Roxie

**Roxie** is the main protagonist of the book *The Painted Wolf*. She looks like Ahsoka Tano's pet Lycanroc, but unbeknownst to many people (excluding her owner), Roxie hides a dark secret.

## **Physical Appearance**

She looks like a large Dusk Lycanroc with a yellow mane and underside and a black nose. She has yellow eyes, an unusually large, thick, bushy tail, and primarily yellowish-gold fur. Her extremities and tailtip are black, and her thick, soft, fluffy pelt has tan, black, brown and white markings. She has large pointed ears with yellow insides, the left of which has a small notch. Her upper canine fangs are sticking out. During her time in Afriak, she wears a black horsehair necklace of animal fangs and a bloody rat’s skull, before having to switch to a red collar upon being captured by the Jedi after the Siege of Mandalore.

Her true form is a large Kitsune/Dusk Lycanroc mix. In this form, she is twice her original size and has nine longer, bushier, swiping tails. There are now battle scars on her shoulders, flank, face, and neck. Her legs are noticeably longer and slightly thinner, with the paws having yellow pads and claws. She has a more muscular neck.

## **History**

### **Early Life**

Roxie was born in a cave on the savannah planet Afriak when the many native tribes on the planet founded their first villages. Right from when she was born, Roxie was sought after by the Nikwodo tribe as their leader needed to own a predator, which was the custom for qualified leadership. However, Roxie escaped into a large forest that was considered sacred by all of the tribes. She took advantage of her new refuge and quickly honed her survival skills, practicing on live creatures when she'd gained three tails. 400 years later, Roxie had become a formidable and power-hungry predator who took a liking to killing other animals for sport as well as food. She left the sacred forest and headed to the nearest village, which happened to be the Nikwodo village, which she attacked, killing half of the Nikwodo population for the sheer joy of frightening her enemies and leaving the village burning. After Roxie did this with several other Afriaki villages, the leaders realized they needed to stop her before any more villagers were killed. They united their villages and called upon their gods, which took the forms of animals with certain attributes, to aid them in battling the tyrant. Roxie soon realized what was going to happen and tried to stop them, but was defeated in the fight that lasted 3 days. The village leaders, deciding to unite permanently and simply call themselves and their tribes the Afriaki people, cast a spell on Roxie, which transformed her into a Dusk form Lycanroc; she was then taken in as an exotic pet by the new leader of the Afriakis, Kwatembo. Roxie lived under the ownership of Kwatembo and his descendants for the next 200 years.

### **Escape from Confinement**

After Zumbili, the last Afriaki leader, died from a severe cholera infection, Roxie tried to escape his palace in the capital city of Luku, since Zumbili didn't have any children, but was captured by his wife, Adana, and confined to a cage in one of the bedrooms while Zumbili's funeral was held. For the next week, she was neglected, being fed only once a day and constantly belittled by Adana's subjects. However, having had enough, Roxie broke out of her cage and escaped the palace one night while Adana was sleeping. She fled Luku immediately to avoid being seen and recaptured and took refuge in the open plains beyond the city's borders before arriving in a smaller, dilapidated village in search of food, since she was too weak to hunt any prey larger than herself.

### ***The Painted Wolf***

#### **Chapter 1: The Rogue Lycanroc**

Roxie prowls the streets of a dilapidated Afriaki village in search of food. She recalls the last time she ate, sitting in a cage, chewing on small scraps of tough, rotten ox meat before escaping and turning rogue. She then laments how food and water are harder to come by than she can imagine. She thinks about how she's tried to ignore the constant rumbling of her stomach, including the times when she started to search garbage piles for anything edible.

*More coming soon.*