• View
• Edit
• History
• Backlinks

Jantus

Jantus was a longtime friend of Skoll. He returned to the Bleeding Souls area in order to give his friend a proper burial, and came accompanied by a crew of several other characters. Jantus and his friends remained rather close to Phoenix Valley territory throughout their stay.

History

Jantus was born to Crythe (cry-thee) and Hobburn (hawb-ern) in April of 2005, near the border of the Evergreen Pack, a group of wolves that numbered eleven strong and vied with neighbouring groups for territory. While the leader, Gypsum, was at first hostile toward the pair and their brood, and disapproved of their close proximity to the pack, both parents were very formidable in size, and not directly a threat against Evergreen's interests.

When Jantus was seven months old, Evergreen fell, and Gypsum fled alongside seven of its original members. Jantus's family fled with them, fearing the notice of the victorious group, and eventually the fleeing party regrouped into a new pack, called Wintermark.

At first, Gypsum retained his alpha position, and Hobburn made no quarrel because he and his family numbered five, whereas the seven previous members of Evergreen supported his claim. For some time thereafter, the pack retained a certain level of stability, and Crythe bore another litter, bearing Jantus's two younger sisters: Mala and Ranya. Nevertheless, when Jantus and his siblings were fourteen months old, having lost his mate in the fall of Evergreen, Gypsum desired another, and made his interest in Gatha, Jantus's sister, known. Hobburn would not have this, and violence ensued.

The entire pack knew what was coming, and all uninvolved parties made themselves scarce. Crythe, who knew that her daughter had only a blurry knowledge of how she was involved in all this, talked Gatha into leaving the heart of the territory for a time, and returned to meet with her mate, who she knew would be fighting the alpha for his daughter's freedom. Gypsum's son, Vindel, as well as his second in command, Brodi, supported their alpha in his claim on the young girl. The battle was lawless and brutal. Hobburn died fighting against Gypsum and his son together before Crythe found him. Crythe died of blood-loss twelve minutes later with her jaws still locked onto the exhausted Vindel's neck. Jantus had met Brodi in the forest, and broke his neck with his arms. Gypsum stood over the slain parents of his mate-to-be, but knowing well the strength of Hobburn's son, fled in fear of him on four legs. Jantus was a strong fighter, but he was not an excellent tracker, and he did not know where to look for Gypsum who knew the countryside well, and was faster.

In the aftermath, Jantus ordered Wintermark to disband, and they obliged him, abandoning the territory that he claimed belonged to his parents as a final resting place. He desired to be with his siblings, to stay there long enough to raise Mala and Ranya together, and then to find other wolves, better wolves than those of Evergreen, to begin anew somewhere far off, but Pogrin left with Gypsum's daughter Neri, and soon after their younger sisters were grown up, Gatha expressed her desire to join a pack rather than start one from scratch.

Jantus desired to chase down Gypsum, but lacked the skill, and eventually began wandering; his two young sisters chose to accompany him. He and his sisters were sometimes accosted, for life in that territory was fraught with violence, but such was his strength and his will to live that he was never bested, though he had the sense to avoid pack-territories anyway. Eventually, he found a place called Snow-Capped Pine, and decided to settle himself and his younger sisters there.

At first, the place bothered him because of its likeness in name to Evergreen, but he soon found it to be a much different kind of company. The wolves there valued his strength in battle, and scorned the thought of battle amongst themselves for the sake of trivialities such as mateship. Parents had defined rights within this pack, that the pack would defend in spite of any alpha's ruling. It was not a civilized pack by any means, and was one of three in a narrow valley vying for territory, but it had a loose code of laws that were followed, and possessed a moral character that he found to his liking. Jantus's life became more violent while living in the Snow-Capped Pine, but he found that he liked this family better, and was happy to risk injury for their cause.

In time, under the leadership of a wolf named Bold, the pack came to dominate the valley in which it lived, and in driving out its foes, it prospered. Jantus was not the eldest of the wolves, but his strength granted him a comfortable position within the ranks. Strength, he learned, was a good thing to have in a society of warriors.

The fabric of morality and ideals that held Snow-Capped Pine wolves together against their adversaries eventually led them to the aid of a golden wolf whose scars were impressive even by the pack's standards, and whose story was even more incredible. The wolf's name was Skoll, and he told them there was need of a crusade against a murderous religious faction in the west. He had already gained a small retinue of would-be soldiers from other packs, who had rallied to his cause, and not willing to be outdone or to back down from a test of courage against the most blatantly evil wolves they were like to come across in this life, the pack agreed that some of its members should be sent with this wolf to vanquish this foe.

Bold chose to go, and insisted that Jantus come with him. His Beta, Harner, refused to be left behind. Those three and what amounted to over a dozen wolves that the--at that point quite sizable--Snow-Capped Pine spared for the golden wolf's cause left for battle. Jantus, who already had quite a bit of fighting experience, quickly learned that what Snow-Capped Pine was accustomed to was by no means the limit of what war could truly be. The Shadow Priests, as Skoll had named them, were the most twisted, vile creatures he had ever witnessed, and took to gruesome sacrifice in between battles, generally of prisoners drawn from Skoll's ranks or slaves dragged in from packs abroad. Skoll himself impressed Jantus and Bold as well, not only for his unshakable focus and fearlessness against such dire foes, but for his inexplicable, unrivalled skill. Whatever his history was, was the golden wolf had abilities that far surpassed even the most experienced fighters, and discipline that could carry him through hell and back, and eventually--Jantus was convinced--his followers alongside him.

Jantus was the only member of Pine's leadership to survive the War of Shadows, as it was later named, and only one other survivor from the lower ranks, a wolf named Samson, returned home with him. They had paid a heavy price, but the day was won, and no one who had seen the travesties committed by the cult could question the need for their demise. The two of them returned with their tales of horror and courage, dire foes and conquering heroes, and took the places of Bold and Harner as alpha and beta of the pack.

Jantus met a woman named Vera, a new member who had been taken in to swell the pack's numbers after he'd left, and the two of them mated and had four daughters. As the alpha of the pack, he maintained good relations with all other packs that had dedicated wolves to Skoll's war, and with Skoll himself, who was revered as a hero in Snow-Capped Pine from their return onward.

It was a great tragedy to learn what happened next. A team of four warriors, whose origins he had not had the chance to learn, had passed through Snow-Capped Pine, looking for a wolf named Skoll. With the loosening power of human liquor, the youngest member of the small group admitted that their aim was to kill the man. Enraged, Jantus rose to attack them, alongside many other wolves who were in the company of the travelers at that time. Jantus killed the eldest, and his packmates killed the largest, but the two youngest managed a fighting retreat all the way out of packlands, inebriated through they were; all in all almost half a dozen of his packmates died in the process. It was then that Jantus came to believe that something was truly amiss, for these four had fought much as Skoll did, with his same level of expertise, and he dispatched Samson and a troop of Pine wolves to pursue the remaining two.

It was with a heavy heart that--months after the two had eluded Samson's pursuit--Jantus received word of Skoll'd death by his wartime ally, Aivyr. Allegedly, the old wolf had managed to kill the youngest in hand to hand combat, but that the last of them waited and issued a formal challenge, and the idealistic fool had accepted. Samson set out again with warriors at his back, but he could never find the killer, whose name was said to be Asmodai. Jantus was saddened, but understood death to be a part of life, and resolved to one day visit the place of the golden wolf's death.

Relationships

Family

• Parents - Crythe ♂ and Hobburn ♀
• Littermates - Pogrin ♀, Gatha ♂
• Siblings - Ranya ♀, Mala ♀
• Children with Vera - Fala ♂, Feny ♂, Brin ♂, Vel ♂

Mate

• Vera

Acquaintances

Tayui Aston, Princess Chance, Finn Fidh, Cwmfen nic Graine, Ty Trenton Nasphrite, Anselm de le Poer, Gabriel de le Poer, Jazper Rhiannon, Rurik Russo, Jefferson Soul

Appearance

Upon first seeing Jantus, the first trait that most people notice is his size. While his height is impressive (7'10), it's his girth that stands out, as he's both extremely broad across the shoulder, but is also very thick around the chest. There's no way he weighs less than 550 lbs, and in all probability he ways much closer to 600 or above.

In terms of complexion, Jantus does alright in looks. He isn't particularly handsome, but he hasn't received any disfiguring scars during the war-times where he's lived, save for a missing eye which he has covered with a well-crafted eye-patch. His pelt stands out for its irregularity, with black fur near the top, brown and gray along his flanks and white along his chin and underbelly, as if each one overlaid the next.