Halan

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  1.   1.  Appearance
    1.   1.1  Coloration
    2.   1.2  Other
  2.   2.  Personality
    1.   2.1  Demeanor
    2.   2.2  Ideals
  3.   3.  Relationships
    1.   3.1  Family: Families
    2.   3.2  Relations
  4.   4.  Interaction
    1.   4.1  Abilities
    2.   4.2  Inventory
  5.   5.  History
    1.   5.1  Cercatori d'Arte, Midnight Souls, and Life as a Loner
    2.   5.2  Timeline
    3.   5.3  Threads

by Kite

Halan is the son of Michi and Anna, born in Berlin. He is currently a loner living in the ruins of Charlottetown.


Overview

Basics

Heritage

NPCs

Etc.

PLOT OPPORTUNITY!

OOC ASSUMPTIONS!

  • Halan loves plants, and would gladly purchase some more exotic ones.
  • Finding a friend (or frenemy) who was from a pack Halan is prejudiced against would be interesting.

Currently, none.

1.  Appearance

In his Optime form, Halan is a tall, lanky wolf with dull gray fur and yellow eyes. His fur is neatly kept, and he shaves his hair so that there's only normal fur on his head.

Halan's fingers are longer and thinner than that of most Luperci, which does give him a definite advantage when tinkering with things. When handling objects that could catch onto his fur (or are sharp and poke things), he wears long, fingerless gloves. These are made of zip ties, twisted together and fastened with more zip ties. This does not provide him a very wide range of movement, but is sufficient for grabbing onto things.

Generally, he prefers to avoid wearing clothes, as he finds them rather uncomfortable, and doesn't see the point when it isn't so cold his coat won't keep him warm. When working, though, he wears a vest with pockets, the better to keep stuff in. He wears a bit of lime green sea glass, wrapped in old copper wire, around his neck. Sometimes, he also wears a bracelet made of twisted wire, with bits of shells tied snugly to it.

While Halan isn't the most active individual, he's prone to getting sudden bursts of energy. When he does, he gets twitchy and tends to make short, quick movements. This has an unfortunate tendency to startle others.

Halan almost never takes his Lupus form. When he does, it's to more easily move through underbrush, or travel more quickly. Much like his Optime form, he is long-legged--which provides an advantage in travel.

1.1  Coloration

  • Optime Hair: N/A (keeps it shaved)
  • Eyes: Pirate Gold (#B88300).
  • Fur:
    • Primarily Storm Dust (#6B6C6A).
    • Cloudy (#A7A6A5) and Alto (#D9D9D9) scattered and ticked throughout coat

1.2  Other

Modifications

  • Piercings: N/A
  • Tattoos: N/A
  • Scars: N/A

Accessories

Halan tries to wear things that fit his idea of what Lupercai society should be--he likes designs that might be considered "primitive," but prefers vibrant colors, advanced materials, et cetera. He also tries to distract from how dull and boring his coat is.

  • one necklace made of twisted bits of wire enclosing a large piece of green sea glass.
  • one bracelet made of twisted wire, with shells that have had holes drilled in them strung along it

2.  Personality

Overall, Halan is quiet and reserved. He'd much rather spend time immersed in a book or tinkering with technology, than socializing. Even when he is around others, Halan tends to the quiet side... until someone brings up technology or philosophy, at which point he quickly becomes drawn into conversation, and proves himself quite eloquent. Striking up a conversation is the easiest way to form a friendship with him, and once one does, they'll find that he is quite loyal.

Halan is a firm idealist, believing it is the destiny of the Luperci to establish a thriving civilization that exceeds that of humanity's in its glory. He doesn't wish to recreate human society, he wishes to take its technological feats in order to more quickly build up a uniquely Luperci society. Since the Luperci are a fairly young phenomenon, Halan hopes to prove himself to be part of the vanguard of a new age. Unfortunately, he's impatient with the pace of progress, and is a bit of a control freak. The result is that he made a decision to move to a more primitive place.

He naturally finds himself drawn to shiny items, and those who know him well joke that he must be part magpie. Sea glass, gemstones, metals--anyone who can get him a particularly nice specimen will find that they can trade it for quite a significant service on his part.

Before the death of his mentor, Halan was quite the rebellious young wolf.

2.1  Demeanor

  • Occasionally spaces out when there's something interesting around, then snaps back to the topic at hand with no sensation of how much time has passed. During these periods, he isn't quite aware of his surroundings, and is focused entirely on one thing, which can be an idea, a daydream, or even a beetle crawling around. Thankfully, this only happens when he is engaged in repetitive manual tasks that don't require the active use of his judgment or mind. In this state, he will continue to perform the task.
  • Attempts to appear calm, dignified, and polite, no matter the circumstances. This trait actually gets more exaggerated the angrier he is, until he finally snaps and goes berserk.
  • Anyone who manages to get past his mental and social defenses will find that he's incredibly haunted by the death of a mentor figure, and the knowledge of his own mortality. Having caused Ingnere's death, he also has yet to come to terms with what he's done--he knows he had little choice, but his actions still disquiet him.
  • The only thing that can conquer his fear of death is a choice between his own life and his ethical principles.

2.2  Ideals

Traits

Dignified, principled, accepting

  • Outlook: Pessimistic in the grand scheme of things, optimistic in the short term.
  • Sociability: Heavily introverted, for a wolf. Halan would happily spend most of his time confined to his space, so long as he could read.
  • Expression: Submissive, to a point. He will absolutely not bend from his ethical values under any conditions.
  • Alignment: Lawful Good

Motivations

  • Immortality -- If there's one thing that Halan desires more than anything else, it's the secret to immortality. This is not something he desires for wholly selfish reasons, but his main motivation for finding it is his own benefit (directly or indirectly).
  • Knowledge -- As far as Halan is concerned, nothing more needs to be said.
  • Enlightenment -- This goes hand in hand with knowledge. Halan's main goal may be the accumulation of knowledge, but he does care about how enlightened other people are, both for the sake of others and the fact that it makes accumulating knowledge harder.

Fears

  • Death -- Halan is absolutely terrified of death. Terrified. There is nothing that frightens him more than the possibility of someone he loves dying, or dying himself.
  • Becoming too human -- It's a bit of a cliche, but ever since Halan bothered reading a history book he's decided that many Lupercai are very close to becoming overly humanized, if they have not already passed that line.

Biases

  • Packs: Views Salsola as collectively guilty for slavery--either they practice it or are collaborators who would defend the right of people to keep slaves. Inferni is often understandable, but unfortunately seems to have a bunch of psychopaths around. Casa di Cavalieri is admirable.
  • Species: Doesn't give a shit.
  • Non-Luperci: Finds non-Lupercai a bit bizarre--they don't need to change form, after all, and it would give them extra years to live.
  • Gender: Doesn't give a shit.
  • Color: Doesn't give a shit.
  • Sexuality: Has no shits to give.
  • Age: ''' Prefers to avoid anyone who looks like they might die of old age soon.

Sexuality

Bisexual, and not particularly comfortable with the idea of a committed relationship. Extremely reserved.

Interests

  • Likes: hippies, ghosts, plants, exploring, books, medicine, animal husbandry
  • Dislikes: aging, slavery, getting into fights, mustard (hasn't grasped that mustard gas isn't related to the plant)

Substances

Hasn't tried anything.

Spirituality

Believes in a variant of Plato's Theory of Forms. He believes in a higher world of sorts, a conceptual space, where ideas dwell. Ideas are given life by the actions of individuals in the material world. Conversely, ideas can be channeled for particular tasks or flashes of insight.

Ironically enough, Halan does actually believe in an afterlife... yet this doesn't affect his underlying psychological issues.

3.  Relationships

* Does not know this person by name.

3.1  Family: Families

  • Mother: Anna
  • Father: Michi
  • Siblings: N/A
  • Half-Siblings: N/A
  • Children: N/A
  • Cousins: N/A
  • Extended: N/A

3.2  Relations

Key Relations

  • Serecen is Halan's best friend, close ally, and the one he left Berlin with.
  • Alya was Halan's mentor. Her death led to Halan re-entering his old pursuits, and eventually leaving Berlin.

Positive Relations

  • N/A

Neutral / Negative

  • Ingnere is the self-proclaimed Great Hunter, and an asshole who sexually harassed Serecen. After Midnight Souls split up, Halan found himself the target of Ingnere, who thought he could be used to find Serecen (in fact, Halan had lost track of Serecen after Midnight Shores broke up). This, ultimately, led to Ingnere's death.

Minor Relations

  • Sex: N/A
  • Friendly: N/A
  • Enemies: N/A
  • Murders: Ingnere

4.  Interaction

  • Speech: mildly accented English, calm tone that turns icy when angry (and devolves into incoherent snarling when enraged)
  • Scent: books, sea salt

4.1  Abilities

Strengths

  • Fishing (Journeyman): While he usually works with Pythia, Halan can fish by himself, either with a net or with a hook and rod.
  • Horticulture (Journeyman): Understands how to take care of unusual plants, and has experience growing plants for trade.
  • Scholar (Journeyman): Halan was educated since birth and so can understand some of the more advanced terminology in introductory science texts. However, much of it is practically useless to him, and he lacks the necessary cultural context to truly understand it--it's one thing to read about what an electron is in a science textbook, it's quite another to understand why that matters. He is by far best at the life sciences, which have captivated his interest for most of his life.
  • Linguist (Dabbler): Can speak fluent German and English, albeit with an accent. Can talk in the dialect of High Speak spoken by dolphins. Can speak very limited French and Italian. Reading French and Italian is easier, though his vocabulary isn't any larger.
  • Scavenging (Apprentice): Halan has lived most of his life in Berlin, which, while mostly cleared out, did have some spots left to scavenge in. He has an uncanny ability to pick out shiny objects from a distance, which gains him a bit of a reputation as a magpie.
  • Swimming (Apprentice): While he usually has Pythia to help him, Halan is capable of swimming several hundred meters without difficulty--in warm weather, at least.
  • Medic (Journeyman): Knows germ theory (note that his understanding of it boils down to "there are small nasty things that hurt us and can be fought by doing X, Y, and Z), and has some knowledge of herbs and cleaning/closing wounds. This includes surgical sutures. After using instruments, he sterilizes them in fire.(:cell width=50%:)

Weaknesses

  • Impatient: Halan needs to feel as if he's doing something, as if he's contributing to the advance of Lupercai civilization. The fact that he didn't feel like he was doing so in Berlin is the reason he left.
  • Emotionally needy: Despite his aloof personality, Halan is a wolf, and instinctively seeks the approval of those higher up than he. He does not like to admit this, however, especially to himself.
  • No combat training: Halan has never been in a fight for his life--even when being pursued by Ingnere, he didn't fight back. He is not totally helpless, and could in fact be very difficult to hunt, but in straight-up combat he is absolutely screwed.
  • Wistful thinking: Halan's entire life is built upon a lie: Lupercai can live as long as humans with the use of human medicine. This is actually both a strength and a weakness; the reason Halan puts so much stock in human medicine is that he thinks the longer lifespan of humans is proof that it works. However, it also means that his pain is renewed every time someone dies of natural causes related to age, because he believes that, were he competent enough, he could have saved them.

4.2  Inventory

Trade

Halan is fair and honest towards most, but has few problems with ripping off someone he finds repugnant. If they're especially foul, he may well refuse to trade with them at all.

  • Offering: plants, baubles scavenged from Charlottetown, fish
  • Accepting: medical supplies, furs, books, plants he doesn't already have

Items

Books

  • science encyclopedia intended for young children (approximately equal in level to this)
  • book on how to take care of houseplants

Survival Gear

  • iron knife
  • hook and rod (no reel, it's just string attached to the a stick)

Other Junk

  • waterproof backpack
  • aforementioned jewelry
  • vest
  • gloves

5.  History

Born in Berlin to two scholars, Halan grew up immersed in books and the remnants of human culture. From the beginning, he was trained to accept anything he read in a human book as correct. Human ethics, human philosophy, and human science were the prime authorities. Anything else was suspect at best; the Lupercai were so young, after all, and the humans had been so advanced. Clearly, any species that could build such wonders and accomplish such feats were to be emulated. For much of his life, he believed that humans were innately superior, and that Lupercai were mere primitives. What were a few clay pots and iron smelting next to the ability to travel to the Moon, or explore the depths of the oceans, or send messages across the planet in a mere instant?

Then Halan finally bothered to read a history book.

He came away nauseous, ashamed of both his own species and humanity. There was mass slaughter, killings in cold blood, decades of war, slavery, discrimination... every evil that human ethics claimed to be against could be found in the pages of their own history, and that history showed the very purpose of his life--the accumulation of knowledge--being used for incredibly evil purposes. And what did that make his own species, the ones who desired to emulate humanity? What madness was this? The Lupercai, he concluded, were losing their way, and trying to be too human was the reason why.

Halan ran, both emotionally and physically. He started to spend all his time in Lupus form in the outskirts of the city, and preferred to associate with more feral individuals. While he still was curious, no longer was he interested in science, or technology, or books. Instead, he wished to run wild. This rebellious stage in his life came to a quick and nasty end, though, when his mentor, Alya, died. For Lupercai, she died old. But for Halan, any death for her was too young. Her death upset him greatly, and ultimately led him to vehemently reject his new ideals and return to his old ones--somewhat. He experiences some degree of cognitive dissonance associated with both believing that Lupercai should make their own destiny and instinctively looking towards human texts for knowledge and guidance. When brought to the forefront, this results in a headache.

This rage over death was only intensified by the reminder that humans could live up to eighty years, five times as long as the normal Lupercai lifespan. Halan saw this as unfair, and it infuriated him. Driven to the brink by grief and rage, he swore that he would beat death or die trying. At the same time, he convinced himself that it was solely the lack of advanced medical technology at fault, and refused to acknowledge the existence that Lupercai naturally aged faster.

Nevertheless, he did not want to become totally human, and he couldn't stand what he felt was the glacial pace of progress. So he decided to throw a dart at a map of the world and go someplace that was an absolute backwater, the better to feel like he was actually getting something done.

Around the time he was leaving, Serecen was the subject of repeated unwanted advances by one of the better hunters of Berlin, so they left together.

5.1  Cercatori d'Arte, Midnight Souls, and Life as a Loner

Once in Canada, he joined Cercatori d'Arte. When it broke apart, he joined Midnight Souls. He was always somewhat of an outsider in both packs, and kept to the fringes of the territory. Luckily for him, he learned the skills he'd need to survive in the wild, because when Midnight Souls broke apart, he didn't join another pack. Instead, he went with a few NPCs and became a loner, living in the abandoned ruins of Charlottetown. They fished for food, collected valuables from the ruins to trade, and Halan tried to keep some of the human infrastructure in acceptable quality.

His life there lasted a few years, but in the summer of 2017, Ingnere caught up with him. As it turned out, his old enemy had been infuriated enough to follow him to the Souls region. Once he was there it took remarkably little time for him to find Halan; to this day Halan suspects someone they traded with sold him out. Obviously, Halan couldn't let an old rivalry fall upon his allies' heads. There were three of them against Ingnere, but Ingnere was combat trained, well fed, and armed. None of them were any of those things. So he fled with the help of Pythia.

The two of them were on the run for several weeks. Halan and Pythia were quite familiar with the terrain, and with Pythia's help Halan could travel over water much faster than the canoe Ingnere had bought. They couldn't lose him entirely, though. Ingnere was a skilled tracker, and he wouldn't hesitate to take hostages to make Halan face him.

But Halan was smarter, and tricky quarry. In late September 2017, Ingnere found himself in hostile territory. It wasn't claimed by a wolf, it was claimed by a male grizzly bear Halan had bribed. Ingnere lost, of course, and Halan traded fresh fish for what he could salvage from Ingnere's corpse. After that, he went back to Charlottetown, but found that his friends had moved in his absence. He remained there regardless, living much as he did before.

5.2  Timeline

2014

  • July: Leaves Berlin.

5.3  Threads

2014

  1. It was a Dark and Stormy Night (12 August)
    Sticks and Stones, with Serecen. The duo travel to d'Arte but get split up in a massive storm that washes Halan off a cliff.
  2. Meet and Greet (14 August)
    Ethereal Eclipse, with Jace Wolfe and Skye Collins. Halan attempts to join Cercatori d'Arte.
  3. It Ain't the Leavin' (23 August)
    Thornbury, with Serecen. The dynamic duo are reunited.
  4. You're close to the epicenter, son. Tread Carefully. (2 September)
    Thornbury, with Jace Wolfe. Halan tries to convince Jace to teach him archery. Also, to not shoot him.
  5. some call it crazy but i call it healing ((so burn it down)) (29 October)
    Ethereal Eclipse (group thread). The Border Tree is burned down.
  6. rain and wind and weather (20 November)
    Arisaig Shoal (group thread). CdA travels to their new home.
  7. Exploratory Party #1 (1 December)
    Charlottetown (group thread). Halan leads some members of Midnight Shores scavenging.
  8. Chicken's in the bread pan picking out dough (6 December)
    Kingsweald, with Jehan de l'Or. Waterfalls are pretty when frozen!

2015

Category: 2012 Births