Henry Volker

*"...So, these are bad spirits, right? Can't we just put them in, like, 'spirit jail'?"*

**Stats**
**Age:**26
**Auspice:** Rahu
**Tribe:** Iron Master
**Pack:** Night Guard
**Virtue:** Hope
**Vice:** Lust

### **Description**

5'11", slightly tanned, bald head with dark brown handlebar mustache. Built like a wrestler, with noticeable but not terribly bulky muscles, and generally carries himself somewhat slouched. Wears his cop uniform when on duty, otherwise dark jeans and a flannel shirt. Usually wears mirrored aviators unless it is quite dark out. Always has his gun (glock 22) and fetish handcuffs on him whenever he can.

His personality depending on the situation. While on duty, he goes into classic hardass mode, sometimes jumping the gun. Around others, he is pretty snarky and 'alpha male'. He is still calibrating to the werewolf life, but is starting to get the idea that it's a bad idea to try and out alpha the pack alpha unless you really mean it. Spirits are still a concept he has yet to fully grasp, but his simple ideas sometimes have unexpected insight. Overall, his goal is to protect and serve as best he can, though the morals involved can be very grey at times.

### **Backstory**

Grew up just outside Mobile, Alabama, though due to unexplained problems with his mostly-absent father, he and his mother moved up to Philadelphia when he was 7. Because of all of the chaos and confusion he had in his early life, contrasted with the chaos growing up without means in a city will give you, Henry Spent much of his teens trying to impose his own order on his world. He usually wasn't a decision maker; while he could lead, he preferred to try and stick to whatever order there seemed to be in a world that didn't make a whole lot of sense. Because of this, he decided fairly early on that he wanted to be a police officer, an enforcer of the peace. While he was a moody child, this goal provided a focus, and he got accepted to the academy out of high school and, by his 25th birthday, was a Police Seargent, and well on his way to becoming a Lieutenant. However, his early life began to catch up with him.

There had been a few murders recently. Two had been reported earlier, brutal, bloody things, unlike the usual violence that seems to plague the inner city. And just the night before, there had been a third, with similar enough circumstances that the department was confident that this was the work of a serial killer. The victims were all gang members, though curiously, they were all from different gangs, and from fairly 'civilized' gangs at that. And all of this squarely in the jurisdiction of Hank's station.

Call went out that there were some suspicious folk about one night, and seeing as he was on patrol nearby, Hank got sent to investigate. The premises were a set of run down apartment buildings in one of the emptier neighborhoods. Not having anything in particular to run on, he did a visual scan of the apartments. Being far too large an area to pick through just from a non-specific warning of 'suspicious people', He gave the neighborhood another drive through. It was then that a burst of gunfire went of in one of the flats on the next block ahead. Pulling up to the scene, Hank got out of the car, gun drawn. As he was running up the steps, something crashed out of the window. And even though he had clear line of sight, and the illumination of a full moon, he couldn't be more specific than that it was *something*. And a large something at that. His training slipping out of his mind, Hank began to panic for the first time in years. He ran and ducked into the entryway of the building, holding his gun not as a weapon but as a ward against evil. Four people rushed out of the building a couple moments later. He couldn't gather his scatter thoughts again until both groups had long gone. Shakily, he went to call in shots fired, then went to review the scene.

The thing launched out of a fourth story window through plate glass, and there was a lot of blood pooled where it had landed. It either got cut real bad by the window, or was the recipient of the shots. Regardless, it shouldn't have been real mobile after that landing, but it seemed to have outran the group of four as far as he could tell.

By the time forensics showed up, they confirmed that this was another murder, with the victim found horribly mauled as before. This time, however, he was a nobody as far as they could tell. This time, though, there was blood on the scene, likely the killers. Hank told the story as best as he could make sense of it. A large man leapt from the fourth floor window, and immediately sprinted off before Hank could either get a good look or give chase. Despite how blurry his memory was, he knew in his heart this was a lie. He did still remember the fury in its eyes... and all of its blood drenched teeth.

It was then that his world began to fall apart. He devoted himself to the investigation, but he felt like his mind was slipping away. He saw things sometimes, out of the corner of his eye. The world seemed to whisper at him. His moods got the better of him as well, fury replacing the usual frustration over an elusive criminal. More than that, he felt paranoid. Watched. Soon, he was given some 'vacation time', as his lieutenant noticed him acting erratically, getting to emotionally attached to the case.

That couldn't have been the end of it though. Something was up with this killer, and he felt he had some connection to the case. He managed to pull some favors with his coworkers to get him updates on the case. In the end, though, fate was the one who brought all this to its conclusion.

A month later, doing his 'patrols' one night in the areas he felt the killer would be most likely to strike again, he saw someone sprinting up the fire escape just as he walked past an alley. While it's incredibly unusual for people to run back to their homes at night, it was suspicious how *silently* this silhouette ran up the metal stairs. He gave chase at a distance, trying to be inconspicuous. When he heard the sound of breaking glass, however, he abandoned his attempt at stealth.

Climbing in through the window, he saw that *thing* again, just as horrible as it's shadow was last time. Rather than panic, though, he felt rage. Rage at this beast, the way it was ripping into whosoever apartment this was.

It was then that he went through his first change, under the light of a full moon. He launched himself at the beast, his body rippling. He got surprise, bowling it over onto the ground before it knew he was there. Despite the new found strength he felt throughout his body, the beast thrashed with it's claws and teeth. His rage was the only thing that kept his holding onto this living buzz-saw, as he was *not* going to let it kill again. As he grappled with the beast, however, it became more and more apparent that he was hopelessly outmatched. When he got a square hit, he felt his strength matching its, but it knew how to use its ferocity far better than he did. A thought fought its way through his rage as fear shot down his spine, “You could die here.” Just as panic began to grip him, however, the door was kicked down. The beast was now the one trying to flee again, but Hank held onto it long enough for the nearest person to draw a sword- A fucking Sword! -and come to his aid.

After the four subdued the beast, it rippled and shifted back into the shape of a middle aged woman. The primal rage and panic having tempered each other, Hank fell back, in a shape that was more or less human. Breathing hard, and covered in grievous wounds, he didn't have enough coherent thought left to ask anything or try to call for less mysterious help.

The Fairmont pack, as they are know, are currently the Eldest pack in the city, and were the ones tracking down what was know as a Balehound. They had great difficulty pinning it down however, as she always seemed to slip out right from underneath them. Despite Hank's inexperience, and the fact that he was almost her fifth victim, his reckless attack delayed her for long enough that the pack could finally apprehend her. Although this pack was friendly to him, and helped introduce him to this strange new world, it was not for him to be able to join them. For one, they weren't looking to take on newbies on a long term basis. For two, they were apparently battling what was known as a wound, and they assured him that it would be the worst possible introduction the werewolf world to try and do battle with that.

And, more relevant to Hank, he knew that because of the blood spilt and his unexplainable wounds that the cops would quickly place him at the scene of the crime. He knew how suspicous the whole thing looked, having now been ID'd at two of the four murder, both under suspicious circumstances, he pretty much went back to the station and told them what he could; he didn't know what happened. The lynchpin of his plan was that he was wounded in the same way as the victim, but of course he failed to take into account that his wounds healed in the time it took him to go back to the station, and he was distracted enough not to notice. So the police now had him, with clothes torn to absolute shreds, drenched in his and the alleged perpetrator's fresh blood, with wet blood still scattered around a fresh corpse on scene, and Hank basically shrugging and saying that he doesn't have a clue what happened.

In the ensuing months it took the department to figure out what to do with this mess, The Fairmont pack caught him up as safely as they could on everything they thought he would need to know about werewolves. As thanks for helping to apprehend a Balehound on his first change (even if it was mostly just chance and good timing), they acquired him a fetish whenever he was struggling with how to subdue and restrain violent werewolves without resorting to just killing them. Soon, Hank managed to politic his way through the mess and stay on the force, though it involved being demoted to bottom rung again as well as a transfer. Being caught between two dangerous situations, he followed Fairmont's advice to go more rural, as it makes most aspects of werewolf life easier. However, still craving some civilization, Penn State seemed the perfect choice, along with the likely evidence of werewolves in the area to join up with.