Garrow Dekar-Smith

Name: Garrow Dekar-Smith

Gender: Male

Species: Human

Age: 19

Job: Hacker/ Computer Tech

Background: Garrow grew up in a divided household, his parents divorced and remarried, and he has several step-siblings on each side. Due to his quiet and responsible nature, Garrow quickly faded into the background around his more lively siblings. As a result, he tends to not spend much time talking to other people, and is quick to get annoyed when he feels that others are talking too much. After graduating high school, Garrow was surprised to find that his talents with computers were not much in demand, as everybody seemed to have the same set of talents. He worked at a dead-end job for a time, before deciding to prove to everyone that he was worth something. This took the form of hacking the lab’s database. When he was discovered, he was offered a job, and quickly took it. He’s been with the company for almost a year now.

Appearance: Garrow is on the tall side of average, 6’ or so. He still has a bit of a fight with acne going on, though it is clearing up. His skin is fairly pale and he has short auburn hair. His eyes are brown and hidden behind thick glasses. Garrow is most often found wearing some combination of jeans and hoodies, in any color.

Personality: Garrow is fairly laid-back and easy to work with. He has a few pet peeves that can set him off, but generally speaking he is the last one to get annoyed or irritated. Of his actual siblings, there are none that he is particularly close to, but he greatly enjoyed Dolly’s company for the time that she was with him.

Dolly

Name: Dolly

Gender: Female

Species: Cloned Sheep

Age: 1 year

Human Equivalent: ???

Background: Dolly got screwed six ways from Sunday. First off, she’s a cloned sheep, and has all the genetic anomalies that sometimes accompany cloning- advanced aging, some muscle deterioration… To top that off, she became a halpha- no one can really tell for sure if she was intelligent before this happened, but one thing is for sure, she’s little better than a vegetable now. Being a halpha, combined with her genetic problems mean that she is aging very rapidly, and some of her vital organs are beginning to shut down. Unfortunately, Dolly may not survive to make another appearance. Unlike the other animals, she was not able to elude capture for very long, and was picked up by Garrow a mere day after her escape. This doesn’t seem to bother Dolly in the slightest. Garrow was the one to name her Dolly, after realizing that she was the cloned sheep from the lab. Currently, she is being shipped back to the lab for analysis- the scientists hope to find a way to track halphas.
Appearance: Dolly has dark eyes, short curly hair that is extremely light, and very pale skin. Her carry-over mark is currently unknown.
Personality: Dolly is a girl with very little on the brain. Thus far she cannot speak- it is doubtful if she ever will. She has a small attachment to Garrow, the computer techie who is working for the bad guys.

Cross

Name: Cross

Gender: Male

Species: Coyote/German Shepherd

Age: 1½

Human Equivalent: 15

Background: Cross’ mother was killed by a hunter when he was only a few weeks old. He was found by Mrs. Landerlan and her children who begged to keep him. Thus Cross was adopted into the Landerlan family. He was a few months old when he was taken from his human family and brought to the facility. Cross tends to purposely block out those unhappy times, so not much is known of what happened to him there. He tags along with Thanatos seeing him as a pack member and friend. His current objective is to seek out and rejoin his human family.

Appearance: Cross is about average height for a fifteen-year-old human with golden tanned skin, and multi-colored, shaggy hair ranging from dark brown, to black, to gold, to tan. This hair color mimics his fur color when in coydog (coyote-mix) form. His eyes cross over in his human form, remaining the same golden-yellow along with a purple line that wraps around his arm down to his elbow. He prefers to wear the orange shirt that he “found” after escaping the facility and always has a football on him, one of his favorite things in the world to play with.

Personality: Cross is very carefree and willing to try almost anything. At times this behavior causes people to think he’s naïve or stupid but he’s far from it. He possesses the coyote trademark of intelligence and mischief, often landing himself into some bad predicaments, and he easily succumbs to trickery from humans when food is involved. He proudly claims that he’s half coyote and half German Shepherd though he doesn’t understand the complications that come with being half coyote when it comes to humans, particularly ranchers. Whenever the facility is mentioned he becomes quiet. If a question is directed his way on the subject he pretends not to know what is being talked about. He’s shown himself to be a great fighter, often using his intelligence to get out of a situation, though when cornered he panics and acts without thinking first.

Profile: Audrey

Name: “Aunt” Audrey Hooper

Gender: Female

Species: Human

Age: 63

Job: Paramedic (retired), Volunteer at local Halfway House

Background: Audrey was the second child of her parents, the first being a three-years older son called Terrance. When Audrey was still in high school Terrence left home- every now and again he would call his family and tell them he was fine, he claimed to have an important and exciting job which required a lot of travel- and he never gave them any contact information for him. Audrey became a paramedic and worked that way for many years- until one day she found her brother out on a call. He’d become homeless and was dying of a drug overdose. He literally lived down the street and she never knew. Outraged and heartsore that such a thing could happen, Audrey began to volunteer at the local halfway house in hopes of preventing such a tragedy from repeating. She has since retired from being a paramedic, and operates her house as an extension of Chance House, allowing the homeless to sleep there when the shelter is full and housing some of their supplies. This is why, although Audrey claims that her house is the shelter, Jenny is the only person staying with her.

Appearance: Audrey is about 5’3, with skin the color of milk chocolate and crinkly black hair that’s heavily threaded with gray- she usually keeps her hair put up in a crown of braids. Her eyes are warm brown, and she prefers loose comfortable housedresses for indoors, and jeans with a brown jacket for out-doors. It doesn’t come up in the story, but Audrey was considered to be quite a looker in her younger years.

Personality: Audrey is warm and caring- she never actually had a family of her own, but sees the reflection of what her family might have looked like in every face that she helps. She has a strong sense of justice and believes that chances should be given as long as people are willing to take them. Her sense of justice, therefore, does not often coincide directly with the Law, which is why she has yet to report Jenny to the authorities. A big part of her outreach to the homeless is based upon mutual respect- a thing which has gotten her into trouble a few times, as she is almost always willing to respect the choices made by her charges over what society dictates as right.

Profile, Jenny

Name: Jenny

Gender: Female

Species: Virginia Opossum

Age: 3 months

Human Equivalent: 11

Background: Jenny is very young, and hadn’t been at the facility for very long when the escape occurred. She’s unsure what happened to her mother, though she knows that at one point they lived in the wild, her memories of the capture are hampered by her young age- her memory didn’t really develop until she was injected with the “people virus” so she’s not at all sure about what happened prior to that. Currently, Jenny is living at a halfway house with a woman called Audrey and learning more about humans.

Appearance: Jenny is fairly short, about 4’3 or so, with lightly tanned skin and waist-length pale brown hair and dark brown eyes. Her carry-over mark is three pink dots beneath her left eye, as well as pink fingers and toes. Jenny adores the pink hoodie given to her by Audrey, and refuses to get rid of it.

Personality: Jenny is fairly innocent and unsure of what to do most of the time- when she gets scared she has a tendency to faint in hopes of escaping whatever is happening. Since Audrey has told her this is unhealthy Jenny has been trying harder not to pass out in dangerous situations. She has the potential to be quite brave. Jenny’s feelings about the other animals mostly are relief and acceptance- she’s still quite used to being taken care of and is quite eager to join another family. Her biggest worry aside from them getting caught, is them splitting up.

Profile, Robyn

Name: Robyn Goodman

Gender: Female

Species: Human

Age: 23

Job: Police Officer

Background: Robyn grew up in an average middle-class family, but was a noted overachiever in school- so much so that even during high school she was studying and preparing for going into the police force- which has always been her dream. Her dedication has led to her being the youngest officer on the force- though it’s easy to forget that when viewing her interactions with her co-workers, who have helped her learn to take it easy. Robyn lives alone, but calls her parents every Saturday to let them know how she’s doing. Robyn met Gary during officer training and has since become quite good friends with both him and his girlfriend, Melanie. Every now and again Gary will try to set her up with one of his friends in a blind date that is always spectacular in it’s horrendousness- other than that, her life is fairly normal.

Appearance: Robyn is about average height, 5’8, with pale skin and blonde hair, which is constantly pulled back into a ponytail. Her eyes are green, and she is most often to be found wearing either her black police uniform or a pair of jeans and a dark long-sleeved shirt.

Personality: Robyn has been noted for being dedicated to her work, and it’s common knowledge that she’s the youngest officer on the force. More time spent with the force has given her a sense of humor that was distinctly lacking in her high school and college days. She’s well-known for mentioning Murphy’s Law at any given moment- but was quite surprised when that law took on a new meaning as her own definition of fact and fiction was horribly skewed. She’s more than a little curious about the experimental animals, even if they do seem to giver her a headache, and the universe seems to be conspiring to keep her in the loop.

Profile, Turin

Name: Turin

Gender: Male

Species: Black Billed Magpie

Age: 2 years

Human Equivalent: 21

Background: Turin was captured by the experimental facility when he was 1 year old, and had just determined Mira as his mate. They never had a chance to produce any eggs. Turin was captured along with his brother, who is nameless at this point in time, and died at some point during their captivity. Since magpies are social birds, Turin feels strange and ostracized now that his flock has rejected him. He’s fairly lucky though- since he lived free for a year around humans (magpies generally live close to humans) he can blend among them fairly well.

Appearance:Turin makes for a tall human male, 6’5 or so, he has pale skin a messy black hair that alternately flops forward into his eyes and sticks up in the back. This carries over from his magpie form, in which he has never been able to get the feathers on the back of his head to lie flat the way that they should. His eyes in both forms are a vivid red-orange, which can be quite disconcerting to those not expecting it. His carry-over mark is on his arms, which are black from shoulder to knuckle, except for a thick band of white which stretches diagonally across them above his elbow. Turin prefers sleeveless shirts- sleeves make him feel restricted and unable to fly- even though this preference leaves his arms plainly visible.

Personality: Turin is bitter and suspicious of almost everyone. His curse is that he’s smart enough to know that he’ll never be accepted back into his flock, but hopeful enough to try anyway. He’s very opposed to what he is now, and would rather stay in his animal form if he can. As for his feelings on the other animals… he’s willing to stay with them to a certain degree, as a sort of replacement flock, but especially in the beginning, he will be the first to threaten to leave if he thinks something is going wrong. Since Jenny is so young, and he never got to have any chicks of his own, he’s slowly becoming protective of her… but don’t expect him to be nice. Magpies are tricksters, and Turin’s bitterness has severely warped his sense of humor.

profiles...?

Should we put up profiles for our characters? For the sake of easy reference?

people virus!

Just an idea for maybe how our hapless animals gained the disconcerting abilities of thought, memory and shapeshifting.
It would be really weird and the worst luck in the world for a scientist to be experimenting on how to give humans favorable animal traits and winding up with animals that had favorable animal traits.
So maybe- just maybe- there was some sort of idealist employee who experimented on the animals in the OTHER direction- without the knowledge/approval of anyone else. Gave the animals a "People virus!"
.... that's what cross would call it anyway. I bet the real name would be long and faintly Greek.

Jacket here! Yesh, the people virus! *cough* Anywho, this idea is great! Now as for the motive behind the scientists/facility/government wanting to capture our characters; if the animals infected with the 'people virus' are obtained by enemy countries then there could be problems. Big ones!!! For the animals can look like humans or animals which would make them wonderful spies. Not only that but they have abnormal abilities in human form which they use to their advantage. The government doesn't want the haphas falling into the wrong hands so they want to quickly re-capture all of them, and either (now there is going to have to be a vote on this one) erase them or try to subdue them and make them submit to their wishes. Okay, have fun deciding!

Hapha

• human forms hold the eye distinctions of their original animal form
• hair also holds original distinctions when in animal form
• all hapha's human forms have a distinct marking signifing their species
• um... that's all I can think of for now... will get back later