Kestrel - Male - Excercitus

Basic Information:

Name: Kestrel
Age: Four
Gender: Male
Pack: Excercitus

Physical Description:

Breed: Mackenzie Valley wolf / Black Elkhound hybrid
Height: 22"
Weight: 50 lbs
Fur Color: Black
Eye Color: Odd-eyed, amber and blue

Physical Description Summary: Kestrel is uncommonly small for a male, scrawny and undersized even for a wolf of his unimposing height; some of the biggest hunters are more than a foot taller and nearly twice as heavy. His size, combined with his jet-black fur and feathery, upturned tail, suggest that he's probably not entirely a wolf at all. His eyes are mismatched, one a normal amber and the other blue. The blue eye is weak and hypersensitive to light, and Kestrel is partially deaf on that side. He has small scars littered under his fur, mostly from the numerous 'play' fights he lost as a pup.

The Facts:

Personality: For a wolf in a position of relative authority, Kestrel has a complicated relationship with his pack. The skinny, half-blind weakling has never fit in well with the militaristic culture of Excercitus, and he resents being forced to rely on them for survival. He's solitary and secretive, taking a kind of twisted pride in disappearing off to mysterious places on his own despite his complete inability to defend himself. He's proud and vindictive and never, ever forgets an insult. Whenever possible, he cultivates an air of sinister mysticism; he likes to imply that he can see and hear things with his pale eye and bad ear that are beyond the senses of other wolves. (He can't, of course, but his practiced stealthiness and habit of skulking around where he's not expected mean he knows more about what's going on the pack than anyone might expect.) More than anything else, he hates being laughed at, turning sullen and vicious for days if he feels he's been shamed. Despite all this, he's extremely clever and an excellent healer, and so far that's been enough to make the pack tolerate his faults.

History: Kestrel had the dubious honor of being the smallest pup his birth pack had ever seen. By the standards of the Calic wolves, all of his family would seem small; the valley where they lived had been a human settlement, long ago, and many of the wolves still have the look of their curly-tailed little sled dogs. Still, they were healthy, if small; Kestrel was tiny. He didn't have a proper name; if anyone referred to him at all, it was as Runt. Nobody expected him to survive. The day his siblings died, they were down at the river, taking their first, shaky steps from the den into the sunlight. Kestrel, weak from hunger and the constant futile competition for milk, stayed behind. One of the things that made the valley such a pleasant place to live was the stone dam, left behind by the humans; prey would come to drink from the lake it formed. An ancient structure, it gave out without warning, and the resulting flash flood swept away everything for a quarter-mile on either side of the river's banks, including Kestrel's litter-mates. His mother managed to claw her way to safety, although most of her pack drowned. Panicked, she grabbed her only remaining pup and ran for higher ground.

Her journey brought her into the mountains and eventually to the Excercitus pack, carrying a month-old newborn the entire way. The wolves of Excercitus recognized her fierce spirit, and she fit in well; within a few months she was pregnant again. Kestrel was pushed aside: his mother's new mate wanted nothing to do with another male's pup, his mother didn't want the bitterness of losing five healthy pups for one stunted one, and none of the militaristic Excercitus wolves were particularly interested in raising a runt. Kestrel grew up on the fringes of the pack. As he got older and steadily more caustic, he was pushed farther from the group; when he was about a year old he left the their territory entirely and took up with a small band of rejects scraping out a living in the harsh upper Highlands. Few of his makeshift pack were capable hunters, making food difficult to come by; in a few months, Kestrel was skinnier than ever, his growth permanently stunted. It was here, though, that he learned to be a healer, from a half-demented old coywolf named Gwyn who'd once been the greatest healer north of the Wall -- or so she said, anyway. She gave Kestrel his name; she frequently got confused, thinking he was another wolf she'd known long ago. Anything was better than Runt, so he accepted it, and eventually came to like it. Gwyn couldn't remember who he was, but she knew secrets of healing that had long since been forgotten in Calic. When she died, the pack more or less disintegrated. Facing the threat of a winter on his own, Kestrel returned to the lowlands. The memory of what being a loner was actually like -- hungry and hard -- helped him rein in his resentment and pride enough to rejoin the Excercitus pack, now among the Santores. Gwyn's teachings combined with the knowledge of the Calic lowlands made him an impressive healer, and when the old Ducere Santore was killed by a bull elk, Kestrel became head of the healers. He's still not well-liked by most of his packmates, but he's saved lives that would otherwise have been lost, and the respect is enough to keep him in his position.

Notes: He thought about joining the Caisteal pack instead of going to the highlands -- they would probably have taken him in and looked after him -- but, at least when he was young and stupid, he decided he'd rather have pride than a full belly. He's not sure if he'd make the same choice today.

So... that is that! Hopefully I'm posting this in the right place >.> I kind of feel like I'm coming off all 'life is so hard, everyone is so mean to my poor character' and I can't figure out how to not, but I really don't mean to. I mean, Kestrel's had some bad luck, but most of it is his own damn fault, he pretty much got himself kicked out by being unpleasant, so.

You mentioned on Gaia that new folk could take advantage of the mixed-breed option if we liked, so he ended up part Husky-thing, I guess? That's where the size and the heterochromia genes come from, in my mind. Tell me if you don't like it! Or anything else!