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