Brynhildr Reinette Dottir - 2/5brynkittenApril 6 2011, 18:28:51 UTC
Over the years, Bryn’s parents seemed to find many flaws. She was never polished enough. Never eloquent enough. Her skill at the keys of the piano were nothing worth bragging about to their friends and colleagues. More and more Bryn became aware of how little her parents thought of her. They had no hopes that she would ever become useful to their family, like her mother Simone had been useful to her family in securing a marriage to her father Alaric.
Still, together, Bryn and Gunn made up for the lack of affection from their parents, and as such, neither grew discontent enough to rebel or push for their own desires. After all, it had been hammered into them that one of the worst things they could do was imply or show they were at all ungrateful for all their parents had provided for them. After all their parents did and said, they were still their children and craved acceptance.
Unfortunately, this state of affairs between parents and children would not last forever.
Bryn was seventeen when she changed for the first time. It happened swiftly, a tingling sensation over her skin the only sign of something strange before her bones began to change shape and realign to support a different body type. Everything about her adjusted, from the inside out, and within a minute Bryn was no longer a teenage girl, but a full grown cougar.
It might have become something she could handle easily after a period of time, or perhaps with someone to guide her, but Bryn had no such luxury at the start. She had shifted in front of her mother and father, who unfortunately didn’t know that this ability of hers was something that followed through her father’s bloodlines. They didn’t know that her father’s brother was also a shapeshifter. They didn’t know anything other than the fact that Bryn was now potentially dangerous to them, with a secret that could ruin the life they had painstakingly maintained. She was too much liability to ignore any longer.
Bryn passed out from the shock of this unexpected change, and was locked away while her parents tried to decide what to do. While several options were discussed, even that of arranging for an “accidental” death, eventually they decided to contact the government to have her taken away. With connections with several state and military officials, it would be a simple thing to have Bryn transported to a facility as a test subject. There, her rights would be stripped and she would have her new ability tested and exploited.
It never came to that, however.
Gunn’s loyalties were divided, but he never questioned what would be the right thing to do. The answer was clear from the start. Rather than let their parents send Bryn away, he helped her escape. It took some clumsy but determined efforts with a screw driver, a hammer, and a crow bar to get her door open, but eventually Gunn had her bedroom door pried open. There was only so much food and supplies he could pack into a bag for her, but soon Bryn, who had since shifted back, was on her way.
Scared and panicked, Bryn took off in the middle of the night and ran into the woods. Adrenaline pushed her into shifting once more. Rather than pass out once more, Bryn maintained consciousness. She took in her surroundings with superior night vision, markedly improved sense of smell and hearing, and in a body far more sensitive to the environment. Everything was more intense and alive than she ever could have imagined. She was more alive.
Bryn traveled up and down the pacific coast for years in this form. Through trial and error she learned the extent of her abilities, and to a degree, came to accept this change in her life.
It was much harder to come to terms with the direction her life had taken, however. Bryn was without family, without friends, and without any support whatsoever. For this reason, and because of a constant fear of being discovered by her family or their connections, she spent most of her time in animal form.
It’s during a rare moment of time while she’s in her human form that Bryn, now age twenty, is brought to Holloway’s Keep.
Brynhildr Reinette Dottir - 3/5brynkittenApril 6 2011, 18:29:22 UTC
4. Personality: Bryn is in many ways a work in progress. She’s had years of rules of conduct and behavior drilled into her, and normally would find it quite comforting to fall back on all she was taught. However, the development of her shapeshifting ability and the betrayal of her parents has caused her to question her instinctive reactions and ways of thinking.
Bryn feels very much conflicted in her human form. Being a shapeshifter has opened her eyes to a completely different side of life, and as such, finds it hard to behave exactly as she once did in her human form. All at once she yearns for everything she was denied, and in some cases didn’t even know she was missing in her parents’ household, and is still at times too scared to reach out for it.
In many ways, Bryn is uncertain and tentative a great deal of the time, having never had a chance to truly come into her own as an individual until now.
She is a great deal more confident in her other form. While she still maintains possession of her own mind, there is a portion of her that is driven by instinct. Surrendering to that instinct makes her feel a great deal more at ease. As an animal there is little more to worry about than where her next meal is coming from and where she’ll sleep at night.
All in all, a great deal of what motivates Bryn is her growing desire to live life for herself. It is this that will drive her to take chances that she might not, had she remained on Earth.
5. Previous Game Developments: None, it’s a fresh start for Bryn!
6. Appearance: Bryn is not very tall, at five foot two. She has long blonde hair that’s falls mostly straight to her shoulders. Her eyes are deep brown, and she has a somewhat angular facial structure, especially at the jawline. Due to her time spent living in the wild, Bryn unfortunately has a slightly gaunt appearance of someone who is a bit undernourished.
As a cougar, Bryn is on the larger side for her gender. She stands at two and a half feet tall at the shoulder, and is about eight feet long from nose to tail. Despite her size, Bryn is on the less muscular side for her build, and has a great deal of agility and flexibility to her advantage.
7. Abilities: Bryn’s shapeshifting ability is something she inherited from her father’s side of the family. While her father does not have the gift, her uncle does. It is not tied to the moon at all, but rather her actual genetics. It is for this reason that Bryn carries over some of her instincts and senses from her cougar form, and also how she’s able to maintain her human personality while in an animal body.
Bryn’s shifting abilities are normally unhampered, and she’s able to shift between her two forms with ease and minimal discomfort, however upon arrival she’ll find herself able to only manage shifting to or from one form or another twice, finding the actual process tiring and requiring a great deal more focus than usual.
8. Languages: Bryn was raised to speak both English/Common and at her parents’ insistence, German. She also has nearly four years of high school French under her belt as well.
9. Items: The only thing Bryn has on her are her clothes, and the bag that Gunn filled for her three years ago. All that’s inside the bag is a little money, some food, and a swiss army knife she bought for herself during her first month on her own.
10. Weapons: Bryn has a “Ranger” Swiss Army knife. Unfortunately, all of the edges of the blades and saw will be blunted. In her other form she’ll have claws and teeth, of course.
Brynhildr Reinette Dottir - 4/5brynkittenApril 6 2011, 18:29:57 UTC
11. Writing sample - Third Person Prose: Bryn yawned and stretched out on her favorite rock. It was flat, wide, and surrounded by thick brush that mostly hid her from view. Granted, the wind blew a little stronger up there, which meant that at times her prey was downwind of her, but it was still an excellent vantage point when she was hunting.
At the moment, however, Bryn’s stomach was full. She’d taken down a large, white-tail doe early in the week and it had been surprisingly filling. Really, it had been more than enough to hold her for a while. Because she had no intention of hunting again for a few days at earliest, Bryn had decided to shift back into her human form for a while.
It wasn’t something she did often. Truthfully, she didn’t really feel comfortable in that body these days. Sure, she had lived in it for the first seventeen years, but that was before everything had changed. Her new life involved hiding her real face and, well, living in the boonies. The middle of no where. It was by no means glamorous or safe. It was almost always hunting season for one animal or another, and deeper in the mountains, well out of public view, several groups of people were involved in drug manufacturing and trade.
For one reason or another, everyone had guns.
It might have been safer to go somewhere else. Somewhere even less settled. Somewhere more lush than this dusty mountain range. There were places with dense forests, more game, and less dangerous people. Bryn was sure she could have adapted to one of those places, some of which she’d even been to recently.
There were parts of California, up near the border of Oregon, that were largely unsettled and Bryn had been quite happy there for a few months in the Spring. She might have even settled in Washington if it hadn’t been for a nasty run in with a bear, back in August. It had only happened once, but once was enough for her.
In the end, it was Gunn that kept her coming back to that same, hot, boring mountain range. At least, it was the thought of him that drew her closer to home. Bryn found it too hard to entirely abandon the only family member she’d ever really cared about. She owed him her life. Perhaps she wasn’t really close enough to be of any use to him, and he had no way to reach out to her if he needed help, but Bryn felt more comfortable being nearer to her brother.
For the next hour, however, Bryn wasn’t worry about that. The hunters, the bears, and even her brother could take the backseat during that short space of time. Her rock wasn’t in no one’s territory but her own, and she going to enjoy the feel of the sun’s warmth and the wind’s coolness on her skin.
Brynhildr Reinette Dottir - 5/5brynkittenApril 6 2011, 18:30:44 UTC
12. Writing sample - First Person Prose: [Bryn’s fingers play over the rim of her water glass as she stares into it.]
You know, life used to be so much easier. I had a family and my family had a plan and I was going to follow that plan. There was no uncertainty, no confusion, no conflict. My life was all set out and that was that.
[Bryn purses her lips together, remembering well the conversation she’d had with her mother just a few years ago. Her mother had clearly, and without emotion, outlined the sort of life Bryn was to expect.]
The plan was for me to graduate, attend an Ivy League university, and through those college years, allow myself to be trotted around at parties and introduced to other families with eligible sons. My parents would take to the parents of whomever they liked best, and they in turn would pressure their son to see me more. If he agreed, we’d go on boring, unimaginative dates until finally he was pressured to...”offer for me.”
I didn’t have a dowry but I might as well have, with all of the family and business connections they boasted of. It pays to be friends with my parents, and even more to marry into the family. If my parents were lucky, I would marry someone equally advantageous, giving Gunn a brother-in-law who could be counted on as an ally even after they passed on.
[She grimaces.]
Then everything changed and I had to learn to rely on myself and learn everything the hard way...I had to learn how to think for myself. To think, period.
[At that, Bryn smiles a bit, chuckles even. Her fingertips press to the sides of her glass as she slowly lifts it to drink before carefully setting it down again.]
There’s no amount of schooling to prepare a person to be dropped in the deep end. I never realized how much was decided for me until I had to start making all those decisions for myself. Didn’t have time to think about it either. It was either sink or swim, you know?
I’ve managed well enough these last few years but, well, it’s easy to do that when you spend most of your life in animal form. Everything is simpler that way. Life is hunting and eating and finding a safe place to eat. The fighting is territorial...never personal.
[Bryn looks up and smiles, though it doesn’t reach her eyes at all. There’s no emotion there but a bleak sort of acceptance.]
It’s almost as easy as how life used to be.
13. Tattoo: Bryn’s tattoo is located on her chest, just over her heart.
Lastly, come on over to the keep_ooc and introduce yourself! You are also welcome (and encouraged!) to say hello in our AIM chat, chatofthekeep. Get yourself settled in and if you have any questions, please contact a moderator!
In regards to shifting, we have set up a base rule for all shape-changing characters. One shift (form a to form b) will require a 4 hour break before the next shift. It is possible to shift again (form b back to form a) before the four hours is up, but the recovery time will boost to an additional 12 hours instead of 4. A third shift within this time frame will not be possible.
Holloway's Keep will be kicking off at 9:30pm EST / 8:30pm CST / 6:30pm PST. Once again, welcome to the game!
Still, together, Bryn and Gunn made up for the lack of affection from their parents, and as such, neither grew discontent enough to rebel or push for their own desires. After all, it had been hammered into them that one of the worst things they could do was imply or show they were at all ungrateful for all their parents had provided for them. After all their parents did and said, they were still their children and craved acceptance.
Unfortunately, this state of affairs between parents and children would not last forever.
Bryn was seventeen when she changed for the first time. It happened swiftly, a tingling sensation over her skin the only sign of something strange before her bones began to change shape and realign to support a different body type. Everything about her adjusted, from the inside out, and within a minute Bryn was no longer a teenage girl, but a full grown cougar.
It might have become something she could handle easily after a period of time, or perhaps with someone to guide her, but Bryn had no such luxury at the start. She had shifted in front of her mother and father, who unfortunately didn’t know that this ability of hers was something that followed through her father’s bloodlines. They didn’t know that her father’s brother was also a shapeshifter. They didn’t know anything other than the fact that Bryn was now potentially dangerous to them, with a secret that could ruin the life they had painstakingly maintained. She was too much liability to ignore any longer.
Bryn passed out from the shock of this unexpected change, and was locked away while her parents tried to decide what to do. While several options were discussed, even that of arranging for an “accidental” death, eventually they decided to contact the government to have her taken away. With connections with several state and military officials, it would be a simple thing to have Bryn transported to a facility as a test subject. There, her rights would be stripped and she would have her new ability tested and exploited.
It never came to that, however.
Gunn’s loyalties were divided, but he never questioned what would be the right thing to do. The answer was clear from the start. Rather than let their parents send Bryn away, he helped her escape. It took some clumsy but determined efforts with a screw driver, a hammer, and a crow bar to get her door open, but eventually Gunn had her bedroom door pried open. There was only so much food and supplies he could pack into a bag for her, but soon Bryn, who had since shifted back, was on her way.
Scared and panicked, Bryn took off in the middle of the night and ran into the woods. Adrenaline pushed her into shifting once more. Rather than pass out once more, Bryn maintained consciousness. She took in her surroundings with superior night vision, markedly improved sense of smell and hearing, and in a body far more sensitive to the environment. Everything was more intense and alive than she ever could have imagined. She was more alive.
Bryn traveled up and down the pacific coast for years in this form. Through trial and error she learned the extent of her abilities, and to a degree, came to accept this change in her life.
It was much harder to come to terms with the direction her life had taken, however. Bryn was without family, without friends, and without any support whatsoever. For this reason, and because of a constant fear of being discovered by her family or their connections, she spent most of her time in animal form.
It’s during a rare moment of time while she’s in her human form that Bryn, now age twenty, is brought to Holloway’s Keep.
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Bryn feels very much conflicted in her human form. Being a shapeshifter has opened her eyes to a completely different side of life, and as such, finds it hard to behave exactly as she once did in her human form. All at once she yearns for everything she was denied, and in some cases didn’t even know she was missing in her parents’ household, and is still at times too scared to reach out for it.
In many ways, Bryn is uncertain and tentative a great deal of the time, having never had a chance to truly come into her own as an individual until now.
She is a great deal more confident in her other form. While she still maintains possession of her own mind, there is a portion of her that is driven by instinct. Surrendering to that instinct makes her feel a great deal more at ease. As an animal there is little more to worry about than where her next meal is coming from and where she’ll sleep at night.
All in all, a great deal of what motivates Bryn is her growing desire to live life for herself. It is this that will drive her to take chances that she might not, had she remained on Earth.
5. Previous Game Developments: None, it’s a fresh start for Bryn!
6. Appearance: Bryn is not very tall, at five foot two. She has long blonde hair that’s falls mostly straight to her shoulders. Her eyes are deep brown, and she has a somewhat angular facial structure, especially at the jawline. Due to her time spent living in the wild, Bryn unfortunately has a slightly gaunt appearance of someone who is a bit undernourished.
As a cougar, Bryn is on the larger side for her gender. She stands at two and a half feet tall at the shoulder, and is about eight feet long from nose to tail. Despite her size, Bryn is on the less muscular side for her build, and has a great deal of agility and flexibility to her advantage.
7. Abilities: Bryn’s shapeshifting ability is something she inherited from her father’s side of the family. While her father does not have the gift, her uncle does. It is not tied to the moon at all, but rather her actual genetics. It is for this reason that Bryn carries over some of her instincts and senses from her cougar form, and also how she’s able to maintain her human personality while in an animal body.
Bryn’s shifting abilities are normally unhampered, and she’s able to shift between her two forms with ease and minimal discomfort, however upon arrival she’ll find herself able to only manage shifting to or from one form or another twice, finding the actual process tiring and requiring a great deal more focus than usual.
8. Languages: Bryn was raised to speak both English/Common and at her parents’ insistence, German. She also has nearly four years of high school French under her belt as well.
9. Items: The only thing Bryn has on her are her clothes, and the bag that Gunn filled for her three years ago. All that’s inside the bag is a little money, some food, and a swiss army knife she bought for herself during her first month on her own.
10. Weapons: Bryn has a “Ranger” Swiss Army knife. Unfortunately, all of the edges of the blades and saw will be blunted. In her other form she’ll have claws and teeth, of course.
Reply
At the moment, however, Bryn’s stomach was full. She’d taken down a large, white-tail doe early in the week and it had been surprisingly filling. Really, it had been more than enough to hold her for a while. Because she had no intention of hunting again for a few days at earliest, Bryn had decided to shift back into her human form for a while.
It wasn’t something she did often. Truthfully, she didn’t really feel comfortable in that body these days. Sure, she had lived in it for the first seventeen years, but that was before everything had changed. Her new life involved hiding her real face and, well, living in the boonies. The middle of no where. It was by no means glamorous or safe. It was almost always hunting season for one animal or another, and deeper in the mountains, well out of public view, several groups of people were involved in drug manufacturing and trade.
For one reason or another, everyone had guns.
It might have been safer to go somewhere else. Somewhere even less settled. Somewhere more lush than this dusty mountain range. There were places with dense forests, more game, and less dangerous people. Bryn was sure she could have adapted to one of those places, some of which she’d even been to recently.
There were parts of California, up near the border of Oregon, that were largely unsettled and Bryn had been quite happy there for a few months in the Spring. She might have even settled in Washington if it hadn’t been for a nasty run in with a bear, back in August. It had only happened once, but once was enough for her.
In the end, it was Gunn that kept her coming back to that same, hot, boring mountain range. At least, it was the thought of him that drew her closer to home. Bryn found it too hard to entirely abandon the only family member she’d ever really cared about. She owed him her life. Perhaps she wasn’t really close enough to be of any use to him, and he had no way to reach out to her if he needed help, but Bryn felt more comfortable being nearer to her brother.
For the next hour, however, Bryn wasn’t worry about that. The hunters, the bears, and even her brother could take the backseat during that short space of time. Her rock wasn’t in no one’s territory but her own, and she going to enjoy the feel of the sun’s warmth and the wind’s coolness on her skin.
Reply
You know, life used to be so much easier. I had a family and my family had a plan and I was going to follow that plan. There was no uncertainty, no confusion, no conflict. My life was all set out and that was that.
[Bryn purses her lips together, remembering well the conversation she’d had with her mother just a few years ago. Her mother had clearly, and without emotion, outlined the sort of life Bryn was to expect.]
The plan was for me to graduate, attend an Ivy League university, and through those college years, allow myself to be trotted around at parties and introduced to other families with eligible sons. My parents would take to the parents of whomever they liked best, and they in turn would pressure their son to see me more. If he agreed, we’d go on boring, unimaginative dates until finally he was pressured to...”offer for me.”
I didn’t have a dowry but I might as well have, with all of the family and business connections they boasted of. It pays to be friends with my parents, and even more to marry into the family. If my parents were lucky, I would marry someone equally advantageous, giving Gunn a brother-in-law who could be counted on as an ally even after they passed on.
[She grimaces.]
Then everything changed and I had to learn to rely on myself and learn everything the hard way...I had to learn how to think for myself. To think, period.
[At that, Bryn smiles a bit, chuckles even. Her fingertips press to the sides of her glass as she slowly lifts it to drink before carefully setting it down again.]
There’s no amount of schooling to prepare a person to be dropped in the deep end. I never realized how much was decided for me until I had to start making all those decisions for myself. Didn’t have time to think about it either. It was either sink or swim, you know?
I’ve managed well enough these last few years but, well, it’s easy to do that when you spend most of your life in animal form. Everything is simpler that way. Life is hunting and eating and finding a safe place to eat. The fighting is territorial...never personal.
[Bryn looks up and smiles, though it doesn’t reach her eyes at all. There’s no emotion there but a bleak sort of acceptance.]
It’s almost as easy as how life used to be.
13. Tattoo: Bryn’s tattoo is located on her chest, just over her heart.
Reply
1. Join these communities:
• holloways_keep
2. Post to the following:• keep_ooc
• keep_logs
• and if you are 18 or older, keep_adult
• The Activity Page
Lastly, come on over to the keep_ooc and introduce yourself! You are also welcome (and encouraged!) to say hello in our AIM chat, chatofthekeep. Get yourself settled in and if you have any questions, please contact a moderator!• The Taken Characters Page
• The Friend Add/Removes Page
In regards to shifting, we have set up a base rule for all shape-changing characters. One shift (form a to form b) will require a 4 hour break before the next shift. It is possible to shift again (form b back to form a) before the four hours is up, but the recovery time will boost to an additional 12 hours instead of 4. A third shift within this time frame will not be possible.
Holloway's Keep will be kicking off at 9:30pm EST / 8:30pm CST / 6:30pm PST.
Once again, welcome to the game!
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