• View
• Edit
• History
• Backlinks

Singe

Singe is currently a Loner

1.  Appearance

Singe appears much the same way he acts: erratic and disheveled. His coat is a fiery red-brown with a leather-tan underside, naturally rather fine and lacking in distinctive markings. The effects of his affinity for playing with fire make themselves apparent, however: varying splotches of ash cloud his fur, and small burns litter his body. The most prominent burns are along his snout, across the top of his head and a part of his left ear, his fingers, his thighs and upper calves, and the tip of his tail extending nearly halfway down the underside. The pyro's vivid yellow eyes are wide and often red around the edges from exposure to heat and smoke, typically contracted and shifting sporadically. He's relatively tall for a coyote, and though his limbs are thin and wiry, they are noticeably toned from lugging around wood and other materials to fuel his mania.

He covers his worst facial and cranial burns with deep, faded, navy-blue cloth bandanas; one tied round his muzzle, and one worn on his head, with bits cut off for his ears to stick through comfortably. A pair of simple, loosely-fitted pants of matching color cover his lower body in Optime form. All articles of clothing he possesses are burnt in at least one place, and worn from age and use, but typically kept free of dirt. His facial bandana slides back down to his neck to reveal his hideously scorched snout when he assumes Secui form.

Singe prefers Optime form and is typically in it unless otherwise mentioned. When in his bipedal form, he stands at 6' 7", but weighs just 176 lbs. His Secui and Lupus forms share this trend, as well, being 3' 4"/121 lbs. and 2' 1"/22 lbs., respectively.

2.  Personality

Singe is outwardly mad, and most actively displays symptoms of extreme pyromania. He's learned to control and channel his urges into productive efforts, for the most part, though he still exhibits signs of mental and perhaps even physical instability; these effects are minimal to begin with, though they increase to drastic and dangerous levels the longer he goes without lighting a fire. He often keeps his fiery urges in check by keeping two large torches with him, often ignited and carried in either hand (in Optime form) or clenched in his jaw (Secui or Lupus forms). When in 'withdrawal,' Singe deteriorates into bouts of paranoia, schizophrenia, and various tics and behaviors that would denote insanity. Around fires, however, he is exceptionally loyal and even outwardly receptive and empathic, in his own loud, quirky way. He is fanatically protective of things he cares deeply about; his fires obviously top this list, though as long as he remains in control of his pyromania, friends and pack members remain very close runners-up. When it comes to entities that threaten these things, expect him to burn them. With fire.

Singe consistently refers to himself in the third person when speaking, and is all too eager to shout his thoughts, though he is capable of an 'indoor voice', as well. His voice carries a noticeable yet unintrusive rasp, likely from his tendency for screaming and repeated incidents of smoke inhalation. He doesn't speak with any distinctive regional accent, though his words are slightly higher-pitched than most others his age, owing to his diminuitive weight.

When influenced by the euphoria he experiences as part of setting fires, Singe is all too happy to demonstrate his affinity for his creations' violent beauty through fire-dancing using his two favorite torches. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if driven deeply enough into desperation by a lack of ignition over a prolonged period of time, he is equally content to light himself on fire, even experiencing joy from the sensation of being burned.

3.  History

Singe was born to a wandering pair of lowlife coyotes that had decided to try and settle down somewhere - have kids, make friends, mug passersby, that sort of life. He was born alongside three sisters, all of whom were generally stronger, faster, and more intelligent than he was. Though never outright abused, he always caught a hard time from folks around him for being such a load for his family to drag around. Nobody could place exactly what was wrong with him, so Singe paid little attention to his own shortcomings, more focused on trying to find something he did excel at.

It was during a brush fire that threatened their home, however shabby and makeshift it may have been, that something finally clicked in Singe's idle mind. While his parents and his sisters fled the blazing brush, Singe had stayed back, completely and totally mesmerized by the flames - how they danced and flickered with a sort of violent grace, bathing their surroundings in the colors of a wondrous sunset, consuming all that stood near them without discretion, reservation, or mercy. The blistering heat that radiated so intensely from the blaze seemed to warm his very soul, spreading through his veins as it would spread across the branches of a tree.

His family did eventually manage to pull him away from the inferno before it consumed little Singe, but without the fire's warmth coursing through him, it was as though he was missing something vitally important to his existance. Every passing day after the fire, he felt weaker, more unstable, as though the world would begin to collapse around him. He learned very quickly how to start and maintain fires, the simple action of igniting a small campfire bringing him tremendous calm and relief as that soul-embracing heat seeped into him once more. It was sort of cute, at first, watching the wiry little pre-teen assemble all sorts of forest clutter and try to figure out how to make it ignite, often burning himself on the rare occasions he did succeed, but once he started, he could hardly stop. Every day, he'd ignite something just to see how it burned - sticks, plants, trash, clothing, even his family's possessions. Steadily, his habit became less of an asset and more of a nuisance, until one night, one of his fires spread to his family's new home. Too enthralled by the flames' spectacular dance, Singe did nothing to extinguish the fire or warn his kin of what he'd done. When the blaze had subsided and their second home lay in ashes, Singe had failed to recognize the full extent of the consequences of his mania-induced inaction: the fire had taken the life of one of his sisters.

'Exiled' is a light term for what happened to him next. He no longer had a family to care for him, no one to rely on but himself. Singe, however, had something else to help him survive - something no other beasts had in the way he did. He had fire.

Spurred by the loss of control that took the life of his sibling, Singe dedicated himself to mastering the flames, learning what materials burned, how easily they would ignite, the scents they released, how difficult they were to gather and transport, how the flames spread, and how to control that spread. Where his family would no longer provide for him, the fires would.

Thoroughly enlightened in the ins and outs, the capabilities and limitations of this scorching force of beautiful destruction, Singe thinks himself ready to return to the companionship of family - but with the one he was born into so far away, physically and emotionally, the wild-eyed pyro sets out to find a new family; one that never knew him as the incompetent whelp that scorched his own home and killed a sibling; one that would see him for what he was - an enigma of fierce loyalty, crippling instability, and fire.

Especially fire. Fire! FIRE! LOTS OF FIRE!