Archy
Archimedes Connell Dresner (a.k.a. Archy)
Archy is one of two Alphas of the Philadelphia pack. His life hasn't quite gone the way he wanted. He never wanted to be a wolf. Never wanted to be their alpha. In many ways, the position and responsibility scares him. He doesn't know exactly what to do with it. So far as he's concerned, the pack is better off being managed by Astrid, she knows the logistics better. The sea of chaos is nothing to her, it's something she wrangle with ease. Archy on the other hand? He has no head for that kind of organization. The only area he does well for the pack is as a protector. He's a massive wolf, powerful as a wolf, and better at wrangling actual threats to the pack.
Unfortunately, he's been scared off from doing a lot of protecting. At the The Heroes' Summit he saved the mayor, but had to do so by shifting in front of a whole crowd of witnesses and journalists. The pack believes in operating only from the shadows. His cover was blown and he had to lay low so as not to bring attention to the pack. There's an inherent fear, a risk, of them being caught just by association. Of course, Lee Winship had no problem weathering the press, but then he never worked for them. Archy knows the internal workings of the studios. He knows some of the people who would hunt him down to learn every detail, and just how far they'd go to learn more.
At the moment, Archy does his best to get by in day to day life, trying to just be a normal person. Sometimes, he slips out at night to look for threats to the pack. He's been looking into the Vampire Rebellion and the new wolves being created around the city. It's work from the shadows. He's more willing to do that for the time being. It doesn't risk exposing the pack.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Archy is a wolf. To be specific, he's a werewolf. He has three forms, a human, an anthro wolf, and a quadrapedal wolf. Most onlookers would describe him as as powerful and majestic. His fur was long and thick, starting with black fur on his head and back that sublty mixed with coal greys and shades of brown streaks across his body. His chest, belly, and chin were a lighter shade of cream. His eyes are golden, entrancing. They can suck you in if you look on them too long. His scent is a mix of body wash, the forest, and a light touch of something wild, musky, that betrays his lycanthropic nature to all with a sensitive enough nose. As an anthro wolf, he tends to stand at least 6' tall, but he has size-changing powers. He could be far, far bigger. As a feral, he stands taller than most horses, big enogh to look down at a Clydesdale.
In his human form, Archy stands about 6' tall. His hair is somewhere between black and brown, it looks almost like his fur, almost. The mass on his head is some barely controlled chaos, it wants to be curly, but he's somewhat tamed it to lie flat. His eyes are blue, with flecks of gold in them, there's something inhuman about them. At first glance, he might be the quiet guy you overlooked in the classroom. Being a wolf, it's taught him to be unobtrusive. Good hunters don't stand out. He dresses nice enough most of the time: jeans, a geeky t-shirt, and a worn pair of flip flops. It's enough to be comfortable, enough to hide in the crowd, and after destroying his past five favorite shirts from having to shapeshift, he doesn't wear suits or anything particularly fancy often.
The quiet-guy act dies fast when you get his attention. He's… excitable. If you start talking about spider man, he gets animated, hands gesturing, maybe doodling on a napkin about it. Then again, if you get talking about NASA, MHA, programming, editing, you stand no chance of shutting him up. The same goes for even his lewder interests, though he's learned to talk slower then, nudging a foot against you, or slowly smirking as he mentions what a tight fit his werewolf is sometimes. Maybe he's talking about fitting in buildings, or maybe you turn red and he's talking about something else.
Special abilities
Shapeshifting
As a werewolf, his form isn't set in stone. He starts as a human, but can turn into a feral or anthro wolf on command. These forms are bigger than a normal wolf. His feral form can get to be about the size of a horse if he pours enough magic into it. In either form, he becomes a massive, brute of a creature, capable of smashing through walls, taking a beating, and tearing people in half with his bare hands.
Wolf Instincts
Wolves see the world differently from humans. The same goes for werewolves. Gestures, movements, body language, scents, everything is completely different now. Where a person might be indecisive, a werewolf will act more quickly. There's an instinct-driven take to the world around them. A handshake can be a threatening gesture to a werewolf. Little things just stand out in new ways.
Healing
It's nearly impossible to kill a werewolf. There are two options: a fair amount of silver or destroy the body faster than it can heal. Small arms fire is almost useless against a wolf. It gets stuck in their body, and pushed out or dissolved by their healing powers. Most wounds will heal within 24 hours. Even after just a few hours significant injuries such as broken bones will have healed enough to move again.
Enhanced Speed/Strength/Senses
The biggest improvement is in physical power. Even in human form, a werewolf is stronger than near any man alive. They're able to move, lift, and jump in inhuman ways. On top of that, senses like hearing, smell, and nightvision are greatly enhanced. It's an all around upgrade package. Werewolves were made to be the stormtroopers of the apocalypse. Their bodies were built for war. This makes them very nearly unstoppable, especially when they have numbers on their side.
Curse of the Wolf
Not everything about being a werewolf is good. There are significant downsides. Every full moon, a werewolf will shift into their feral form. There currently are no known methods to stop this. The process can be incredibly painful, especially for new wolves. Within a week of the full moon, a werewolf will become highly contagious. They can infect someone with scratches and bites. At other times, the risk of infection is closer to 1/100. The moon will also impact their mood, with werewolves being antsy and agitated the day of a moon, and often experiencing a hung-over like state the day afterward.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Archy was born in the 90s and rather quickly grew up to be a geek. He spent his early years watching Star Trek, reading about the Wright Brothers, and dreaming of being an inventor. Everything inspired him to want to create, from the sci-fi on TV to watching the shuttle launches. Unfortunately, this made him a loner in school. His classmates were reading Captain Underpants and his nose was plunged into the pages of a Ben Franklin biography. At the time, he was disappointed Ben didn't get blown up in a lab accident or something else crazy, befitting a great scientist (Otto Octavius was a fine example).
The real world didn't align with his view of science. You couldn't disappear into a lab, spend a day tinkering, and emerge with a medical breakthrough like The Doctor or fly a starship called a Puddle Jumper through a wormhole across the galaxy. Somewhere in high school, he learned to embrace his creative spirit in the one outlet that welcomed his ideas: art. Class writing assignments were good places to practice sci-fi and the Media Classes were a good place to practice practical effects. There's also a good few stories from being on Stage Crew. It's your typical high-school creatives' life. Despite that, he never lost the interest in science. Archy excelled in all his classes, but science was still a favorite. Computer programming was still a favorite. Programming was creative too, it was an art form where you could make anything you wanted.
College was a busy time. He still hadn't found a crowd he wanted to hang with. In school, he was the kid with the sciency-books. In college, he was the guy who never stopped working. There were dozens of student films and broadcast projects he worked on. His own projects were reflections of his mood. The first short film was about depression (his floormates were stoners, no sci-fi geeks to hang with), the second was just fun action, and so on. Graduation couldn't come fast enough.
After college, Archy found work in various production studios. There was a bit of contractor hopping from place to place before he landed in a niche as the animator, vfx, and everything guy at a nice little studio. They took on special effects projects for major productions, occasionally made a documentary all in-house, and things were going really well. It was a bachelor's life, though after the third girl who thought Captain Kirk was Vader's son, he started to lose hope. Then came the wolves.
Getting bitten is a traumatic experience. If anyone tells you otherwise, they're lying or were never bitten. In Archy's case, it was a warm summer night. He'd just bought his first telescope and found his way out to the middle of nowhere for a good view of the stars. Living in the city, he'd stood no chance of seeing any stars from the roof of his apartment complex. The woods were quiet that night, he'd set up camp in a clearing: a hammock with some blankets on it. There was a gun on the tailgate of his truck, but there'd been no signs of anything dangerous. The worst he'd find, maybe a bear or a bobcat. Make some noise and they usually run off rather than face an unknown like a human.
Archy had been bent down looking up at the moon when it happened. A dark shape threw him to the ground. His arms flailed, trying to beat on it. He was no small guy. It wasn't enough though. The wolf had dug in and was flailing him around. All that scared it off was the howl of another wolf. It left him there, he'd have died if it were a regular wolf. It wasn't, of course. He had passed out after being bitten, waking the next morning, dazed and confused. The effects of being bitten take days to pass. There's a sickening delirium, fever dreams. He faced them alone at first, lacking enough coordination and energy to even bother trying to reach a hospital.
On the fourth day, someone from the Pack found him. His scent carried on the wind, a strange werewolf. They came to investigate. Just a few nights before, they'd found a rogue wolf in their territory and taken care of it. It happened every now and then, a wolf invades with the intention of overthrowing the pack leaders, taking over. They try to get a one on one fight with the alpha. In the old days, that would've worked. More modern wolves, challenging the alphas is also often a challenge to the whole pack. That is, you only get to fight their leader if they let you. They weren't going to let the invader get that chance. In the midst of fleeing, he'd stumbled on Archy, was probably going to eat him.
The pack embraced Archy, took him in, took care of him. Shortly after, he uncovered a plot by the pack Alpha to wipe them all out. He was using a special toxin, a blend of Silver, Berserker Toxin, and other materials to weaken the human side of the wolves, while amping up their wolf side. It would expose them to an easy kill at worst, and at best leave them trapped in their wolf forms, without treatment. Astrid, Archy, Daisy, and Holden hastily arranged a counter attack against the alpha, his outsider partners, and any supporters they had. It saved the pack.
In the aftermath, the pack functioned without clear leadership for months before Archy and Astrid rose to the top. She was exceptional at organizing the pack. He was seen as an ideal leader in battle. It worked, but it wasn't necessarily the best arrangement. He never wanted leadership or responsibility like that. As a werewolf, he had become more social, but he was always averse to putting the others at risk.
Of course, his family hasn't helped matters. He was disowned after they learned he was a werewolf. His biological grandma still loved him, regardless, but the others? Parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and so on? He was a monster so far as they were concerned.
Employment
Archy formerly worked for various studios around the city. He's had roles in news, documentary production, and regular studio production. His man specialty is editing with a fair concentration in effects work. The work got him around, he knows most of the journalists in the area. He's watched them hound after a story, even helped them when hounding after a story. When the right reporter gets on the scent of something, they're not going to stop. They're relentless. That he knows them directly has proven a problem for his hero carreer.
After his identity was blown at the Heroes' Summit, Archy had no choice but to leave his job. Every executive in the studio, any studio he'd ever worked for, wanted nothing more than to pry into his personal life. They wanted him to be a front-end man, a spokesman on the news. They wanted him to have reporters to his apartment. They would give him a nudge on the shoulder, "come on buddy, you know how this works, you ran that camera over there just three weeks ago doing this exact thing. Make it easy on me, won't you? I'm your friend."
Currently, he runs a small studio. His name is nowhere in the records. It's something to keep him busy during the day time and if anyone asks, provide a record of employment, show that he's living a normal life. If the cops come, he can say he's not doing unlicensed hero work, and have a reasonably believeable story.
Failures & Embarrassments
His intellect has gone to waste. That really bothers Archy. He looks back at his life and feels like he's taken the easy route at every turn. He had the mental capacity to do far more than he has. He could have been an engineer, a researcher, something that would actually put his abilities to use. Instead, he went for the arts. He can feel his own wasted potential and wonders the many what-ifs. What if he'd gone to another field entirely? Would he better at helping the pack? Would he be a better wolf?
Some of that is a bit of imposter syndrome. He's no novice at his field. It's a question perhaps of being an imposter of a person for the choices he's made. In some sense, it's even a bit of buyer's remorse.
Perhaps a bigger failure, is that he exposed his identity and let it push him into hiding. He should have shifted sooner, out of site at the Heroe's Summit. Or he should have gone hand to hand instead of shifting. It probably would have hurt a lot more, but it wouldn't have killed him. It was a bad call to shift. Shifting only guaranteed an easier fight.
Intellectual Characteristics
While growing up, Archy was called a Genius, Gifted, Brain Child by everyone around him. He is smart, but in his own ways. His greatest mental ability is learning quickly. He can find patterns and logic in how things are set up and quickly put them to use as if he's been around them his whole life. For example, when he was 7, he worked out how to mod games. It wasn't anything complicated, but he found config files and worked out how to change them to bump his stats in game. He saw the logical structure of the game files, the common sense naming schemes, and put everything to use. The same skills helped him pick up programming quickly, taught him editing, effects, photoshop, and all the rest. He's quick to ingest and apply information.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
At this point in his life, his motivation is a little broken. He started out wanting to do good. It's something he picked up from his dad, a firefighter. Just like the coast guard, you always had to go out. You didn't always have to come back. Honestly, he always worried about that 'not come back' part. He knew what it meant to see a firestation draped in black.
As a werewolf though, he didn't have to fear death in the same way as a normal human. He could, for once in his life, take the extreme risks. It was something he was willing to do. Fighting his pack's old alpha, for instance, to save the others. Growing into the wolf he is today.
He tried to be a hero. if he could make the city safer, that too, would be better for his pack. That backfired, now he's frustrated. He's motivated by the safety of his pack and some sense of doing good. Held back by the repercussions of doing just that. Trapped.
His fallback is to live a good life until he can do more.
Relationships
History
Archy and Astrid both rose rapidly in the ranks of the pack following the attempt of their former Alpha to get the entire pack killed. In the power-void that followed, the pack gravitated to the two who did the most: Archy in uncovering and fighting the Alpha, Astrid in helping to organize the pack. Combined with the death of several older members of the pack in the failed self-destruction, they were the most obvious choice to lean towards. At the time, there was an expectation that the leaders of the pack would be a mated pair. It can't be said that they weren't interested in each other, but their lifestyles didn't mesh. At the time, Archy was wild and free, cut loose from the ties of family and overcoming a great many fears. Astrid was constrained and clinging to the pack more than ever, having nearly lost them. One wanted to be more active in the world, a hero. One wanted to take the pack deeper underground for fear of what may happen next. Ultimately, they were not compatible in that way. Their differing views of the world ultimately poisoned any chance for a relationship to last between them. As it stands, they're not entirely friendly towards each other. Archy has been separated from the pack to ensure any attention he gets doesn't lead a threat to the others. Astrid has given him what support she can, in a logistics sense. What lies between them now, is a minefield of complexity.
Commonalities & Shared Interests
They're both werewolves with a fondness for reading, movies, games, and niche entertainment. Both love to cook and prefer an evening quietly sitting together doing something. Both share some interest in music, country and rock.
Current Location
Species
Year of Birth
1991
Spouses
Astrid
(Former Girlfriend)
Siblings
Children
Gender
Male
Eyes
Blue/Grey
Hair
Black, short cut and unkempt.
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
White, slightly olive arms.
Height
6'
Weight
255 lbs
Aligned Organization
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