Minsk is a darkly complected man with dark hair. This makes his golden eyes stand out as his most prominent feature, especially when he is stalking his prey and they notice his eyes in the darkness before noticing the rest of him. When in the light, the viewer will notice that his face, especially his cheeks, have been horribly scarred from some old affliction. He is constantly on the move hunting fugitives, so he must keep his body in awesome shape. Not only his endurance but also his strength, because this prey often has allies. He is above average height for a man of Flaim.
Minsk wears his armor at all times, other than when bathing and sometimes when he sleeps. His leather armor is a long black vest that extends to mid thigh with a high collar and half sleeves that cover only the outside of his arms. It has been cured too, but dull textured, so as not to reflect torchlight. The leather armor has gold trim around the collar, cuffs, and bottom hem. There is also a lone gold trim band across his chest.
Under his armor, he wears a dark gray wool long sleeved shirt, and tight dark green pants that extend down to his calves. Along the outsides of his legs all the way from his hip to the cuff, is open and laced with leather laces. He normally wears a matching pair of long black gloves and boots that have a leather clasp around the wrist/ankle and elbow/knee. These have been cured in the same manner as his armor to reflect less light.
Minsk wears a sheath for his swords that makes them accessible from above his shoulders, and a quiver of arrows that he wears on his left side. On his right hip he wears a medium sized bag for his equipment.
Minsk uses a pair of matching fourteen inch long knives, given to him by an elf craftsman. They have a slightly curves steel blade and an antler handle, which extends farther up the blade on the back side. He treasures these knives as his most precious belonging and cares for them as such.
Minsk also carries a standard issue bow, but the arrows he carries are especially crafted to stay in the target (not travel through). They have a broader head than a normal arrow, to ensure the victim is in as much pain as possible, when Minsk catches up to them from where he fired. This causes the arrows to have a much shorter range than that of a narrower arrow, and be almost useless against metal armor.
Minsk has an unusual knack for calming canines and training them to aid him in hunting. He has always had a kindred nature with them and has worked to combine it with animal training, making him very good at getting his companions to do what he wishes.
By no means a master craftsman, Minsk has invented his own arrow head, called the Punisher arrow, which he can craft if given use of a smithy to forge the arrow head. If he does not have the parts needed to craft the arrows themselves, he is skilled at finding suitable shafts of wood that he can work into arrow shafts.
Minsk has become known for his tracking ability, both in wilderness settlings and in urban ones. Using a combination of his own skills, interrogation, and utilizing his animals, there are very few places for his prey to hide after he finds their trail.
Minsk is very distrusting of everyone he meets until they have proven themselves. He tends to be soft spoken and uncomfortable when in social settlings, but when he is working a job, he can be very commanding. He tends to get very close to the person he is speaking to, allowing his height and feral appearance to intimidate.
Those that spend enough time with him, see a different side when it comes to this three animal companions. Minsk loves them almost as though they were his children. He plays with them, and works them through their training when given any down time. The four of them even sleep curled up together when outside of civilized environs.
Minsk wishes to continue to avenge the death of Aran, which he views as his greatest failure. He feels that by bringing criminals to justice that he can somehow find redemption.
Minsk was born in a small village in western Flaim. His parents were farmers, as were his several brothers and sisters. They lived a modest life, but they were happy. When the dragon Shooting Star began to burn the villages of western Flaim, Minsk's village was one of the first to go up. He survived the attack by being out hunting small game (playing hooky) with his pet dog at the time of the attack, instead of working the fields like the rest of his family. He saw the fires in the distance and rushed back to save them but was too late. He was unable to save any of his family, and his whole body was terribly burned. He was found by King Kashue's men and brought to a healer, but spent several years in intense pain, while his body healed.
Once he was released he had no money, or belongings to call his own, and no family to go back to. With little else for options he joined the Mercenaries Guild and began taking jobs. None of them were too difficult, because he had very little real skills, but as he successfully completed more and more of them he started to become good with knives and the bow and arrow.
In his spare time in between jobs, Minsk began to work with the stray dogs around the Mercenaries' Guild Hall in Flaim. He would train them so that they would appear to be docile and to do tricks for passers by, but with a specific snap of his fingers they would immediately become vicious guard dogs, keeping intruders at bay. The higher-ups in the Guild noticed what he was doing and began to pay him extra for his work with the dogs.
When he returned from a successful mission, he was horrified to find that some of the other mercenaries in their boredom had begun to make the dogs fight each other and to test the limits of the dogs' endurance. Minsk immediately stopped the dog fights and berated those involved, but could not regain the trust he once had for them, so he quit the Flaim Mercenaries' Guild and moved back out into the wilderness of western Flaim, his only companions were three wolf-dog hybrids that he raised from puppies; Midnight, Twilight, and Dusk.
One stormy night there was a knock at his cabin door. It was an injured elven woman. Minsk took the beautiful elf in, but he was no healer, and her wounds were infected. With the storm in full force, Minsk would be unable to get to a proper healer for a couple of days. He made the elf as comfortable as he could, cleaned her wounds, changed her bandages, and tried to help her eat and drink. In her times of lucidity, Minsk found out that her name was Aran, and that she was a Ranger from Raiden.
When the storm ceased and the passes were once again transversable, Minsk went to get a healer, leaving his animal companions to guard the elf. As he traveled, he realized that he had begun to fall in love with the elf. It had only been a couple of days, but in that time he felt a kindred of spirits that he had never felt before. With the healers help, Aran survived but her right arm was severely crippled, making her retire from her duties as a ranger.
Minsk and Aran spent the next couple of years together as a happy couple. They never married and although they tried, were never able to conceive a child. Aran taught Minsk the skills of a ranger as best she could which made life easier for them on their own.
One day, Aran announced that she was going to visit her family, and she wished Minsk would go with her. He agreed and the couple, with their three 'children' (the dogs) packed up what they needed and began their trek. Just as they got to the outskirts of the elven land they were attacked by a group of humans. As the battle ensued, Minsk realized that the men attacking them were his fellow mercenaries from Flaim, the ones who had been abusing the dogs there. Apparently they had been fired shortly after he left, and became bandits, blaming him for their misfortune.
Together with Aran and the dogs, they bested the bandits, chasing them off as they did not wish to kill needlessly. Minsk and the dogs went to make sure that the men did not double back, as Aran cleaned her wounds. What he did not know was that one of the bandits had not entered the fray, simply observing from a nearby tree. When Minsk left, the sniper launched an arrow and killed his elven love. Upon his return he found her body and thanked the gods that it was unspoiled. The bandit was satisfied with her death, and did not torture her. Wrapping her body in her cloak, he followed the trajectory of the arrow to the tree the sniper had hidden and began to track the scoundrel down.
When he caught up to the man, he was already dead, killed by the elves of Aran's homeland. They assumed Minsk was an ally of the human and were about to kill him as well, when they noticed the cloak that Aran was wrapped in. Demanding an explanation, the elves allowed Minsk to tell his tale. The elves believed him and brought Minsk and Aran's body to her family. Unable to become part of their family, her parents gave Minsk a pair of ornate knives that would have been Aran's wedding gift from them.
Minsk could not live among the elves, as seeing them every day reminded him of his loss. When he told Aran's family that he was going to leave they saw him off, wishing him happiness. Minsk traveled to Raiden and reported Aran's death to her former superiors. They were saddened by his loss, and offered him a place as a Ranger of Raiden.
Minsk found that the life of a ranger did not satisfy a need within him, so he also joined the Mercenaries' Guild of Raiden, and began to combine the skills of both ranger and rogue as a bounty hunter. He finally began to find the peace he sought by bringing in criminals, especially ones that had performed similar crimes as those that reminded him of his own past. He continues to serve duties as both ranger and bounty hunter.