Herald
The Unlikely Chef
Appearance
A giant rat, still prone to walking on all four legs, with famously 'pristine' hygiene standards (he sticks his whole hand in his mouth and licks it clean before cooking).
Personality
An earnest, self-taught chef who takes cooking deadly seriously. Bad with humanoid names, so he hands out nicknames instead, and he has not responded well to being told he must now wear pants.
Backstory
Life was easier before self-awareness: find food, eat, sleep, repeat. That ended the night an aged druid called Grandpa awoke Herald to be his assistant. Herald threw himself into cooking, and after Grandpa's death took work in the kitchen of the Thirsty Alpaca Tavern, until a case of severe food poisoning laid low a guard captain (definitely not the firebrandy incident) and sent him fleeing into the woods. Resolving never to sicken a patron again, he took up toxicology alongside finer cooking. While digging through a mountainside for rare spices and herbs, he found a malnourished, barely-breathing man on the ground and, rather than be blamed for another corpse, set up camp and began preparing a meal.