Oscar (Lupus)

[Oscar]

General

Name: Oscar
Alias: Doesn’t really have one, but maybe it’ll develop if he meets someone imaginative enough to make a nickname out of “Oscar”.
Species: Lupus
Gender: Male
Age: Seven
Pack: Children of Hvítur Ári
Rank: Hunter

Physical
Height: 3 feet

Weight: 100 lbs

Appearance: Oscar is quite lightweight looking with long, thin legs and compact muscle. His brother Grebo inherited all the tendency to grow huge muscles whereas Oscar only ever gains a little muscle no matter how hard he tries. Still, it doesn’t bother him too much. He has a long stride and bounces along effortlessly, gracefully. He always seems to have an air of happiness and optimism and when he speaks it is with energy and enthusiasm. He has an English accent with a little hint of New Zealand for some reason - he probably puts it on, having heard it somewhere else. His fur is short, soft and quite shiny, which would look impressive if he had big muscles. His tail is long and just bushy enough to be useful in the cold. He is black all over except for a few dashes of white: around the openings of his ears and their tips and around his eyes; his front right and back left paws are all white; his front left and back right paws have a little white on them as though they had been dipped in whitewash. His eyes are a greeny turquoise colour that is very fetching. They have gold flecks in them at times and a sparkle of intelligence and curiosity.

Other:

Mental

Strengths: Oscar is quite a fast runner. Of course there are many that can outrun him but he was the fastest in his pack. He also seems to be able to disappear very easily - of course he can’t turn himself invisible but he is good at not being noticed. He uses this quality to sleep during a boring conversation, take shortcuts through places he’s not really supposed to be and sneak up on prey. He’s also very intelligent and good at sussing people out and solving problems in a strangely logical kind of way.

Weaknesses: He is not very strong and never has been. Large jackalopes have been able to get away from him simply by kicking him off. In a fight he tends to try to talk himself out of it rather than actively participating but in times he has got in real trouble as he is rather good at (unintentionally) annoying people. If he is wounded he tries to carry on but it is a great hindrance to him as his body is well balanced so any injury will knock it out of kilter. He cares about others only as far as a wolf’s instincts go - the rest he has tried to learn and force himself to care about, but he doesn’t really see the logic in it.

Personality: Oscar is, on the surface of it, a friendly wolf. He will give you the time of day and ask for directions, happy to communicate with others and work in a team as a wolf’s instinct dictates. Sometimes he appears to look down on others who are less logical than them, and discard their opinions as nonsense. He rarely makes proper, solid friendships as he doesn’t see the logic in the whole caring thing, but when he does make a friend he tries his hardest to do right by them. He does sometimes get it wrong and has been known to disappear without warning, especially if he thinks he’s really stuffed it up this time.

Oscar enjoys swimming, running, hunting and solving problems. He may appear to want to help you with your problem but he is doing it for his own thrills rather than your welfare. He is not malicious or nasty in this respect: just has different priorities from most wolves and does not value friendship too highly. He has in the past had one or two friends who he strangely cared about, but these are special wolves with whom he had a real affinity. One of them was even a hawk.

Oscar dislikes injustice and nastiness. He will fight to keep the law just and fair as it is a logical system. Nastiness is illogical. He also dislikes clingy wolves: back in his old pack he had for some reason a sort of fan club. He didn’t care much for that.

As is the way with lupus wolves, Oscar values all creatures the same and would ask for directions from a jackalope the same as from a friendly wolf. Not all animals can talk of course, but some of them help in other ways. He always expects people to treat him as politely as he treats them.

All in all, this is a polite, gentlemanly wolf who favours logic and science above such trivial matters as family and friendship.

History: He has no real sob stories or dramatic backstories, I’m afraid. He was never left to fend for himself on a rainy night when he was a cub. He was one of two male cubs in a litter, the other being Grebo who is a small wolf, built like a bull who loved to follow orders. Oscar was a taller but weedier cub who was quiet, spending his days contemplating or listening to stories rather than playing. He would often forget to eat and never begged for food. As he grew up he was recognised as being clever and good at solving problems and despite his weaknesses, he was made the head of the hunt in the pack. This was a pack of lupus, with no other wolf species and Oscar has never seen a wolf from another species. Eventually he felt life in the pack becoming a little boring: he never had time for exploring any more and although his country was beautiful and lovely, he had worked out a lot about it and had no time to make more discoveries. Eventually he applied to his father Protagonist, asking him if he could leave for a while. Protagonist knew that his son would never come back but gave him leave anyway. He has been travelling ever since.

An elemental problem: Oscar is a lupus and lupus control elements. His father controlled metal and his mother controlled fire; straightforward, normal, common elements. When Oscar first opened his eyes he loved to watch the dancing fires his mother made to keep the cubs warm in the snow. His father made them all talismans from shiny, non-precious but hardy metals in the soil. They were based on the animals in the woodland around their territory and Oscar’s was a silver goshawk on a silver chain. It is very well detailed and he wears it always beneath his fur where it fits him perfectly, unable to be caught up in a tree branch or twig. Sometimes it is possible to see the goshawk poking out from under the fur but usually it is hidden. Oscar isn’t the sort to be sentimental about these things, but he has always worn it and it felt a part of him.

So his parents controlled metal and fire, but what of Oscar himself? Shortly after he had opened his eyes, using them to watch his mother’s dancing flame, Oscar began to lose his footing on the ground and float up high in the air. His mother had to grab him and hold onto the scruff of his neck to stop him from floating off. He would be lying still one moment, watching the fire, then the very next moment he would gently drift upwards. This little problem continued and refused to go away. In fact it seemed to get worse as he grew older: at a few months old he would be swimming in the river with his sisters, quite happy, but gradually begin to find it rather hard to stay in the water. He would float upwards until he could grasp a tree branch and hold onto it until gravity would return to normal.

This bothered him because it was illogical. Gravity worked for the others, so why not him? His father made him some lead bracelets to weigh him down but he never used them, preferring to find out more about his ability and what he could do to control it. He asked his grandfather, who told him that his grandmother’s element had been gravity and when she wanted to, she could float upwards. Perhaps when she was younger it had been harder to control. So Oscar decided that his element was gravity and learnt to control it as the other cubs did. Now, at the age of seven, controlling his own gravity has become as easy as breathing. He stays on the ground but when running he makes himself weigh less, becoming fleeter of foot. Of course when he comes up to any prey he is chasing he must become heavier again. For some reason he can’t seem to make himself have more gravity - only less. This is annoying as it would be useful to hunt by floating above an animal then dropping like a ton of bricks onto it. He is beginning to learn to control the gravity of other things but cannot control other wolves’ gravity: it has taken this long to master his own! He can get things to sink in water when normally they would float, and vice versa. Small things like leaves may float at his command. He is quite proud of his unusual power although sometimes used to wish he had a more logical one.