a.k.a. Reynard (by Dora, during her madness)
Formerly SKALD 9. Currently SKALD 1?
A being discovered with an insane human man at the edge of the pit into the crypts of Briarstone Asylum. He initially presented as a scared, filthy, and malnourished arctic fox.
After looking into the pit and seeing the thing below the earth, Dora immediately began caring for him like a child and gave it the name “Reynard.”
When Dora cast detect thoughts in Chapter 18, she learned that Reynard had an above average intelligence, a level almost entirely unknown for typical animals.
In Chapter 27, while Thema had control of Dora‘s body, she released the fox, who ran deep into the fog of the North Courtyard of the asylum. Dora later found him wrapped around Brin‘s corpse.
In Chapter 31, Reynard expressed great discomfort with the champagne fox that Ray decided to let follow the party.
In Chapter 34, it was revealed that the fox was actually a middle-aged Kitsune man with black and white striped hair. He was also suffering from mental trauma, but remembered a school, and a person—a spouse or lover—and a book, and then… worms. He came out of his transformed state on 3 Neth and met the party and other chapel survivors at Briarstone, where he had been a patient. Naysa recalled stories of him singing to the other patients.
In Chapter 43, it was observed that Barnabus had begun to lose his cheeriness, spending most of the day writing. There was a sense of dread about him, and he adopted his anthropomorphic form. He wept and wrote and hummed and slept—withdrawn and disturbed. But every time he saw Dora, he reverted to his human form to accommodate her.
During the solstice ceremonies in Chapter 49, he shared that his parents, Bassanio and Persephone, were crusaders in Kenabres, battling the cults of Baphomet. When he was twelve he was allowed to accompany the mercenary band, but they were betrayed by a man named Cororin. That was the first time he turned into a fox.
During the Skum attack on the Sellen Starling in Chapter 50 (Part 2), Barnabus was revealed to be a Skald, a melding of Barbarian and Bard with a song that can inspire combat rage in his companions.
In Chapter 51, it was revealed that Barnabus already knew the name of Carcosa, even before he saw the city with everyone else on the Sellen Starling during the botched “Great Harvest” ritual.
In Chapter 62 he was working on The Ballad of Ray, and also revealed to Stazi that he had once been a member of a group called the Sentinels, during his time at the Sincomakti School, after he read the name of Xhamen-Dor. When he learned more about the practices of the cult, he fled to Briarstone.
When the party left on the Sellen Starling at the end of Act II, Barnabus decided to join them for the trip south to Cassomir.
In Chapter 98, Barnabus began to experience physical side effects from prolonged Xhamen-Dor seeding: bouts of distraction and inattentiveness, feeling unnaturally cold or warm and panting heavily.
In Chapter 112, he pondered the nature of his relationship with the party and Xhamen-Dor; then he joined Skywin, Benumy, Stazi, and Nixon in fighting off an extraplanar Alhool that appeared to assault the ship.
In Chapter 116, Barnabus revealed that he had been reading the party's books (and learning Aklo in the process) when they’d been “sleeping.”
In Chapter 120, the sight of Vadrack in his fully exposed form drove him mad, leaving him in a state of profound melancholia.
In Chapter 136, Barnabus got especially drunk, and fairly maudlin, during the festivities of the Night of the Pale. He shared a story of speaking with someone scratching inside the walls of Briarstone Asylum, a being he came to call the Scholar, from whose lips he first heard the Abyssal tongue. And he shared Ray and Thema’s birthdays, which he’d learned during his days pouring through the files in Fort Hailcourse.
In Chapter 139, Xhamen-Dor shared Barnabus’ dream of being back amongst the Sentinels. Geraldine was telling him his time had come, that the seed of the Enemy had progressed too far—and he knew he had to surrender his life for the greater good.
In Chapter 141, Barnabus finished parsing Weiralai’s journal and became fluent in the nightmarish Tongue of Leng.
In Chapter 145, while the party discussed their imminent visit to the Mad Poet’s Oasis, Barnabus spoke up only to express his desire to claw the Inmost Blot out of his head.
In Chapter 146, Barnabus materialized at the Forsaken Caravanserai after the party’s fight with the Yeth Hounds and Denizens of Leng. He revealed in Chapter 147 that he felt he needed to be a part of the journey to the Mad Poet, that he needed to participate in and share the party’s dangers since he potentially stood to benefit from the outcome of their quest.
In Chapter 148, Barnabus experienced one blessed night of sleep without Xhamen-Dor in his head when the party rested on the Dreamlands moon.
In Chapter 150 (Part 1), while crossing the Eastern Desert Barnabus felt the notion that he had anything in his life worth returning to slipping further and further away.
Then, after helping the party defeat the Mad Poet’s Jinmenju, Barnabus offered himself to Alhazred as a willing Sacrifice. The Mad Poet stripped him of his memories and life experience, and forcibly ejected him from the Dimension of Dreams.
In Chapter 151, it was revealed that Barnabus was in the same state in the waking world that the original party had been at Briarstone Asylum prior to their waking at the beginning of the adventure: conscious, but essentially empty. And all of his magic items had been drained of their power upon his waking from the Oasis, as well.
In Chapter 152, Barnabus was slain by the demonic messenger that arrived shortly after Grip woke up in Cassomir, and then was immediately reincarnated by Pandora into the body of a female Sylph. In this re-born life, they were given the new name of Persephone, to honor their mother.
In Chapter 168, Dabwick stopped by Chester and Jaydove’s and discovered that Persephone’s condition still had not changed after several more days of rest and recovery. Whatever had happened to shake the party out of of their communal reveries at the top of the campaign was clearly not happening to Persephone.
Before departing Cassomir in Chapter 171, Dabwick stopped by Jaydove and Chester’s one last time to say goodbye to them and Persephone.
First Reference: Chapter 17
Other Notable References: Chapter 18, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 27, Chapter 31, Chapter 34, Chapter 43, Chapter 49, Chapter 50 (Part 2), Chapter 51, Chapter 62, Chapter 89, Chapter 98, Chapter 112, Chapter 116, Chapter 120, Chapter 136, Chapter 139, Chapter 141, Chapter 145, Chapter 146, Chapter 147, Chapter 148, Chapter 149, Chapter 150 (Part 1), Chapter 151, Chapter 152, Chapter 153, Chapter 168, Chapter 171, Act IV Interlude Part 1