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Paranoia, paranoia, everybody's comin' to get me |
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— Flagpole Sitta (Harvey Danger) |
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Son of the Rat King of the South Piedmont Colony, sent to manage the smuggling hub in the Northeast and act as emissary to the northeastern colonies... But he has ambitions of his own.
Personality
Guston can be an arrogant prick, on his down days, but he's not all bad. He'll beat your bully up for you. Sure, he'll be expecting something in exchange. He doesn't break too much from his species's mold, but he does seem more confident and above the wererat's craven nature. He does have a bit more ambition, with a ruthless streak a mile wide, than your average rat, but he's legitimately not average. Ultimately, like most of his kind, he wants what's best for his colony.
Background
The Rat Prince of the Piedmont
Guston McCown was born the son of the Rat King of the South Piedmont Colony. Furthermore, when the Rat King and his son locked eyes for the first time, the boy's eyes flashed red, signaling the kid's status as an alpha.
For all their, some would say many, faults, wererat society tends to be egalitarian. Males and females are equally promiscuous and this is seen as normal to wererats. Males and females (and other gender and sexual identities, even in the past) are equally seen as worthy members of the species. Human racial identity is irrelevant to the wererats, wererat is wererat. Sure, they endlessly mock each other, and these traits may be included in that, but wererat is wererat.
So an outsider may look at the alpha-born son of the Rat King and assume he'd be treated special for his high birth. An outsider would be wrong. Guston got no special treatment for being the Rat King's son, but he also wasn't forced into the role of family scion either. He was allowed to forge his own destiny like (ostensibly) any other wererat. So it was that young Guston McCown collected a circle of friends and cousins and stepped up to his role as alpha. As middle school and high school came and went, the alpha boy refined his circle into a tight-knit plague. The wererats saw this, his father noticed, and after high school graduation, at only eighteen years of age, Guston was sent northward to take his place as liason to the Northeastern colonies. His family and community expect great things from the Rat Prince, and it's likely he will stand tall and deliver.
SIGNATURE ABILITY
Vox Regis Voluntas Populi
Wererats are a craven people. They are prone to panic in the face of true opposition and can become a chaotic swarm. Guston can use his voice, through his limited Alpha connection with wererats in his vicinity, to lend his own bravery to his people. His voice, especially when given a simple and direct command, will cut through the chaos and give the wererats who hear it a purpose. They will be instilled with a defiant courage, able to rise up face the threat. However, they will also lack the discernment necessary for independent assessment and are prone to brash mistakes. So this effectively turns a panicked swarm of wererats into a possibly terrifying united force of rallied troops.
SKILLS
Brawling - Competent Level
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Guston's personality has brought him to fisticuffs on many occasions. He's no professional fighter, but he can hold his own.
Charisma has long been bred into the McCowns, and Guston is no exception. He has the charm of a bad boy, a rebel, a leader, and a commander.
Management - Expert Level
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Despite his age, Guston has shown a great aptitude for management, logistics, and tactical and strategic planning.
Guston is often in the position of needing to repair the mechanics and electronics of the operation, or at least managing others doing it.
Shifter Lore - Expert Level
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As the son of a Rat King active politically among the colonies, Guston has learned a lot of his own kind and much of those of other breeds.
Shooting - Competent Level
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As someone who engages in criminal activities in the human world, Guston has naturally learned to use human weaponry.
Smuggling - Competent Level
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Guston is much more comfortable as the brains behind the operation, but he still knows the ins and outs of a smuggler on the ground to not be dead weight if he needed to actually get his hands dirty.
Like most wererats, Guston knows the basics of survival. Also like most wererats, the basics is where his survival skills remain.
Whether it's picking pockets, swiping something unnoticed, or breaking into a building for some old-fashioned robbery, Guston is fairly decent at this work.
ABILITIES
Power: Alpha Chitters - Enhanced Level
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While most wererats are able to use their senses to intuit how many rats are in the area, Rat Kings have a low-level psychic connection to rats and wererats alike in a mile radius. This allows the Rat King to discern the general emotional state of a direction or the immediate area. Rats will have simpler emotions than wererats.
This connection allows him to send out simple messages which the rats will be able to pass along to other rats, able to stay coherent for miles and allowing simple commands, warnings, and messages to be passed along the rat population until their non-sapient minds corrupt the message to gibberish. Any wererat who hears this communication will be able to decipher it, though the farther away they are, the more like a game of Telephone it becomes.
Power: Alpha Confidence - Enhanced Level
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Guston is fairly distinctive among his people in that he lacks the craven nature of his kind. But this isn't just a personality quirk, as it manifests in a supernatural manner, giving him an aura of confidence and direction. Others may find it difficult not to take him seriously when he tries to take control of a situation. Or mock him when he makes a declaration or statement that may otherwise seem ridiculous. His gaze may inspire truth in his target's words, as lying in the face of this alpha might seem like a bad idea. He may even instill fear in others, ironically touching that primal flight instinct even in those who typically favor the fight.
Power: Alpha Wererat - Enhanced Level
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Alpha wererats, known as Rat Kings (traditionally female alphas were still referred to as Rat Kings, though the term Rat Queen has become more popular in recent years, and even Rat Monarch gaining popularity as a gender neutral term), possess abilities beyond most wererats, including a dominance wererats typically lack, the alpha call, and alpha senses.
As a Rat King, Guston can send out a dominating chitter to nearby wererats that serves as a battle cry, inspiring bravery in an otherwise craven people. This same chitter can be used to shame and weaken beta and omega wererats, giving a Rat King the ability to deal with defiant wererats. A Rat King's authoritarian screech can actually affect other shifters, triggering a forced shift.
As a Rat King, Guston's wererat eyes glow red and he often keeps his eyes crimson when not flashing the eye glow.
Power: Disease Immunity - Enhanced Level
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Guston's kind are largely immune to natural diseases. Only the strongest natural diseases affect him, and the symptoms tend to be much milder than if he were human. Guston can, however, carry diseases that don't affect him. Magical diseases affect him normally.
Power: Domination - Enhanced Level
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Most wererats lack the supernatural domination other species tend to have. Rat Kings are different, exuding an aura of dominance and able to intimidate those without exceptional willpower. Human normies and most animals are susceptible to this, which a Rat King initiates through a hiss or snarl and accompanied by flash of glowing red eyes. An agitated or nervous Rat King is especially likely to snap at others with this ability.
Power: Healing - Enhanced Level
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The resilience of the wererat leaves non-lethal wounds from personal weaponry of little concern to Guston. He'll heal from minor wounds instantly, while severe wounds tend to heal in a couple days, maybe three or four for the worst cases.
Power: Indiscriminate Eater - Enhanced Level
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As a wererat, Guston can consume, and gain nutrients from, almost any organic matter without detrimental effect. This includes things that would make a human sick, like organic poisons or improperly prepared food.
Power: King of Rats - Enhanced Level
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Guston is able to call upon the aid of nearby (a handful of urban buildings or a farmhouse and its yard) mundane rats, who will know him as kin and king even in human form. Unlike most wererats, he can direct them, not only relying on their own accord. He can give the rat swarm simple directiions like 'hinder' or 'bite' or just let then aid on their own by causing chaos. Through his senses, he instinctively knows about how many rats are around him at any given time.
Power: Physique - Enhanced Level
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Wererats are tougher, stronger, and much more agile than an average human. Guston is able to smash through most common structures that lack armor or built of reinforced materials. He can break through solid walls of sturdy wood or brick with moderate effort. Guston can resist substantial amounts of damage, especially blunt force trauma, and emerge either unscathed or with only minor injuries. He also possesses far superior agility, able to catch arrows in midair with little effort and even dodge projectiles like bullets. This enables Guston to leap much higher and farther than an average human, as well as giving him the ability to bounce off walls and tumble like a skilled gymnast, and even take little damage from falls from substantial heights.
Power: Senses - Enhanced Level
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Guston's senses are enhanced beyond a normal human's. He can hear heartbeats to detect if there is potential danger around him. He can hear conversations, even quieted ones, a few rooms off. His night vision is excellent and his ability to sniff out food, even stale food stored in containers, has few parallels. If he needed to, he could stalk someone with his nose, following their scent across all sorts of terrain.
Rat Kings almost never create more wererats this way, but they are capable of transforming others, usually humans, supernaturally into wererats. Via bite or claw, the process is taxing on the target, working best on humans with strong recuperative abilities. Teenage youths tend to be the best candidates.
ADVANTAGES
Wererats claim to have ambitions, and many of them truly do. Most of them lack the courage necessary to really reach out and grasp the stars. Guston is an exception, lacking a typical wererat's cowardice, and not afraid to take risks and gamble in life.
Since Rat Kings almost never inflict the transformation to wererat on anyone, they tend to build up that energy and release it when they breed, resulting in Rat Kings being born among their offspring often enough that it's not considered weird, especially when the mother is the Rat King. Guston was born as a Rat King and is afforded the respect due from his colony and possibly others.
Guston holds a Class A Commercial Drivers Licence issued in the states of Georgia, Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusettes, and is in good standing. This permits him to drive a variety of vehicles, most notably the eighteen wheelers his father's company uses to transport goods and smuggle contraband. His age prohibits him from driving commercial vehicles outside the issuing states.
Guston was raised in the South Piedmont Colony in the Atlanta Warren. When he's in the colony's territory, he can typically tap into the resources of his colony, which includes food and other supplies, systemic resources (due to wererats infesting the lower echelons of local governments), and a place to stay for a while. As his father's liason to the Northeast and overseer of the smuggling hub there, he can also call upon those resources as well.
The Old Truck Stop is ostensibly a plaza containing the eponymous facility and other businesses useful to truckers and other travelers. And while it does function as such, it's also the hub for the South Piedmont Colony's supply and smuggling operations in the Northeast. The Warrens Motel serves as both the office of the smuggling operation and hosts the South Piedmont liason(s) to the Northeastern colonies.
Guston is the leader of a very tight-knit plague (wererat 'pack') many of whom have known each other since before kindergarten. Known as the Jackson Boys (due to their residences in Jefferson GA and the surrounding Jackson County), the plague relocated to the Northeast with him and serve the colony as security.
Despite possibly being one of the most prolific of the shifters, the often-secretive nature of the wererat and the relative "celebrity" status of werewolves tending to make them the assumed "default" shifter in the minds of many, accurate lore concerning wererats can be difficult to come by reliably. Wererats like Guston are prone to deception, a xenophobic nature, and an inherent cowardice. They tend to easily blend in with their human neighbors, rarely conflict with more powerful (or perceived to be more powerful) supernatural creatures, and have rarely left an overt mark on the supernatural world. Even otherwise extensive lore repositories may have less dependable information concerning them, and many may only know of them through legend and rumor. Wererats or ratfolk are extremely rare in human mythology as well. This can serve as a disadvantage, but it can also be of use to them at times as well.
WEAKNESSES
Most wererats are boastful yet craven. Guston was passed over when the coward gene was being handed out. He's largely the opposite, overconfidant to the point of brash stupidity quite often.
Due to his strength of will, strategic mind, and charisma, one might forget that Guston is still young. He may have pulled off a coup that upset a decade-long stability in the wererat political landscape, but last week he was spraypainting stop signs for shits and giggles.
Wererats like Guston tend to have have impulses that make them want to take things. There's no real reason for this beyond the wererat's natural instinct to collect food and anything that might be useful later. Guston struggles with this need to take anything that isn't nailed down, though he has been able to keep himself under control most if the time when he's being observed. This need to take things becomes less bearable during the full moon.
Like most shifters, wererats are closely tied to the phases of the moon. This affects them in various ways, such that they are at their strongest when the moon is full and their weakest during a lunar eclipse. The phase of the moon also strongly affects the wererat's emotions, such that they can become almost overwhelming near the full moon. Wererats often find a strong urge to shift during the full moon, as well as on the nights just before and after a full moon. Guston has largely learned to deal with the emotional tides, though during the full moon his paranoia still increases.
During a full lunar eclipse, wererats like Guston are generally powerless and essentially reduced to the status of ordinary human. Once the moon becomes visible again, his wererat nature is restored. During a partial eclipse he is somewhat weaker than normal, but he does retain his powers at a high-end Basic level.
As a wererat, Guston must consume three times as much food as he would have to if he were human.
Mountain ash, when activated, creates a barrier against most supernatural creatures. Wererats cannot generally penetrate such a barrier, nor can they create one. Guston is no different.
Wererats have a strong tendency toward paranoia. Guston is no different. It's hard for him to trust anyone, and any little perception of betrayal will be used as proof in his head that a person shouldn't be trusted. Guston has learned to push his paranoia to the side and mostly suppress it, but when stressed or during the full moon, it becomes much harder to ignore.
Wererats are so overlooked that even most supernaturals are unaware of their existence. And those who are aware see them as insignificant nobodies at best. Most wererats are unaware of this state or prefer it that way. Guston is different. He knows that the entire wererat society could collapse and the world probably wouldn't blink. (Okay, that many criminal organizations and families collapsing would be noticed, but...) And this bothers him. He's stuck between wanting wererats to be recognized while at the same time not wanting to screw up wererat culture that has survived on their insignificance since time immemorial.
