Caldera

## Application Sheet

Caldera was a dark gray she-wolf. Born outside of the Domain, she joined Xassa as a Nabu. She was created and RP'd by ShishiNoSeirei.

## Personality

* ***Repressive and Unforgiving.*** Despite her cold and confident attitude, Caldera is affected more by her emotions than she lets on. She prefers to repress her emotions, seeing them as a weakness. She takes pride in being able to do her work without having to use such cheap tricks like emotional fuel to finish her tasks and make decisions based on facts and knowledge.. any emotion that happens to appear, no matter how positive and socially acceptable they may be, are repressed and hidden.
* ***Haunted and Defensive, but Resilient.*** Caldera is haunted by the memory of being the one that was always left behind for different reasons and told that it was due to her not fitting in with the pack. She was more emotional than the others, and despite her best efforts to not show it, she failed. Her resilience was one of the few things that helped her to catch up and join her pack once again, but the memories of being left behind every time she was too slow or too emotional have left scars deep inside her. Her persistence made her pack to eventually abandon their attempts to get rid of her, accepting her once she had shown them that she would not give up her spot for another wolf and was able to defend her spot without anyone's help. While not admitting to it, Caldera is afraid of being left behind every time she works in a group and loses her spot to someone else.
* ***Strict, Persistent, and Straightforward.*** Due to her strict upbringing, Caldera herself is strict toward anyone that happens to work with her. She sees her strictness as something necessary, something that helps others become a better version of themselves and prepares them for the job. She is very straight forward with what she wants, how she wants it done, and if someone succeeds or fails to do it properly.
* ***Self-Destructive.*** Despite being a very collected and non-impulsive individual, Caldera has developed a self-destructive behavior; she calculates her worth by counting the tasks and their difficulty. Whenever she is asked and requested to do harder tasks, Caldera is happier and more content with herself, while easy and non-challenging tasks are seen as a warning that the pack is losing their faith in her.
* ***Unforgiving.*** While not being a psychopath or narcissist, Caldera seems to enjoy when someone is hurting emotionally, and sometimes uses that situation to show the suffering soul that letting emotions take control is the worst thing you can do. Since Caldera prefers to keep her emotions hidden, it is unknown if she is able to feel empathy for anyone who is going through a rough time or if she really is enjoying such sight...or if it is a tactic to put herself on higher ground to defend her spot.

## Pre-Group History

Born and raised in a pack where results were more important than anything else, Caldera learned the hard way what happens to those that fail to live up to someone else's expectations. From a young age Caldera and her siblings (two brothers and one sister) were playing around like any other puppy in other packs did. However, during their playtimes, the parents and other pack members were free to openly criticize and taunt any pup that failed to do something simple. Her parents put a lot of time in raising her and her siblings into strong and disciplined individuals. They all were expected to help each other to live up to their parents -and packs- expectations, the only form of encouragement during training was a harsh critique and sometimes taunting. Caldera has received a fair share of harsh words and insults through her young life, each word hurting her and pushing her toward the goal of living after packs main motto: reach greatness by suppressing the sea of emotions inside you.

There was no such thing as being unable to do something. If the alpha requested a task to be fulfilled, all wolves were expected to do it and by fulfilling it, and depending on their performance they had a chance to collect either good or bad points with the Alpha. Their life was a constant competition for approval, to keep their rank, get better rank, become better at their task, and more importantly, qualify for the really important tasks and titles. The wolf that won most tasks no matter how small or big they became the “star” of their pack, the one that could eat first by alphas side and the one that would be forgiven if they messed up, but only once (at least in theory).  The goal of it all was to create the perfect workers that could temporarily be hired by either a loner or a pack for a task; from simple jobs like hunting and collecting herbs to fighting off threats to guard and protect a weakened, sick pack. However, being hired to kill someone was seen as a dishonorable thing and punished by death. Like many others, Caldera learned to kill only if it was the only way to get out of the situation rather than start fighting as soon an enemy approached. An unwritten, silent rule among the higher rank ups was to leave younglings behind to test their spirit and loyalty to their homepack. It was more common to leave female members behind, due to the belief that their loyalty was never as strong as male`s. This rule was never spoken about openly with any other wolf to keep it secret and prevent new younglings from fighting for a specific, already known goal. Since Caldera was unaware of it, every time she got left behind by the group she was out with, and it ended up hurting her, scarring her mentally and making her fear losing her spot to someone else if she didn't manage to come back. In her comeback, every single member was expendable and could be kicked out simply for failing to finish a task. To stay in it was a constant battle, which has made Caldera resilience to difficult tasks, and that persistence pays off well in the long run.

It made Caldera- and others- aware that she was too emotional for her own good, making her being always one step behind everyone else.

Caldera was involved with a wolf that happened to be alphas, a favorite pack member. They both bonded by challenging each other and built their relationship on the competitiveness that existed between them. The pair grew closer together with each season that passed and eventually ended up creating a family mostly due to the pressure of their parents. Caldera had one litter of four pups and discovered quickly that being a mother took too much of her time, keeping her away from the work she had learned to love to do regardless of how others treated her during those missions. Slowly but surely Caldera became slowly more and more annoyed with the pups that she loved, and started to ignore her duties as a mother in order to do tasks that took her farther and farther away from her family. Angered by their daughter's behavior, Caldera`s parents brought a new female into the pack and asked her to raise Caldera`s pups, hoping that their daughter would wake up and take back her own spot from the stranger.

This new female ended up stealing Caldera`s partner's heart. His interest in the other wolf enraged Caldera more than she wanted to admit, feeling as if he had ripped her heart to bits in order to be with the new member of their pack. In order to remind him about her existence,Caldera challenged the other female to perform a trial-run, a competition set up of four different tasks, each of them performed during different seasons. Caldera realized that this challenge was a mistake a little too late, failing to complete it and made other pack members lose their faith in her. After that, all jobs she was given were low-priority and difficult. Caldera`s self-worth was crushed and eventually, she decided to leave the pack, leaving the stranger with her family.

Despite the fact that it was her mate that fell in love with someone else, Caldera blamed herself for not being able to prove her worth. To her, not being able to prove herself and her qualities was equivalent to being useless, and emotions were what got her there in the first place. Carrying one's own weight was required of all her pack members, and she failed to carry her weight when it mattered the most. Caldera left the terrains she called home and wandered off into the unknown, searching for a pack she could join.

Until today Caldera is asking herself if she will always be at risk of being left behind, the fear of being alone and pushed aside even when she is part of the pack is burned into her mind. During her travels Caldera learned how to push away her feelings and use her skills to survive, realizing her pack`s motto was more valuable than she thought. Ever since then, she promised herself to never make a decision that was based on feelings alone.

Caldera ended up joining Xassa due to the pack's diplomatic nature and it's rough unforgiving terrain. She sees the pack as a perfect place to grow in and learn new skills, or expand her existing ones.

## Trivia

* She lost her eye in battle against Rajbera of Chandor.

## External Links

* Official Application Sheet
* ShishiNoSeirei's deviantART Gallery