#no foreplay without loreplay

[yael-art-den]

Ref sheet for my Beastkin (Artic wolf) Hvass. He's a "loner" AKA a guy who voluntarely left all social pack life to go live on the wilds on his own. A freak, culturally speaking.

Beastkin (Beastfolk or Hombres-Bestia as I got them in writing), especially Wolfkin have complex social groups and rules that very clearly define your place in the social hierarchy and how you must act with people that are higher/lower than you on that scale. A lot of that includes micro-expressions and body language; things that are... hard for others to understand when you're always in a half-feral form. Hvass doesn't like to show his face to strangers, so he's seen as "rude" because others can't infer further meaning other than strictly literal. That's not his intention, but that kind of behavior is often tagged as cagey at best, and outright lying at worst. His wolf head actually emotes and does facial expressions, but people aren't usually able to interpret them and ask to see his "real" face which is, in contrast, very inexpressive.

Living on your own is only seen in teenagers and early adults trying to find a new pack or create their own groups, and it's a behavior that is expected to end when someone becomes an adult and settles in a group. When you live in a Monster Hunter-esque world in terms of wild danger, big groups mean a bigger survival chance. Being an adult without a pack subtly means that "no one wants you in their group" and it's seen as a personal failure; though it's sometimes romanticized in storytelling (in a similar way that werewolves or pirate romance stories are, "Oh what if this hot and mysterious stranger took me").

Hvass has tried and failed for most of his early adult life to make it work with different groups, but it never did. He's BAD bad at reading social cues and cannot physically imitate the body language of others (dog heads don't work the same way as humans do). There have been times when he thought he was doing fine and then discovered people didn't want him there anymore and he was just supposed to Get It and leave. All of that distrust in people made him become very quiet (which was also bad! now you're just a wolf-headed freak whom people think can't talk!) until eventually he decided to fully live on his own.

He's "friendly" though extremely cautious and has built a lot of walls around himself. He's learned that he doesn't know how to tell when people are lying, so he keeps his distance until you can prove that you're trustworthy. Still, he's not a talkative person even when he likes you.

He has an adoptive bio kid. He's 90% the child is his (found him abandoned near the path of a pack he spent some... time with in the past) and he shares the same quiet "weird" behavior that he does. He's a great dad, but having to raise a kid made him stop and think for a long time what he was going to tell him about the world. You cannot tell a kid that others are scary and will lie and hurt you, and that people are weird and complex and you cannot understand them. You can't tell a kid there is no hope. But he cannot just lie, it's a complex problem for him.

Claws and (wolf) jaws are natural weapons, but he needs to use ACTUAL weapons to hunt. That's not an issue when you hunt in groups, and certain hunts or particularly traditional packs forbade their use. Why are you (as a beast) using tools.