Marius Riesse

*Coffee-Loving Rodeo Werewolf*

* Overview
* Sheet
* Background
* 'Ships
* Logs

 My blood is 99% coffee.

— Marius Riesse

Marius is a Salish werewolf who got a degree, rides horses, knows how to use a gun and a bow... and lives life by his own rules.

## Personality

Marius is a quiet, if at times cloudcuckoolanderish figure. He's quick to befriend people, however; he's naturally a curious creature and is definitely intrigued by people. He has a knack for asking questions and getting to know people, but don't mistake his quietness for weakness. Marius, when angry, is not somebody to be taken lightly. Fortunately, it takes a lot to get him angry.

## SKILLS

Given Marius has been through high school and holds a pair of degrees, it's safe to say he is smart and finds schoolwork a rewarding challenge. His degrees aren't from no-name schools: one from the University of Colorado and Washington. It's not Ivy League, but it's still a hard hill to climb, and Marius has got there. Twice.

Growing up on Salish land meant Marius turned that into one of his signature things. He's able to hit a bullseye on a target or use bows to hunt from horseback, for instance. He's not the world's best archer, but he's certainly able to use it to show how competent he is is in competitions, or to hunt.

Part of it is being a werewolf. Part of it is growing up as a member of the Salish tribe and going for long, long runs and walks. The end result is Marius is a naturally gifted athlete... if he ever bothered to turn pro. As it is, he puts his lycan gifts to good use. He's most adept at cross-country and distance events. Paradoxically, he hates the 100 and 110m dashes and hurdles. But, give him a cross-country route, and he's off running. Literally!

Marius has had an entire life... and unlife as it were, to get uncannily good, if not freakishly great, at finding the bargains in a store. This doesn't work in the Walmarts of the world, but Em likes his little stores better.

Marius can just about rotate the tires, fill it with gas, replace the throttle cables and to very, very basic stuff to keep the bike running. Given instructions, that can extend to things that need a wrench. That being said, EM knows when to draw the line.

Marius can just about rotate the tires, fill it with gas, replace the throttle cables and to very, very basic stuff to keep the bike running. Given instructions, that can extend to things that need a wrench. That being said, Em knows when to draw the line.

Marius is good with his hands...in terms of making things. This ranges from things like arrows and bullets to making and selling horse equipment at his ranch as another revenue stream, or making custom horse riding gear for willing customers.

Marius grew up on Salish lands and spent every summer learning to use a rifle, a .444 Marlin to be exact. He learned the basics of firearm safety and how to care for a gun he was given at 14, under the tutelage of his teachers. He had to learn every facet of the weapon, and over the years learned how best to clean, maintain, repair and use it. He also learned its capabilities and what not to do with it. Learned at the same time as rifles, a pistol is Marius's fallback projectile weapon. While not as good with it as his .444 Marlin rifle, Marius is able to group five shots on a target at 50 meters.

Being around horses all his life, Marius practically learned to ride before he could walk. Over the years, he's parlayed that into a career as a rodeo rider. Naturally, he uses horses when out of the city. Some of that knowledge transferred over to his chosen motorized method too: a dirt bike.

Marius is a fluent speaker of many languages, four to be exact. First off, there's his native Salishan language, secondly Kutenai, third German, which he had to take for a foreign language course, and finally there's French, which he took just because he was bored.

Em learned this in college. It came in handy for sneaking into places where he wasn't supposed to be.

Marius has been training in aikido ever since he was a teenager. He started at age 13 by being driven to Billings on a weekly basis for classes. He carried that on once he was a wolf. He's proficient enough to be a purple belt and help out in the dojo he goes to every week.

Many, many facets of Marius's horse riding transferred over to two wheels. Indeed, he owns and operates a dirt bike he built himself over a long Montana winter. He made sure it could survive that state's harsh winters, but bringing it west seemed like an easier time for the bike.

Learning to live off the land in Montana in all four seasons has taught him a great deal about survival. He's able to survive on his own for days at a time, taking only what he needs from the land.

## CASTING

Marius can call simple and weak spirits to aid him in a fight. There's drawbacks, of course; the spirits are distracting, and summoning and keeping the spirits around tires him out faster than a regular fight.

Marius can commune with the spirits, provided he's on Salish ground and he's absolutely sure he knows what to ask for. The spirits however are fickle and may not give up the information easily, exacting a price for the information.

Whilst on Salish lands, or lands owned by the Salish, Marius can call a wolf to his aid. Be it a spectral or actual wolf, he effectively "binds" a wolf to him for a full 24 hour period. Short of Marius sending the wolf away, or the wolf being killed, not a lot is going to tear the wolf and Marius away from one another.

## POWERS

Marius has a natural body temperature of about 110°F. This allows him to endure extremes of temperature, staving off cold and tolerating heat, far better than a normal human. The elevated body temperature also makes it harder for him to become sick, as the germs and pathogens adapted to human hosts generally do not tolerate his body heat. Of course, this comes with the drawback that his body heat is high enough to cause alarm if he is ever checked over by a human doctor.

In human-form, Marius possesses the following traits: Peak human strength and agility, Enhanced-level Toughness and stamina sufficient to resist bullet wounds and carry a person for miles on end at a run without any sign of fatigue, Enhanced-level Senses akin to those of a wolf that enable him to track by scent and hear over great distances, and running speeds faster than even peak Olympic athletes. He can also shift into his more powerful wolf-form, granting him even further expanded abilities.

Marius's Enhanced-level regeneration allows him to recover from nearly any wound. He heals so fast that broken bones knit faster than they can be set, which can be a potential complication. Even if he is seriously injured to the point that a human might be crippled, he can bounce back quickly, though at times he still requires proper medical care. In addition, each time he shifts his body regenerates itself on the cellular level. This does not instantly heal injuries, but it does effectively "reboot" his aging process. (This refers to the cellular decay of growing old, not the process of growing into a mature adult. He effectively remains in the peak condition of an eighteen-year-old.)

When in wolf form, Marius can communicate with any other wolves in his pack via telepathy. In fact, he cannot avoid doing so. In wolf form, he shares his thoughts and memories freely with the pack, even if he might prefer to hide them. No other psychic or magical powers have been demonstrated that are able to disrupt this connection, though he must be in wolf form to access it.

In wolf-form, Marius possesses the following traits: Enhanced-level Strength sufficient to crush stone in his jaws, Enhanced-level Agility, Enhanced-level Toughness and stamina sufficient to resist most mundane forms of trauma, Enhanced-level Senses akin to those of a wolf that enable him to track by scent and hear over great distances, Enhanced-level Claws/Fangs that allow him to tear through most conventional materials, and Basic-level Travel Speed, allowing him to run at over one hundred miles per hour.

## ADVANTAGES

He owns a nondescript apartment, located near a fire escape for getting in and out quicker. The shades are always drawn, too, and the light is usually either off or as low as it can go.

Marius's shift is beautiful to behold, with a wave of russet fur starting at his toes and in a smooth, rolling motion, covering his body. The whole process takes no more than ten seconds to finish. When shifting back to human, the fur simply rolls back down his body and disappears.

Coffee actually calms Marius. It doesn't make him jittery or hyper....well....that is past his fourth or fifth cup. By that point he's lethally calm and zoned in, at which point him being jumpy and nervous is a bad sign for anyone else in the vicinity.

Marius owns a ranch off in the country outside the Forks city limits. He breeds and trains horses there.

As a Spirit Animal, Wolf comes to support and teach Marius about matters of personal power, balance, self-control and Marius's animal instincts. Wolf is his guiding spirit animal, teaching and guiding Marius. However, being born with a Wolf Totem, he has an innate connection with Nature and a craving for freedom. Marius's life is filled with the intense instincts of the Wolf spirit who constantly keeps him vigilant in the face of potential danger. Those born, like Marius, with Wolf medicine in their soul simply tend to more easily understand how to help balance the world in a more harmonious way.

## WEAKNESSES

Marius has several nicknames, all given by his tribe, from He Who Howls at Cars, a reference to Marius being too stupid to not chase a parked car; to PITA, for being difficult to work with and teach, a name he carried into education; to Little Puppy, a name he's been known to break bones for being called. However, there's worse--or, more accurately, faster--ways to get Marius riled up: by calling him a "Psycho Injun," a scornful nickname he picked up in school.

Due to being a lone wolf, Marius doesn't get any sort of pack protection or benefits, at all.

For his magic to work, Marius must be on or near Salish ground, or lands owned by the Salish. For the powerful stuff, he has to be physically standing on Salish lands. For the more general things, he can be up to several miles away, up to 500 miles for the most basic things, needing to be closer the more powerful the magic he's attempting to pull off.

To a human nose, Marius actually tends to have pleasant, naturally earthy smell. However, to most vampires, he carry the "reek" of a lupine shifter, which vampires often compare to a "dog smell" or worse. This makes it easy for those with enhanced senses to track him via scent.

Marius lives to prove he's a better rodeo rider than his peers and will go the extra mile to prove it, no matter what that entails. That extends beyond the saddle, too. Marius is a showoff who will use that to prove he's better at things than anyone else. With obvious results that he doesn't always, or rarely on two legs, prove he's the best at anything.

Once he's angry and his wolf is on the hunt, Marius will not quit hunting. His anger won't subside until either the object of his hunt is dead or he gains enough control to rein his wolf back in. This isn't always the easiest of tasks, especially since anger weakens his control.

Marius was born on Salish lands in eastern Montana to a Salish medicine man and a white mother. Marius therefore grew up with both parents marrying a month before his birth. Marius was taught the ways of the Salish, from the magical to the mundane. He learned fast, but formal schooling was another story. He was regularly bullied in a mostly white school, which resulted in him starting to train in aikido at age five, though casually at first. For his sixth birthday, he got a horse, to teach him responsibility, and a year of aikido lessons in Billings, across the state. Marius proved he was a natural, learning fast. He put his lessons to use one day in third grade in the school cafeteria, when he brutally took down a bully, sending a clear message: leave the Native children alone.

He expected punishment from his people, but instead, he was hailed as a hero for standing up for himself and the other Native kids who also attended the school. Marius was never troubled again at school. He gained the moniker of "that psycho Injun kid," but people quickly learned never to call him that to his face. Even so, he found school difficult and scraped by with passing grades. He much preferred being out on a horse, roaming the wilderness of Montana, and every moment he wasn't in school, he was out exploring and learning and playing. At age fourteen, Marius was given a rifle as his father, his tutor, deemed it needed to help keep himself and Marius safe and to teach the growing boy how to hunt responsibly. Marius spent every day of every summer learning to ride, hunt and use his bow and rifle, and survive off the land. When he finished high school, he didn't initially pursue college. He'd found a new passion.

It all started when one of his childhood friends brought Marius to a rodeo. Em begged and pleaded his parents to let him try. They were worried, and he went behind their backs when they said no. Initially they grounded him until he was 18, which was a month away. However, Marius put his decade plus of riding horses to use in a local rodeo, proving once and for all his parents really, really needed to let him ride. Marius took to one aspect in particular: barrel racing. When on his first run he nearly tied an event record, and heads turned. When the now 18-year-old bested people twice his age, heads really turned, and Marius got noticed and offered to turn pro. He held off on it, however, preferring to finally get his degree in horse care. Because he had a plan. He wanted to open his own ranch and breed and train horses and, maybe someday, host rodeo events. Em had a definite plan, now, and he sought out a school to study what he would need to own his own ranch, having to transfer between several schools before he got settled. Marius ended up in Seattle at the University of Washington, finding he fit well there.

Marius graduated from UW with his degree and returned for a summer to Montana to in theory spend his final summer with his tribe. Thanks to support and nudging from his family, Marius was able to buy a ranch and get himself a place to chase his dream. And he still rode, too. Marius is still to this day, a professional rodeo rider, and owns a ranch in Clallam County, where he breeds and trains horses, too.

Logs featuring Marius Riesse:

* 2019.01.21 - Battle Aftermath 3: Fireside Resolve, a Battle for Survival
* 2019.01.21 - The Apocalypse, Day Two: Cookies for Breakfast Is Okay, But Only During the Apocalypse
* 2019.01.22 - The Apocalypse, Day Two: Breakfast Club
* 2019.03.01 - Running Visit