holloways_keep application
Name: Wolf
Age: 26
Journal: wolflupin
Contact: AIM @ Gosperru2
1. Character's Name: Te Ata Stonefeather
2. Age: 24
3. Background: Te Ata was born to a rather traditional Native American couple, both of whom worked long hours to make sure they could provide the best they could for their only child. This resulted in Te Ata spending a lot of time alone by herself as a child, but she had no ill feelings towards her parents, no matter how much she wanted them to be home. She spent most of her time alone dreaming of flying. She wanted to a pilot when she grew up, so she made sure to keep her grades up as much as she possibly could.
However, everything changed shortly after Te Ata turned 17. She climbed a large tree in the woods close to her house, but the branch she settled on was weak from storms that had swept through the area the week before. After sitting on the branch for a few minutes it suddenly broke. Te Ata barely had time to fall before she suddenly changed into a barn owl. She managed to slow her fall enough to keep from getting seriously injured before suddenly shifting back to human.
Severely shaken, Te Ata huddled at the bottom of the tree for almost an hour before collecting herself enough to go home. Curling up in a chair, Te Ata waited for hours until her parents came home. When she explained to them what happened, neither seemed too shocked by what she told them. Then her father dropped a real bombshell on her. Long before technology boomed, all humans had the ability to shapeshift into an animal form unique to each person. As time went on, most cultures forgot about their abilities to shift, and only a few groups still knew about and practiced shifting. However, sometimes people could shift by accident in times of need, though this didn't always happen. Te Ata was one of the few who shifted accidentally like this, and would have to leave to go to a remote settlement of shifters to be trained properly on how to shift and get accustomed to using her animal form as freely as her own body. Her father had lived in one of those settlements when he was a teenager before leaving to return to normal society with her mother.
Te Ata could barely believe what her parents were telling her until her father shifted into a mountain lion and her mother into a snake. Realizing this was too much for Te Ata to process, they shifted back and coaxed her into bed. When she awoke in the morning, her mother helped her pack a bag of supplies and essentials, explaining that she would have to make the journey to the shifters' village on her own; the most they could do was drop her off at the forest that contained the village and point her in the right direction. Packed and ready to go, Te Ata and her parents started the long drive out into the countryside. Over two hours later, her father pulled over onto the side of the rode next to an overgrown path. They told Te Ata to head north for two days to the tallest mountain in the area, which she would need to climb most of the way up to reach the village.
Te Ata watched her parents drive away before looking dubiously at the path winding away into the forest. Hitching her backpack up high, Te Ata began her arduous journey up the mountain. She spent the first night scared out of her wits of every rustle of the leaves and shuffling sound she heard, but relaxed the next night when she wasn't attacked. Te Ata camped out at the base of the mountain at the end of the second day, trying to figure out how to scale the practically vertical mountain. In the morning, she set off up the mountain, barely making it up to a ledge halfway up the bluff before nightfall. Exhausted, Te Ata practically passed out as soon she was safely on the ledge and didn't wake until the sun was almost right above her. Pulling herself up and forcing down a quick breakfast, Te Ata set off to climb the rest of the way up.
It was long past sundown when Te Ata finally made it to the village, only to find two middle-aged women and an elderly women waiting for her at the edge of the cliff. The women helped support her into the village and into a large lodge before sitting her down at a table with food and water. The elderly woman sat across from her and began to speak to Te Ata, who was rather relieved her parents had insisted she learn their native language. Te Ata listened closely as the old woman introduced herself as Sah-cooh, the village medicine woman and explained that she would help Te Ata learn how to control her shifting, along with how to live as the villagers did. Sah-cooh told her that Te Ata could choose to leave the village once Sah-cooh decided her training was finished, or she could stay to help teach the future generations of shifters. Te Ata bowed her head in deference to Sah-cooh, who nodded in return and left, giving the other two women instructions to bathe and clothe Te Ata before she slept.
Once that was done, Te Ata was directed into a lodge where two other new arrivals were sleeping already. Falling asleep the instant she lay down, Te Ata was woken early in the morning by one of the other teenagers in the lodge. A girl at least four years younger than Te Ata had been the one to wake her up, and she introduced herself as Amelia. As they headed into the village plaza, Amelia explained that she had arrived two days earlier after making the climb with one of the villagers. Since her family had never had any shifters before, the man who had helped her had been sent there when Neesh, the village shaman, had a vision about her shifting into a chipmunk. Amelia then pointed out the boy who had been in the lodge with them, Daniel. He had been there two weeks before Amelia had arrived, and he hadn't said much the entire time he had been in the village.
Quieting as they were herded into the center of the plaza with Daniel and another boy, Neesh spoke to the village, asking them to help the four learn how to control their gift and teach them to use it wisely. Te Ata had to quietly translate for Amelia and Daniel, the only two who did not know the language. Once finished, Neesh prayed for them before disbanding the villagers.
For the next two years, Te Ata and the other three worked hard to learn how to completely control their powers. Daniel turned out to be a rather goofy, though painfully shy, boy who shifted into a Kestrel. The other boy turned out to be the son of Neesh and Sah-cooh, Ta-sha, a wolf shifter, who was the complete opposite of Daniel. Te Ata and Amelia became close friends as time passed, but Amelia loved modern society too much to stay. So when she was deemed sufficiently trained at the end of the year, she left the village, promising to get in touch with Te Ata's parents so they could keep in contact. Daniel stayed but slowly drifted away from Te Ata without the bouncy Amelia around to keep the two together. Ta-sha did not seem to care either way about any one of them, prefering to keep to himself than interact with anyone.
A year later, two years after Te Ata first came to the village, the rest of them were told that their training was done. Te Ata decided to stay behind while Daniel decided to track down Amelia, explaining that he had had a crush on her. Te Ata wanted to stay so she could help find shifters whose families did not know about the village. For the next five years, Te Ata did what she had chosen for the village, and helped to bring frightened new shifters to the village. Her wings gave her an advantage, as she could travel farther and longer than the land-based shifters could.
Te Ata was on her way to find a new shifter when she awoke in the Keep.
4. Personality: Te Ata is a very solitary, serious person, prefering not to speak unless she has to. As a delegate for her tribe of shifters, Te Ata has learned to be diplomatic and can usually defuse tense situations, though sometimes she lets her mouth run without thinking about what she's saying. She is confident enough to say and do whatever she wants without worrying overly much about what people think about her. Te Ata doesn't smile or laugh a lot, and often frowns, sometimes unconsciously. Due to the nature of the shifter culture, Te Ata is very secretive about her life past the age of seventeen. It was forbidden for shifters to talk about themselves to outsiders, so she will either try to steer the question away from that subject or ignore any questions outright.
She can anger easily if the right buttons are pushed, but she tries to hide any real sign of emotion because she believes showing emotion is a weakness. Te Ata has trouble dealing with emotions because of this belief, and prefers to ignore any negative emotions to an almost unhealthy degree. However cold she appears to be, Te Ata is still kind, and won't just stand around if someone is in trouble. She is polite to everyone she meets until they do or say something she doesn't like, but she is always kind to children and elders.
5. Previous Game Developments: N/A
6. Appearance: Te Ata stands at 5 feet 10 inches, with a slim, muscular build. Her skin is dark and she has dark brown eyes and hair, which is slightly wavy and reaches the bottom of her shoulder blades. Her face has a highly-pronounced bone structure, with prominent cheekbones, a wide nose, and a strong jaw. Te Ata has some small scars on her legs that comes from walking around heavy brush without long pants, and calluses on her hands from the constant use of weapons and tools, but no large, distinguishing scars.
As an owl, Te Ata is a normal Barn owl, standing about two feet tall with a five foot wing span.
7. Abilities: Besides her shifting ability, Te Ata is a normal human. She is agile and quick, but is only as physically strong as a human who constantly does manual labor. Normally, Te Ata can quickly shift to her owl form with barely a thought, but while in the Keep the transformation will take a few minutes and be more draining than normal, with a one hour cooldown period before she can shift back.
As a Barn owl, she has no special abilities, though her thought processes are the same in this form as in her human form. When she shifts, however, her clothes don't shift with her, so she either has to carry a specially made pack or find clothes when she shifts back.
8. Languages: English and the native language of the shifters.
9. Items: Te Ata wears an abundance of jewelry, including lots of bracelets, earrings and a necklace with an obsidian feather pendent. She carries a leather pack with a couple changes of clothes (a plain cloth dress, jeans and a t-shirt), survival tools (flint, medicinal herbs and clean strips of cloth to bind wounds), and an old framed photo of her parents and herself when she was a child.
10. Weapons: A hunting knife and a bow and arrow set. The knife will be blunted and the arrows will loose their shape, becoming flat instead of pointed. In owl form, she has her talons and beak.
11. Writing sample - Third Person Prose:
This...could not be happening.
Te Ata blinked hard, trying to reconcile the fact that she had just turned into a bird. Shaking so hard she could barely stand, Te Ata gathered up her scattered clothes that had fallen off the instant she had changed and re-dressed before collapsing against the base of the tree she had been previously sitting in. The bark bit into her skin as she continued to shake, mind racing desperately to try and figure out what the hell had just happened.
How did she turn into a bird? How was that even possible? People didn't just change into things at random. It was completely and utterly scientifically impossible. If it were possible, everybody would know about it and scientists would have done research on how it was done and there was absolutely, no way no how, a way to turn into an animal.
So how had she managed to turn into a bird without even thinking about?
Hell, she didn't even know what kind of bird she had been. One moment she was falling, screaming at the sudden fact that she was about to fall fifty feet to the ground, and the next she's...screeching and flapping wings and she couldn't even think about it without her vision tunneling and her head spinning dangerously.
Te Ata dug her fingers into the tree, using the pain to steady herself as she tried desperately to just...not think about what had just happened.
She didn't know how long she sat at the base of the tree, the entire time a blur. When she finally recovered, it was almost dark and the temperature had dropped dramatically. Shivering from the cold this time, Te Ata finally pulled herself up and began the short walk back to her house.
How was she going to explain this to her parents?
12. Writing sample - First Person:
[The audio switches on and there's a rather annoyed noise.]
To this...Lord Deior?
I am not amused. I was in the middle of something important, and I would prefer to finish it before being taken somewhere without my knowledge. This note is hardly a believable reason for my presence in this place.
Hmph.
This thing shows me there are other people here, and have been for some time now. Why we are here and how can we get away is what I want to know, though other useful tidbits of knowledge won't hurt. I am obviously not a prisoner, considering there is a key here and my door is unlocked.
...And why are my weapons are blunted? Might as well have taken them away than expend the effort to make them blunt. This all seems rather convoluted to me.
13. Tattoo: Around her hips
14. Room Preference: No preference!