boogieshoes | Mercy-Verse rules and Character sheets

The following post is a short redaction describing some of the rules in the Mercy Thompson universe, and short character sheet.

Things to know from the Mercy Thompson series:

General Rules and Background:

Firstly, one should realize this is urban fantasy - where the world is the same as modern day except there are werewolves, fae, and vampires. I'm going to concentrate on the werewolf interaction rules in this section, but allow me to say the following things about the fae and the vampires: The fae are heavily based on historical source material, and in most European cultures, fae of all types can be extremely wily and certainly act in a non-benign manner. Their overlords are called 'The Grey Lords', and they came out a decade or so ago, think 1980s or 1990s for that time frame. They can't lie, but can twist the truth into all sorts of things. Most fae live on 3 main reservations in the US, none of which are near Denver.

Vampires are typical bloodsucking monsters in silk suits - no sparkly vamps here. They essentially have to keep 'herds' of humans to feed on. Most think of and treat humans like cattle, and their society cannot really stand the scrutiny coming out to the world would mean. In most cities, the vampire seethe and the werewolves are in direct opposition, politically, but uneasy truces rule the day. No one can afford a vampire/werewolf war. Sometimes the vampires have the upper hand in a city, sometimes the werewolves do. I haven't decided what the Denver supernatural political scene is like, so have at...

For the werewolves, we should first examine their wild cousins, the grey wolf and it's kin. Grey wolves typically are pack animals, and the pack has a strictly enforced heierarchy of authority. The Alpha isn't necessarily the best hunter or the best runner, but he is usually a good tactician, and is respected by all his pack. Only the pack Alpha and his mate are allowed to have pups, and the entire pack takes care of them. Wolves outside the pack system are very vulnerable, and though such a situation is survivable, they are much healthier inside a pack as a general rule.

Wolves typically stand 28-38" at the shoulder, and are sexually dimorphic, with the females in any population being about 20% less in size than the males. The following pics show some standard wolves:

Werewolves are canonnically much bigger than real wolves - Mercy notes at one point they can reach up to 250lbs, and I'm guessing they can be up to 1.5x the height, making the tallest males 57", or a little less than 5 feet, at the shoulder. Tall, eh? They share the sexual dimorphic characteristic with wolves, and also the need for a pack. Lone wolves are highly unusual, and many aren't very mentally healthy. Werewolves have forelegs built more like a lion's or a bear's, and their shoulders are articulated for those powerful sideways swipes that bears can execute. They run faster than greyhounds, but are densely muscled, especially in wolf form, and the wolf form doesn't swim well, if at all. In fact, drowning is a favored form of suicide for wolves who are pining away in grief. Their markings and coloration tend towards the dog end of the canid spectrum rather than the wolf. In human form, a werewolf will usually look about 25, and have little body-fat. They are usually attractive sexually to humans, that being part of the werewolf energy peeking through.

To become a werewolf, a person must be savaged by a were in wolf-form almost to the point of death. There's a fine line that has to be drawn there, the place at the edge between living and dying that allows the werewolf virus to bypass the human immune system and turn the host into a werewolf. Most people don't make it. The Marrok has thus declared that werewolves should only be made of the willing - and past the age of majority. Although the Marrok's pack holds a ceremony in the fall where they do this, time of the year is not a big player in the Change to werewolf - willpower of the individual is much more important, but still not a clear indicator.

People who have been unwillingly changed are said to have been 'raped' (which terminology I have issues with, but that rant isn't appropriate here). One of a Pack's primary responsibilities is to kill rogues - those lone werewolves who eschew the Marrok's rules - and tracking down and helping any of their victims that became werewolves. In the first few months, werewolves generally need an Alpha-level dominant to help them maintain control. In fact, the first few changes they often don't even remember time spent as their wolf-selves. Practice allows them to get better at maintaining control even in wolf-form, and otherwise forming some kind of working partnership with their wolf. If a new wolf can't find control within a year, it's the Alpha's responsibility to kill them to prevent them from becoming a danger to humans and other wolves.

Making the transformation from human form to wolf and back again is painful at best, and can take as much as fifteen minutes. Werewolves can change into wolf form when they want to, but it can be difficult without guidance the first few times. Also, it takes a few hours to recover from one form-change enough to perform another one. The transformations take a lot of energy, and a werewolf can reach a point of not having enough energy to make a transformation. Typically, the eyes are the first to change - the wolves do not usually have the same color eyes as the human form. Anger or fear will spur a transformation, although if you can calm a werewolf down before more than their eyes change, they can frequently stop themselves from changing. They *must* change the night of the full moon, and if they wait for the moon to pull the change from them, it's more painful than usual. The same applies if they resist a change forced on them by another wolf. Alphas are usually the only weres strong enough to force other weres to change.

As in most mythologies, werewolves heal quickly, and are very tough to kill. Silver will create wounds that heal human-slow, and you can kill a werewolf if you expose them to silver enough times in a short period - it causes a massive allergic reaction. If you get lucky and puncture a major artery or vein and the wolf doesn't stop to put pressure on the wound, he can bleed out before he heals - this is a rare occurrance, however, and shouldn't be counted on.

In a werewolf Pack, you have the Alpha, and a clearly delineated descent of authority figures - dominants of varying power - until you get to submissive werewolves, and females. It's imperative to know one's place in the pack, and stepping outside of it is seen as a challenge to those more powerful than you. Dominants will fight for their rank until they reach something they're comfortable with, and thus adding a new wolf to a pack can be an uneasy proposition at best. What makes a dominant is a combination of willingness to fight, personality, power, and something 'other' that contributes to his force of personality. The Marrok remarks that the fact of dominance or submission is as much a result of one's choices in life as one's personality. A Dominant has an imperative to protect those weaker than him, and will lead from the front. Despite their advantages and supernatural powers, most dominants die within about 10 years after becoming werewolves due to fights.

Submissives can certainly take can of themselves and kill people if need be, but they are defined by *not* having a need to fight. In a werewolf pack, they take the place of puppies - the need for the Dominants to protect them binds the pack together and gives them purpose, especially as werewolves don't reproduce all that well. Female werewolves are effectively sterile, as they always miscarry the first full moon after getting pregnant - the change is too hard on the fetus. Male werewolves married to human females don't have a lot of children either: sperm with the were-DNA is rejected as incompatible by the human ova, so only human-DNA-only sperm works, and then there's the typical issues of any pregnancy.

There are far fewer female than male werewolves. The usual story is that females don't survive the transition to werewolf as well as males, but I have a sneaking suspicion that prior cultural issues made death a more preferable option. Because of this, females are generally considered the ultimate protectees, and unmated, they rank lower even than the male submissives in a pack. Because werewolves are mate-oriented like their wild cousins, unmated females in the vicinity typically touch off the male were's instincts for aggression. In order to keep peace within a pack, female werewolves are often encouraged to choose a mate. A mated female takes her rank in the pack from her mate, and mates can draw upon each other through their mate-bond.

Characters:

From the Mercy Thompson-verse:

The nice people at http://www.hurog.com put together some awesome character fact sheets, which I am cheerfully ripping off so that people who read/ want to write stories in this AU know who’s who of the major characters in the Mercy-verse.

Bran Cornick/ The Marrock:

Bran Cornick is the Prince, or Leader, of the American werewolves. He’s a fairly subtle and manipulative bastard, but he’s a good guy at heart. He deliberately suppresses his powers to project a fairly harmless aura most of the time, and is aided in this by looking and dressing like a typical computer geek/ college student. In human form, he has sandy hair and a non-descript face, with hazel eyes the color of ‘an oak-leaf backlit by the sun’. He has a very pale complexion, so much so that you can see blue veining beneath his skin. There’s no indication of his height, but in the books, indicators of his age are that he was alive around or before 500AD, at which point the average height for European men was around 5’4” – 5’8”. I’m guessing he’s at 5’8”.

He was born in Wales, and is known as a Welsh Bard, and has two sons: Samuel and Charles Cornick, described below. He doesn’t like his mate, but neither does he allow others to disrespect her. Bran carries witch blood from his mother, and used to be telepathic in both sending and receiving, but now can only send – although lesser wolves aren’t sure the ‘receiver’ in Bran’s head is actually broken!

In wolf form, Bran has what is usually thought of as a typical wolf coat, with a tail that has a splash of white on it. His wolf is smaller than the usual werewolf, being only slightly bigger than a real wolf. He has pale gold eyes.

Samuel Cornick:

Samuel Cornick is the Marrok’s oldest son. He was born when Bran was still human, and is probably 20-30 years younger than him. He is officially a loner, and has no technical standing in the Marrok pack, but he has Doctoral degrees several times over and can be regarded as *the* expert of werewolf medicine. Samuel is one of the few werewolves who truly likes people.

His human form is tall, over 6’, and he has brown hair, a long nose, and grayish blue eyes that are set deeply into his head. Muscled like Val Kilmer. His wolf has pure white fur, no markings, and ice-blue eyes with a black ring around the iris.

Charles Cornick:

Charles Cornick is Bran’s second son, and his enforcer. When there are problem wolves that need to be killed, Charles is the one who does it. He’s 196 years old, son of a full-blooded Salish woman. The unusual circumstances of his birth mean that he is unique among werewolves in that he was born a were, not made. In human form, Charles favors his Salish heritage – he’s more than 6’ tall, with long black hair, black eyes, and dusky skin. He wears gold studs in his ears.

In wolf form, he is red with black points (ie, legs and feet, probably ear-tips, eyes, and tail-tip as well), and falls at the top of the bell-curve of were-wolf sizes. Because he inherited some form of Shamanic Magic from his mother and grandfather, he can make the change from human to wolf to back again almost instantly and painlessly on a normal day. Also, his clothes appear and disappear when he changes – everybody else has to get naked manually or they’ll tear their shirts when the change occurs. His change is longer and more painful the more tired he is. He is more sensitive than usual to silver and it’s effects.

Adam Hauptmann:

Adam Hauptmann is the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, in the Kennewick, Washington area. In the Mercedes Thompson series, this is the main pack we see in action. Hauptmann liases with the US federal government after the werewolves come out, shortly before the events in Blood Bound (2^nd book in the series). Inheritance of the Marrok position is by might of arms, so to speak, and Adam is 4^th in line for the throne, behind the Marrok’s sons and the Alpha of the Houston pack.

In human form, he’s medium-height (5’10”) and weight (180lbs) and Slavic-looking, with chocolate brown eyes, olive-complected skin, and dark, naturally curly hair. Adam became a werewolf while he was a POW in Viet Nam, and is 64 years old. His wolf has a coat of deep silver fur, with an undercoat of lighter colors that probably make it appear to glow in the light of a full moon. He has black points and yellow eyes.

Mercedes Thompson:

Mercedes (Mercy) Thompson isn’t actually a werewolf. She’s the skinwalker the Mercy books tell their stories through. Unlike the evil witches of Navajo legend, Mercy was born with the ability to change into a coyote at will. She’s half-Blackfoot, half-standard American white, and in human form, her features have a Germanic cast to them although her coloring is Native American. As a coyote, she’s 32lbs, and standard coyote brown, with no odd markings. As of the end of Iron Kissed, the 3^rd in the series she’s mated to Adam Hauptmann. She is 33 when the series books starts.

Warren Cochran:

Warren Cochran is the Columbia Basin Pack’s Third/Gamma, and Adam’s best friend. Although there is no official age given in the Briggs books, I’m placing him as having been changed into a werewolf during the Civil War, which would make him at least 150 years old if he was 15 and fought in the last couple battles in 1865. He’s also gay, and therefore has spent most of his time running lone, because no pack would have him until Adam accepted him. Even in Adam’s pack, many of the wolves think he should be turfed out, or killed. Because of his early years having been spent alone as well, he does not have a particularly good grasp of body language, and does not tend to use his body language to communicate his moods, like most werewolves do.

Specific physical description isn’t given of Warren in the books, but I always imagined a young Paul Newman. His wolf is described only as having a brown coat.

Characters from the Mag7 Verse:

We all know what these characters look like in human form, so what I'm planning to do here is offer a combination of pictures and verbology describing the characters in wolf form. The pictures below are from the same place as above, and are stock photos. This site is fairly easy to search, and as a lot of great photos.

Chris Larabee: Chris is the Alpha of the Denver Pack, such as it is. Chris's overall status is somewhat of a deliberate mystery, as is most of the Denver pack background and history. He ranks as one of the 10 most dominant werewolves in North America, but both Chris and the Marrok prefer nobody really know just how strong he is. He is loyal to the Marrok, although his continual contact with society as a federal agent leads him to occasionally disagree with the way the Marrok does things. Chris was attacked by a rogue werewolf in 1862 during the Civil War at the age of 23.

His wolf-form body type looks closest to an Arctic Wolf's:

He is in the mid-range of werewolf size for males, at about 50" at the shoulders, and has the usual larger fore-quarters structure. He has a 'harness mark' on his chest and over his shoulders of black. His wolf-eyes are black.

Vin Tanner: Vin in wolf-form has a body type based on the typical timber wolf as shown above. Another average-sized were, he stands about 49" at the shoulder. Vin has always been close-mouthed about the circumstances of his Change to a werewolf, but he has let slip that it also happened during the Civil War period; he was fairly young at the time. Vin's wolf-eyes are blue, which makes reading his emotional state difficult, and his coat patterning resembles that of an Irish Wolfhound:

Buck Wilmington: Buck is huge in his wolf form, even for a werewolf. Imagine a body like a St Bernard's:

with a face and a coat like this:

Buck's wolf-eyes are gleaming yellow, and his front paws are white. He stands 58" at the shoulder, and is fully as thick-bodied as the St Bernard shown. Wolves who know of the Legend of the Black Wolf of the Plains often mistake Buck's wolf for the wolf of this legend. He has to work extra hard in wolf-form to be non-threatening, and has consequently learned to control almost every aspect of his body language consciously till it has become second-nature.

Buck was attacked by one of the ubiquitous rogue werewolves during the Civl War, a few months before Chris was. At 18, he was desperately seeking someone to help him out of his confusion over the Change, and in Chris, he found a friend and companion against chaos and despair.

JD Dunne: JD's wolf-body, like Vin's, is based on the usual timber wolf look as shown above. His coat patterning follows the German Shepherd:

but he is more rough-coated, like this version:

JD's wolf-eyes are a warm yellow-brown. Average werewolf height. JD was attacked by one of the rogue wolves hired by Ella Gains to destroy Four Corners in 1875. He was the last of the 7 to be Changed into a were.

Ezra Standish: Eza Standish is as flashy in wolf form as he dresses in human form. He looks in both body type and coat patterning like the Mexican Maned Wolf:

and

He is thicker through the body, somewhat like Chris's wolf-form, and stands at an average were-wolf height. Ezra's wolf-eyes are brown. Ezra was also Changed by a rogue attack during the Civil War. The war was a bad time for Bran in terms of keeping everything under some modicum of control. Many, many of the weres loyal to him and/or in control of their territories got caught up in the War and died, with the end result that there were a lot fewer Alpha-level weres to help control new wolves and keep the rogue population down.

Nathan Jackson: Nathan was Changed while a slave in the South in 1848. White Southern werewolves had declared it anathema to try to change blacks into werewolves, so Nathan's Change was followed by a quick exit to the North of the Mason-Dixon Line. Nathan's wolf has green eyes and again, is average height, a couple inches taller than Chris. He has a normal Timber Wolf frame, and looks like this:

and for a body shot:

Josiah Sanchez: Josiah is the oldest of the 7, a victim of another rogue, but during the Texas-Mexican War in 1836. Josiah also has yellow-gold wolf eyes, a Timber-wolf based body, but his coat markings resemble those of a black-and-white border collie:

and I also found a close-up head shot:

OCs:

I haven't fleshed out what the OC's look like, as I'm thinking of them more of the support cast. Their looks will depend very much on things that come to me while telling stories, so alternate visions of them will not be criticized.

Ruth Carouso-Wilmington: Buck’s adopted daughter from WW2 France. She opts not to try becoming a werewolf, but marries and has kids and grandkids. Recent death (to the ATF time-frame) hit Buck hard, but he keeps in touch with his ‘nieces and nephews’, whom he loves and dotes on.

Obediah Kevin Dunne: Dominant werewolf. JD’s son from his first wife – not Casey – married in the late 40’s. Obediah is about 50 years old at the time of the ATF-verse, and runs lone like Buck, Vin, etc. He tends to have very firm ideas of what people can and can’t do, and it irritates everyone, even Nathan, who used to do that himself. Obediah is a local beat cop. Voluntarily Changed after he came back from Viet Nam with Josiah in the 60's. Called Obie, usually.

John Michael Sanchez: Dominant werewolf. Josiah’s son from a marriage in the 60’s. He spent time in the Army Rangers in the late 70's/ early 80's before he came back and opted to become a werewolf. Like the other dominants in the Denver area, he runs lone, but reports to Chris as the local leader. John is pretty much a body-guard/ merc/ bounty hunter in the local area. His nickname is Mic-mic.

Orin Travis the Third, Esq: AD at the Denver branch of the ATF, in charge of Team 7, among others. Not in the know on the werewolf thing. Orin is taller than the original by a head, but shares the same face and many of the same mannerisms. His eyes are a different color than the original Orin’s, though.

Rules for writing in this universe in a following post.

-bs