Kiara Kruger

*Ex-Army Werecheetah*

* Overview
* Sheet
* Background
* 'Ships
* Logs

Born in South Africa, Kiara was the first in several generations to show the feline heritage again. Now, after a couple terms in the Middle East, she is on her way to college on the the west coast of the United States...

## Personality

Kiara is often controlling her instincts, biting down on urges as she had been trained to keep her difference a secret from the beginning. While this often makes her appear paranoid, it is the training of long years that also has kept her well. On the other hand, she often has a hands on approach to problems and is dependable. Tasking her to do something will get it done. When she has the time to spare, she loves the adrenaline rush of a run, but as there is rarely a chance to unleash her inner feline, she fets her kicks from daredevil acts like high speed driving or daredevil sportive activities, relying on her healing to fix up whatever happens to her.

## SIGNATURE ABILITY

### Blood of the Land

In Africa, the ground always has been thirsty and fed the blood of countless tribal wars and colonial invasions. Arabia has had its fair share of bloodshed feeding the ground, and so has America, between colonization, revolution, the Civil War, and more. But, the land doesn't forget the blood it has had to drink.

Kiara's bloodline shares a bond to the land, and when they feed about two pints of their blood to it the right way, it will give it back for a short time. In places of bloodshed it comes easier, but on every land it will come eventually. When the blood resurfaces, it boil up in a pool of red-black liquid maybe ten yards in diameter. From its depths, tentacles of it lash out to constrict and strangle the enemies of its caller, obeying only the spoken command of its master. Their strength and toughness is Enhanced level. The pool stays for about five minutes before it is reabsorbed into the land again. However, the land doesn't have endless amounts of blood everywhere and will need about a week to replenish it for the area of a city.

## SKILLS

Back in south Africa she learned how to handle herself in a brawl as a young teen, using the basic instincts of her kind. In the army, that got refined and combined with a rigid firearms routine and combat drill.

Kiara knows her fair share of field medical treatment with little to no equipment. In the end, she is a pro when it comes to fixing up a body and prevent it from dying after even grevious harm, though she might not heal them or aid in healing.

Grown up in South Africa and then moving to live alone in the US for high school meant, that Kiara had to learn to cook for herself before she joined the National Guard for a student stipend. Even though her cuisine is more stuff like Bunny Chow, Sphatlo and Smuts Cookies.

While Kiara had been deployed overseas, she had ample training to move even heavy vehicles over rough terrain such as deserts and mountain hills. As an experienced driver she prefers manual over automatic.

While never having gotten a formal education in this field, Kiara learned early how to fix up machines with improvisation, tape and spit.

Kiara knows enough about the supernatural world to identify the enemies of her kind and corruption.

Kiara has a natural knack for languages and learns them quickly. She mainly speaks English, Zulu and Afrikaans fluently and without accent. Quite some other languages promoted in South Africa she can speak with an accent. During her time in the Army she also learned to speak Farsi and Arabic.

Kiara was born and raised in the South African Province Mpumalanga. Even as her parents were having a farm, she quickly learned how to survive, and got quite some refinement atop of that when she joined the National Guard and served two terms in the gulf region.

## POWERS

Empowered by her bloodline, Kiara can shift fluently and quickly between her human shape and her cat shape, taking several steps in between. Clothing adjusts itself to the new shape or gets absorbed into her body. The Sabertooth and Cheetah shapes do lack opposable thumbs.

As a cheetah, Kiara possesses the following traits: Basic (peak human) Strength, Enhanced level Agility, Enhanced-level Claws/Fangs that allow them to tear through most conventional materials.

The monstrous healing that is common to werewolves is shared also by Cheetahs. Non-lethal wounds from personal weaponry such as swords, shotguns, or even rifles don't result in significant loss of ability and minor wounds heal almost instantly. Severe wounds last only a couple days at worst.

In any shape but human, Kiara's body possesses natural weapons that are quite dangerous to normal humans and supernatural beings alike: Her non retractable talons carve through stone and steel, and their bite's pressure is able to shatter bone and tear flesh easily.

Cheetahs are a combination of the typical feline grace with high speed muscles running hot, and the effectiveness of muscles changes with her shape. In Human and Near-human Form, she posesses peak human strength and agility as well as Enhanced level stamina; the near human shape boosts her agility a small bit and provides claws as well as a balacing tail. In the Warform and Sabertooth shape, her strength is significantly higher than a normal human while still being below the average Werewolf, but her agility outmatches that of them. Going all feline reduces her strength to her human level, but pushes the agility quite some. Her stamina stays unchanged.

As a Sabertooth, Kiara possesses the following traits: Enhanced-level Toughness sufficient to resist most mundane forms of trauma, Enhanced-level Agility, Enhanced-level Claws/Fangs that allow them to tear through most conventional materials.

The natural senses of a feline are sharp, and so are Kiara's. She can hear sounds outside of the human hearing spectrum and is much more sensitive to faint sounds. She can hear the heartbeat of a human in close range and the quiet conversation two rooms over. She can smell a person's emotional state by their scent or track them by it if it is still fresh. She percieves fast movements much better than humans and is able to see in almost pitch black night.

Cheetahs are the fasted land animal alive in short bursts. But the people of Kiara's bloodline can run as fast as the wind and faster when they give in to their feline side fully, and not just for short sprints but hours and hours without tiring.

In Warshape, Kiara possesses the following traits: Opposable thumbs, Enhanced-level Toughness sufficient to resist most mundane forms of trauma, Enhanced-level Agility, Enhanced-level Claws/Fangs that allow them to tear through most conventional materials.

## ADVANTAGES

Having spent the last year on deployment twice consecutive, all the belongings Kiara cares for fit into a couple Duffle Bags in the back of her 2015 Ford Mustang VI, including her single AR-15 lower with a couple different uppers.

Serving two tours in the middle east in the National Guard, Kiara earned herself some backup money and the student stipend she had joined the guard for in the first place. The Stipend covers the college fees and some of the costs of living, only needing her to pick a small side job besides the studies.

In 1917, a Mauser Gewehr 98 fell into the hands of Kiara's british great grandfather as he served in the Great War, fighting German troops in the wastelands of Flanders. Later in his life, he emigrated to the US, taking his trophy with him. As the second World War came along, Kiara's grandfather's father took it with him as he joined the war effort in a home defense group. Despite never seeing active combat, the scarseness of 8mm Mauser ammunition and the fear of the day the axis might come to the US shores led to him seeking out a circle of native american medicine men, having them enchant it with ancient blood magic. Since then, whenever this heritage weapon is called upon with the right magic words, its magazine will fill anew, but it also will drain about half a pint of blood from its user without a wound.

## WEAKNESSES

The feline side of Kiara demands to be fed protein rich to soothe it, and the best way is to consume meat in some sort or the other. Unless her diet contains a good portion of meat, her inner cat makes shifting into a different form painful and unpleasant.

Mountain ash, when activated, creates a barrier against most supernatural creatures. They can't easily pass a barrier, nor can they create one.

To humans, the natural smell of her family is pleasently exotic, a little like dry sand. To those with an inner beast like Werewolves and Vampires though it is the smell of an african shifter, a feline... and she can be tracked easily by it.

The moon metal is a bane to several supernatural beings, and Kiara is one of them. The mere contact with the metal is painful and leads to an allergic reaction. Weapons made from the pure metal or coated with it cut wounds that heal only at a natural healing rate and scar easily.

Kiara's Family has been made of soldiers since generations. Her mom's line are Boers from the netherlands, and some of them even served in the Boer wars. Her mother went to study in the US and married her father, staying in Georgia for a couple of years. But then they moved back to South Africa in their early 20s after inheriting a farm from a relative of her mother. A couple years later, Kiara was born and grew up in the local communities. But even as a kid she was different from other kids her age: Her blood reacted to the red soil, making her feel itches different from those of humans. Instincts. Her mother had been spared of those as apparently it skipped a generation and never was told about it, but Kiara wasn't. What it was her parents couldn't tell. Only as an older aunt of mother came to visit, it got clear: Kiara wasn't like the other kids not because she was strange, but because she wasn't entirely human in the first place. Her bloodline carried what some might call "Were-cheetah-curse", but it was not a curse that could be broken. It was a gift that one could coexist with.

After being taught about her heritage, the biggest part that changed for Kiara was, that she was drilled to control her instincts and shifting. Soon after, she started to roam the lands of the district after school, learning to hunt the feline way under the supervision of her great aunt. After her sophomore year, her parents insisted that she would take her next two school years back in the states, not only to secure her US citizenship but also to try to give her better chances of education. She lived with an uncle of hers in Utah for the next two years, having to keep her secret from him as only her closest allies knew. Being kind of distant to him and disagreeing with his idea that she might need to be more feminine and protected, she often got into fights with him. Partly to spite him, partly to secure money for her college, she took the offer of a Recruiter for the National Guard after graduating.

After basic training, Kiara took a tour of duty in the gulf region, serving in a support battalion. After the quite calm tour, she had returned to Utha, but quickly moved to the east to get as far away from her uncle as she could. A couple months later she took her second assignment, again to the gulf region. Returning from her last deployment, she packed the few belongings to the back of her car and set on to move to the east coast, where she had found herself a spot in the literature classes.

Logs featuring Kiara Kruger:

* 2019.01.25 - Waking Up At Rowanwood Late: Kiara
* 2019.01.26 - Through the Eye of the Needle
* 2019.01.29 - The Newborn Army
* 2019.02.10 - Into the Mists
* 2019.02.11 - Curious Goods
* 2019.03.01 - Running Visit