Cervantes Isabal

[Cervantes]

Character Name: Cervantes Isabal
Race: Werefox/Human shifter
Age: 20
Height:
- Human Form: 6"
- Half-Fox Form: 6'1"
Weight:
- Human Form: ~155 lbs
- Half Fox Form: ~155 lbs
- Fox Form: 45 lbs
Hair:
- Human Form: Long, dark brown.
- Other forms: Grey fur.

Physical Description:
Human: Cervantes is tall and lean with sharp features, black hair and his father's dark green eyes. His skin is tanned and unblemished, and his eyelids pull back with a hint of ancestry from the east, although his true origins are impossible to pinpoint. He is quite handsome, having been gifted with a touch of the exotic from his mother and the good bone structure of his father. This is offset by the fact that he is generally unkind and far from endearing in personality.
Carrying himself with youthful vitality, he appears to be quick, dexterous, and clearly intelligent. In social situations he's haughty and belligerent, thinking of most other people as inept and generally stupid.
Half-Fox: Cervantes is a typical kitsune. Half fox, half man, he has grey fur, a thin canine snout, large ears, golden eyes, and a single bushy tail.
Fox: A foot long common grey fox, with an additional foot of bushy tail.

Possessions: ~ 300 bishani. A travel pack with living essentials including a change of clothes worn by commoners in southern Eyropa.
A finely crafted dirk with a silver hilt embedded with a sapphire at its base. A simple shortsword with a black hilt and a blade that has been made black by some means of anodization. Two vials of arsenic trioxide (a tasteless, odourless poison).

Powers and Strengths:
Physically Attractive: He looks young, healthy, active, and is confident enough in his own abilities that it is either appealing or intimidating, depending on the audience.

Stealth: As a human, Cervantes knows how to move swiftly and quietly while remaining crouched behind cover or concealed in shadows. He is spry and light, although in order to remain truly stealthy he must shift into his half-fox form. Once in this form, he makes essentially no sound while running or jumping.

Acrobatics: Cervantes has worked on his natural flexibility, physical strength and precision to the point that he can be called a skilled acrobat. Somersaults, backflips, handstands, running along ledges and climbing walls are all things he can do in his human form. In his half-fox form, he can perform these feats and more with incredible ease.

Martial Arts: By training mixed martial arts, Cervantes has capitalized on his natural abilities. In his human form, he fights using his sword, dirk, or both. When his opponents are armed and trained, this is his preferred technique for dealing with them.
As a half-fox, he knows how to quickly claw and snap at weak points, particularly when opponents are unarmed. The increased speed and dexterity he gains in this form makes it nearly impossible for an unarmed human to defeat him.

Streetwise: A life spent on the streets has taught Cervantes how to eyeball strangers, get information, deal with those who do business on the wrong side of the law and acquire illegal goods and services. He has connections with minor criminal elements around south-eastern Eyropa that enable him to find work or assistance in many areas including, but not limited to, contract killing.

Killer: Cervantes knows how to kill quickly, quietly, and efficiently. Whether garotting someone so they can't make a noise or fight back, or placing a knife in the back so that it punctures an organ to ensure death, he has used these techniques enough to execute them reliably.

Fox Shifter: Were-foxes, also known as kitsunes, can transform into a mixture of a fox and a human, or fully into a fox. In their half-fox form, kitsunes are some of the quickest and most agile creatures around, though they lack any super-human strength or healing abilities. The half-foxes, not surprisingly, half sharp claws and teeth for rending flesh.

Weaknesses and Handicaps:
Not the Nicest Guy: Something about Cervantes doesn't instill trust in others, and his reputation does not help this fact. It's hard for him to come across as anything but a young, arrogant man who's looking out for his own interests.

Astray: Living alone on the streets, without anyone to guide him, means that Cervantes has no home to go to, no heritage to draw on for comfort, no family to turn to for support, and nobody who cares about him to provide guidance. He may be experienced on the streets, but he is still young and naive. He has been taken advantage of in the past, and will likely be again. His life choices are questionable and have yet to grant him real happiness.

Unproven: Cervantes is a guy with something to prove. The primary motivating factor in his success on the streets and in martial arts can be used against him. He wants to be the best at whatever it is he's doing, and is determined to show others that he is. This also manifests itself as overconfidence.

Women: He gets it from his father, and possibly his age. If anything can manipulate Cervantes and make him think with something other than the head between his shoulders, it's women.

History:
In 142 PW in the port town of Trelham on the Western shores of Eyropa, a young human woman named Winnie Isabal and an equally young kitsune named Chrishton Radu had what Chrishton thought would be a simple exercise in recreational fornication. Winnie had come north to seek refuge in a peaceful place from violence and ethnic fighting in Semerkhet, and brought with her exotic features and darker skin of the south. Chrishton had arrived on an undisclosed "business errand" from Ayana and never revealed himself as anything more than a Westerner and a human.

Though Winnie was a beautiful and loving woman, Chrishton had no intentions of staying put or being pinned down by a long term relationship. Her subsequent attempts to change his mind and make him stay lead to nothing but denials and heated arguments. Chrishton's hot-headed words, stubborn nature and allusions to secretive "missions" for some purpose more important than her brought Winnie to tears on many occasions. The two oscillated back and forth but their tense relationship held for as long as Chrishton was in the town.

When it finally came time for him to leave for good, following the instructions of spiritual servants Winnie still knew nothing about, Winnie informed him that she was pregnant. Furious that she would use a child as a bargaining chip and that she would wait so long to tell him, he left her for good with the advice that she seek an abortion or a man who could settle down. She never saw him again.

Winnie never sought an abortion and never found another man to help her raise her child, who she named Cervantes. She struggled to make ends meet and keep enough food on the table for them both. The first decade of Cervantes' life was wrought with poverty and domestic fighting.

When he grew old enough, he learned that stealing was often the only way to get what he wanted. At fist stealing only food for home, he soon moved on to material possessions. Winnie scolded him, but never made him return the things he took. At school he fought with other boys and fell in with a crowd of bullies and other aspiring thieves. It wasn't long before he secretly stopped attending school at all in favour of roaming the streets with his friends looking for things to steal.

The boys formed themselves into a street gang called the Swift Hands. Thievery turned into trading contraband and mugging. Muggings sometimes ended up in murder.

When he was 16 Cervantes got into a fight with another Swift Hand over a pair of leather gloves and in the brutal fight that ensued he spontaneously shifted into some kind of beast. He tore the other boy to shreds with claws and teeth he never knew he had. There were no witnesses. Nobody suspected he was capable of tearing someone apart so brutally, let alone him. His transformation ability became his favourite secret.

As the Swift Hands grew in fame in the underground, they caught the eye of a more serious, more powerful criminal organization known as the Tarsis family. The Tarsis began regularly recruiting members of the Swift Hands for dirty jobs until eventually the Swift Hands disbanded completely, all of the members joining the new family. Cervantes proved himself to be capable of any task, including arranged murder.

Winnie always suspected her son of continued stealing and hanging around with a bad crowd, but when he started bringing home more money than she did, without having a job or a proper education, she knew something more was going on. She confronted him finally, yelling at him to tell her the truth, and when he told her that he had joined the Tarsis family she snapped and ordered him to stop or she would throw him out of her home. Her son was not going to be a thief and god knows what else.

He left her to cry alone at home that night and, following in the footsteps of his father, never returned. He had enough money to live on his own. After pulling strings and insisting to the highest levels in the family that he was ready, he has received an offer for a special assignment - something far to the east, all the way in Keltaris.