I realized I didn't post this.

This is Dylend, the most justifiably angsty raccoon dude.

He was there when the Mana Tear formed.

At the center of the tear was an improbable web of now flayed leylines that once promised incredible power to those who held the land, but such power causes envy.

Stationed as the lead defense mage of the lost citystate that is the ground zero of the explosive conflict, because of Dylend the aggressors faced mutual destruction but his actions caused the formation of the tear itself.
Once Dylend saved as many as he could holding back the floating city's onslaught, but at this scale magic was unpredictable and once Dylend could finally strike back his actions caused a cascade that was felt the world over as the leylines simply broke.

His instruments screeched as the energy swelled, the only thing he could do now was seek refuge in a stasis and hope the city survived.

It didn't.

A couple centuries later he was accidentally roused from his stasis by Nicole, where the magical radiation near the ground zero quickly saturated him and the lasting glowering hate from the dead floating city finally found him. A combination of propaganda and developed prejudice lasted well beyond the deaths of the people that held them. This stewing hate turned Dylend into what those people considered a verminous and dirty creature. Dylend however looks at the animal creature he became with more of a neutral stance, but it does mean literal racism turned him into it which is a bit of a bummer. He finds later that every time he travels near ground zero he will be reset to this raccoon form as the dead perceive him from their haunted city.

He's on the up and up though, while his magic doesn't work like it used to he knows how to use all of the fancy, now artifact, magic arrays in the Mana Tear which never leaves him lacking for work...Even if it's now 2 feet shorter and fuzzy. He could do without the demonstrably prejudiced malevolent spirits though.