Niall

Kiwi: He's from New Zealand and he sounds it, and he's half Maori. He tends to stand out because of that - even though Australian and Kiwi accents aren't all that rare on the west coast with the number of travellers. Though rumour has it that he was actually born in Gray Harbor. He definitely has family in town .

Park Ranger: He manages the ranger station closest to Gray Harbor on the edge of the Olympic National Forest. He participates in interpretation activities and patrols the park to ensure the safety of park visitors and keeping out poachers. He's only recently been promoted to the managerial role, and has moved into town. He's one of those people who sticks out because of his accent, but he hasn't been a common sight within the town itself until recently. He's known to be one of the more entertaining park rangers. He makes learning fun! Most people know him as Ranger Tok.

Wildlife Expert: As he's been a ranger in and around Gray Harbor for seven years, he knows the forest and its wildlife very well. He's attempted to research the Veil, but thus far hasn't had very much success. But people might think of him as a potential resource if they're looking for thin points in the woods.

Some people are natural wanderers, and that's Niall Tokoronga. He was born in Gray Harbor, but grew up primarily in Wellington, New Zealand who moved him back when he was just a year old. His parents were a Jewish-American mother and a Maori father. His father was a foreign correspondent turned travel writer, and his mother was a talented photographer. Niall was eight when he first remembers leaving New Zealand when the family travelled through Southeast Asia. Most of his young life was spent travelling with his parents, but Wellington was always home. A love of the natural world was instilled in him from a young age. His parents became a journalistic team, and neither were in to talking about five-star hotels or air-conditioned coaches. Adventure was the name of the game.

So it wasn't surprising that Niall chose to travel when he was old enough. He got a working holiday visa and got on a plane for British Columbia. He taught skiing in Whistler and other smaller ski hills. When his working holiday visa ran out, he applied to work in a logging camp. Niall was always savvy and on the lookout for an opportunity. His visa to work in the camp was only short-term, but he was determined to make himself useful. So he apprenticed under the camp cook. He started out scrubbing pots and pans, and transitioned to preparing and serving. His visa was extended as a result.

One day, the heli-logging camp was hit with an unexpected and violent storm. The crew was struggling to top the trees in an old growth forest to stop the whole stand from collapsing. It was a less contentious but still controversial form of logging that he had been drawn to after seeing the results of clearcutting firsthand. Even though he was a camp cook, it was all hands to try and get the work done on time. The storm hit harder and faster than anyone expected. Niall was assisting a logger trying to top a tree. A wicked wind came up, and the tree went down. He was hit with falling branches and passed out. He came to covered in rain and mud with a head wound. The logger lay half-crushed beneath a tree, his body broken and clearly suffering. It was in that moment of pain and fear that he first manifested his Glimmer. He instinctively reached out to try and move the tree off the man, but to no avail. Niall maintained consciousness awhile longer, and thought he heard whispers and saw dark shadows moving between the raindrops before he lost consciousness as well.

The incident left a deep impression on him. It took months to recover both physically and mentally. At first, the logging company took care of him, but eventually his visa ran out. He was both unwilling and unable to return to work. He suffered panic attacks on the edge of the wilderness, not just because of the accident, but because of what it unleashed. He connected the forest with his burgeoning strange abilities. It was all very disconcerting. He wandered aimlessly around Vancouver, even sleeping on the streets for a stretch of time. Eventually, his parents got in touch with him. They flew to his mother's hometown (and his birthplace) of Gray Harbor where they still had family.

Once there, he slowly began to heal both mentally and spiritually. He met his uncle for the first time. It was Christmas and everyone got a bit too in to the spirits. His uncle let slip that Niall had Glimmer, that others in their family had it, and what exactly that meant. At first Niall didn't believe him, but the more he thought about the drunken words, the more it started to make sense. He was also forced to acknowledge that he could see the Glimmer in others. It was at once terrifying and compelling. He got spooked.

Rather than go back home to Wellington with his parents, he went backpacking across Europe. He signed on board an adventure bus tour company as a travelling cook. He fell in love a couple of times, but nothing ever lasted. There was a part of himself that was forever inaccessible and potential partners figured that out after time. The longer he was away from Gray Harbor and the woods where the accident happened, the easier it became to ignore and forget the finer details of the unease and what he thought he saw in the woods - and even forgetting most of it outright or chalking it up to head trauma.

After two years of travelling, he went home to Wellington. He stayed home for another six months, but eventually his curiosity got the better of him. He got on a plane and headed back to the West Coast - this time to Washington State instead of BC. He enrolled at Washington State University and studied environmental science. He did well there, and he got summer jobs at various national parks. It took him nearly two years to work up the courage to visit Gray Harbor. The first time, he didn't stay. - he just got acquainted briefly with distant relations he'd never met. Then he retreated back to Seattle, finished his degree, and got a permanent job as a park ranger.

One day, Niall ended up at a job shadow in the edge of the Olympic National Park closest to Gray Harbor. Previously, he hadn't spent more than a few weeks in the town. But the job shadow was for the entire summer season. As it tends to, once Niall was there, the town got its claws into him and he felt compelled to stay. He applied for an opening at the ranger station closest to Gray Harbor and got the job.

He's been in town for about seven years now, though until recently he'd spent a lot of time deep in the park. It's only recently that he's been promoted to a management role and now manages the rangers out of the Gray Harbor station. His job these days is more administrative and interpretive, though he still finds his way deep into the forest.

Over the intervening years, he's developed both a fascination and a healthy respect for the Veil and what lies beyond it. He's not as comfortable with the strangeness as long-term residents tend to be, but nor is he unaware of the things that move in the shadows. In fact, he tends to seek things out, and attempts to document the thinnest parts of the Veil (and largely fails.)

He is a tall, lean man with a runner's build. His jawline is squared, but not brutish. His eyes are large and warm chocolate brown. His nostrils are slightly wide and his lips are bowed ever so slightly. His hair, once black, is now mostly silver. It's kept quite neat for the most part, with faint sideburns. He almost always sports similarly silver stubble. His skin is warm and nearly wrinkle-free save for some subtle crow's feet in the corners of his eyes when he smiles. He wears a lot of skinny jeans, plaid and wool caps like a proper PNW hipster when he's not in his on-duty khaki uniform and Smoky the Bear hat of a park ranger.