Name: Mahdi
Alias: Idris [undecided]
Gender: Male
Nationality: American Citizen
Place of Birth: Acre, Israel
Ethnicity: Arabic

Lycanthropy:

This strain of lycanthropy is an infliction which is passed from animal to animal via the introduction of bodily fluids (such as saliva or blood) in sufficient enough quantity to create a growing viral infection in the victim. The new lycanthrope will not suffer their first change until their first lunar cycle has been completed with the first change taking place on the night of the full moon. This change is compulsory and uncontrollable and results in both a psychological break and a physical restructuring of the body as the infection takes ahold. Both bone and muscle density increases, allowing for greater all around fortitude and an increased organ capacity. The lycanthropes canines elongate partially and alongside all teeth, grow partially in size. A lycanthropes hair tends to grow quickly. Aside from the physical changes, the change brings about a surfacing of more instictual and 'feral' behaviour, something that can interfere heavily in everyday life and takes time to control.

Lycanthropes are possessed of great fortitude and celerity. They are many times stronger, faster and physically tougher than any human. They can survive and recuperate from wounds that would normally mean certain death for the average mortal, stretching from a strengthed immune system to the mending of broken bones. A lycanthrope is possessed of heigthened senses ranging from eyesight to taste - oft as not, however, a tolerable sound to a human can become intolerable to a young, or surprised lycanthrope. All the 'benefits' of lycanthropy are exaggerated even futher while transformed. Alongside the growth in phsyical size and prowess, their senses and athletic ability becomes truly formidable. So do, does the presence of their 'beast' half, which struggles against the concious control of the human heart, always desiring to be free.

This strain allows the infected to change at will. It is however affected by lunar tides. The younger the lycanthrope the more a full moon will compel them to change, and the longer they will remain a lycan once they give in. Even when 'human', a lycanthrope at the height of the lunar cycle will find their more animalistic qualities coming to the fore. Conversely, a young lycan may find it more difficult to change on command at the opposite end of the lunar cycle.

As the lycanthrope ages they will inevitably change frequently, compelled to do so by its very nature. Over time, these changes exact a permament change on the infected both physically and mentally. They can begin to represent the beast within, manifesting animalistic qualities and behaviours even while the beast is caged within.

Description:

Mahdi is visibly of arabic descent. He is tall with borad shoulders, but an otherwise slim build. He keeps his dark hair cropped close to his scalp, the same length as the few days growth of stubble on his face and neck. In keeping with his Middle Eastern heritidge his eyes are a deep brown colour a few shades lighter than his hair. His nose is slightly too large, but his face is otherwise fairly symetrical, plain but not boring. He bears no tattoos, piercings or scars.


Biography:

Born in Acre, Israel Mahdi was the third child of an impoverished family, a citizen of Acre's growing underclass. The pressure of nearing Western Crusaders meant that more and more people were flooding towards the cities in search of protection and security. Mahdi were no exception to this wave of immigrants, all of whom arrived to find that the city could not sustain so many hungry mouths. The family, and the city, survived mainly due to the wealth brought in by its port. Mahdi had reached his late teenage years by the time he contracted lycanthropy. The accepted story is that while unloading cargo on a newly arrived merchant vessel where a sick crewmate, supposedly inflicted with scurvy, attacked Mahdi. In 1189 Acre was besieged by the armies of the Crusaders. The city starved slowly, crumbling from the inside out. Famine tore apart the impoverished. It took two years for the city to drop too its knees. With the siege successful, the Crusaders held each Muslim citizen as a hostage with which to negotiate. When talks began to falter, the towns former citizens were executed one by one. At the time of the siege Mahdi had been struggling with his lycanthropy for only three lunar cycles, and he maintained his secrecy only by luck. The siege only tightened the net in which the beast roamed, and by the time the Crusaders climbed the walls he was already chained in the cities jailhouse, ready to be executed. The Crusaders saw this truth for themselves. They too feared him, but their curiosity outweighed any hesitation they felt. So it was that Mahdi found himself aboard a galley bound for Cyprus. Chained up in the vessels bowels, provoked and jeered at through the bars of his cell. The ship never reached the port for which is was bound. It's remains were found some time later wrecked off the islands coast. No trace of Mahdi was ever again recorded during the Crusades.

Alone, frightened and unable to care for himself Mahdi succumbed to the lure of the beast within. He travelled, hunted, lived as a beast for much of the following decades. Increasingly he became feral, withdrawing more and more into himself. He would avoid signs of human life, afraid and intimidated by their presence. He moved only when humans strayed too close or prey learnt better than to inhabit the same forests in which he slept. When he moved, he moved west. It was in Germany that Mahdi first met others of his kind. It was the scent that drew him in; it wasn't something he recognized, but he knew it instinctively. On some repressed level of his former self, perhaps he craved the company after so long along. It drew him closer to a town than he had been since he had left Acre.

He had lived the average humans life time before he came across another of his kin, and this time, it was a pack. It was in France, a woodlands near a small settlement fifteen miles from the Italian border. This time, they had sought out him. When he caught their scents he had panicked, expected to be attack once again. Only it never came. What entered his house that night was a trio of men, clean, shaven and polite. It was something of a revelation for Mahdi, a small miracle. He had others now, with whom he could share his pains. Talk to openly. Even to hunt with, knowing that the others would prevent anyone else from going too far. It was the first time that Mahdi had experienced the lycanthropy as anything but a curse. It was a shame, then, that it could not last forever. A long time had passed. Long enough for the four men to grow close, closer perhaps than family, to loose enough of their old selves that their new life became their self. Until someone discovered their secret. Until the panic spread and frightened men and women came with burning torches, swords, pitchforks and axes. Mahdi was the sole survivor, and a bitter one.

It sparked off a dark time in his life. The first time he had killed a man it had been in fear for his life, and in later years he has accepted this. The second time, and too many times after that, he killed out of hatred. A hatred of men, whom took away his family. Whom hunt him because of an infection, a disease. It was worse because he never slipped back into the feral state of his early changes; he was conscious, deliberate. He hunted man, as man had hunted him. A small, whispering part of him enjoyed it. It is that, perhaps, which Mahdi remembers. That which makes him somber on cold nights alone. That, which drives him now to strive for better. It took a long time for the anger to stop, to falter to a point where he stepped back and looked at what he had done. What he was. He wishes he could point out a catalyst that changed him, but there was none. It was time that weathered him down, time that blunted his rage. If not for time, perhaps nothing at all would have changed. Thankfully, for his soul most of all, time went by.

It took Mahdi a long time to feel human again. He could never forget the things he had done, could not live with it. Yet, he was too afraid to die. Too shameful to take his life and end it. So he struggled. He climbed out of the hole he had dug for himself and began living again. Hesitantly, haphazardly, in a world he hardly recognized any more. Time worked its magic. He began to accept his actions in the past, if not forgive them. Atonement was his goal. Is, his goal. Centuries passed in this pursuit. Centuries in which he tried to better himself. He travelled, listened, learned, observed. He met others of his kind. Often they were feral, wild. A danger to others, to themselves. Those, he began to silence quietly. The others, those more human than beast, he stayed with some time. A time always came where he had to move on, though. To walk the lonely roads again.

So he finds himself in the modern age. Wing City. In his life Mahdi has done many things. Many are good. As many are bad. It has become his goal to unify his kin, to draw them together to form not just a pack,but a society. A family. He aims for peace, for an end to questions, the wandering. An end to the struggle between beast and man. Perhaps, now, at last, he has accepted that to struggle is futile. That in centuries of being alive, he has yet to live.

[Details added as I go]

Pack:

[New additions are welcome.]

- Mahdi
- Amelia Duvloc