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Description

Spots :: (coming soon)

B A S I C

Name :: Ruia
Translation :: “Dream”

Gender :: Male
Age :: 2 yrs. 6 mos.

Weight :: 150 lbs.
Height :: 2.7 ft.

Gift :: Gift of Disguised Trails
The ability to disguise one’s scent and pawprints.

Tribe :: N/A
formerly :: Crowded Water
Rank :: Loner
formerly :: Sentry

A C C E S S O R I E S

Necklace :: a piece of smooth wood and two feathers (acquired as a loner).

S C A R S

Muzzle :: acquired during a scuffle as a cub.
Back :: an unfortunate encounter with a wildebeest resulted in these three scars. The attack was provoked by an ill-fated attempt on the part of his father to 'use his Gift to ask for directions'.
Hind leg :: gained through a similar scenario as described above, but from a leopard instead.

P E R S O N A L I T Y

|| Tolerant || Sluggish || Sarcastic || Blunt || Social || Insolent ||

Tolerant :: generally, Ruia is difficult to anger and nearly impossible to provoke to the point of violence. He’s relatively good-natured when it comes to cubs or adolescents pestering him with questions. That doesn’t mean he’s incapable of being offended or irritated — direct insults will result in a reaction. However, he is unwilling to act on such impulses.

Sluggish :: Ruia would much rather lie around and do very little than be up moving around. He becomes more active during cooler weather and prefers to restrict most extensive activity to dawn or dusk when the heat of the day is less pervasive.

Sarcastic (Sassy) :: as much as he dislikes physically engaging in conflict, Ruia has no qualms against potentially starting verbal quarrels. His preferred battlefield involves words rather than teeth and claws. It fits well with his tendency towards laziness as language requires much less effort than trying to bodily knock someone to the ground. While most of his biting observations go unheard, a steady stream of them still tend to make their way into the world of the known. It makes one wonder just how much of the time he spends lying around involves criticizing others without their knowledge.

Blunt :: some may consider bluntness to be a negative trait, but it’s less so for Ruia. While he has less of a filter than he used to, his comments that aren’t intended to steer towards sarcasm typically contain a heavy dose of honesty. He can be brutally honest even, to the point that people assume it’s meant to be sarcastic or outright insulting.

Social :: despite having left the tribes to pursue life as a loner, Ruia has no great dislike of large groups. In fact, he tends to prefer them over one-on-one interactions. Group situations allow him to distribute potentially hurtful remarks among everyone and prevents anyone from feeling as if they’ve been specifically targeted. Additionally, his preference for listening rather than responding makes groups more enjoyable as there can be multiple conversations going at once.

Insolent :: Ruia can drift towards disrespect at times, particularly when someone is giving him orders that he has no real desire to follow (especially ones that he morally disagrees with).

H I S T O R Y

Ruia was born along with four siblings not long after the tribes settled into their new territories to Huru and Asali. His father was a member of Crowded Water (although he was not born into the tribe) while his mother was a former member of Sunning Rock who changed tribes to be with her mate.
Two of his siblings disappeared early on, leaving him with a brother and a sister remaining. He was close to both but preferred roughhousing with his brother more than his sister. It was during his cubhood that he acquired the scar across his muzzle. It was his ‘reward’ for trying to drag another, unrelated cub into a scuffle between he and his remaining siblings. (Ruia was more careful about paying attention to who wanted to play and who didn’t after that.)

As a Tyro, he spent most of his time training to be a Sentry. He disliked conflict more as an adolescent than he does now as an adult, but was unsuited to becoming a Messenger like his father. He lacked the necessary speed and was not agile enough to be of much use. Likewise, he felt as if he didn’t have the patience to attempt becoming a Healer. Ruia settled for becoming a Sentry Tyro, no matter how often he found himself resenting it, and did moderately well in his training. He was not enthusiastic enough to put his best efforts forward but was concerned enough about his mother’s expectations that he was motivated to be mediocre rather than a complete failure altogether.
Life was becoming lackluster for Ruia as he neared the end of his training, but he was not so disenchanted that he failed to notice his father (Huru) becoming more distant from everyone, even his family. The older cheetah was looking increasingly unkempt and haggard as the weeks passed, and Ruia left for his Tyro Quest with a faint worry lingering in his mind that his father would disappear like his siblings had during the time he was gone.

During his Quest, Ruia discovered that he had the Gift of Disguised Trails. It proved itself a useful talent more than once when he encountered some unexpected danger or simply needed time to himself. He found that the personalities of his fellow Tyros tended to fluctuate between sweetly worried, panicked, and obnoxiously confident. Some of them liked to brag about how they had expected a “real” challenge while others seemed to take safety in numbers to another level and became irritatingly clinging. The time spent on his Quest was easily the most aggravating time he had experienced at that point in his life.
By the end of the Quest, Ruia had taken to mostly staying near the others without being overly friendly and inviting clinginess. He trailed behind the rest of the group on their way back and avoided conversations when able. He was thoroughly burnt out from the experience.

It was immediately following his Quest that Ruia, now a full Sentry, caught Huru sneaking out of camp. He cornered his father and demanded to know where he was going and what he thought he was doing. Huru responded that he “couldn’t take take living in the tribe anymore”. He claimed it was too stressful and involved too much responsibility. Being relied on to remember and deliver messages made him anxious, and the close quarters had him jumpy and miserable almost constantly. It was because of that, he said, he was leaving.
Ruia knew he couldn’t let his father go off on his own. He’d never survive. Instead, Ruia insisted that he was going, too. He was unable to be deterred, and the two left together in the middle of the night.

They became loners after that, traveling wherever prey seemed to be most plentiful and avoiding others as best they could. Ruia found constantly looking after his father to be tiresome and irritating, but kept at it for the sake of his mother and brother. Neither of them would ever forgive him if he let Huru die somewhere in the wilderness. So, grudgingly, he became the most responsible of the two even though Huru was considerably older and should have been able to care for himself. It became Ruia’s job to make sure he ate, slept, and kept his coat free of parasites. Despite his best efforts, Huru continued to deteriorate. He became thin and scruffy-looking. Ruia largely ignored his own poor condition, and worked the best he could to keep both of them fed. Huru was too skittish to make a decent hunter and couldn’t defend himself even if he’d wanted to.
Ruia earned four more scars from two separate occasions — both of which he blamed on his father’s ill-fated attempts at using his Gift to talk to other animals. There were multiple other attempts that resulting in frantic flights from wild dogs, a leopard, and a particularly angry wildebeest. After that last encounter, they learned to stop asking about prey locations or directions.

They weren’t thriving, but they were surviving as loners until one evening Huru suggested they return to the tribes. Ruia was, understandably, angry. He felt he had a right to be after Huru had dragged him all over the place and often made his life miserable. Then, his father explained that he hadn’t meant return to the tribes as in go back to living in one. Instead, he thought it might be nice if they could just live near them. It would give them both an opportunity to see Asali and whichever cubs had stayed in the tribe with her (Ruia and Huru still didn’t know about Ngoma’s disappearance). Ruia admitted that it would be nice to see his mother and brother again, and the two set off a few days later for the tribe territories.
Currently, they are living as best they can near Crowded Water territory — hoping that one of their agonizingly cautious hunting excursions will give them a chance to see family again.

S T R E N G T H S

Weight
Sentry training (fighting skills)
Knowledge of survival without a tribe
Ability to take charge of a situation
Slow to anger (less likely to make rash decisions)

W E A K N E S S E S

Agility
Speed
Poor swimmer (too heavy to swim well)
Tendency towards sarcasm
Learned ability to be in charge (reluctant to return to a “weaker” role)

R E L A T I O N S H I P S

Orientation :: Bisexual
Status :: Available
Interests :: (none)

Father :: Huru (living)
Mother :: Asali (living)

Siblings ::

Kiojah (brother, living)
Nyuki (brother, assumed dead)
Ngoma (sister, living)
Nzuri (sister, assumed dead)

C R O W D E D W A T E R

Pending…

S U N N I N G R O C K

Pending…

C R O O K E D T R E E

Pending…

C O A L I T I O N S

Pending…

R P E X A M P L E

Ruia yawned, tongue curling between pointed teeth, and stretched. His shoulders protested the motion, bone grinding faintly against bone beneath layers of powerful muscles. He reversed the stretch then; one hind leg extended to its full length behind him as he leaned forward. There was a peculiar twinge high in his hip from the fall he had taken yesterday, and he cast a dark look at his father’s fretfully dozing figure. The pale cheetah twitched an ear and whined plaintively in his sleep - blissfully unaware of the glare he was receiving. With a huff Ruia shook out his pelt and ducked outside the makeshift den.
Outside, the sun was bright enough to nearly blind him. He stumbled into the relief of the shade at the base of a nearby tree and slumped back to the ground. His hip twinged again, and Ruia grumbled irritably to himself. He blamed the entire incident on Huru, not that he would ever say such a thing. If the older cheetah hadn’t been distracted by what he had thought was a suspicious-looking shadow, the hare wouldn’t have slipped away into the brush. At the time, Ruia had been upset enough after three days of missed meals that he railed his father out a good one for it. Huru had, of course, cringed and apologized as he was wont to do, and, even though nothing had been forgiven, Ruia let the matter slide. It was no use shouting or making a big deal of it. It had only served to make Huru whine and become even more helpless in the past. Besides that, it was kind of pathetic to sit and yell at his father. There was still prey somewhere in the area, and what was left of the day should be spent trying to catch that than being angry.
That was one thing Ruia had learned from their time as loners. Whatever spare time he had that wasn’t being dedicated to resting or being too exhausted to move had best be dedicated to hunting. Even if it was just prowling quietly around whatever scant area they had claimed as their own for the time being, it was more productive than fits of rage or loitering about doing nothing. The part of his nature that wanted to be lazy always groaned and begged him to go back to sleep, but Ruia pushed it aside time and time again.
Now, however, he dropped his head down onto his forepaws with a sigh. He didn’t need his father with him to try hunting, but it couldn’t hurt to see if Huru was in a more competent state of mind today. If he was, they might have a chance of catching something.

Description

Spots :: (coming soon)

B A S I C

Name :: Ruia
Translation :: “Dream”

Gender :: Male
Age :: 2 yrs. 6 mos.

Weight :: 150 lbs.
Height :: 2.7 ft.

Gift :: Gift of Disguised Trails
The ability to disguise one’s scent and pawprints.

Tribe :: N/A
formerly :: Crowded Water
Rank :: Loner
formerly :: Sentry

A C C E S S O R I E S

Necklace :: a piece of smooth wood and two feathers (acquired as a loner).

S C A R S

Muzzle :: acquired during a scuffle as a cub.
Back :: an unfortunate encounter with a wildebeest resulted in these three scars. The attack was provoked by an ill-fated attempt on the part of his father to 'use his Gift to ask for directions'.
Hind leg :: gained through a similar scenario as described above, but from a leopard instead.

P E R S O N A L I T Y

|| Tolerant || Sluggish || Sarcastic || Blunt || Social || Insolent ||

Tolerant :: generally, Ruia is difficult to anger and nearly impossible to provoke to the point of violence. He’s relatively good-natured when it comes to cubs or adolescents pestering him with questions. That doesn’t mean he’s incapable of being offended or irritated — direct insults will result in a reaction. However, he is unwilling to act on such impulses.

Sluggish :: Ruia would much rather lie around and do very little than be up moving around. He becomes more active during cooler weather and prefers to restrict most extensive activity to dawn or dusk when the heat of the day is less pervasive.

Sarcastic (Sassy) :: as much as he dislikes physically engaging in conflict, Ruia has no qualms against potentially starting verbal quarrels. His preferred battlefield involves words rather than teeth and claws. It fits well with his tendency towards laziness as language requires much less effort than trying to bodily knock someone to the ground. While most of his biting observations go unheard, a steady stream of them still tend to make their way into the world of the known. It makes one wonder just how much of the time he spends lying around involves criticizing others without their knowledge.

Blunt :: some may consider bluntness to be a negative trait, but it’s less so for Ruia. While he has less of a filter than he used to, his comments that aren’t intended to steer towards sarcasm typically contain a heavy dose of honesty. He can be brutally honest even, to the point that people assume it’s meant to be sarcastic or outright insulting.

Social :: despite having left the tribes to pursue life as a loner, Ruia has no great dislike of large groups. In fact, he tends to prefer them over one-on-one interactions. Group situations allow him to distribute potentially hurtful remarks among everyone and prevents anyone from feeling as if they’ve been specifically targeted. Additionally, his preference for listening rather than responding makes groups more enjoyable as there can be multiple conversations going at once.

Insolent :: Ruia can drift towards disrespect at times, particularly when someone is giving him orders that he has no real desire to follow (especially ones that he morally disagrees with).

H I S T O R Y

Ruia was born along with four siblings not long after the tribes settled into their new territories to Huru and Asali. His father was a member of Crowded Water (although he was not born into the tribe) while his mother was a former member of Sunning Rock who changed tribes to be with her mate.
Two of his siblings disappeared early on, leaving him with a brother and a sister remaining. He was close to both but preferred roughhousing with his brother more than his sister. It was during his cubhood that he acquired the scar across his muzzle. It was his ‘reward’ for trying to drag another, unrelated cub into a scuffle between he and his remaining siblings. (Ruia was more careful about paying attention to who wanted to play and who didn’t after that.)

As a Tyro, he spent most of his time training to be a Sentry. He disliked conflict more as an adolescent than he does now as an adult, but was unsuited to becoming a Messenger like his father. He lacked the necessary speed and was not agile enough to be of much use. Likewise, he felt as if he didn’t have the patience to attempt becoming a Healer. Ruia settled for becoming a Sentry Tyro, no matter how often he found himself resenting it, and did moderately well in his training. He was not enthusiastic enough to put his best efforts forward but was concerned enough about his mother’s expectations that he was motivated to be mediocre rather than a complete failure altogether.
Life was becoming lackluster for Ruia as he neared the end of his training, but he was not so disenchanted that he failed to notice his father (Huru) becoming more distant from everyone, even his family. The older cheetah was looking increasingly unkempt and haggard as the weeks passed, and Ruia left for his Tyro Quest with a faint worry lingering in his mind that his father would disappear like his siblings had during the time he was gone.

During his Quest, Ruia discovered that he had the Gift of Disguised Trails. It proved itself a useful talent more than once when he encountered some unexpected danger or simply needed time to himself. He found that the personalities of his fellow Tyros tended to fluctuate between sweetly worried, panicked, and obnoxiously confident. Some of them liked to brag about how they had expected a “real” challenge while others seemed to take safety in numbers to another level and became irritatingly clinging. The time spent on his Quest was easily the most aggravating time he had experienced at that point in his life.
By the end of the Quest, Ruia had taken to mostly staying near the others without being overly friendly and inviting clinginess. He trailed behind the rest of the group on their way back and avoided conversations when able. He was thoroughly burnt out from the experience.

It was immediately following his Quest that Ruia, now a full Sentry, caught Huru sneaking out of camp. He cornered his father and demanded to know where he was going and what he thought he was doing. Huru responded that he “couldn’t take take living in the tribe anymore”. He claimed it was too stressful and involved too much responsibility. Being relied on to remember and deliver messages made him anxious, and the close quarters had him jumpy and miserable almost constantly. It was because of that, he said, he was leaving.
Ruia knew he couldn’t let his father go off on his own. He’d never survive. Instead, Ruia insisted that he was going, too. He was unable to be deterred, and the two left together in the middle of the night.

They became loners after that, traveling wherever prey seemed to be most plentiful and avoiding others as best they could. Ruia found constantly looking after his father to be tiresome and irritating, but kept at it for the sake of his mother and brother. Neither of them would ever forgive him if he let Huru die somewhere in the wilderness. So, grudgingly, he became the most responsible of the two even though Huru was considerably older and should have been able to care for himself. It became Ruia’s job to make sure he ate, slept, and kept his coat free of parasites. Despite his best efforts, Huru continued to deteriorate. He became thin and scruffy-looking. Ruia largely ignored his own poor condition, and worked the best he could to keep both of them fed. Huru was too skittish to make a decent hunter and couldn’t defend himself even if he’d wanted to.
Ruia earned four more scars from two separate occasions — both of which he blamed on his father’s ill-fated attempts at using his Gift to talk to other animals. There were multiple other attempts that resulting in frantic flights from wild dogs, a leopard, and a particularly angry wildebeest. After that last encounter, they learned to stop asking about prey locations or directions.

They weren’t thriving, but they were surviving as loners until one evening Huru suggested they return to the tribes. Ruia was, understandably, angry. He felt he had a right to be after Huru had dragged him all over the place and often made his life miserable. Then, his father explained that he hadn’t meant return to the tribes as in go back to living in one. Instead, he thought it might be nice if they could just live near them. It would give them both an opportunity to see Asali and whichever cubs had stayed in the tribe with her (Ruia and Huru still didn’t know about Ngoma’s disappearance). Ruia admitted that it would be nice to see his mother and brother again, and the two set off a few days later for the tribe territories.
Currently, they are living as best they can near Crowded Water territory — hoping that one of their agonizingly cautious hunting excursions will give them a chance to see family again.

S T R E N G T H S

Weight
Sentry training (fighting skills)
Knowledge of survival without a tribe
Ability to take charge of a situation
Slow to anger (less likely to make rash decisions)

W E A K N E S S E S

Agility
Speed
Poor swimmer (too heavy to swim well)
Tendency towards sarcasm
Learned ability to be in charge (reluctant to return to a “weaker” role)

R E L A T I O N S H I P S

Orientation :: Bisexual
Status :: Available
Interests :: (none)

Father :: Huru (living)
Mother :: Asali (living)

Siblings ::

Kiojah (brother, living)
Nyuki (brother, assumed dead)
Ngoma (sister, living)
Nzuri (sister, assumed dead)

C R O W D E D W A T E R

Pending…

S U N N I N G R O C K

Pending…

C R O O K E D T R E E

Pending…

C O A L I T I O N S

Pending…

R P E X A M P L E

Ruia yawned, tongue curling between pointed teeth, and stretched. His shoulders protested the motion, bone grinding faintly against bone beneath layers of powerful muscles. He reversed the stretch then; one hind leg extended to its full length behind him as he leaned forward. There was a peculiar twinge high in his hip from the fall he had taken yesterday, and he cast a dark look at his father’s fretfully dozing figure. The pale cheetah twitched an ear and whined plaintively in his sleep - blissfully unaware of the glare he was receiving. With a huff Ruia shook out his pelt and ducked outside the makeshift den.
Outside, the sun was bright enough to nearly blind him. He stumbled into the relief of the shade at the base of a nearby tree and slumped back to the ground. His hip twinged again, and Ruia grumbled irritably to himself. He blamed the entire incident on Huru, not that he would ever say such a thing. If the older cheetah hadn’t been distracted by what he had thought was a suspicious-looking shadow, the hare wouldn’t have slipped away into the brush. At the time, Ruia had been upset enough after three days of missed meals that he railed his father out a good one for it. Huru had, of course, cringed and apologized as he was wont to do, and, even though nothing had been forgiven, Ruia let the matter slide. It was no use shouting or making a big deal of it. It had only served to make Huru whine and become even more helpless in the past. Besides that, it was kind of pathetic to sit and yell at his father. There was still prey somewhere in the area, and what was left of the day should be spent trying to catch that than being angry.
That was one thing Ruia had learned from their time as loners. Whatever spare time he had that wasn’t being dedicated to resting or being too exhausted to move had best be dedicated to hunting. Even if it was just prowling quietly around whatever scant area they had claimed as their own for the time being, it was more productive than fits of rage or loitering about doing nothing. The part of his nature that wanted to be lazy always groaned and begged him to go back to sleep, but Ruia pushed it aside time and time again.
Now, however, he dropped his head down onto his forepaws with a sigh. He didn’t need his father with him to try hunting, but it couldn’t hurt to see if Huru was in a more competent state of mind today. If he was, they might have a chance of catching something.