Myka

Stats

• Name: Mica Bayle
  • Mica spells there name Myka because everyone failed to pronounce Mica correctly. They are named after the mineral.
• Pack Nickname: Fenris
• Base Species Sable Ferret
• Secondary Species: Lycan
• Gender: Male ferret, Female in lycan forms
• Eyes: Blue but will turn red when angry or in dire form
• 'Color: Sable ferret. Wolf is variable from plain grays of timberwolves to near black as hellhound
• Height / Weight / Notes for forms
  • Ferret: 5'11, 160 lbs well toned, biped
  • Base Lycan: 6'8" 240 lbs bulky and strong, mostly biped, can on all four
  • Dire Infernal: 7' at shoulder, 16 feet nose to base of tail, 2000 lbs equally biped and quadraped, hands remain dexterous
  • Aura Max: About 16 feet at the shoulder, 42 feet long, roughly 10 tons. Absolute maximum unaided shapeshift

Parents:

• Father: Deke Bayle, Ferret Lycan
• Mother: Arya Hess, Polymorphed Hellhound

Physical Forms

Lycan / Hellhound Properties

Myka's appearance does not constrain itself to discrete forms but rather exists on a continuum from wolf to hellhound. At their most lycan form, they appear as a gray wolf of a fairly generic form. Gray fur, white underside, with black ears and some variable brown hues between the gray and white of their coat. Their eyes can appear either blue or gold. As a hellhound, the wolf shape remains though their coat is both denser and rougher. Colors fade to a black coat overall with a gray underside. Eyes become not just red but take on a faint glow with just a pupil floating in the red with no obvious iris.

In terms of size. Myka is generally between 6-7 feet tall and anthropomorphic in either lycan or hellhound states as well as any mix in between. Even so, they are very comfortable running on all fours or on two legs, but their hands always remain human like and dexterous regardless. However, Myka can grow to huge sizes, and once they get to the size of a draft horse, about 7 feet fall and 15 feet long at roughly 2000 pounds, they move almost exclusively on all fours and will rear up on their hind legs in combat. Myka has a maximum size limited by her aura size which places her close to 45 feet long, 15 feet at the shoulder, and over 10 tons. This makes them about the size of a T-Rex, and this maximal size is always black with red eyes. Making this form appear usually requires engagement of the sin of wrath to which she is vulnerable.

Ferret Properties

In his ferret shape, Myka can easily pass for utterly mundane. While he avoids silver and holy magic, they are both far weaker against him in this shape. However, his strength, speed, and regeneration are all beyond normal, they too are also greatly diminished in his non-lycan forms. As a result, Myka tends to appear as a lycan most of the time, and he uses his ferret form as a means of hiding from prying eyes, hunters, and other hostile forces. He can pass off his enhanced reflexes and strength as being something anyone with a good gym membership could manage.

Spiritual Properties

Lifeforce / Aura

Myka has an unusually powerful lifeforce even for a lycan. The reasons for this are not entirely understood, but they are often attributed to his mixed lineage of two supernatural canines. This comes with some advantages such as being very resilient against vampiric attacks as well as hostile magic more out of having a large excess of energy that he can survive losing rather that having any kind of armor properties. It also him to use vampiric weapons that would quickly drain or kill other users with his casting pistol being prime artifact in this class.

Myka's lifeforce is strong enough to produce an aura. most of the time, this is not an issue as the common person cannot see auras. However, other supernatural entities, some of those that serve those entities, and those using sensing magic may be able to see it. Unbound, it is roughly the size of a T-rex, mostly feral in appearance, and mostly hellhound in shape and color. This aura is why she they can use unusual magic and artifacts that would kill lesser souls. To prevent everyone from spotting them outright, Myak normally uses concealing magic to hide their aura at the expense of limiting their maximum potential with spells and some boosts to combat skills. The only form in which this is not normally needed is his ferret base form where most of his powers are at about 10% of maximum and are limited mostly to enhanced reflexes and natural senses.

The aura presents a secondary risk to Myka. The sheer power of it makes it attractive to use in alchemical work as well as other times where it can be used as a power source. Because of this, Myka has to be vigilant and deadly enough to defend themselves against rivals in hell, madmen in the mortal plane, and even some divine entities.

Lycan and Hound vs Silver and Holy

Myka's hybrid nature comes with strengths and weaknesses that neither species usually has. When it comes to silver poisoning, Myka has a minor resistance to this in that rather than being outright lethal, their regeneration is hobbled instead and makes it easier to apply more wounds. Countering this is the weakness to holy attacks that lycan's normally do not have. While not as vulnerable as a full blooded hound, Myka is still affected by such magic and wards with lycan regeneration offsetting injuries caused by exposure to holy power.

Sins

The raw force of his spirit makes it harder to control, and Myka is prone to two sins in particular: wrath and gluttony. Both of these come from the hellhound side of the family, but wrath tends to dominate as it plays on feral aggressions on the lycan side. While Myka is generally well controlled, once he snaps, it is very hard to reign in his anger. While his pack and its structure was excellent at controlling this trait, STAR has unwound much of what they were able to teach him.

Gluttony is a bit more horrifying. It goes beyond a mere obsession with food. The nickname Fenrir comes from the prophecy that Fenrir would devour all things between the earth and sky. Myka is not quite that bad, but the wolf has no problems devouring victims from nose to tail. The pack has never come to harm from this, but it is unnerviung even for them, and it was this that the pack elders came to question his mother and this found out about her side of the family. Again, STAR has encouraged this and worked to break down Myka's inhibitions to make the wolf a better weapon.

Infernal Influence

Myka's infernal side presents an issue other lycans do not face: infernal temptation. There are some agents, especially emotional manipulators like succubi, that can reach the infernal side of Myka's soul. This can allow them to influence Myka's behavior in any form they are in, and at the extreme they can even take control over them for a time. Myka spends a lot of time hardening themselves against this kind of attack, but there is only so much they can do. The only tried and tested force that can counter this are other lycans with their home pack being the most powerful. This is because this plays to the instinctual side of their lycan blood. Howevever, even that can be manipulated by some.

Myka's mother, being a hellhound, is not actually subject to this because she is a full blood, and part of that is an utter hatred for the realm that used to control her. Wrath became her strength, and she fought tooth and claw to get out and into the mortal realm where she has made her life. Its is the lycan pack mentality in Myka that provides a loophole in that self-sufficient confidence their mother has.

Special Skills

Spellcraft

Myka has been learning spellcraft from both sides of their family. From the lycans, she has learned a good deal of magic regarding the natural world, especially things for augmented senses that can be used to chase prey whether or not it is sentient. They can also sense and even slightly manipulate weather on a local scale. Healing magic is included in their skills, as well as herbalism.

Magic from their mother's side is far more aggressive. Destructive offensive spells ranging from energy blasts to causing flesh to come undone was a foundation that STAR built on later. Spells are also available for tracking souls, forming defensive barriers, and causing terror.

Spells learned at STAR and from her mother cover other practical things like dimensional travel, wards, and curses.

Alchemical weapons

Lifeforce Catalyzed Portable Etheric BLast Emitter (LFC-PEBLE) This weapon is a pistol style device that can accept cartridge based spells or directly convert lifeforce into weaponized blasts. The amount of lifeforce needed to fire the weapon is so much that even in its weakest setting with a low power cartridge, it would kill a normal person. Myka's aura is so strong that they can fire the weapon without a cartridge repeatedly without suffering long term consequences. When using pre-chartged cartridges, this is even more trivial. The PEBLE (pronounced Pebble) is effective against armored targets and has been used to down vehciles such as combat helicopters and armored transports. Myka does not usually lead with this weapon unless going up against hardened or supernatural targets. Or churches if they are in a bad mood.

Jumpshards These crystals are a means to rapidly open and closer portals and thus reduce the need to perform entire rituals to move between planes. Given that Myka often moves between mortal and infernal realms, these are almost always on her person. It is unknown if they have any other locations attached to the crystals at present.

History

Early Life

Arya was the sort of agent from hell that moves between the planes often. Using a glamor to hide herself, she wasn't the sort to do mundane things like murder. Arya was very intelligent, and she managed to earn a degree in architecture. A bit of magic and bribery greased her way into a position that allowed her to incorporate infernal deign into common architecture and thus subtly influence the behavior of mortals with little evidence to track it back to her or even to Hell in general. However, life on the mortal plane made her feel longings she had never experienced in Hell, and she found herself using vacation time to explore the wilds where civilization had little hold and some of the old world magic, which fascinated her, remained.

It was a lakeside trip that she found she was not alone. Two huge wolves attacked her campsite and left her with extensive injuries. She kept her glamor and risked more injury as showing her true form would surely cause more problems than some scars would be worth. Surviving the night, it would be the next morning when the rest of the pack would find her. Finding her alive meant she was surely infected, and it was now their job to tend to her since they didn't make a clean kill. That is when she met Deke. AS one of the morphed species, his base form was that of a ferret. Arya and Deke felt an unusual attraction to each other almost immediately, and he became the one to host her. As a doctor, he could keep practical tabs on her, but her glamor was sufficient to hide her hellhound nature even from him, for a time.

The pair was sanctioned by the pack a few months later. Most folks considered Arya to be a late bloomer, but there was not shortage of such in pack history, so they waited for her first turning. It would come to pass that she would be with child before she ever turned. Myka joined the family and the pack in the usual way. She spend ample time running through forests of trees and ones steel. Inheriting both her parent's intellects, she was very clever and learned swiftly. Because of her lineage, Myka was enrolled in a private school that understood and sheltered supernatural beings. As she neared her teens, however, she was moved to a rural site as Arya became aware of Myka's rapidly expanding aura.

Having no control in her first turning, both sides of her lineage emerged under the moonlight. She was the size of a dire wolf, full grown at that, with red eyes and black pupils with no discernable iris. Larger than some of the older pack members, she was much more aggressive than young pups usually were, and it forced Arya to reveal her t rue form in order to keep Myka in line. While many were upset at the deception, none could blame Arya. It was settled that they should remain in the countryside until such time that Myka is controllable. Arya also pledged herself to the pack, rather than to Hell, which also let her expose herself in the pack's presence and teach Myka how to do more than blindly attack.

Myja spent most of their teens with the pack learning how to work as a group, to hunt, to protect each other, and to be a family. They learned old magic from the elders as well as practical wisdom making it possible for Myka to survive in harsh environments, track targets, and mend their allies. The pack also watched in curiosity as Arya taught her infernal skills such as using her sins for strength, resisting them when control was needed, and even some spells meant to form defensive barriers or offensive blasts. The pack structure kept Myka stable, and when she achieved her full aura, having lumps of other wolves snugged against her sides left a deep impression on her that would influence her path in life from then on.

Moving to the City

Knowing her own triggers, Arya eventually moved Myka to the city to ensure she could handle high density living as well as many skills needed not just to live among people but also to take advantage of them. This meant taking Myka into dangerous situations regularly such as gang territory or locations where drug use and abuse was high. Myak was taught how to fight and even to kill, although the latter was done with care to make the crimes very hard to trace. Myka learned enough forensics to know how to get around them when needed. She was also enrolled in martial arts classes to teach her combat skills and the fine control needed to prevent unintended damage due to her enhanced speed and strength. She was also made to work in a coffee shop downtown to test her ability to control wrath.

Myka was also shown the better side of civilization as well, taking in the things that had slowly corrupted Arya and turned her slightly away from Hell's designs. Arya loved innovation in all its forms, and Myka was exposed to everything from art to engineering. Myka's means of practicing stealth was doing her own street art. She spend a few nights in lockup as a result, but even that was a learning experience. This was all in preparation for something that would be far more difficult to deal with and absolutely necessary for her development as a hybrid hound: training in Hell.

Advanced Studies and STAR

Most souls that fall into STAR are tricked into it by promises and then trapped when they have gone too far. Myka was enrolled directly. Very directly. In fact, when she claimed blood ties to the university, and was mocked by the admissions officer, she tore out his throat and penned Myka's application in blood. Myka was told two things: do as you always have and you will be fine, and do not believe anything Mephistopheles says, period. This was Myka's first step at being on her own at the age of 22 with some good life experience behind her. Arya would visit almost every other weekend of show her around Hell and make sure she could handle her sins. Wrath, for the better part, was warned against, but Gluttony was a place Myka, through Arya, would be known.

Myka spent eight years at STAR working through undergraduate and graduate equivalents. Well attuned to math and science, they specialized in material and chemical engineering including robotics and medicine. Unlike a lot of souls in STAR, she took well to her work and was generally unbothered when it came time to torment the souls in Hell or even to make something that could damage the plane of mortals. Like her mother, she understood architecture, but she also knew a lot about structural materials and how to compromise them. They knew how buildings had to be made to make them functional. They also knew a great deal of how to engineer organic compounds which, combined with her knowledge of natural herbal treatments, meant she could make compounds that could heal but most often could cause horrific deaths with all kinds of effects and delays. Flexible and small as a ferret, trips tot he mortal plane were often meant to test those compounds leading to mysterious mass murders.

Advanced combat training was slipped in as a requirement including using all forms of weapons. Staves were always Myka's favorite for reach and ease of improvisation, but there was one weapon they were lead to and succumbed to using: The PEBLE. The alchemical weapon had enormous destructive potential but could only be used powerful souls. Most hellhounds couldn't touch it, but Myka's aura permitted them the use of this advanced weapon. Reflexes and strength were carefully tuned for human sized wolves, forms that gave Myka a maximum of close range assault ability, and as part of her duties and tuition, Myka became one of Hell's cleaners. High priority targets or clean up of someone else's mess, Myka was tasked with eliminating witnesses and evidence as well as destroying diving structures and wards. They actually enjoyed it, Wrath always trying to claw her into its circle as she barely held enough will to resist it.

As graduation came, Arya was missing. This was not usual for her. It was Mephistopheles himself that told her she had been killed by a paladin defending the packs. If it wasn't for Myka, he said Arya probably would never been in danger, but she had only had Myka in a bet to use her to get a soul for herself. It cast a dark shadow on the day, and after the ceremony, she went to seek solace in the one place in Hell that seemed to be good for her: Gluttony. An aspect as Beelzebub caught Myka at the door. The dark mood was unusual for the hybrid, and Beelzebub know them and their mother well. Taking Myka aside, Beelzebub revealed that Arya had passed through here. As a denizen of Hell, usually destruction is complete, but Arya had somehow appeared there before moving on as a spirit. "Your mother didn't have you just to get a soul, Myka. She earned a soul because of what she did with you. You are why she could reincarnate. Damned if I know where she is now, but she is out there. The only thing you did wrong is let Mephistopheles get to you. He's one of the finest liars in all of Hell. You come in, have yourself a drink and celebrate. You and your mother graduated today. And after, I'll give you something so you can beat the shit out of the headmaster, so long as I can watch."

With Beelzebub, Myka managed to salvage her day and celebrate both events in their and their mother's life. Mephistopheles also had a very bad day the next day with Beelzebub cackling as Myka treated him like a rag doll thanks for some special brew she used in combination from something of Satan's making form Wrath. There was no real way to destroy Mephistopheles, and even if it was a painful annoyance, Myka felt much better after and, by proxy, so did Beelzebub.

Time in Hell

After Arya's passing, Myka was in limbo. She remained in hell where she was able to secure a very stable job working for Beelzebub making all forms of drugs and other addictions that could be coupled with irresistible treats. It didn't hurt that Beelzebub enjoyed indulging Myka's own hunger especially for lost souls and wayward demons. They had the opportunity to run with other hounds, but it never felt the same as the lycan packs on the mortal plane. Wild nights, contract killing, and weaponized drugs killed another five years of their life while the mauling of Mephistopheles put her in Wrath's sights. They would remain elusive until a very specific soul arrived in Hell. Having found a means on his own, Deke entered Hell in a last ditch effort to find Myka. It did not take long for him to get caught, but he was kept as a special guest of Satan in the ring of Wrath where he could be used as bait.

When Myka found out Deke was in Hell, she predictably dropped everything and went to secure his safety. The only way she was going to get him back, however, was to fight to get him back. Myka was forced to take part on colosseum combat where Satan could enjoy the show along with masses of demons and souls. Allowed to use any weapon she wanted, she entered in with her PEBLE and her quarter staff. The initial fights were bloodbaths as expected as sinners were sent to fight her as part of their torment. Demons and even other hounds were sent against her with almost no time to catch her breath or clear the carnage. It was the perfect recipe to force her into a frenzy and at last succumb to Wrath itself. Having more intent of trapping Myka for his use than actually giving them a chance to get Deke back, he sent one of Hell's greatest guardians against them: Cerberus. The three headed hound was enough to intimidate even Myka until she could hear Deke yelling her nickname, Fenris, and they understood.

Myka cast aside weapons and embraced the full power of her aura. The size of a dinosaur, she was very much on par with Cerberus in size and strength. Unlike Myka, Cerberus did not have the same regenerative abilities. The conflict kicked up enough betting that Mammopn had to have a seat next to Satan. Blood, fire, fangs, and claws made front row seats a very dangerous place to be as each monster tossed the other across the arena. In the end, the chainbreaker forced Cerberus into submission, and only seeing Deke sitting fearfully in the box seats kept her from trying to destroy her foe. They had to remember the pack on the mortal plane, recall the lessons their mother had given them in controlling this rage. Forcing themselves to revert to a smaller size, Myka retrieved her PEBLE and demanded Deke's return. Satan returned Deke to her as he had already gotten what he wanted. Myka had shown their full potential, and that could never be erased from their past. EVen as they left Hell, Myka knew that you never really leave Hell.

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