Reaper ~ male coyote

ϟ ϟ ϟ
hello hello, introduce yourself, won't you?

NAME: Reaper
AGE: 3
GENDER: Male
BREED: Curly coated Retriever x Greyhound x Coyote
PACK: Ragdog Royale

APPEARANCE:

27" at the withers, and about 55lbs; a touch underweight. A black, long animal with skinny legs, his wiry frame is built for running, although not nearly as much as a pure-bred sighthound. Instead, speed has been sacrificed for a more coyote-like rugged frame, ready to endure famine and cold times. He is definitely not a bulky, heavy hitter sort, although he can hold his own, and his wild ancestry means what is there is efficiently used in daily life and his senses are sharp. Maintenance is not much of a problem for him, nor is injury as he has always healed cleanly and quickly (in part due to his fastidious habits, but partly due to his hybrid body not being what diseases are used to).

Overall, his appearance is incredibly foxish, his tail bushy and straight rather than curly, his nose and head pointed and sleek, his ears erect and unfloppy with that furry roundness that foxes and coyotes both have. He has white markings on his chest and a white tip on the end of his tail, but is otherwise mostly solidly black.

A purely cosmetic part of his appearance is his tendency to wear a skull on his head, usually of another canine. This is done for intimidation (a thing his appearance otherwise tends to sorely lack unless one counts a hungry wolfish look), but also because he likes looking out through another's sockets. He is best suited to stalking and lurking in the shadows and delivering messages, if one were to go by appearances alone, and not to slugfests.

PERSONALITY:

A mischievous, somewhat playful trickster, with a violent side though he often prefers to let others do the actual dirty work or to assassinate someone in their sleep so he doesn't get himself too bloody. He likes cleanliness, and tends to be immaculately groomed. Things out of place or out of order easily catch his attention, and he sometimes responds to this by breaking things worse to make it more symmetrical. He is the sort, who, seeing one family missing a child, kills another family's child so that the number of missing children is not an odd number.

His playful riddler side is an unexpected flip for those who only know his other one; that of the cold, calculating cynic who speaks bluntly. Taken without a view of the whole he could be mistaken for two different people, but he is usually a mixture of these traits. Reaper is a brutal liar who is careful not to let whimsy distract him too far, but indulges when it is safe. It is a constant battle inside him between thrill and playing it safely, and sometimes Reaper can't help but give in to something he knows or suspects really shouldn't be tried. He is the type who often falls victim to his appetites, his greed, as it were. Personal discipline is an issue with him, but not slothfulness; when something truly needs to be done, he does it, as he despises mess of any sort.

Romantically, Reaper is torn between roving instinct and familial instinct to settle down and look after his young. He is a bit of a charmer, willing to go with just any lady, although sometimes his cynical and blunt side stops him from completely lying his tail off in matters of love, as that side has a brutal honesty to it. He wonders, quite simply, what is the point in just sleeping around? Of being just another smuck? If he's being really cynical, he wonders what the point is of living at all. He rarely shows his philosophical side to anyone, but occasionally he does give off an evil monologue to a trapped victim who has no way to escape (fully aware, in perverse humor, that such is what villains do). His sense of humor often trends towards the sardonic when it is not mischievous.

HISTORY:

On the dog side of the family, a bred-for-performance by sporting gentry set of lurchers; retriever cross greyhounds that were used solely for function in hunting, not pretty looks or championships. Any inadequate dogs were not allowed to continue the line. At some point, one of these mutts got lost in the wild, and, having the capacity to survive, did so, even breeding with a local coyote. The resulting offspring had the roving instincts of dogs, and the same tendencies towards infidelity, but good pack and hunting instinct, and further intermingling with coyotes rubbed out some of the more doggish behaviors, although the coloration proved difficult to get rid of.

Eventually, this led to the family of coyotes that spawned dear Reaper. Their ancestral home crowded out by man, his mother and father had taken to living on the streets. This required an adaptation to the new surroundings, and Reaper quickly sought to invest himself in the local social hierarchy and power plays as a yearling. The humans disappeared right around the same time, and he knew the resulting chaos was the perfect time to take advantage, although the sheer scale of the anarchy made him decide it prudent to lay low for at least a little while; perhaps until he was fully used to his adult body and the total idiots with no survival skills were dead. He survived by hiring himself out as an assassin.

In his second year, he decided it was time, and happened to meet the first leader of the Ragdolls (Hades), who would have been three years old at the time. He was one of the first dogs to decide to follow Hades, admiring the other's eloquence and willingness to step on others, but most of all decided he wanted to use the dog's rage to his own ends. He knows being in a group is the perfect way to counteract his own weaknesses, but if a better offer comes around, he might just take it. As of now, he is not exactly terribly close to his pack-mates, holding himself aloof from them but always ready to work.