Gia Rilan

[Gia Rilan]

Take two!

Name: Gia Rilan

Age: 38

Race: Wolf shifter

Physical Description: Long and lean, Gia walks with a rangy grace. She has yellow-brown eyes (which reflect light like an animal's eyes) and dark brown hair, both a bit of a shock against her pale skin. There is something feral about her, enough to slightly unnerve even the most hardy woodsman. She typically wears light clothing made of cotton or silk, usually a long tunic over leggings or a simple dress. She is about 5' 9" and weighs about 150lbs.

In wolf form she has thick dark brown fur the color of her hair on her back and flanks which shades to light cream on her belly and ruff. She has the same yellow-brown eyes as her human form. She is a large wolf and her body type as a wolf matches that of her human body, strong and lean.

Possessions: Gia owns only the things that can fit into a specially made small backpack that she can wear both as human and wolf. She has a change of clothes, two small knives, soap, a small amount of money, a few scraps of paper and a piece of charcoal to write on them with, and usually about a three days supply of food like jerky and other road food.

Powers or Strengths: Gia can transform into a wolf that has nearly the same level of intelligence as her human form. She is an excellent tracker and hunter, both conventionally (she is very good with a bow and arrow) and as a wolf. A good guard as well, she accompanied merchant trains for a few years, though she gets testy with anyone that refers to her as a guard dog.

When fighting as a wolf, Gia is ferocious. She is strong and fast, though not the most muscly of her species. Years of fighting as a wolf have made her a canny opponent, and her quick healing fixes most fight wounds in minutes. Her quick healing works much faster as a wolf, but as a human she also heals quicker than normal, turning a wound that would normally take weeks to heal into a matter of days.

Her power as a wolf waxes and wanes with the moon. On the full moon she prefers to be a wolf for as long as she can, though she has enough experience and control by this point to hold back the change if she must. Conversely, on the new moon she is much less likely to change, though she can still manage it if she tries. Her senses also get sharper and weaker with the moon. She can smell emotions on people and sees all scents as colors, which is usually just confusing if she tries to explain them to someone else.

When fighting as a human, she has a small pair of belt knives she can use passably well. She can usually fight her way out of a tough situation, though if there are more than one or two opponents she can be overwhelmed. She fights well enough to hold her own in a barfight, for example, or if someone tries to steal her money.

Weaknesses and Flaws: Gia does not like to be alone. She will take work wherever it can be found, even if that is an unsavory place, to avoid being alone. Even the knowledge that someone is coming back for her is a relief, and she often comes across as slightly childlike in this aspect. If she is left somewhere she will wait for whoever left her to return until she realizes that she has been left for good, and then she wanders around until she finds someone else to serve. This often gets her into some trouble with the law, but once she has found someone to serve she is loyal to a fault.

She can usually hide what she is, but since she doesn't consider it such a big deal, she is sometimes too vocal when it comes to her race.

Gia has a weakness to silver, as all shifters do. It inhibits her fast healing and a silver sword would hurt her much more than a steel one would.

History: Gia was bitten as a young girl. Her parents despaired and tried to keep her locked in the cellar for the obligatory changes the full moon forced on her. She ran away a few years after that and lived for the next few years as more a wolf than a human, scavenging for food in cities and hunting for it in the forests. She managed to come back to herself by the age of sixteen, relearning slowly how to live in society with the guidance of several shifters, among them a great bear shifter named Marken. Marken told her about a place that was a city of shifters to the north, and together they journeyed there.

Once reaching Zhaltev, Gia was astounded by the number and variety of shifters, and her education on how to control herself and live with others continued. She got very attached to Marken and his small, mish-mashed family of shifters in the northern city and lived there until she was around twenty five, when Marken and his clan were killed in one of the common struggles for power in Zhaltev. Gia, who had hired herself out as a caravan guard, returned to an empty home a few months later. Heartbroken, she waited, ignoring those who told her she was waiting in vain.

She moved on slowly, painfully. Eventually she left the empty house and left Zhaltev, unable to take the memories of her friends and family that plagued her at every corner. She moved on and south, traveling with more caravans and traders until she reached Marn, where she met up with a man who sought to raise a shadow, as Gia understood it. She bound herself to him and served him faithfully, hoping against hope that this man who showed her kindness and affection would stay and keep her by him, until he vanished. She waited, again, by the temple for days until it became clear that she had been left.

Another found her there, and she bound herself again, this time to a vampire lord. He took her in and for that got her fealty and love, then asked her to bring someone of interest to him. Always ready to please, Gia set off the next morning and quickly found her target. While in the process of luring them to her lord, they were set upon by bandits and Gia was badly wounded. The wolf took control of their shared body and ran them away, far away, to spend the next few weeks healing and recovering before returning to her lord. But she had been gone so long, and her target had vanished, and she returned in disgrace. Her lord cast her from his service but did nothing to her beyond that, though she felt that being banished from him was worse than death. Desolate, she lingered on the outskirts of the city before joining a caravan traveling west, where she swore to bind herself to no one and work strictly for money.

However, she could never get the idea of friends and family out of her mind and, determined to find the man who left her at the temple the first time or anyone who knew him, she made her way slowly back to Marn, more wary and more longing for a home than ever.

[Stella]

welcome back you.