Species: Gloom Wolf
Gender: Female
Alliance: Evil
Age: Less than 1 year old on Earth – approximately 50 ‘Gloom’ years old
Human Age Equivalency: 30
Mature Adult at Age: 10
Appearance:
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The Gloom Wolf is a mangy, scrawny, starved creature, called a ‘wolf’ only for lack of a better definition. Her spiky black fur is matted and dirty, and she bears several bald patches across her limbs and flanks. Her claws are pronounced and sharp. Her ears are pointed and tattered, usually held low against her head in a permanent state of rage and desperation.
Gloom’s most distinguishing feature is her face, or lack thereof. It is an eyeless metal cone that splits down the middle – filled with vicious pointed fangs which can, at Gloom’s will, revolve around her mouth at high speed on two continuous tracks, like the teeth of a chainsaw.
Gloom stands at about the same size and height as a real-world wolf, though her emaciated state makes her appear smaller. She spends most of her time as a quadruped but can transform into a biped form when the occasion calls for it, by elongating her limbs and mutating her spine. She is completely black in colour, apart from her face, which bears the dull, sleek glint of steel, or some similar metal.
Personality:
Despite her wretched appearance, the Gloom Wolf bears a strong, prideful aura that marks her as a creature not to be trifled with. She carries herself with an air of eerie, teetering grace that says alot about her attitude and otherworldly origins.
Hateful, starving, and uneasy of her unfamiliar surroundings – the Gloom Wolf lives in a highly stressful state of mind, constantly wired, with a hair-trigger temper. Her scrawny body shudders continuously under the effort of always staying alert and ready to fight. Her breath rattles and wheezes, black slime dribbles constantly from her metal jaws. She is diseased and desparate, but that only makes her all the more dangerous. The slightest thing can set her off, turning her into a raging flurry of fang and claw.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Gloom is a difficult creature to converse with. This is often a shame, as past her bloodthirsty state lies an intelligent and pensive mind. In her rare calmer states she is collected and cunning, with an uncanny amount of knowledge at her command. Being eyeless, her form of vision is extrasensory, and this often allows her to learn much more of the world than others would give her credit for.
The Gloom Wolf can speak, though of course it is rare that she should feel the need or want to do so. Those that do manage to hold a conversation would find her to be darkly eloquent, with a twisted sense of humour. Her manner of speaking is unpleasant yet alluring – like the heaviest of human smokers, her voice is low and broken, laced with gurgles and growls. Her voice radiates entirely from her throat, as her jaws are metal and she has no tongue.
The Gloom Wolf is a fairly joyless creature and there are only a few things that she seems to show any enthisiasm for; hunting, chasing and killing. She is an insatiable glutton as nothing she eats seems to make any difference to her body or appetite. Since arriving at the Forest she has also (though she’d never admit to it) become accustomed to speaking with certain inhabitants, mainly for her own amusement, though for the most part she still prefers to seek solitute.
Abilities:
The Gloom Wolf’s most unique and effective ability lies within her vicious steel jaws. Her long fangs are set on two continuous tracks that run through her lower and upper jaws. These can, at Gloom’s will, revolve around her mouth at high speed, like the teeth of a chainsaw, and are designed for the very same reason – they can shred through flesh and bone in less than a second. This startling feature can take a minute or so to power up, and only lasts for short bursts at a time, but generally this is all the Gloom Wolf requires to create a ready-minced meal for herself. The hardest part of this attack is, of course, actually getting within striking range of her prey!
Gloom was born for the hunt, and so she is a naturally agile and fast runner. She can run as fast as a real-world wolf (around 30mph) when her energy levels are good. Her hunting is assisted greatly by the fact that she has no eyes. Instead she sees with a heightened form of extrasensory perception. This allows her to detect her sourroundings faster, and far more effiently, than light-based vision, meaning that she can run at an almost constant, unfaltering pace. Gloom’s successful hunts are rarely due to her being the faster or more powerful creature, but rather because she can simply detect the lay of the land before her prey can.
In addition, the Gloom Wolf can survive very serious injuries, such as excessive blood loss, heavy flesh wounds and damaged organs, but by no means does this mean she is good at healing. In fact, she takes an immensely long time to heal – rather than be allowed a peaceful death, she is made to suffer her grevious inguries, barely clinging to life.
Lastly, since arriving at the forest, Gloom has discovered that she can mutant her body from quadruped to biped. However this is a power that she rarely uses, and not without valid reason, as it uses up a great amount of her already limited energy.
Disadvantages:
The Gloom Wolf’s power can, for the most part, be compared to that of a cheetah. For one thing there is nothing particularly notable about her physical strength. In combat, she is only about as powerful as a large domestic dog, and little more skillful. Secondly, she is not a creature of endurance, but rather built for short bursts of fast, ferocious energy. Lastly, if a hunt should fail, then she is left in dire trouble, having spent a huge amount of energy without anything to restore it with. She was originally a pack-hunter, using team tactics to outwit prey. On her own, though she continues to learn, her failures are numerous. In these cases she has to spend most of her time skulking around, drawing what little energy she can from distant, otherworldy sources...
It should also be noted that sunlight, moonlight, and many forms of light produced by good-natured spells (excluding fire) are extremely harmful to Gloom and cause her great pain. She can only emerge from the shadows when there is sufficient cloud-covering.
Family:
Gloom was once part of a pack, but as none of the Wolves were born by natural means, family means nothing to her, and the only reason she would miss them is because she was more successful at hunting in a group than by herself. Gloom is the only one of her kind in this world.
History:
It is difficult to recall the history of a creature that orginated from a place where time has little meaning. But this much can be said of the Gloom Wolf’s past;
Gloom came to Deep Forest from another dimension, or more specifically, a world within our World. The beings that dwelt inside this place were wretched and aimless, unable to step out of their world and into our own. However, one particular race of humanoid creatures were far more enterprising than the rest. They could be most closely compared to Humans in their relentless pursuit of knowledge, and most importantly, power. They desired, above all else, to step beyond the boundries of their world. Every attempt to do this had so far resulted in instant death, but the beings had plans to change that. With warped minds and no sense of what we would know as Humanity, the experiments the beings performed, usually on living subjects, were grotesque and savage. They would stop at nothing to find a way to place a creature from their world into the Outside dimension.
It was inevitable that Gloom Wolves, being relatively common and easy to locate, were often caught and made to face violent fates at their hands of the humanoids. Our Gloom Wolf, at the time, was just another member of the pack, and nothing more. She just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What happened to her next, however, would make her unique.
Gloom put up a powerful fight when she was set upon by the humanoids, but unfortnately they were almost as skilled as her when it came to hunting, and they had the addition of ropes and nets. Gloom was dragged unceremoniously back to the humanoids’ laboratory, along with several other Wolves. There, the terrible experiments swiftly began. The details of these experiments are unknown, however it can be said that Gloom was the humanoids’ first success, though not quite as they expected. They merely wanted to place the Wolf ‘Outside’. Instead, they ended up transporting her to an entirely different world. Now, stranded and overwhelmed, the Gloom Wolf has been unleashed onto Deep Forest.
Anything Else We Need to Know?:
All designs, text and concepts featured in this profile are the rightful property of Rachel C Cooper.
Artwork Credits: 1st image by SizzyBubbles, 2nd image by me, 3rd image by Karzrave, 4th image by Neltruin.
IC (In Character) Entrance:
(Contains violence and gore)
The Gloom Wolf’s prey was desparate now. It had strayed too far from the boundries of Deep Forest, and now was paying the price.
This prey, a deer; a delicate but fully grown doe, was currently running for its life – putting all its energy into this one desparate sprint to safety. It was heading through the wilderness, towards the Edge of the Forest – a place where it could hide from the terrible creature that it was being hunted by. The vast expanse of trees on the horizon grew ever closer in the doe’s eyes, but the terror behind it was getting closer still.
***
The Gloom Wolf had apparated into this world without drama or spectacle. One moment she had been in her own world – bound and restrained almost to choking point by the humanoid creatures that were experimenting on her, and the next moment, she was here. Overwhelmed by disorientation and fatigue, she had crawled unsteadily across the desolate plains, keeping so low that her mangy belly almost dragged along the ground. She kept moving despite having no idea where she was, and as time passed she began draw in more information of her surroundings, and was a little calmer for it. This world was no stranger than her own – the only logical option was to adapt and make the best of it.
As the Gloom Wolf traveled, her surroundings had become gradually lusher. Gloom did not care for pleasant scenery but could sense that life was becoming more abundant the further she progressed, and this meant that there was a possibility of food.
Which brings us now to the lone doe that the Gloom Wolf had chanced upon while picking her way through an uneven area of spiky grass and low, protruding rocks. In its search for good grazing the deer had somehow become separated from its herd. Now it fed nervously, making its way carefully between the rocks, pulling up small flowers and long blades of grass as it went, its ears constantly flicking in all directions and it listened for danger.
The Gloom Wolf had never before seen such a perfectly formed, elegant creature. She could not even begin to imagine how good it would taste, if she could only catch it. Gloom was not much for stealth hunting, but she knew she could not afford the usual bravado and taunting tactics that she adopted when hunting with her pack. So she had crept as quietly as she could towards the deer. On the soft ground the Gloom Wolf’s foot-falls did not create much sound, but she could not disguise her rattling, garbled breathing, and the doe had inevitably heard her.
Not wasting another second, the Gloom Wolf sprang forth with a vicious snarl as the deer bolted, and the chase began.
***
Despite its light-footed elegance and speed, the deer’s hunter was rapidly closing in. The deer’s pace was constantly faltering as it caught its hooves on rocks and dips in the uneven ground. The other creature meanwhile was having no such trouble – she raced straight and true, her pointed head fixed like an arrow on her prey, never wavering once, not even to check her footing.
The doe rolled its large eyes for a fleeting glance back over its shoulder, and in the end that was its downfall. It saw the filthy black fur, the long claws, the the metal cone full of fangs which served as a face – and wailed in desparate panic. Terrified, the doe finally lost its footing completely and stumbled. This was all the Gloom Wolf needed to catch up. The last thing the deer heard was an awful shrieking, buzzing noice as the Gloom Wolf’s chainsaw teeth revved into action, and then it was over.
***
At the Edge of the Forest, blood soaked the grass. The deer’s remains were a mess – torn to several pieces and strewn across the clearing by the Wolf’s horrific attack.
The Gloom Wolf ate frantically – a deep-rooted paranoia of being challenged or otherwise interupted at any given moment. This feeling was only intensified by the sheer amount of life she could sense within the looming forest. She had never felt anything like it, and she cowered before it as she fed – tearing off great chunks of bloody flesh, throwing her head back and gulping it down – in a similar manner to a bird, as she had no capacity to chew.
Surely, she thought, it was only a matter of time before whatever was in that forest came out to attack her...
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