base character info
Jan. 2nd, 2018 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
halfacatName: Juri
Age: 22
Height: 158 cm/5'2"
Species: Half-breed human/cat person
Birthday: 13th December (or, middle of the last month of the year/one of the winter months)
Personality: Artless, curious and friendly, Juri is cheerful and social, but far less extroverted than he appears to be. He prefers smaller company if he gets to choose, but on the other hand he's not shy, either, and likes attention or simply being in a crowd without being expected to participate. Independent, he tends to not listen to most people when it comes to advice or 'don'ts'... but he's also not very good at being graceful if someone did tell him he shouldn't do something and why and they turn out to be right. It's not so much that he thinks he's necessarily right and can't be wrong, as more of a bit of a contrary streak along with that independence that makes him want to do it himself, even if he shouldn't. Aside from that he's adaptable to many circumstances, both preferring and finding it rather easy to at least try to roll with the punches. Is also agreeable and consciously tries to not be judgemental, wanting to see the best in others. He's not really naive, but his choices and actions might sometimes appear to be.
Has no poker face to talk about, and isn't shy about showing his emotions - or being attentive about others' emotions, too, as he's rather empathetic and compassionate and likes being able to help even if it won't necessarily change what someone's feeling. Despite this and being generally a forward sort of person, he's surprisingly pretty easily embarrassed. It doesn't stop him by any means, if he wants something, but he can be pretty shy when it comes to intimacy, at least to start with. He usually warms up and relaxes soon enough, and his curiosity means he's open about learning new things. (Just slow to start, you could say.) Tends to default to at least an attempt at jokes when he's nervous or afraid, though admittedly he tends to cheerful teasing otherwise too.
Has some insecurities about his looks - he knows he's not what he 'should' be on either end of his heritage, and knows it's visible even if clothes hides some of it, but he's very stubborn about keeping this quiet and tends to get sullen and defensive if it's brought up. He's not really been bullied about it while growing up, but there's been comments and he knows what he's lacking (or what's just different from what it "should be"). He's working on it (or not, as the case may be).
Talents: Is very flexible, and ambidextrous. Quicker reflexes than a regular human, but his strength is average. Both likes and is good at dancing of various sorts, and while he can play flute, he's not very good at singing. At all.Caterwauling anyone?
(The flute is some sort of transverse flute, most usually a western concert flute for more contemporary takes, or one of its forebears, a traverso, or a bansuri, for historical/fantasy. Probably some suitably futuristic version of a keyed transverse flute for sci-fi.)
Powers: In case of settings using magic and particularly as channeled through music (like a Bard and similar), he's either of average strength or more powerful than he's aware of, as his informal and partially self-taught skills in both music and magic in this case wouldn't lend itself to easily tapping the depths of his magical power.
Background in a few different flavours depending on what's wanted:
Juri's actual story is set in the same world asvharuunensong, where he lives with his mother and her family on the southern spur of the northern continent. His father is a human merchant from one of the northernmost coastal countries of the southern continent, but that's about all Juri knows about him, and that's about as much as he cares to know. He's never needed a father - there are plenty of adult male role models in the family that's taken that space.
He found a taste for wandering early (which meant getting in trouble for disappearing from adult supervision when he was younger), and after gaining enough skill to be able to use his music as a source of income, Juri spends most of late spring to early autumn travelling. That, along with an early interest in history in general, got him curious about feli history in particular, even more so when there's basically nothing to find aside from stories the feli themselves have, and rumours (usually seen as ridiculous by everyone else).
The most persistent rumours revolve around an ancient feli kingdom in the north of the continent the humans claim as their own, and Juri, driven by his curiosity, decides to try and find something, anything, if there is anything to find. Unfortunately the feli in that part of the world are considered slaves, which makes travelling there kind of tense.
Things go fine until he runs into a human noble who takes interest in his 'unique' looks and offers a (suspiciously) generous offer of shelter when it's clear the area is whipped by serious storms in early summer. With no real way of refusing, Juri goes along to the fort the noble was going to and, after being left alone in the man's rooms, snooping around, finds a magical artifact. A feli magical artifact.
Juri had, of course, not intended to stay very long at all, but even with the storm still lashing the countryside, he decides his best bet of getting away (with artifact) is to leave right then and there. Things get further complicated by finding a feli chained in a supply closet - a feli that's very far from home, coming as he does from the isolated tribes of feli in the northern part of the northern continent. Said feli have little over for any feli who lives among other species, by choice or not, and this feli has even less for Juri very clearly being a hybrid. Juri does the proper thing and helps free him (if he can't help anyone else, he can help this feli at the very least), and they reluctantly leave together, in the direction Juri was going anyway, since the wasteland beyond the fort is where the ancient feli kingdom is said to have been.
It's an unpleasant journey with Dima a cruel voice of constant disapproval of any- and everything Juri might do, and them having to huddle together for warmth makes no one any more comfortable. A run-in with a group of humans trying to find escaped feli slaves both make things worse as well as better, opening up some vague road for them to at least work together until they can get home.
Surprisingly, Dima's suggestion on how to get through a city guarding the one easily navigable mountain pass they need to get through, as little as Juri likes it (since it requires him to not just pretend to be human, but cross-dress too, to effectively hide his feline features), is as uncomfortable for Dima as it is for Juri. Dipping into the edges of the desert after getting through the mountain pass despite Juri's reservations, things do not get better. Feli live in the desert, but feli who are even more virulently against any outsiders compared to the northern tribes, and, of course, Juri and Dima get found by a scouting party of said feli. The leader of it shows as much interest in Dima as he does Juri, to both of their discomfort, and Juri is honestly surprised when Dima, having a chance to escape, actually goes out of his way to take Juri with him.
One thing leads to another on their flight north out of the desert, and after an actual apology from Dima the development is quite natural... which might be a little unfortunate because they've been racing against time to hopefully get onto a ship before heat season strikes. They fail, of course, and find themselves captured by a group of feli criminals who's gotten pardons leveraged against them if they assist in said capture.
The human noble - the younger brother of the current ruler, in fact - has caught up to them, and reveals with certainty that he knows exactly what the magical artifact Juri has been hiding in his bag is. A magical artifact that comes from the feli tribes Dima belongs to, but as awkward as the reveal is, at least the coup attempt against the human noble's sister is thwarted and they get released, with the artifact since it isn't actually the weapon the prince thought it'd be. Juri is honestly surprised when Dima allows him to keep it - for now, anyway - and now that he knows Dima can be better than he clearly was in the beginning, there isn't much hesitation in handing it over when they reach the southern coasts of the continent they both call home.
Maybe they'll meet again, but for now both of them are going home.
Pet person 'verse: Either regular modern day or sci-fi setting. Juri can be the result of a supposedly-impossible human/pet pairing, or the presence of/uneven spread of fur can be for some other genetic happenstance reason (making him either more or less attractive as a pet).
Modern/Regular fantasy: Open to whatever if you'd want to mash things together. Juri is flexible and easy to fit in in other worlds, since there can simply be more than one type of cat people if said world already has at least one sort.
*In the case of a fantasy world where humans don't exist at all, his peculiarities come from being the offspring of two different 'races' of cat people, most notably one being less furry than his mother's are.
Sci-fi: Humanity have spread among the stars, and meeting other species out there. One of them happening to look a lot like humanoid cats, and while they were certainly side-eyed a lot when regular friendliness grew into something more between a human diplomat and a local Chee (inter-species what), no one thought that'd lead to anything... Except it did. His father visits when he can, but he was removed from the Chee homeworld shortly after Juri's birth. Juri himself, interested in the greater galaxy and hoping he'll be less weird by disappearing into the general galactic population and hopefully being taken for a less-furry Chee instead of everybody knowing exactly what he is, takes up travelling, supporting himself with the equivalent of intergalactic busking.
Post-Apocalyptic Earth: 133 years ago, the Apocalypse happened - simplified, of course, as it really was both several ongoing processes and another couple discrete events over a decade (or more, depending on who you ask, how you ask it, and where they come from), but. But the Apocalypse happened, and humanity is crawling itself back and surviving as best as it can on a planet partially flooded, in some places nothing more than a hard-scrabble wasteland, but in others, the issue is rather the overabundance of vegetation, not the lack of it.
Mutations, both helpful, useful and lethally dangerous to life and health of the mutated person and people around them both, has become a usual thing. They're usually highly individual and don't transfer reliably down family lines, but a small number of people have been stuck with a type of mutation that does seem to be inter-generational and stable, even if the extent of the animal features vary.
(Juri's is an awkward in-between, and seen as not quite attractive in his own community, already well-established with these sort of mutations.)
Born to a small community on one of the larger islands of what's now the Southern Scandinavian Archipelago (the whole of western Europe has practically been reduced to this), Juri didn't stay there too long, both too curious and self-conscious, so he's been travelling the past four-five years despite the dangers.
(Deity AU: (only used if suitable or asked for) Juri is a demi-god here, his mother a minor goddess of nature and the hunt. One of her roles was embodying the spirit of the prey, a role which passed to her son when he was born.
Juri's abilities include shape-shifting into any animal, control over any plants and trees, and ability to create anything green and growing from his own blood. Once a year, he can be killed as part of a ceremonial hunt and will resurrect with no ill effects. He'd also have the human magic of channelling it through music, being stronger than he would be as a human or a human could be, as his own divinity is powering the magic (in effect, like a human praying to or channelling their patron deity's power).
His father was/is a hunter his mother took a fancy to and revealed herself during one of the yearly ceremony hunts she participates in. The union didn't last longer due to disapproval.)
(Possible Changeling: the Lost AU; Beast Seeming, Hunterheart Kith. This because he didn't catch his Keeper's attention while practising either of his more artistic skills, but while having a rather fun and exuberant run through the forest. Just a stroke of bad luck. Was used as prey in the Hunts, mostly, because even if his beast Seeming is clearly predatory, he has no real urge towards hunting and killing. Has been taken "inside" a couple times, despite not being Truefriend Kith.
Snapped into a more human state of mind when he picked up and played with an unattended flute, as it jogged his memory and allowed him the chance he needed to escape. Is, in the end, not displeased he wasn't spotted because of his flute playing or dancing - these, then, are still all his, with no real influence from Faerie, though admittedly cat flexibility comes in great use while dancing.)
Age: 22
Height: 158 cm/5'2"
Species: Half-breed human/cat person
Birthday: 13th December (or, middle of the last month of the year/one of the winter months)
Personality: Artless, curious and friendly, Juri is cheerful and social, but far less extroverted than he appears to be. He prefers smaller company if he gets to choose, but on the other hand he's not shy, either, and likes attention or simply being in a crowd without being expected to participate. Independent, he tends to not listen to most people when it comes to advice or 'don'ts'... but he's also not very good at being graceful if someone did tell him he shouldn't do something and why and they turn out to be right. It's not so much that he thinks he's necessarily right and can't be wrong, as more of a bit of a contrary streak along with that independence that makes him want to do it himself, even if he shouldn't. Aside from that he's adaptable to many circumstances, both preferring and finding it rather easy to at least try to roll with the punches. Is also agreeable and consciously tries to not be judgemental, wanting to see the best in others. He's not really naive, but his choices and actions might sometimes appear to be.
Has no poker face to talk about, and isn't shy about showing his emotions - or being attentive about others' emotions, too, as he's rather empathetic and compassionate and likes being able to help even if it won't necessarily change what someone's feeling. Despite this and being generally a forward sort of person, he's surprisingly pretty easily embarrassed. It doesn't stop him by any means, if he wants something, but he can be pretty shy when it comes to intimacy, at least to start with. He usually warms up and relaxes soon enough, and his curiosity means he's open about learning new things. (Just slow to start, you could say.) Tends to default to at least an attempt at jokes when he's nervous or afraid, though admittedly he tends to cheerful teasing otherwise too.
Has some insecurities about his looks - he knows he's not what he 'should' be on either end of his heritage, and knows it's visible even if clothes hides some of it, but he's very stubborn about keeping this quiet and tends to get sullen and defensive if it's brought up. He's not really been bullied about it while growing up, but there's been comments and he knows what he's lacking (or what's just different from what it "should be"). He's working on it (or not, as the case may be).
Talents: Is very flexible, and ambidextrous. Quicker reflexes than a regular human, but his strength is average. Both likes and is good at dancing of various sorts, and while he can play flute, he's not very good at singing. At all.
(The flute is some sort of transverse flute, most usually a western concert flute for more contemporary takes, or one of its forebears, a traverso, or a bansuri, for historical/fantasy. Probably some suitably futuristic version of a keyed transverse flute for sci-fi.)
Powers: In case of settings using magic and particularly as channeled through music (like a Bard and similar), he's either of average strength or more powerful than he's aware of, as his informal and partially self-taught skills in both music and magic in this case wouldn't lend itself to easily tapping the depths of his magical power.
Background in a few different flavours depending on what's wanted:
Juri's actual story is set in the same world as
vharuunensong, where he lives with his mother and her family on the southern spur of the northern continent. His father is a human merchant from one of the northernmost coastal countries of the southern continent, but that's about all Juri knows about him, and that's about as much as he cares to know. He's never needed a father - there are plenty of adult male role models in the family that's taken that space.He found a taste for wandering early (which meant getting in trouble for disappearing from adult supervision when he was younger), and after gaining enough skill to be able to use his music as a source of income, Juri spends most of late spring to early autumn travelling. That, along with an early interest in history in general, got him curious about feli history in particular, even more so when there's basically nothing to find aside from stories the feli themselves have, and rumours (usually seen as ridiculous by everyone else).
The most persistent rumours revolve around an ancient feli kingdom in the north of the continent the humans claim as their own, and Juri, driven by his curiosity, decides to try and find something, anything, if there is anything to find. Unfortunately the feli in that part of the world are considered slaves, which makes travelling there kind of tense.
Things go fine until he runs into a human noble who takes interest in his 'unique' looks and offers a (suspiciously) generous offer of shelter when it's clear the area is whipped by serious storms in early summer. With no real way of refusing, Juri goes along to the fort the noble was going to and, after being left alone in the man's rooms, snooping around, finds a magical artifact. A feli magical artifact.
Juri had, of course, not intended to stay very long at all, but even with the storm still lashing the countryside, he decides his best bet of getting away (with artifact) is to leave right then and there. Things get further complicated by finding a feli chained in a supply closet - a feli that's very far from home, coming as he does from the isolated tribes of feli in the northern part of the northern continent. Said feli have little over for any feli who lives among other species, by choice or not, and this feli has even less for Juri very clearly being a hybrid. Juri does the proper thing and helps free him (if he can't help anyone else, he can help this feli at the very least), and they reluctantly leave together, in the direction Juri was going anyway, since the wasteland beyond the fort is where the ancient feli kingdom is said to have been.
It's an unpleasant journey with Dima a cruel voice of constant disapproval of any- and everything Juri might do, and them having to huddle together for warmth makes no one any more comfortable. A run-in with a group of humans trying to find escaped feli slaves both make things worse as well as better, opening up some vague road for them to at least work together until they can get home.
Surprisingly, Dima's suggestion on how to get through a city guarding the one easily navigable mountain pass they need to get through, as little as Juri likes it (since it requires him to not just pretend to be human, but cross-dress too, to effectively hide his feline features), is as uncomfortable for Dima as it is for Juri. Dipping into the edges of the desert after getting through the mountain pass despite Juri's reservations, things do not get better. Feli live in the desert, but feli who are even more virulently against any outsiders compared to the northern tribes, and, of course, Juri and Dima get found by a scouting party of said feli. The leader of it shows as much interest in Dima as he does Juri, to both of their discomfort, and Juri is honestly surprised when Dima, having a chance to escape, actually goes out of his way to take Juri with him.
One thing leads to another on their flight north out of the desert, and after an actual apology from Dima the development is quite natural... which might be a little unfortunate because they've been racing against time to hopefully get onto a ship before heat season strikes. They fail, of course, and find themselves captured by a group of feli criminals who's gotten pardons leveraged against them if they assist in said capture.
The human noble - the younger brother of the current ruler, in fact - has caught up to them, and reveals with certainty that he knows exactly what the magical artifact Juri has been hiding in his bag is. A magical artifact that comes from the feli tribes Dima belongs to, but as awkward as the reveal is, at least the coup attempt against the human noble's sister is thwarted and they get released, with the artifact since it isn't actually the weapon the prince thought it'd be. Juri is honestly surprised when Dima allows him to keep it - for now, anyway - and now that he knows Dima can be better than he clearly was in the beginning, there isn't much hesitation in handing it over when they reach the southern coasts of the continent they both call home.
Maybe they'll meet again, but for now both of them are going home.
Pet person 'verse: Either regular modern day or sci-fi setting. Juri can be the result of a supposedly-impossible human/pet pairing, or the presence of/uneven spread of fur can be for some other genetic happenstance reason (making him either more or less attractive as a pet).
Modern/Regular fantasy: Open to whatever if you'd want to mash things together. Juri is flexible and easy to fit in in other worlds, since there can simply be more than one type of cat people if said world already has at least one sort.
*In the case of a fantasy world where humans don't exist at all, his peculiarities come from being the offspring of two different 'races' of cat people, most notably one being less furry than his mother's are.
Sci-fi: Humanity have spread among the stars, and meeting other species out there. One of them happening to look a lot like humanoid cats, and while they were certainly side-eyed a lot when regular friendliness grew into something more between a human diplomat and a local Chee (inter-species what), no one thought that'd lead to anything... Except it did. His father visits when he can, but he was removed from the Chee homeworld shortly after Juri's birth. Juri himself, interested in the greater galaxy and hoping he'll be less weird by disappearing into the general galactic population and hopefully being taken for a less-furry Chee instead of everybody knowing exactly what he is, takes up travelling, supporting himself with the equivalent of intergalactic busking.
Post-Apocalyptic Earth: 133 years ago, the Apocalypse happened - simplified, of course, as it really was both several ongoing processes and another couple discrete events over a decade (or more, depending on who you ask, how you ask it, and where they come from), but. But the Apocalypse happened, and humanity is crawling itself back and surviving as best as it can on a planet partially flooded, in some places nothing more than a hard-scrabble wasteland, but in others, the issue is rather the overabundance of vegetation, not the lack of it.
Mutations, both helpful, useful and lethally dangerous to life and health of the mutated person and people around them both, has become a usual thing. They're usually highly individual and don't transfer reliably down family lines, but a small number of people have been stuck with a type of mutation that does seem to be inter-generational and stable, even if the extent of the animal features vary.
(Juri's is an awkward in-between, and seen as not quite attractive in his own community, already well-established with these sort of mutations.)
Born to a small community on one of the larger islands of what's now the Southern Scandinavian Archipelago (the whole of western Europe has practically been reduced to this), Juri didn't stay there too long, both too curious and self-conscious, so he's been travelling the past four-five years despite the dangers.
(Deity AU: (only used if suitable or asked for) Juri is a demi-god here, his mother a minor goddess of nature and the hunt. One of her roles was embodying the spirit of the prey, a role which passed to her son when he was born.
Juri's abilities include shape-shifting into any animal, control over any plants and trees, and ability to create anything green and growing from his own blood. Once a year, he can be killed as part of a ceremonial hunt and will resurrect with no ill effects. He'd also have the human magic of channelling it through music, being stronger than he would be as a human or a human could be, as his own divinity is powering the magic (in effect, like a human praying to or channelling their patron deity's power).
His father was/is a hunter his mother took a fancy to and revealed herself during one of the yearly ceremony hunts she participates in. The union didn't last longer due to disapproval.)
(Possible Changeling: the Lost AU; Beast Seeming, Hunterheart Kith. This because he didn't catch his Keeper's attention while practising either of his more artistic skills, but while having a rather fun and exuberant run through the forest. Just a stroke of bad luck. Was used as prey in the Hunts, mostly, because even if his beast Seeming is clearly predatory, he has no real urge towards hunting and killing. Has been taken "inside" a couple times, despite not being Truefriend Kith.
Snapped into a more human state of mind when he picked up and played with an unattended flute, as it jogged his memory and allowed him the chance he needed to escape. Is, in the end, not displeased he wasn't spotted because of his flute playing or dancing - these, then, are still all his, with no real influence from Faerie, though admittedly cat flexibility comes in great use while dancing.)
World map for Juri's actual home
Date: 2021-01-22 12:40 am (UTC)