wetwolfsmell

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Name: TJ/Finch/Ursa
Age: 24
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cloverborn
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Character Name: Danny
Age: 19
Canon: OC

History: content warnings: transphobia, abuse, homelessness, death, possession, manipulation, cults

Danny's world is yet another urban fantasy version of Earth, one where most affairs aren't so different from our own, but the supernatural exists, hidden in plain sight. In Danny's case, the world is inhabited by ghosts and werewolves, which are intrinsically linked to one another: the ghosts who haunt the land and the werewolves they create to serve their own goals. The nature of hauntings and werewolf packs can't really be generalized beyond that; every pack is different, every haunting is different, just like every tragedy is different. Some are fraught with anger and resolution is sought through revenge, some leave remnants that are just lost and seeking guidance or protection, some become points of pride that want to be remembered as long as possible. And beyond that, the hauntings and packs themselves change, influenced by the cultures they spring from and the events that shape them after they're made. The process, however, is consistent: the restless dead call upon their Church Grims to serve them, and usher those creatures to take human flesh by joining with the living. A werewolf, then, is a person parasitized by a ghost's pet, in a way, and it falls to the individual werewolf to decide whether to resist the whims of the wolf or aid it. These mortal vessels die with time, either to join the ranks of the haunting that commands them or to become indistinguishable from the wolf that claimed them, but the wolves themselves do not, having been ghostly from the start. The Grims continue to take vessels until the ghosts they serve are put to rest.

Danny is one such werewolf from south coastal Georgia. The pack he answers to is small, as is the haunting that drives it; victims of a church fire searching for the truth behind their demise, though with time this haunting has lost sight of what truth they're seeking and instead pursue the unknown in all its forms. Before the church found him, though, Danny was on very hard times. When he came out as transgender to his parents at the tender age of 16 he, like many children, lost his home as a result of his parents' ignorance. He quit school not long after and focused on making ends meet for himself, but with the trauma of his parents' rejection and the jaws of depression and dysphoria dogging his heels, it wasn't long until he was at the end of his rope. That despair, when a human reaches out to the veil of death, is what allows a wolf to claim them, as the church's bastion did to him. He fell into the service of the church that made him, joining up with his new packmates Adam, Maya, Tracy, Hazel, Julian, and Dante, each of whom have their own tragedies to bear and their own roles to fulfill. Danny's task, as the bastion, is to protect the reaches of the haunting from trespassers. The pack's den, a liminal reflection of the ruined church that manifests everywhere and nowhere, follows Danny, as he is its anchor in the land of the living. Danny himself is reluctant to shoulder this task, considering he was not prepared to shoulder any task when he was taken, but the grip of the bastion is an especially difficult one to break (though Danny would try nonetheless, until later on when he found his and the bastion's goals were one and the same).

In time, though, he began to take his own interest in the unknown, as he got to know the rest of the pack and slowly learned that most of them, like him, were victims exploited by their ghostly masters. What's more, he began to discover that the pretense of protecting the haunting and finding answers for it was just that: a pretense. As it had become, the church would never be satisfied, because it hungered for complete knowledge as an untouchable goal. As he investigated this alongside Julian and Tracy, he eventually came to confront Adam, leader of the pack and mouthpiece of the haunting, about his true objectives. This conflict ultimately went only partially resolved with Danny and the rest of the pack recognizing Adam as a victim himself, though their conclusion and reconcile was cut short by the incursions of another pack. Danny was called to defend alongside Maya, but this dispute led to a rabbithole down the history of the Church Grims themselves. The First, the oldest pack driven by the oldest haunting, a cultish gathering of thousands of wolves, had been targeting and assimilating other packs for decades, and they had come after Danny and the rest of the church. Danny would be eventually abducted by the First, and from within he would begin to forge new connections with their other captives to stage an escape. Once he and his new allies had managed to slip free from the First's clutches, they returned to the church to find it in shambles, with Dante missing and only Adam and Hazel remaining.

Danny, the survivors of the church, and the other packs he had helped would join together to embark on a cross-country journey to enlist more packs to resistance against the First. Along the way they would reunite with Julian and eventually form up an offensive to pierce through to the core of the First and, in doing so, find the truth behind why any of this existed in the first place. And at the heart of it all he would reunite with one more packmate: Dante, who is in fact not under the church's purview but something much, much bigger and much, much older, even than the First. By helping Dante and his wolf, the shadow, Danny and his comrades unravel the truth and, in so doing, break the cycle that binds the dead to the earth. In the aftermath, as a human again, Danny finally finds the peaceful home and the family he always needed.

If there are other supernaturals in Danny's world, he is not aware of them...yet. It is also worth noting that pack roles/rankings and manifestations are different between packs.

Personality: shy; brave; insightful; kind; rebellious; loyal; angsty; hesitant; skittish

Danny is a shy boy on the surface, timid in the face of most social situations and not usually willing to engage with other people more than he has to. He's preferred the company of animals and especially bugs since he was little. When he first lost his home, he had no friends to turn to and struggled to solicit help from others because of his shyness, and this also contributed heavily to his loneliness when he was initially brought into the pack - he didn't trust or already know anyone, so he kept his head low and his mouth shut until someone else engaged him. He's since learned to be bolder, but in large social gatherings he's still very much a wallflower with a tendency of clamming up.
He is also brave, though, as his lot in life demands him to be. He's very much the kind of brave who is almost always afraid in some capacity, but faces and fights that fear often. His bravery is very duty-driven; at his canon point, in which he was captured by the First and imprisoned with members of other packs, the pressure of the situation and the fact his pack urgently needed the Bastion's protection drove Danny to act on his own volition to stage an escape without the encouragement of anyone around him (on the contrary; many of the other prisoners objected to the idea, being afraid of the Fangs/soldiers of the First). His bravery only persisted afterward as he became the de facto leader of a new temporary werewolf faction positioned to strike back at the First.
Insight is one of the talents of his that Danny doesn't know he has. His open-mindedness and willingness to listen to others makes him an excellent confidant, while his creative mind matches well and gives him sharper tactics and instincts than most. As noted above, when Danny and the pack's contentions with Adam came to a head and things were primed for an internal quarrel, Danny recognized that Adam was still suffering in his own way. This wasn't necessarily an easy judgment to make, just like it wasn't with Hazel, Julian, or Maya, who all seemed so at ease with the pack, though in Adam's case especially it was challenging as he was the Firebrand, the leader of the pack and the closest to the haunting. Adam's behavior was such that most of the pack wasn't sure if Adam was a manifestation of the haunting itself, but in those heated conversations with him at the climax of that arc Danny picked up on Adam's humanity and was able to get the others to stop themselves before anyone got hurt. He has a certain wisdom, though it largely only shines in situations like these, where there's another angle or layer to an issue that needs to be brought into the limelight before regrettable choices are made.
Danny's kindness is something he takes pride in, and the part of himself he strives not to lose. It's something easily threatened by his anger and mishandled trauma. He tries his best to consider others' feelings, as he did with Hazel when he was new in the pack; of all his packmates, Hazel and Dante were the hardest to reach. Dante was rarely around, but Hazel was transformed 24/7 and never spoke to anybody. When he learned that she was a person and not simply a wolf, though, he took care to spend time with her without pushing her boundaries, something the rest of the pack hadn't done for her. It was that persistent kindness that led to Hazel being the first packmate to trust Danny, and she would be one of his closest allies for much of his journey. Almost all of his friendships with his packmates were forged through similar ways, with Danny reaching out in genuine kindness and concern.
Rebelliousness is a crucial asset to Danny's survival so far. While it has helped him avoid trouble, it also makes it harder for him to make and maintain connections or get help from others. His distrust tends to hamper him more than it helps, but when it does help, it does so in spades. For instance, while his immediate rejection of the pack forced Danny to shoulder the burden of the Bastion alone and thrust him back into the woes of homelessness, it also allowed him to get a different perspective on the pack, as an outsider looking in. This time alone also allowed him to more quickly understand the Bastion, though he wouldn't be fully at peace with it until after his escape from the First.
Loyalty is often touted as a positive trait, but in Danny's case it may not be so much. When he does trust others, it's arguably too much, and often at the expense of his relationships with others. When Danny latches on to someone or something, he doesn't tend to let go, and he'll sacrifice a lot to make sure he doesn't lose that someone or something. Much of Danny's bravery stems from this; it was his loyalty to his friends in his pack that drove him to lead the escape from the First, and to pursue Dante. Even after the source of the werewolf phenomenon is found and lycanthropy is reversed, Danny, fully human, chooses to keep living with Hazel, Julian, and Dante, and stay in touch with the rest of the pack, as well as with many of the people he helped along the way.
Like most his age, Danny is angsty. While his problems tend to be a good bit more real than some others', that doesn't make much difference when he still broods and sulks just as much. He tends to wallow in and internalize his problems, rather than share them or solicit help. When he first lost his home, this is exactly what he did - he sulked, grieved, and wallowed in his misery until he couldn't afford to be alone anymore, and even after that he wouldn't make any efforts to socialize until he was brought into the pack. The times during his later adventures when his allies were waiting for direction and help and Danny was off by himself, lost in thought about what was happening and everything he'd been through, are simply too numerous to count; time (and lives) could have been saved if he hadn't spent so much of his time brooding on his own. This is a problem he wouldn't begin to grow out of until seeing others do the same in the yoke of the First; he wouldn't properly change his ways until near his journey's end.
If kindness is Danny's strength, hesitation is his greatest flaw. He thinks too much when confronted with complicated problems and fears making the wrong choice to the point that often it's his getting lost in thought that ends up being just that. Caution benefits him only when he has the time to spare for it. He watched the First take people from their cages many times before he finally resolved himself to break out, he nearly let himself starve when he was newly homeless, he spent months alone because he didn't know whether to commit to helping the pack or escaping it. His hesitation is even what led to his capture, as he stopped to think too long when trying to escape the First and gave them just enough time to catch up.
Lastly, he's skittish, jumpy, between the post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and the heightened senses and reflexes. It takes a conscious effort for Danny to pick fight over flight.

Powers/Abilities:

Mundane - Danny is fast and flexible by human standards.
Passive - He is also, more importantly, a werewolf, and a weird one at that. While his power does stem from his connection to the church ghosts, the bastion goes where he goes. He is significantly stronger than his physique allows, comparable to the strength of a chimp, and his senses of smell and hearing are heightened, and he can see in the dark, for simplicity's sake the basis for this will be the senses of shifters in DND 5e.
Active - He also has the ability to shapeshift into the form of an 8ft tall muscular humanoid wolf monster (think Van Helsing werewolf in terms of appearance and strengths, but blonde and a little fluffier). This shifting isn't fully voluntary, but rather dependent on his ability to get the bastion to cooperate with him; the bastion can also force him to transform against his will and can also force him to do things he wouldn't otherwise do while transformed. He can also sense ghosts (if those exist here), though he can't clearly see or communicate with them. The bastion can perceive them enough to accurately attack them when Danny is transformed. He transforms involuntarily during full moons, not because that's how werewolves in his world work, but because it's how he expects them to work.
Weakness - Silver is poisonous but not deadly, though it does temporarily sever his connection to the bastion and thus suppress his supernatural abilities; touching silver causes flu-like aches and pains for a few hours or, if exposure is prolonged or if it's consumed or put into his bloodstream, he may fall into a fugue and be achy for days. Silver is only deadly to Danny in the same capacities as it would be to a normal human.