Raven Ashfang - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Raven Ashfang

Known As

The Ashwood Shadow

Race (Grade)

Werewolf (E)

Class

Rogue (Infiltrator)

Height

5'7" (human) / varies

Birthday

Mistfall 9, 1279

Age

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Birthsign

The Mist Chimera

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Bloodline Ability

🔮Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Raven Ashfang in hybrid form, Elderwood, full moon

Human Form

In her human form, Raven is twenty-seven years old, five feet and seven inches, and reads as someone who has been trained in a discipline that requires controlled movement and the specific stillness of someone who has decided whether to trust you before you finished speaking. Dark, thick hair falls loose and slightly untamed past her shoulders. Her skin is a warm medium-brown. Her eyes are dark at first glance, the brown resolves in certain angles of light to reveal a ring of amber, which is the most visible tell of her nature in this form. She is strong in a lean, functional way, and she moves with the particular economy of someone who never takes a step they haven't already mapped.

She wears practical, dark clothing, built for movement, minimal, nothing that catches light or snaggs brush. On both wrists she wears bands of silver-threaded wire, close to the skin, which she has worn for four years and which she does not explain. At her collar, usually tucked under clothing, hangs a small pewter disc on a thin chain. One side is blank. The other has a small engraved "R." She does not discuss it.

Hybrid Form (Pictured)

The hybrid state shown above is Raven in partial transformation, wolf ears rising through her hair, amber eyes fully lit, fangs extended, claws present. Fur patches develop at the arms and shoulders. The overall impression is of something that knows exactly how to move between human registers and is not currently choosing to be in one. She can hold this state for several minutes when focused. She uses it rarely, because it serves a very specific purpose: she deploys it when she wants a conversation to end immediately and decisively.

Her full wolf form is large and dark grey, not black, as most people assume from the name, but deep charcoal with warmer undertones at the chest and legs. She is fast in this form in a way that has nothing to do with size and everything to do with how she was trained before the bite and what the bite added afterward.

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Personality & Temperament

The thing about Raven that most people eventually note is that she was Raven Ashford first, born to it, trained to it, a rogue in a city for years before any of the rest happened. The lycanthropy changed what she is and what she can do; it did not change the fundamental structure of her. She is still precise, still economical with words, still reading a room before she enters it. What changed is the depth of the reading. She knows things about people before they've told her, from scent and sound and the small involuntary tells that most humans couldn't detect. She tries to use this considerately. She does not always succeed.

She chose the name "Ashfang" at twenty-four. This is everything you need to know about who she is: she looked at her transformation and made a decision about it. She did not accept it, exactly, she claimed it. "Ashford" was the name of someone who hadn't been through what she'd been through. "Ashfang" is who came out the other side. She has no interest in pretending otherwise.

Positive Traits

Precise and trustworthy; her word is always good
Connects fast with people who don't flinch at what she is
Wolf senses make her an exceptional scout and tracker
Has a dry, spare humor that surfaces when comfortable
Owns her nature; asks to be dealt with directly, not pitied
Her rogue training predates the bite, sharpened after

Challenging Traits

Does not warm easily; warmth must be earned first
Wolf instincts, head tilts, and stillness unsettle strangers
Territorial about the Elderwood, almost by instinct
Full moon protocols make her unreachable for a day
Acts on unshared senses, looking sudden and unexplained

I chose Ashfang. I was Ashford for twenty-three years. That name belonged to a person who hadn't run under a full moon or tracked prey through two miles of dark forest by smell alone. She's not gone. She's just... not who walks around in this body now.

The Elderwood at night is mine in the way that no property deed captures. I know every corridor of it, every creature in it, every change in it from one week to the next. If something is wrong in there, I will know it before anyone else does. That has value, and I'm not modest about it.

Ask your question plainly. I'll give you a plain answer. That's the whole transaction.

Likes

The Elderwood at night, especially in wolf form
Precise people: clear requests and direct terms
Rain dampens unwanted scents, sharpens useful ones
High spots with good sightlines; she always knows them
Information work: surveillance, tracking, intelligence
The hour before dawn, between the night and day shifts

Dislikes

Being approached without warning from behind
Perfume and strong scents in close spaces overpower her
The word "cure" applied to herself; she won't use it
People who make the werewolf the topic before making her one
Dense urban environments; the wolf inside hates them
Being underestimated because lycanthropy looks like a burden

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Background & History

Raven Ashford, Rogue

She was born in Caldvast, a mid-sized trading city, and came into the rogue's trade the way most people do in cities that size: by being useful to someone who had a use for her, at an age when she was old enough to be effective and young enough not to think too hard about the ethics. She was not affiliated with a guild for most of it; she worked independently for a small information broker who valued her instincts for sightlines, entry points, and the specific skill of being in a room while everyone else thought she wasn't. She was good. She knew she was good. By twenty-three she was taking the contracts that the people who weren't quite good enough turned down.

The Bite

The contract was straightforward on paper: tail a specific person from their townhouse to their meeting point, note who they met, return and report. The target turned out to be something else, she didn't know what it was when she followed it into the marshland outside Caldvast's eastern wall, only that the way it moved didn't match its shape, and by the time she processed that, it had already found her. She doesn't remember most of what happened next. She woke up three days later on the Caldvast outskirts, in a state she couldn't account for, with marks on her that she couldn't explain and an awareness that something fundamental had changed. She spent a week testing what had changed and finding out. She did not enjoy that week. She has not wasted any time since.

The Year of Learning

Six months of controlled chaos: working out which of the things she'd read about lycanthropy were accurate, which were folklore, and what the actual parameters of her situation were. She did this methodically, the way she had approached every other problem in her rogue career, gather information, test hypotheses, adjust behavior based on results. The full moon protocols were established in this period, after one very bad night that she does not describe in detail and does not plan to. The silver wire bracelets appeared at month four, when she noticed that the physical sensation helped her hold human form during partial shifts. By month seven she had a working operational framework. By month nine she had accepted that this was not a thing with a fixed endpoint, it was a new operating condition, and she could be functional within it or not, and she chose functional.

The Name

"Ashford" was the name on the paperwork she filed under, the name her broker knew, the name of the version of herself that had walked into the Caldvast marshes on a straightforward contract and come out different. She considered keeping it. She decided against it. "Ashfang" was not chosen for drama or for announcement, it was chosen because it was accurate. The "ash" is for the grey-dark of her wolf coat, the color that appears in her eyes when the amber is just starting to surface, the color of the Elderwood on overcast mornings. The "fang" is what she now is. She used the new name first on a contract note to her broker, who read it, looked at her for a moment, and did not question it. That was the entirety of the transition ceremony. She was satisfied with that.

Silmarithil

She worked the Caldvast region for two more years after the transformation, same rogue work, different capabilities, and left when she calculated that the Elderwood offered something no urban environment could: space to run, genuine darkness, and a forest that would not be a problem she had to manage. Silmarithil's reputation reached her as a city that collected unusual residents without making their unusualness the price of admission. She assessed that claim over several weeks from a distance, watching who came and went and what kind of problems they had, and concluded it was accurate enough to be worth testing in person. She has been there long enough to establish that the assessment was correct. The Elderwood she now considers her territory in the functional rather than the formal sense. She is aware that Alar Thornrunner is mapping the same forest on a different schedule. She considers this, on balance, fine.

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Current Status

Residence

Silmarithil

Role

Rogue

ATTENTION!

Do not approach Raven Ashfang from behind without announcing yourself. This is not a preference, it is a physiological response she has partial control over at best, and the partial part is the part that matters in a sudden confrontation. She will not apologize for what happens. She has mentioned this to people before the fact. Consider yourself mentioned.

She is not hostile and she is not looking for conflict. She is a professional with a specific skill set who has made a stable life in a place that suits her. Approach her as a professional and she will respond as one. She takes contracts, she holds to her agreements, and she does not volunteer information about her nature but will confirm it directly if asked.

Do not suggest that she should want to be cured. She has not asked for this perspective and she will not find it helpful. On any other topic she is considerably more receptive.

She knows the Elderwood at night better than anyone currently living in Silmarithil. If you need to know what is happening in that forest after dark, she is the correct person to ask.