Temperance (Vektren)

Leone (Brother)

Aura (Great-Grandmother, NPC)

## Application Sheet

Temperance was a dark gray-brown wolf with neon green eyes. She joined Vektren in the midst of the Hive Wars, serving as a Scythe. Her story is ongoing. Temperance was created and RP'd by Jackalloops.

## Personality

* ***Hardened and Thick-skinned.*** Harsh lands make harsh wolves. Temperance grew up fast, and a little mean. Her sink-or-swim mentality has few exceptions and is a philosophy she is adamant on. She has overcome illness and injury before, grown calloused pads walking on jagged terrain, and expects nothing less of herself or others. The young must grow hard, and fast. The infirm must make do, or die. Temperance's mind is equal stony-- it is difficult to truly enrage her, and even harder to hurt her with words. This doesn't mean she can't be caring-- if she is dealing with a pup (generally against her will, since she tries to avoids them) she will protect them from risk beyond their ability to control. Nor is she opposed to following through on a senior wolf's request that she bring them a specific meal. Temperance isn't cruel. Or at least, if she is, she doesn't mean to be.
* ***Dedicated and Self-Assured.*** Inaction is death in the desert, and brings only suffering before it in the badlands, especially. While Temperance isn't on a quest for power, she still has her own motivations. She has little tolerance for indecisiveness and is quick to weigh options and take action, though she lacks real-world experience to always make the best choices. Overall Temperance is a predictable wolf, with predictable re/actions and feelings. She doesn't err far from herself in the grand scheme of things. This makes her mind difficult to challenge, much less change. She is *capable* of betrayal, as her history indicates, but the upper limits of her allegiance have only been tested once. With all her needs met, and not actively engaged in a conflict of any sort, one may find her to be a particularly stable and almost gentle wolf. Temperance knows what she's about. She generally confident in what she does, and, while she is no soothsayer, Temperance's blind confidence in her packmates may make her a good morale booster. This is true, as well, of always trying to uplift her friends.
* ***Nonreligious*.** An honor-bound wolf, this young female believes much more firmly in the here-and-now than an unseen realm guiding mortal beings. Temperance is somewhere between atheist and agnostic, and mostly naïve about spirituality having grown up without any of her own. She isn't sure of the details, but allegedly far back in her lineage were wolves who could allegedly commune with spirits or win favors from gods of some kind-- these scant details that were shared with her are fuzzier than a hare's paw in winter. She isn't so sure about the truth and primarily ignores this as the mad ramblings of an old woman, having never seen a spirit or witnessed anything particularly "godly" or "miraculous" for herself. But she finds it more than coincidental that she-- one of only two children ever bore by The Shunned-- has come across wolves who worship who they call the Shunned Ones. It would seem there is no place for her *but* among them. She wants so very badly to convince herself of divine forces guiding the pack, despite the silence of the shadows all around her. If nothing else, it is a small commonality. As someone so desperate to find a place in the world for herself-- and even who she is-- this means something. It has to.
* ***Dour and Serious*.** Generally, she is a wolf who keeps her feelings to herself. Not quite modest but her sober personality may come across as such.  Humorless is not a bad descriptor for Temperance. Prone to neither laughter or smiling, her infrequent and dirt dry wit is often missed by others. A wolf who easily comes across as unfriendly from the start. She would like friends-- and is actually rather lonely in life-- but doesn't quite know how to make them. She was raised for strategy and scant resource management, not small talk and games.
* ***Rigid on Hierarchy, and Lawful.*** The caste system she grew up in left a deep mark. Temperance is reliably obedient and non-argumentative about what she is asked to do-- if only because she expects, and wants to avoid, punishment of some kind. Punishment in this context could mean as little as disappointing her superior/s. She accepts and does not question the laws of the land, and upholds them should she see someone stepping out of line. Her silence on any misdeeds against the pack has a steep price, and likely does not have a long lifespan. To this end, she is also an honest wolf. She expects and infrequently even accepts, credit for good fortune or deeds and will usually pass off her own accomplishments as the work of her superiors. She has little desire for glory or power, only seeks to make herself useful, and keep those in charge of her fate happy. While not power-hungry, she recognizes that there are things she is simply better at than others and will volunteer to use her skillset eagerly. She is generally neutral and polite with those of the same rank (or social standing if they do different jobs or are hail from different packs). When placed at the helm, she expects total cooperation and trust in her decision-making.
* ***Mournful and Codependent.*** Clingy, overbearing, and a bit too intense when someone has won her affection. If Temperance has taken a liking to you, you may find yourself looking for her over your shoulder, only for her to suddenly appear before you. Not obsessive, but close. Easily spurned, but not prickly about it. She is prone to low moods and long lapses of silence. Winter is an especially hard time for her in this regard. She will perform exactly as expected during these moody spells but has little energy to do much else. Somewhere within Temperance is still the little girl, who loved her brother more than life itself. She is, more recently, a very bitter young wolf. Trapped somewhere between disenfranchisement with the world and sorrow at her lot in it. She is doing her best to kill this part of herself because life, when she is so soft, seems impossible. Temperance of the Badlands has known little kindness in her life and she is not the wolf she wants to be, but she knows no other way.

## Pre-Group History

It all began with Aura. The small pack she settled late in life nestled between scrubland and a valley formed in the grave of an extinct volcano. Badlands in her lifetime, the valley would someday be rich with life. Aura swore it. And those who dissented with the territory she selected were rounded up for slaughter by her most loyal general, Miltiades, not yet a traitor.

To add to their numbers and secure resources, they tracked down wolves from surrounding smaller packs with decisive efficiency, executing the alphas at their den sites to prove a point Temperance was never privy to (it was before her time, after all, and one simply doesn't question history). Those who spoke out or wouldn't submit to Aura's rule were driven into the volcano's gaped maw by the horrifying force of Miltiades and the war band. Mournful songs fell silent after days without water.

The region settled in Aura's name there was no place to direct her ire with the world but inward to her ranks. Mother and child bickered, at odds over resource management, over laws, over males, and Miltiades' duty to birth heirs. An act of submission gave Aura a litter of four sired by a male of Aura's choosing, of course, and among them a little girl named Peacewater. Once they were weaned, Miltiades took her leave-- her patience with her mother's gone and her final duties considered done. Left to atone for their mother's sins, the young pups left behind eventually became known as The Shunned. Aura demanded absolute loyalty from her grandchildren, visiting them infrequently and with little love in her heart to give. Temperance never understood why they inherited those crimes, but it was simple-- their birth had cost Aura everything she had built and invested in Mel. She couldn't look at the pups without seeing her empire collapse.

Functionally a pack-within-a-pack, The Shunned became a band of scavengers subsisting on scraps and stolen meals. Living among sinkholes and minimal vegetation, these wolves became lean and hardened-- still loyal enough to Aura to work for a good meal because they knew little else, but resentful of the conditions they'd been exiled to. They welcomed into their fold the other outcasts who crossed their god-empress, growing from four into eight, into twelve embittered souls. Peacewater found particular comfort in one such soul, eventually coming to spend more time with the newcomer, Roscoe, than her littermates and comrades. To him, she gave two children: Temperance and Leone.

Aura was furious when she learned one of The Shunned had bore children, storming through their prison-lands with murder on her mind. At once it was ordered that the band be subdivided by sex (regardless of gender), to prevent such liaisons among the unfaithful. To her credit-- or perhaps realizing she had no bloodline left without them-- the old wolf seemed to recognize the whelps as her kin and affixed to each of their names the title 'of the Badlands' elevating the newborns to a sinless rank to show her followers she is not wholly unforgiving; that there could be a return to the main lands for them, too, if they'd only just behave.

Lacking a wet nurse, Peacewater was allowed to nurse her pups in the abandoned termite mound she bedded Roscoe in. But as soon as she and Leone were on solid-- a rushed and hungry five weeks at their mother's teats-- it was back to the outskirts as a member of the new all-female band for their mother.

Allowed no real childhood to speak for, the two pups were trained for two harsh years to fill the void the departure of her greatest war chief had left in Aura's ranks. There were other generals, however, none could rightfully be considered an heir if they didn't carry her blood. It was simply unthinkable. Aura had hoped to find in one of them a powerful soul, worthy of her throne despite being lowborn. Leone struggled; he was simply softer. So the role of growing into Miltiades' paw prints inevitably fell on Temperance when he departed in the night with a kiss on her cheek. In her loneliest moments, she remembers the feel of his forehead against hers. She never held it against him and will miss his soft companionship until her last breath.

The next morning, enraged when she learned her great-grandson had fled his duties just as another failure past, Aura struck Temperance for her brother's desertion, deriding them both before leveling further insult against Leone for his cowardice.

An old wolf, already in failing health, the hag was no trouble to strike back.

Again. Aura hadn't even seen it coming.

And again, neither of them uttering so much as a word to each other.

And again-- until she could lift neither tooth or claw against anyone, anymore.

Sitting with an otherworldly stillness, Temperance's dark figure did not disturb the vultures and crows as they fed on the dead tyrant's body. She was just another fixture of the badlands, the blackest smudge in a world without beauty. At the first sign of bone, as though drawn from a trance she didn't know she was in, the little wolf rose, shook dust and dried blood our her pelt, and left.

The madness had, at last, ended.

Against all odds The Scourge, however, still tenuously exists. After a civil war in the absence of a leader or a trained heir to the hollow throne, it is now led by Aura's only surviving general. In the time since Temperance's departure (perhaps inspired-through-fear of the wrath such a caste system had wrought) they welcomed The Shunned back into their fold as full packmates, allowed to take mates, eat from any kill, and even gain rank.

Fearing what disaster may befall them next should either of the wayward children be found or forced to return, they have forbidden anyone from looking for either wolf said to be "of the badlands" in hopes that the boy finds his peace and the girl finds her glory elsewhere. Peacewater barely remembers the little bundles of fur that had nursed at her belly and cannot believe her nights of comfort and good sleep beside Roscoe-- a wolf she wasn't even with these days-- had ultimately resulted in such a bloody schism.

Mostly, Peacewater misses her mother. Sometimes she wonders if her children do, too.

As for Temperance of the Badlands? She, and her future, seem no softer than the lands that bore her.  All she knows is that the Domain is the greenest place she has ever seen, and its soft grass feels good on her worn paws.

## Trivia

* Despite being the descendant of a bloody legacy, Temperance usually tries to avoid fights when she can.
* Hailing from lands where the deepest body of water was no deeper than her wrist, she's a poor swimmer and really looks ridiculous in water.
* Entering the Domain, Temperance is closer to an atheist than agnostic.
* She'll use "Aurann" as an alias when outside Vektreni borders. A portmanteau of Aura and Ann.
* She has more than a passing familiarity with what wolf flesh tastes like.
* Temperance was a runt, with poor placental placement in utero. While she was born very small and struggled in her earliest days, she seems to have no lasting effects aside from being small for her lineage.
* Despite being larger than them now, Temperance is still skittish around foxes after the attack that cost her her ear tip, and her brother even more. She will likely share this with no one, considering it an embarrassing fear and weakness for a wolf to have.

## External Links

* Official Application Sheet
* Jackalloops's deviantART Gallery