but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.
THE BASICS
NAME: Mael Lockwood NICKNAMES: Rue GENDER: Male AGE: 40 DATE OF BIRTH: 10/25/1983 SPECIES Werewolf
STATUS: Single SEXUALITY: Uninterested
OCCUPATION: Hunter/Tracker HOMETOWN: Missoula, Montana CURRENT RESIDENCE: Brooklyn, NYC TERRITORY: Territory 3; The Wilds
PARENTS: OPEN SIBLINGS: OPEN
QUIRKS: bites his nails, tattoo obsession, sweets make him sick LIKES: archery, wood fires, silence DISLIKES: loud music, vampires, traditions
RELATIONSHIPS
OOC INFO
NAME: Meggi AGE: 35 DISCORD: Mut#1600 Email: ionesurvivor18@gmail.com TIME ZONE: Central US
PERSONALITY
Rue does not like most people. He is stand-offish, difficult to get along with, and unless someone is willing to make an effort, they don’t find him particularly all that relatable. His mind is like a steel trap. He keeps most things to himself, and never speaks about his past. He hates small talk, and fails spectacularly when it comes to speaking and interacting with children. His manner is brusque and curt, and he doesn’t know or care to be tactful. If he happens upon someone with the same interest as him, however, Rue will sometimes oblige the other with a conversation or two. Though he has many business relationships and acquaintances, true friends are hard to come by for him, but it never appears to bother him. He prefers keeping his distance and being alone.
Another trait that tends to keep others wary of him is Rue’s predilection for violence. He doesn’t mind a fight, and is the first one to volunteer if there is a difficult or messy job to do. He seems to get satisfaction out of hurting others, especially if he decides it’s for the good of the pack. Though deep down he may understand it’s simply an excuse to feed his addiction, he is neither guilty nor apologetic when it comes to harming others when he determines it’s a necessary evil. Taking things too far is quite common with him, however, so he sometimes gets in trouble when he slips up in this manner.
Though Rue never truly appears happy or fulfilled, at times he at least looks satisfied. When he’s gets a new tattoo or bow, when he has time off to retreat to the woods of upper NY and stay in a cabin, or when he’s tracking something – whether it be a job, a threat, or simply what’s for dinner – a little bit of life finally rouses within him. Unfortunately, living most of the time in the concrete jungle of the city does nothing for him, and Rue is definitely the type to be caught sitting on the roof and smoking with a faraway expression in his eyes. He is still very much a lone wolf, sometimes on the periphery of a pack, but never quite joining it.
APPEARANCE
Rue has dark brown eyes and a pale complexion, made even more pale due to his black hair, which he often wears long and messy, rarely brushing or styling it. Though his hair often hides it, his left ear is notched at the top, a traditional method of signaling bonded marriage in his former pack. He has sharp features; namely his cheekbones, nose and chin, and can often appearing strikingly handsome in one light and almost alien in the next. He is a little taller than average, standing at 6’, and his long limbs are often ensconced in tight lycra or polyester, his preference for form-fitting clothing practical rather than any particular style. He nearly always wears a brown leather archer’s glove when working or actively protecting the pack, along with a compound bow and arrows or one of his smaller crossbows when needing to be more discrete.
Rue has several tattoos; on his arms and forearms, upper torso along his ribs, chest, and a large one on his back. They are all depicting arrows in some form or another, most with complex geometric designs. He doesn’t have any piercings, however, and aside from the depictions on his skin he doesn’t wear any jewelry or accessories, not even a watch. He sticks to plain and muted colors in clothing; black, beige, grey, and doesn’t appear to have any interest in his own appearance one way or another. Often, his shoes are old and worn with holes in them, and he will walk them down to nothing before he bothers to buy another pair.
As a wolf, Rue is a lot smaller in size than most, with a black fur coat and amber eyes. There are tufts of grey along his back, not any indication of his age but a genetic predisposition for spotted color like the rest of his pack. He doesn’t prefer to spend time in his animal form, and will usually fight the change during the full moon. However, at times when he is particularly weak either in body or mind, he will revert to being lupine and seek out a place that has been abandoned by others to be alone.
LEGEND PACK
In 2020, exactly twenty years after Rue had fled his birth pack in Montana, he heard the well-known Legend pack was under siege from a group of vampires intent on annihilating them. Despite his preference for being alone, it was a difficult life for a creature whose drive was to be in a social group. Rue made up his mind to stick his nose in it, and soon gathered enough intel on the new vampires to realize they would probably be trouble eventually for him, too. Rue had never liked vampires, and made a point of avoiding them at all costs. If he couldn't, he would do everything he could to get rid of them without being caught.
He saw no downside in throwing in his lot with the Legends, though he didn't exactly walk up and ask them. Instead, Rue systematically began to thwart the vampires in whatever ways he could, tracking and keeping tabs on their movements, laying traps for them, notifying the wolf pack anonymously of when they might be planning to strike.
Unfortunately, his efforts amounted to little. The two groups came to a vicious head. In the heat of battle, through sheer luck of being in the right place at the right time, Rue helped save the alpha, Greyson, thanks to a nicely placed arrow. Rue suffered a terrible injury of his own, but when he awoke he was still alive. The wolves had dragged him off with them. While still wary of this stranger that had appeared out of nowhere, there was a unspoken beginning of acceptance of him within their group.
HISTORY
Mael was born into a purist pack with ancient heritage stretching centuries into history. The pack, though still relatively large, had dwindled in numbers over the last five decades due to their strict traditionalist beliefs, which determined that only born wolves were true shapeshifters and any turned by a bite were never to be accepted. The pack was extremely secretive and hostile to outsiders of any kind, and lived by a draconian hierarchical political system, in which any deviations or attempt to undermine those in charge would result in severe punishments, up to and including death. They lived on vast acres of land just outside Missoula, Montana, owned by the family through generations, and were able to function in a nearly cult-like manner with little outside interference from the rest of the world due to long-standing relationships with those in power in that area of the state.
In Mael’s pack, the alpha, beta and gamma were still the leaders, but a group of elders held the right to veto their decisions and institute what they called ‘legacy law’ whenever there came a clash of views. These legacy laws had been cemented since almost the beginning, and held such puritanical measures as a mating system in which the elders paired born wolf children off early on with the intention of keeping the line pure. Oftentimes these pairings were decided at moment of birth, in an attempt to force an imprinting as quickly as possible (though this method, of course, wasn’t realistic). Mates with decades of age difference between them were not unheard of, and the higher-ranking pack members unsurprisingly often took advantage of this system, having multiple mates for themselves.
Mael was a difficult, defiant child from the beginning, exacerbated by the oppressive system he was born into. Though his parents – lower-ranking delta members – were loving and doted on him as much as the rest of his siblings, Mael was the black sheep of the family from early on. He didn’t seem to connect with anyone, was often caught fighting with his brothers or cruelly teasing his sisters, and no amount of discipline or beatings seemed to phase him. The older he became, the worse his behavior got, and he soon was causing trouble that was drawing the attention of the outside law. At age ten his parents, at the end of their rope, took their son before the elders in desperation, hoping they would have a way to ‘fix’ him.
The elders put him with an older wolf, an omega, on the fringes of the pack, deep into the Montana woods. It was a banishment of sorts, but also tactical. This particular wolf was an outsider who preferred to keep to himself, with an unruffled, calm demeanor and a no-nonsense approach to life. He was called ‘the hermit’ by most of the family, and at forty years old had somehow shirked his mating duty. There was a scandal there, everyone knew, but no one knew the details.
Shockingly to everyone involved, Mael settled down. The omega taught him skills most of the family dabbled in but did not have a knack for anymore: hunting, tracking, becoming proficient with weapons that had been mostly forgotten by modern society. Once Mael got his hands on a bow, he was enraptured. He loved to hunt, he loved to practice archery, and most of all he seemed to prefer being in the woods by himself, with no one else around save the omega.
However, Mael’s peaceful time came to an abrupt end when at fifteen he had his first turn at the full moon, and the elders decided it was time for him to mate. He’d already been paired to a female named Aria at birth, but neither of them had ever gotten along. Aria was soft-spoken and gentle, and Mael was brusque and harsh. As soon as the two were forced to marry and move in together his unhappy nature manifested again, leading to violent fights, issues with drugs, and contant punishments from the alpha and beta in attempts to put him into line.
Mael ran away often, back to the depths of the Montana woods and the omega. It became clear to the elders that this wasn’t just a familial bond. Imprinting was a hush-hush topic in the pack. Only the elders knew the depth of truth about the subject, and pushed their own agenda instead, always declaring when they chose their mated pairs that they were imprints, and there was to be no doubting them. Many of the pack were brainwashed, raised to believe the lie, but true imprints still happened, and it was up to the elders to quash it quickly so as not to risk the fabric of their cultist society.
Mael was seventeen when he and the omega were dragged before a council and decreed an abomination. The omega was executed, and Mael was dragged to the Den, a prison made out of a cave where the family kept their worst offenders. He was to stay there until a decision was made on what to do with him, but his jailtime was cut short. The Great War was happening, and the instability of the pack was looming. They needed all of their numbers, and they needed to protect their land.
Things changed in an instant. Mael was armed and sent to the borderlines to guard and kill anyone who crossed into their land. He had no trouble doing so, and in fact thrived on it. There were no repercussions anymore; he tore through anyone who wasn’t the pack, single-mindedly and with a deep, incurable rage. The pack was distracted; the War was intense, and no one noticed Mael’s unscrupulous murders.
On a quiet, late night, on the new moon when much of the pack was weary and at their weakest, Mael waited until he knew most had gone to bed and were deep asleep. Their land was vast, and the sentinels were far away from the centralized neighborhoods, on the borderlines. The alpha and beta were the only two standing watch over the direct community, working in shifts.
Mael killed the beta first, shooting him in the back of the head with a crossbow as he sat smoking outside, completely unaware of his own packmate’s intentions. The alpha was smart and strong, though, and sneaking into the fortress of his house was impossible. So Mael cut himself deeply and lured him out with a whimper, pretending to have been injured by an intruder, killing the alpha swiftly with an arrow jammed through his throat when he was close enough.
Last, was the elder who had made the decision on the omega’s execution. Mael drove a knife into his heart slowly, every so slowly, until he was dead.
He fled. He dropped his name, going by Rue instead, and with the confusing and bloody backdrop of the Great War aiding him, he managed to disappear, picking the largest city in America since it was the least likely place his pack would ever expect him to go.