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[credit_not_blame]

Player Information
Name: Kaylin
Age: I am over 18
Contact:
Email: chirospasm22@gmail.com
AIM: chirospasm22
Plurk: owls_in_miss
Characters already in Medietas: None



Character Basics
Character name: Anastacia “Stacia” Novik AKA Stacia Gun-Shadow
Character Journal: credit_not_blame
Canon: Werewolf: the Apocalypse, (old) World of Darkness
Age: 16
Permissions: Available here

Appearance:
Stacia is a very pretty teenage girl who is clearly going to grow up to be a striking young woman. She has pale skin, mid-back length brown hair, blue eyes, and knows how to enhance her looks with makeup and posture. There’s a small tattoo done in black ink on her right wrist of a circle that is thickened on one side to make a very thin crescent moon. She is petite, with the musculature of a cross-country runner, especially noticeable in her legs as she tends to wear short skirts to show them off. If someone knows what to look for, they may also notice interesting development in the muscles of her arms, as she also enjoys running in wolf form.

Stacia is also a smallish wolf with tawny brown and black fur, darker on her torso, lighter on her face and legs. She hasn’t quite grown into her limbs yet, but is sure-footed and certain in her movements. Her teeth are very white and very sharp looking, and her eyes are gold shading toward orange. While she generally appears watchful, she doesn’t seem skittish.

Setting:
The White Wolf Werewolf: the Apocalypse Wiki can be found HERE.
Basically, the World of Darkness is very much like our reality, but darker and with more supernatural stuff going on once you scratch the surface.
Additionally, in Stacia’s particular off-shoot, some of the were-amphibians, were-cockroaches, and were-rhinos had a Come-to-Gaia moment, so there are good versions of those “mockery breeds”.


History Stacia’s parents moved to the United States from Russia in the early nineties and did quite well for themselves in America. Stacia was their third child and significantly younger than her two siblings, so she grew up a little spoiled and the center of attention. She was popular in school, a combination of having a talent for social interaction and her peers having a vague sense that crossing her would be a bad idea. She always enjoyed running and, as she reached puberty, began competing in cross-country events and running both to stay in shape and to help control her somewhat-explosive temper.

This was largely her life up until Homecoming of sophomore year. While she’s still well off and popular in school, her private life changed significantly when her date attempted to assault her and she flew into an uncontrollable rage, transformed into an eight-foot-tall human-wolf monster, and ripped him to pieces. The next thing she knew, she was waking up somewhere else in the woods, surrounded by strange men, and covered in blood.

(They really shouldn’t have been surprised when she started screaming her head off.)

Once she was calmed down and cleaned up, she learned that she was a Garou, a shapeshifting warrior meant to battle the forces of destruction and corruption to try and preserve the spiritual essence of the Earth. If she hadn’t transformed into a werewolf once already, she probably wouldn’t have believed them. To help preserve the secrecy of the existence of the supernatural, some of the Garou were able to disguise her date’s death as a tragic drunken boating accident rather than a monster attack in the woods. Stacia still feels guilty about it, and suffers from nightmares about the event.

Over the course of the next few months, she learned more about this “crazy eco-terrorist murder-cult in the woods” she’d found herself involved in. Another Garou, a man in his early twenties named Ace, took a shine to her and inducted her into his pack even though she wasn’t technically part of the “Garou Nation” yet. She had a lot to learn still, but Ace pretty much decided that it didn’t matter because he didn’t want it to (being both Garou- and ‘normal people’ nobility does that to a guy). At one point, the pack came across a spirit that had been somehow reduced to a husk, which should not have been able to happen and instinctively horrified all of them, Stacia included. They brought it back with them and Stacia personally helped dissolve it in a magical pool. Unbeknownst to her, there were tadpoles in that pool at the time, the children of a Garou and a Kappa (one of the good were-amphibians), and the influx of spiritual energy caused all two dozen of them to become shifters – and one of them to go from a frog-shifter to a wolf-shifter. Once everyone figured out where the naked, shouting teenagers were coming from, Stacia half-jokingly announced that she would “accept credit, but not blame” for the incident. After all, she was a Cub, other people had lead her to the pool, she’d had no idea that there were tadpoles in it! She also promptly offered to help babysit.

Stacia spent the next several months making connections and trying to figure out what roles she wanted to play; ultimately deciding to join the Shadow Lord tribe, the politicians and manipulators of the Garou. It took her awhile to achieve that goal (she was challenged to find the person responsible for burning down a Garou-owned nightclub; that person turned out to be hiding behind protections greater and more powerful than anyone suspected), but she was ultimately successful.

Not long after that, she had a dream in which the archangel Raphael spoke to her about some of the crazier-than-usual things that had been going on in the world. She might have dismissed it if Raphael hadn’t then shown up to inform the other local Garou about the cause of the strange happenings and what they could do to make them stop. And thus did Stacia become the chosen of Raphael to try and convince the archangel Michael not to murder the bejeezus out of all the supernatural creatures on the planet. No pressure or anything.

Against all odds, she and the other Garou actually succeeded in this, also convincing Michael to focus his attentions on the weird Cthuloid thing that was poking into reality as a result of some weird unmaking and remaking of the world event that happened several months prior to Stacia’s First Change. Things seemed to calm down after that, a little, but now they’re heating up again with Kinfolk (people related to werewolves and other shifters but unable to shift themselves) being attacked and humans armed with silver bullets calling themselves the Gaian Initiative hunting and killing Garou. A Shadow Lord kinfolk wandered onto the caern by accident and Stacia is slowly easing him into the realities of life with the Garou. Additionally, the father of the frog-shifter babies recently died in a fight, bringing home a sharp reminder that the world is an awful place and that she’s likely to die young and violently. She has also officially claimed the position of Den Parent, a role which requires her to guide new Cubs in their development until they complete their Rite of Passage and officially join the Garou Nation. She doesn’t technically have the rank to hold the position, but was able to claim it as a result of circumstance and politics.


Personality:
Stacia is a manipulative, self-interested brat. She’ll even admit it to your face if she likes you well enough. She has a short temper, a long memory, and a weakness for flattery. She’s also deeply empathetic, and believes strongly in the importance of showing compassion to those in need or pain. She will always give someone a chance – but if they blow it, they’re going to have to make amends before she gives them another. For all that she still wears miniskirts and low wedge heels for day-tripping in the woods, she also maintains a practical streak that has saved her butt on more than one occasion.

One of the roles Stacia performs as a member of the Garou Nation is that of a Ragabash, the Trickster and the Questioner of the Ways. She leans more heavily toward questioning than playing tricks, and her interpretation of this role is that it’s her duty to make people think about what they’re doing and why, to hopefully prevent them from doing something stupid (Garou history is full of a lot of “someone did something stupid”). Sometimes her questions are honest, sometimes they’re sarcastic, and sometimes they’re condescending, but she asks a lot of them and is refuses to be satisfied by answers parroted from tradition. She believes strongly in personal choice and deciding one’s own fate rather than relying on dictation by outside sources. While a person can’t control everything, but they can control how they respond to their circumstances. There’s nothing wrong with choosing the path of least resistance, but it’s wrong to not acknowledge that it is still a choice. For example, her role as Ragabash was dictated by the phase of the moon that she was born under, but she has embraced it as it allows her more freedom to voice her opinions than she might otherwise have.

As a Ragabash, she has a naturally smaller pool of the supernatural Rage that Garou (and other shifters) have access to. While she could work to expand the amount of Rage that she could access, allowing her to move more quickly in combat and to possibly survive blows that would otherwise kill her, she has only recently began to examine that part of herself. She feels what little Rage she has very strongly, and she’s not sure that she’d want to survive some of the things she’s seen other Garou come back from. She feels like she’s half-monster already, and worries that exploring her Rage would tip her from “half” to “fully”. She’d rather die as who she is than to come back as something…else. She has recently discussed these worries with a representative of the Shadow Lord totem spirit Grandfather Thunder. Said representatives are probably the only things that can tell her to “suck it up, princess” without having immediate eternal enmity declared against them.

Stacia weighed her options and eventually selected the Shadow Lord tribe, the wheelers and dealers of the Garou, mostly out of a sense of self-preservation. She wants power, not for its own sake, but to protect herself from ending up one more warm body for the Garou Nation to throw into the meat grinder. While the Shadow Lords aren’t in charge of the Nation as a whole, they still wield a great deal of power as the seconds-in-command. Stacia decided that she’d rather be one of the people deciding who lived and who died rather than being one of the people who that was decided about. The Shadow Lords also tend to wield power in the human world as well, and Stacia has no intention of giving up her human life and be a Garou all the time. She believes it’s important that the Garou stay in touch with the concerns and lives of both humans and wolves, because otherwise they’re just going to end up shouting into an echo chamber and die horribly. She also selected the Shadow Lords a little bit out of spite, since the tribe that does rule the Garou Nation only accepts those who have a certain mystical pedigree, and as she lacks any sort of mystical pedigree whatsoever, Stacia is offended that she would have been dismissed out of hand. If she can’t wear the metaphorical crown, then she intends to be the most amazing power-behind-the-throne that anyone has ever seen.

While not a pacifist by any means, Stacia responds to careless violence with withering scorn or a furious “what the fuck is wrong with you?” Violence is a tool to be used deftly and precisely, not spread around with a big shovel. She has joked that her preferred method of combat is “standing behind the rest of my pack”, but it is actually hiding up a tree with a sniper rifle and taking opponents down from afar, which has earned her a Deed name of Stacia Gun-Shadow. She has also learned to use her claws, a knife, and a spear because she knows that she won’t always be able to choose the range at which a combat takes place and would rather not die as a result of over-specialization. She is generally capable of keeping her head in a fight, something she still finds a little disconcerting as the world she grew up in wasn’t nearly this violent on a regular basis. She is generally one of the first to offer protection to weaker or injured people, both out of her natural empathy and compassion and also because doing so removes her from the heat of battle.

Upon finding herself in a dangerous situation, Stacia’s first instinct is to call for back-up and to fall back to gather further information. She’s reluctant to abandon others in dangerous situations, even if they got themselves into said situation, but not so much that she will charge in to rescue them without backup or at least more information. She also strongly dislikes being abandoned in such situations herself; doing so will earn her instant enmity which will then be nursed until she can devise an appropriate punishment.

People tend to like Stacia, sometimes against their better judgment. She has a way of endearing herself to those in positions of authority, or even just those whose friendship she thinks may be useful. She does genuinely care for the people she befriends, and is not an unloyal friend – however, if a person screws up or starts behaving in a way that could damage her own standing, Stacia will act to create distance and protect herself. She is also not above using her friendships with authority figures to get her own way, if only to establish that her position in the pecking order can be backed up with significant firepower.

Stacia also prefers to deal with the craziness of her life through compartmentalization, generally indicated by location and the way she is wearing her hair. If it’s loose, she is Normal Human Teenager Stacia. If it’s up in crown braids and/or hidden under her “pack business” blond wig, she is Shadow Lord Garou Stacia. If it’s up in a ponytail, it could go either way. Attempting to blur those lines (someone she only knows from Garou society showing up at her high school, for example) is a good way to trigger her short temper.

Additionally, because she’s keeping her life as a Garou secret from her parents, and one of her packmates is something of a celebrity (and another is, you know, with the mob), Stacia tends to wear a blond wig and covers her eyebrows with a lighter pencil while out on “pack business”. She also maintains an alternate identity to go with the wig, that of a distant cousin of the celebrity packmate, which is backed up by him and by documents created by other Garou.

While she won’t be getting the benefits of her pack totem spirit while in Medietas, the fact that she follows Goat, a totem of cunning, has influenced her growth as a person and as a Garou. This particular goat spirit demands that his followers seek to be under the authority of as few as possible, and that they try again a different way should they fail at something. The latter suits Stacia’s own stubbornness and adaptability – once she has selected a goal, Stacia doesn’t give it up easily, but neither will she keep continue on a path that doesn’t get her where she wants to go. As for seeking to be under the authority of as few as possible, she has chosen to interpret it as a state of mind: if she doesn’t do anything to cause those in authority to enforce that authority on her, then she is basically free to do as she will. She’s mostly chosen to do as she’s been told, but only because she has deemed said orders to be sensible. Being generally contrary serves no purpose, and is stupid besides.


Powers/Abilities/Talents:
Shapeshifting: Stacia has five forms she can shift into: Homid (human, silver doesn’t harm Stacia in this form as it would in her others), Glabro (hulking humanoid that can only be mistaken for human in dim light, think the beta werewolves on MTV’s Teen Wolf), Crinos (enormous wolf-monster with claws and opposable thumbs, basically what you get when you google “werewolf”), Hispo (direwolf AKA a wolf the size of a small pony), and Lupus (wolf). It’s slightly more difficult to shift into Glabro and Hispo than it is to shift into the other three. When enraged or terrified past the point of control, Stacia automatically shifts to Crinos or Hispo and tries to destroy or flee from the cause until she no longer feels that she is in danger or she has exhausted herself. So far, this has only happened the night of Homecoming, but it is less difficult for her to Frenzy on the new- and full moons. If she plunges deep enough into a Frenzy, she will fall “in thrall to the Wyrm” and will attempt to eat anyone – ally or enemy – who can’t fend her off.
Unbeknownst to her, Stacia will struggle when attempting to shift to anything but Homid in the presence of wolfsbane. She can only speak human languages in Homid and Glabro, and her physical abilities change depending on the form she’s in: for example, she’s a lot stronger in Crinos than she is in Homid.
Supernatural Healing: Unless in Homid form, Stacia heals within minutes from any injuries not caused by silver, fire, radiation, or the claws or teeth of other supernatural creatures; and even injuries from those causes heal within a week if she’s allowed to rest. However, if she is in her Homid form, she heals at the same rate a regular human does.
Animal Magnetism: When she goes outside, squirrels stick to her clothes Humans find something about Stacia a little irresistible, and she comes off as extra charming and persuasive as a result.
Untamable: Stacia is immune to direct mental control via magic. Her emotions can still be manipulated with magic to make her do things, and I’m willing to discuss with other players how their magical systems may or may not be able to do it, but by the magical standards of her world, she’s functionally immune to direct control.
Mitanu’s Tongue: an ability gifted to her from a coyote trickster spirit, Stacia finds it easier than most people to talk her way out of being blamed for things. It’s not a guaranteed get-out-of-jail-free card, but people find themselves more willing to believe that she is either innocent of wrongdoing or was misguided rather than an active source of intent.
Persuasion: With effort, Stacia can make herself extra persuasive to those listening. This is a magical effect rather than a skill, though she tends to be a persuasive speaker even without it.
Blur of the Milky Eye: She can’t turn invisible, but she can become a blurry and indistinct figure. If someone manages to spot her, they will be able to track her visually, at least until they lose visual contact and they have to try and find her again. This has no effect on tracking her by hearing, scent, or magic.
Aura of Confidence: Stacia is always projecting an aura of superiority, which makes it difficult to read her aura or find weak spots. This is a magical effect. It’s always “on” and requires no effort from her to maintain.
Luna’s Armor: With concentration and some spiritual effort, Stacia can wreath herself in shimmering moonlight, which can act as armor against physical blows. It also offers her some resistance to damage from silver weapons.
Shadow Weaving: In theory Stacia can do this, but she hasn’t actually learned anything about occult magic, just spiritual magic. If she learns some occult skills, she will be able to warp and twist shadows within 100 yards of her with a flick of her fingers for a short period of time. It can help hide her at night, but at her rank it’s mostly just a spooky trick she can do to intimidate people.
Combat training: Stacia has been trained in the use of sniper rifles and handguns by a (Garou) leg-breaker for the Irish Mob (who also taught her to shoot whiskey). She is also decent (though far from an expert in) fighting with a knife, spear, and her own claws and teeth.
Computers: Stacia is a computer whiz. She can’t build an AI or anything, but she knows her way around computers well enough that her parents weren’t surprised when she was invited to what they were told was an exclusive internship out of the country (actually a form of supernatural Witness Protection).
Larceny: Stacia understands the basics of grifting and pick-pocketing, though she might not try the latter on anyone sober. Her focus was mostly on making sure that she’s difficult to identify if she needs to slip in and out of a crowd.
Screaming: Screaming as loudly as Stacia can pretty much has to be considered a talent. She tends to break it out when she’s particularly afraid or enraged as a way of controlling her Rage.
Languages: Stacia is a native English speaker and fluent in both Spanish and High Tongue, which is the language used by Garou in their Crinos, Hispo, and Lupus forms.
Crossing the Gauntlet: Stacia can, with concentration and preferably help from a reflective surface, either look into or move from the “real world” to the Umbra, a world of spiritual energy. This is where the spirits she’s used to interacting with come from.
Rites: Stacia knows and can perform several rites of the Garou Nation:
Rite of Talisman Dedication: This mystical rite allows her to bind objects to herself so that she doesn’t lose or destroy them when she shifts. She generally performs the Rite in the morning, after she’s dressed and applied her makeup for the day. At this point, she can only bind a maximum of three things to herself other than her outfit for the day, though she can increase that number through development of spiritual understanding.
Rite of Cleansing: This mystical rite purifies a person, place, or object of the spiritual influence of the Wyrm, the spirit of destruction that the Garou combat. It may not be useful at Medietas, since the Wyrm (probably) isn’t part of the spiritual makeup of the world.
Rite of Contrition: This rite is more of an official apology performed when a Garou wants to acknowledge that they messed up. With the amount of supernatural rage that flies around among Garou and the spirits they deal with, it’s pretty important to know how to say “my bad, please don’t kill me”.
Rite of Preserving the Fetish: This mystical rite is performed to honor and preserve the spirit within a fetish or multi-use magical tool. At minimum, the Rite involves cleaning and repairing the object into which the spirit is bound. Stacia performs it once a month on her silver bracelet, which is a Nyx’s Bangle (see: contents of Stacia’s back pack) and her Fang Dagger spear (see: item #3 to appear in her house on the island).
Rite of Binding: This mystical rite binds a spirit into an object to create a one-time use magical tool. After the tool is used, it breaks, releasing the spirit. Probably not going to be useful at Medietas, I doubt that there will be appropriate spirits.

Additionally, Stacia will expect to have this ability, though it may not be applicable to all characters:
Delirium: At one point in the distant past, the Garou took it upon themselves to cull humanity. As a result, the sight of a Crinos Garou triggers a sort of supernatural ancestral memory in humans, causing them to panic and later create a fog over the memory so that the human will forget or dismiss what they saw. As everyone else is coming from worlds without Garou and therefore without the ancestral memory, this may not come into effect.


What 4 items would you like your character to have with them on the island during their stay?
1. A sniper rifle and associated ammunition
2. A smartphone with photos of her (human) family and friends and associated charger
3. A spear, the point of which appears to be carved from the fang of some kind of animal. When Stacia stabs something with it, she can exert a portion of her spiritual essence to cause the spear to “bite” more deeply into the wound and do more damage.
4. A well-loved teddy bear.

Additionally, on arrival, Stacia will be carrying a backpack containing her overnight kit of makeup and toiletries, a change of clothes, hair brush, a blond wig, and a beautifully-wrought silver bangle with symbols carved in it. The bangle allows her to blend in with the shadows at night, though using it will also make her eyes glow like the full moon.