Darkness Falls' Werecard

From: "93hillsd" (93hillsd@princethorpe.org.uk)

Human Name: Daniel Hills
Were Name: Darkness Falls
Phenotype: Wolf / 'Wolf Man' half-form
Shifting Ability: Mental/Dream/Aura
Birthdate: 10/6/82

Birthplace: Walsgrave Hospital, I think, I was too young to remember at the time
Home Territory: Coventry, England
Dream Territory: The world has got loads of interesting places for me to find; 
forests, mountains, islands, oceans. Where I'd really like to be tends to depend 
on what mood I'm in at the time.

Physical Description, Human: 6'1" tall, fairly heavy build (i.e. a bit overweight, 
though not immensely so), slightly-shorter-than-shoulder-length wavy brown hair 
that repels all attempts to make it look smart, blue-grey eyes behind large glasses, 
almost permanently confused look.
Physical Description, Were: red-brown wolf form, light grey around the muzzle. The 
grey extends down my throat and covers the undercarriage. Think Red XIII from FFVII 
with grey tints and no tattoos. In 'wolf man' half-form, a seven-and-a-half foot tall 
digitigrade werewolf, muscles more pronounced than in human form, with same fur markings 
as wolf form. In both wolf and half-wolf forms my eyes change to green, not blue.
Human Career: A-Level student (boring I know, but it'll be over soon and I can go and 
let myself loose on the world)

Hobbies/Interests: Almost anything involving other places, realms, worlds, or people/creatures. 
Favorite media for transmitting these stories include video games (I grew up on Sonic the 
Hedgehog), films (lovely dark gothic-style futuristic ones), music (I'll listen to almost 
anything on the radio (note, almost anything)), the Games Workshop series of wargames and, 
more recently, roleplaying.
Favorite Movies: The Matrix (dark, gothic, futuristic), The Lion King (talking Disney animals), 
a couple of the James Bond movies (especially Goldeneye -"I am invincible!" - ha!), and I 
thought the twinned parallel stories in Sliding Doors were a good idea - made you think in 
order to keep up with them, but good. I enjoyed Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's 
Dracula as well.
Favorite Were-movie: Not seen too many, but probably The Howling (1, not the sequels)
Favorite Literature: I don't really get that much time to read, but almost anything from 
the fantasy/sci-fi/horror genres will do. The last book I actually read properly was Brave 
New World by Aldous Huxley, but that was on recommendation for the 'practical ethics' part 
of my theology course.
Favorite Were Literature: The White Wolf W:tA stories are quite cool, they've got a good 
imaginative background and plenty of mood.
Favorite Art: Most of the art I know comes from Japanese anime- or manga-style cartoons. My 
personal favorite is Akira (yeah, I know this is going back to films, but I put too much 
stuff in that part already). Failing that, the Games Workshop and White Wolf artists are 
brilliant. Mark Gibbons and John Blanche are especially talented.
Favorite Were-art: Toni DiTerlizzi draws the best cartoons of werewolves I know.
Favorite Quote: 'I'm just a man who's battling with his mind,' ('108 Battles of the Mind' 
by Kula Shaker, see below)
Favorite Were Saying/Quote: 'It's okay, three days of the month I'm not much fun to be around 
either' (Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer on finding out her boyfriend is a werewolf)
Favorite Personal Quote: See 'Personal Therianthropy' below, right at the end. It'll spoil the 
pseudo-mystical effect if I put it here. It's where I take my were-name from.
Favorite Song/Band(s): I'm a fan of anything by Kula Shaker, especially 'S.O.S.' or 
'108 Battles of the Mind'. On the flip side, I think Aqua write some of the funniest songs 
around (no-one can possible take anything sung in that voice seriously, can they?). I also 
like All Saints and the Corrs.
Favorite Season: Summer - endless days sitting in the warm sunshine in the garden, beautiful.
Favorite Holidays: Christmas - I love all the lights and shining tinsel and music and 
Christmas trees (and naturally the presents)

Preferred Prey: To hunt, anything or anyone that tries their hand at bullying or taunting 
me. Generally they don't taste as nice, though, so to eat, I prefer a nice parcel of fish 
and chips. 
Hunting Tips: Strike when they're unprepared. A fight is easily won if your prey/opponent 
doesn't know it's supposed to be fighting.
Preferred Method of Attack: Go for the throat!
Favorite Non-Were Mythological Beast: Dragons 
Feelings Toward Vampires: Depends greatly on the individual. Mind you, I'd find it pretty 
difficult living forever, you'd start to miss people after the first eighty years or so. 
Also I like the sun too much (and now that I come to mention it, I like food too much as 
well).
Feelings Toward Normal Humans: Humans are normal? I guess I'm just a little bit naturally 
suspicious of them, but if I spend enough time with them and get to know them, they are 
great friends. Every one has great potential, be it for good or ill.


Personal Therianthropy: 

	I guess it started when I first started Primary School. I was generally the one 
to get taunted or picked on and it set me apart from the others. So after a while I just 
accepted it and grew up on my own. I tried not to get too attached to anyone or anything, 
'cause it usually got wrecked or ruined somehow. The first signs of theriomorphism started 
to show at about the age of seven, when I started to walk digitigrade, for no other reason 
than it felt right. My parents didn't see my point, and made enough remarks about it for 
me to stop. I was just taking the path of least resistance.  I moved on to Secondary School, 
where things continued as they always had done, and, despite the occasional bout of enraged 
'self-defence' in the face of the bullies, nothing much changed until about the age of fourteen 
or so. I know this seems a huge generalisation, after all, you'd think seven years would 
change something, but it didn't feel as though anything did. I was just running on other 
people's rails, as though in a kind of perpetual hypnotic sleep. I figured that the less 
of myself I put into anything, the less I'd get hurt when it all went wrong. Anyway, at 
about fourteen, a friend introduced me to roleplaying and for some reason I instantly 
'clicked' with Werewolf, even from first seeing it. A lot of the themes of it seemed to 
sum up how I was feeling at the time. It gave me a new way to express what I was.

	I moved to my current school, Princethorpe College, to complete my GCSEs, and over 
the period of about three years I gradually began to relax and open up a bit more to people. 
I just felt all sort of locked up in a box and wanted to get out and stretch my limbs a bit. 
The GCSE exams came and went and the school organised an 'Outward Bound' team-building--type 
holiday in Wales as a release after the pressure of the exams, which I went on. It had quite 
a … profound effect on me, which really opened me up. There were a couple of events which I 
didn't even know that I would be frightened of that completely terrified me, and the people 
that got me through that are now ranked as the most cherished friends I have in the world. 
(For future reference, don't ever show me people jumping off waterfalls, even on TV - it 
tends to have an … adverse effect). Anyway, that aside, the final two days of the course 
was a trip up a mountain, complete with sleeping out under the stars at the summit. The view 
of the sun setting over the bay was unimaginably fantastic and something made me feel much 
more alive than I remember having ever felt before. When the moon came out from behind the 
clouds, I just had to howl at it, a long, loud celebration of the sun, the moon, the planet 
and existence itself. I felt wonderfully awake and alive and free. The others were somewhat 
puzzled by the outburst, but they accepted it happily. I think they were feeling something 
similar.

	But life doesn't stand still on top of mountains howling at the moon, however much I 
want it to. We came down from the mountain and returned to our lives. A bit of the feeling 
stayed with me though. I started to draw loads of (bad) werewolf drawings, and if I wanted 
to put myself into a picture, I would draw a werewolf in my place. That marked the first 
realisation of what I was feeling and who I felt I was. I returned to college to do my A-levels. 
Not long after that, I had my first Dream. I was in wolf form, just running happily through 
a darkened forest, dodging the trees and bushes and enjoying the feeling of the wind and 
the fresh night air. When the woods came to an end, I ran out over a short expanse of 
grass and came to the edge of a cliff. I looked up slightly and saw a beautiful moon in 
the midnight blue sky. If you've ever seen the movie sequence in Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, 
you'll have a pretty good idea of what I mean (minus Abe's great handprint on the moon's 
face, of course). With my howl to the moon, I woke up.

	Even in waking life I started to become more wolf-like. If I ever get tense or edgy 
about something, I naturally start to growl or flex my fingers like claws at it. (Good tip - 
I've discovered claws are very good for opening packages, especially cardboard boxes that 
some fool has wrapped up in industrial-strength sticky tape). When I get up from meditating, 
I often get the impulse to go away on all fours, and sometimes I slip into walking digitigrade 
without realising it. I've not yet managed to fully P-shift (the extent of my physical 
change is limited to behaviour patterns), so I haven't wagged my tail at anything yet 
(the human tailbone is woefully inadequate for the job), but if I ever do, I'm sure that 
will follow.

	Which brings me up to the present day (about time, I hear you cry), and your site. 
When the computers at school got the Internet (our home one is over eight years old and 
wouldn't know an Internet connection if we slapped it over the disk drive with one) 
I started searching for werewolves on the web and found you, and learned about all the 
different types of shifting and the lycanthrope community at large.

	Phew - that was quite long wasn't it? Sorry for the potted life history, but it 
seemed to explain a lot of stuff to me so I thought I'd better put it down. And so now 
life moves on, in a way that it never seemed to do before. And with the new day comes 
new understanding and insight. Darkness falls, but the light always rises anew.

									D.F.