Evan Friave-Goodlace

Evan's mission is as follows: he gets to babysit a litter of Khipri! Lucky guy. Young khipri are puppy-sized, with tough scales like a pangolin, but a long furred chinchilla-like tail and long rabbit-like ears, but by six months they're about the size of tigers. They need lots of warmth and attention to thrive, which is where Evan comes in! The ALASTAIR unit on this world is a little caught up with some local issues, namely the fact that this litter's mother and every other Khipri adult is getting poached, so they don't have the firestarting hands to spare.

Neither the species doing the poaching nor most of the members of the ALASTAIR team that's borrowed Evan are strictly humanoid, and so Evan spends most of his time with the khipri litter feeling as if he's bunkered down in the middle of a monster war. It's not so bad, though -- with a little bit of help from his loaner team Evan excavates and kits out a den in relatively protected territory. The team leaves him with food supplies for the kits, a general guide to the non-poisonous foliage in the area, and some brusque but heartfelt wishes of good luck, but the general consensus is that the more they check in on him, the riskier it is for the hidden litter they're trying to safe, so Evan is mainly on his own.

He regrets that fairly quickly. There are six baby khipri to keep track of and they're at the age where their energy is boundless. He quickly grows to adore them despite his caution about getting attached (leaving Imber behind broke his heart a little, after all), and ends up naming them for the pine cones they resemble -- Douglas Fir, Blue Spruce, White Spruce, Jack Pine, Juniper and Giant Sequoia (who is the runt of the litter). He spends any time he's not spending working on improving (and improving the camouflage of) the den chasing the little creatures around. They're smarter than they look, and Evan more than once questions the assertion that they aren't at least slightly sentient. They escape the den a lot until he gets canny to their tricks and sets up a door that takes thumbs to operate. This works while they're still smallish, at least.

As a surrogate parent, Evan isn't exactly a khipri himself. He can't teach the youngsters how to hunt or the ins and outs of surviving the native hazards that their planet has to offer, but he does his best. One thing he imparts with careful thoroughness is caution around strangers; the kits are naturally friendly, and Evan's terribly certain that's going to get them poached themselves the moment they meet some unfriendly creature in the woods. He hides them whenever anyone comes to the den to visit, even friendlies, and guards them with a great deal of suspicion for anything odd in the woods.

About halfway through his stay, one of the species that includes the poachers finds the den and just about makes off with one of the kits while Evan is sleeping. The kits have learned some of his caution, though, and Juniper squawks up a storm while she's being kitnapped.

Evan just about fries the intruder in his panic. It effectively runs the poacher off, but Juniper is burned too. He calls his temporary team in a tizzy and they send a healer to help, but Juniper will always be marked on her right side where the flames got at her. Evan is wracked with guilt for this, and rather than risk it happening again he conscripts help to relocate the den. The changed location works, and when it's time to go, his litter is alive and well, about the size of pitbulls, and absolutely heartbreaking to say goodbye to. He has tried to draw their likenesses before he left, but he's no artist and they're pretty bad representations. If ALASTAIR allows it, though, he's kept a few scales from their not-infrequent moulting. He is eager for adult conversation with other sentient creatures again, even if he will deeply miss his entire litter of troublesome pinecones.