercing their necks and knocking them unconscious. When they began to stir, they found themselves lying atop an altar in a cold and forbidding cavern, surrounded by the lifeless husks of the animals that had once filled the woods with sound. Yamui attempted to cry for help, but found himself gagged by the dormant heart of some creature and tied still by sinews carved from its body. He watched as two figures entered the room, recognizing Nino with a cry of recognition, quickly stifled by the ominous aura seeming to emanate from Nino’s companion.
(Events of Nino (Original) occur)
As Yamui stumbled from the room, carrying his half conscious wife against his shoulder, his mind was filled with nothing but fright of the monstrosity he had just seen appear from The Hunter’s ritual. Limping off into the night as fast as possible, he encountered a man who claimed to know Fleio during his descent down the ridge. Yamui quickly related to the man, who said his name was Caspian, the events that had just transpired, then continued in his desperate flight as Caspian charged up the ridge in the direction from whence Yamui had come. Finally reaching the lodge at the entrance to the reserve, he broke into a car and drove to his home, collapsing against the door in exhaustion as his friends opened it with expressions of shock at Yamui’s sudden appearance. He woke later that evening to find Asher and Lana waiting in the living room, Matthias presumably out patrolling the home’s perimeter. He shared his story once more, watching their faces contort with the realization it must have been Ninno they had chased earlier that autumn. As they sat there processing their daughter’s role in Yamui and Fleio’s kidnapping, they turned towards the window, drawn by some indescribable presence. While Asher and Lana rose, Yamui screamed and ran in fright, calling for them to leave, saying that they were in danger. After glimpsing the approaching bloodied amalgamation of wood and stone, Yamui’s companions fled with only slightly less desperation than Yamui. They quickly found Matthias and Fleio, before fleeing into the night, as they have been ever since, attempting to put as much distance between them and the creature who pursues them for reasons unknown, at least to them.
