Name: Adam Ross

Clan: Shadowfur Clan

Occupation: Musician / Pack Enforcer

Alignment: Neutral

Actual Age/Apparent Age: 28/20

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Bi-curious, with a strong preference for women

Race/Species: werewolf

Appearance: Since before he could remember, Adam has always had dual colored hair. A deep russet red with white streaks intermixed into the loose curls. He wears it long, choosing to own the thing kids would have teased him about, had he not. Because of the length, the longer loose curls tend to take on a life of their own, some poking out in what seems like all angles.

Whatever caused his hair to be dual colored, also affected one eyebrow and the color of his eyes, one a rich brown, and the other a pale blue, bordering on silver. While the contrast is stark, Adam doesn’t seem to care, reacting more like he can’t understand why people are so focused on the strangeness to his appearance, even though he understands exactly why. His features aren’t normal, but instead of wasting time trying to figure out why, or changing it, he just sort of accepted it and moved on.

In fact, he owned the strange appearance enough that his entire upper body is covered in a series of tattoos, to the point that it looks like a giant one covering his torso, shoulders, and down his arms to the back of his hands. Though, instead of the hulking form expected of most bodyguards, Adam is rather...slender. Broad shoulders often poke out from shirts, there but not filled out with muscle as most things are often seen. While not out of shape, Adam’s form is more average than one might expect, no rippling muscles anywhere, just..an average build.

But that simply hides a strength most don’t see until it is far too late. Adam carries himself with a graceful step, his movements remaining easy and almost lazy in a way, and where he lacks in visible strength, he makes up for in speed. This often makes his opponents underestimate what he is capable of, allowing him to use his strengths to gain a quick upper hand by catching them off guard.

Adam also often has a ferret. On his shoulder. In a pocket. Curled in the hood of his jacket. Shimmied its way down Adam’s sleeve until just its whiskers poke out to tickle his hand, making one arm look thicker than the other. Peering at you over the top of his head where it’s managed to tangle itself up with Adam’s curls. Where Adam is, the ferret is often closeby.

Personality:
Even though Adam is a quiet one, his presence is often hard to miss. He prefers to weigh his thoughts before speaking, making it seem like he might not be paying attention, but rest assured, he is paying attention to far more than he appears. After growing up moving from foster home to foster home, Adam learned there’s a power in quietness, as well as the ability to intimidate with it as well.

Even so, Adam seems to never be far from some form of music, whether it be the way he’s humming to some tune in his head, drumming his fingers on a counter, table or his leg, or in a corner of the Den with some musical instrument. He will readily admit to a love of music, and often plays in local bars and open mics, but what he won’t admit is the way that music helps curb the urges brought on by ears of addiction. Only Kathryn knows that part, given she was the one that showed him how to use it.

Adam finds it hard to trust, given growing up in the foster care system, to the early days of the Clan, but once his trust is earned, it would be difficult to find someone more loyal. That said, it isn’t a blind loyalty. Adam learned the harsh lesson that comes with blind loyalty, and that even if someone deserved it in the past, it doesn’t mean he is required to give it should anything they do break that trust.

The only counter to that blind loyalty is the young wolves in the Clan, those still struggling with things he went through - from breaking their own addictions to trusting those around them. It seems as if no matter how many times they stray, how many times they lash out, how often they aim specifically to hurt another, he is always there with a quiet word of comfort, a reassuring, strong presence in their darkest moments. The hand reaching into the dark pit to help pull them out.

While this could be seen as a softer side, it would be a mistake to consider Adam a soft man. He is the first to jump in to protect the Clan, often beat to the fight only by Kathryn herself. He will not hesitate to end any threat to the Clan, or any member of the Clan, choosing to leave any blind loyalty he might hold to the ideals of what they could be, striving to help Kathryn to lift them all to those ideals.

Abilities/Skills:
          Resist Moon’s Call - Werewolves have always been tied to the moon, and while some are able to resist the call of a full moon, it simply makes it easier to work through the need to shift with the moon rather than remove it entirely. They can avoid that call while new wolves might not be strong enough to do so. This comes with age and practice, more than how strong a wolf is.

          Intimidation - Adam is not one to cross. With a certain look from his dual-colored eyes, people tend to quiet down or rethink their plan. He can’t sway the mind of another to the point of changing their intended plans, but once he decides it necessary, his demeanor tenses enough to make others rethink their intended plan at least. If it works, it works, if not, he isn’t beyond fighting out whatever attack may come. Though, out of respect for Kathryn, he tries other means before throwing punches.

          Speed - One of the fastest wolves in the Shadowfur Clan, and in the city, Adam can move much faster than a human, often surprising opponents with just how fast fast really is.

          Strength - While not a “drop a person in one hit” type of strength, Adam’s tends to lean more towards endurance than brute force. He can last longer in a fight, his grip is tighter than expected.

Weaknesses:
          Shifting - Shifting forms is not a quick process, and a wolf opens themselves up to a very real vulnerability while shifting forms. They find themselves distracted, their inherent defenses considerably weakened, and in a fair amount of pain during the minute or two it takes to shift forms.

          Moon Phases - Much like how they are naturally stronger during a full moon, wolves tend to be weaker during a New moon.

          Silver - While silver will not poison a wolf, wounds caused from it take much longer to heal, weakening them further during that lengthened time. Shifting forms takes much longer and grows far more painful, they move slower, react slower, and any powers they have aren’t nearly as effective, the silver from the wound creating an effect similar to a strong, body-wide infection for a human. This can be used as a method of controlling a wolf, by making them wear a silver necklace or piece of jewelry causes the same slowed reaction and shifting, and lack of strength.

          Addiction - Like many of the Clan members, Adam was drawn in by the drugs, and changed from there. While mostly under control, addiction is a battle one never quite stops fighting, and he can sometimes be more susceptible to fall back on old ways.


History:
Adam grew up moving from one foster home to the next. The longest he ever stayed in one was about three months before they finally had enough, claiming him a “difficult child” and “hard to handle” when really he simply didn’t trust that they would want him around for very long, and refused to make any connections with others in the home based on that fact alone. Once he turned sixteen, he filed paperwork to become an emancipated teen, moved out of the foster system, dropped out of school, and promptly fell into the worst group possible for such a kid.

All he wanted growing up was someone to show him he mattered to them. Someone to have his back and actually care. Someone to actually mean it when they said they wouldn’t toss him aside the moment giving a damn about him became hard. And he found it. Or thought he had.

He stumbled on a group of teens around his age that seemed to like what he did, and offered him somewhere to stay. It took Adam a few months to actually accept, not believing it was anything more than false platitudes, and even when he moved in, remained convinced that, like every other place that tried to call itself a home, he would find himself moving on to somewhere else.

Within this group, he found his way to the darker side of drugs, starting at first recreationally, to ease his worries and forget about how hard life actually was. Eventually, what started out recreationally turned into a deepset addiction he couldn’t break. Once Adam reached that point, those friends he’d found took him out to the woods one night for “the greatest trip he’d ever go on”.

It took a week later for him to come out of whatever happened, and all he could remember was that his throat had grown raw as if he’d spent an entire night yelling. Which he had. But all he remembered from it, high as he was when it started, was that the shadows had attacked. For a while, Adam thought it merely whatever hallucinations the high had brought on and thought nothing of it, until he felt his first change come on.

He moved out, wanting nothing to do with the group that had taken him in after that, but the addiction was too strong, the confusion of what had happened to him drew him back, where he met Jasper and had the entire thing explained. He was now a werewolf, now part of the Iron Claw, and would pay back the debt he owed from the drugs he’d used all those months prior - the cause of his now addiction - by somehow making himself useful to the Clan.

Adam hated every minute of it, but the threat of taking said payment from his hide in the form of beatings was enough to drive him into selling the drugs he also used. The threat of beatings that he endured a solid week before he realized they just wouldn’t stop until he agreed. Every chance he got, every time he thought he could get away with it, Adam bucked Jasper’s system. He only sold as much as he had to, and rode that line that marked the bare minimum of what he had to do to keep the beatings at bay.

At first, he didn’t want to trust Kathryn, the new blonde that showed up, far too sweet and caring for his taste - for this place. Yet, she also undermined the goals of the clan as much as she could, but without a drug-rattled mind, she seemed to do so much better than he. He found he admired her strength, her ability to stand up to Jasper and refuse to back down, slowly winning him over, as well as many others in the group.

It was then Adam allowed her to send him off to a rehab program she worked with, promising him he would have a place to come back to whether it worked or not. To prove the point, she visited him daily, checking up on his progress checking in on him once the program allowed, and when it didn’t, she made sure the staff knew to let him know she had been there. Daily. Rooting for his success. During his hardest moments, this was the only thing that kept him going. Kat believed in him even when Adam couldn’t believe in himself. And when he made it through the program, it was Kat waiting at the door to take him home. This was what finally convinced him that trust could happen when someone proved they were worth it.

After Jasper’s death, it was Adam that first spoke up when Kathryn put forth the idea that they needed a new Alpha. It was his voice so regularly silent that it drew everyone’s attention when he spoke, claiming Kathryn had been their Alpha, their leader for much longer than they had been without one. He wasn’t sure how many would agree with him, and was surprised at the chorus that came after, voices rising to state the same as his dual colored eyes held Kathryn’s over the heads of all those agreeing that she not only should be the Alpha, that she had been, and would be the only one they trusted with the task.

From that point on, he stood at her side, helping her to rebuild the Clan, to teach them how to trust, to give them somewhere to vent, to rage, someone to lash out at until they tired themselves out, only to find strong arms lifting them, taking them back inside where it was safe, showing no anger or frustration with them for the torrent of anger he took from various pack members that needed to release it. The next morning, as they came back out and saw Adam for the first time after lashing out at him, they were greeted simply as if the event had never happened.

He filled the role of a seawall to their hurricane of emotions, letting them expend the energy in a safe way, taking the force from their volatile emotions before Kathryn took over to build them up from there. This role built his endurance, allowing him to fill the role of bodyguard effectively when Kathryn needed it. While the Clan could lash out at him only for Adam to simply take it, anyone else would find a swift end to the threat instead.

Other information:  Only after he shifted for the first time did Adam realize that the mixed coloring he carries in human form was something genetic, when it carried over to his wolf form as well. The beast he shifts into takes on the same russet coloring, though a little more brown than his hair, with white streaks throughout the fur. The same mismatched eyes remain as well, one icy blue and the other nearly golden in color.

(Any specific thing you wish to build or accomplish with your character?):