R'ly Gerr

R'ly is not a Pelatih - not an Animal Master with the rights and privileges they earn by passing proper Status exams. She is, though, very keen on breeding animal-based Budak. Slaves, with animal features found among the animals that her zoos are filling up with... Those Budak, those animal-shaped slaves, include her own son Haad. He seems to be far too powerful for his own good. Wait, no, for R'ly's own good. Let's not mince words: Haad should be Raised immediately and put into Pelatih status if not outright into Peridian as a breeder in his own right. But getting a look at his genes proves to be a little hard for nearly any legal entity that comes calling. R'ly always manages to put someone else's genes into the sample, or gets some other lesser-quality Budak to sit in for Haad. She'll dull his colors, make him blend in with the common servants, anything to keep those annoying prying eyes off of him.

How did she even get into this predicament? She was young, just out of her Peridian studies in fact, and looking for people to snap up for projects. That right there should have been a massive red flag, but no one stopped her. Possibly because she changed their mood to suit her needs whenever they would bring it up. She did pass those exams with flying colors, by the way - it's not like she is bad at her job in any way. She makes a tidy sum every year brewing up and selling off a variety of Budak to people in Curra. They like the furry ones, they're warm and pretty and make excellent obedient Budak already. It's cold in the north of Altem, after all. Who wouldn't want a pet that can also brew your tea?

This young and somewhat striking Peridian was up in Bok, the fur-based cast-offs among the breeding circles there provided a good amount of credits... Not that she was supposed to be buying and breeding other Peridian's work, necessarily. No, she would wait until they were sold once or twice, their Budak or even Bayaran status leaving a nice clean paper trail just in case anyone looked. They're servants, that's all. Third Degree Peridian like herself get to own whatever comes out of their Budak and Bayaran, it's a technicality that they were already heavily bred for several generations, right? But up in Bok there were people around who she admired greatly; breeders who had a century of work behind them already when she came on the scene.

It wasn't to the breeder that she went, though, when she found a very specific person. He still stood upright at times, though he wasn't a shapeshifter. She had put a lot of her family's money into this preserve and zoo up there, and how odd it was that this pack of wolf creatures (Ice Wolves? weren't they extinct?) kept following the investors around. Occasionally eating them. How... fascinating. Those wolves didn't seem quite right though. She wasn't a Pelatih, she only knew how fur felt and how features blended with each other in a humanoid format. She didn't realize that the much more colorful of those wolves - normally pale shades of grey and silver or white and cream - were not all wolf. Until she spotted the one who had horns coming off his sleek head.

He had been lurking around the edges of the zoo's capture zone for weeks, and finally R'ly could stand it no longer. She had to know. Her Breeder's Eye told her, those colors seemed familiar. Plus, wolves didn't come along all that often. She knew enough about them to realize that if they really were Ice Wolves, they were either starving or incredibly mad about their territory being invaded - because typically they were reclusive and very hard to spot. This one, he came right up to her when she gave a whistling call.

No dog would have met her eyes like his did. Those eyes of his were almost the same shade of gold as her own, though surrounded by black sclera and those four odd horns to her two. He stood up, on slender dog-like legs, with blue-tinted claws on his hands and feet, and he spoke in broken words that this was his pack's land, that this was an atrocity she was investing in.

Yet he didn't attack. And it wasn't even her power doing it, keeping her safe from the very clear harm that he could deliver. Pretty clearly he was also versed in some sort of politics, as he mentioned his sire's distrust of man-made places like their grandfather's.

Their grandfather: Izraethi, the brilliant genetic engineer who she'd come to research. This animal-shaped man - he was definitely still Zekiran through and through, on four feet or two it didn't matter - was the descendant of one of the richest and most important Peridian on Curra. And at odds with him. That could complicate things. But R'ly was nothing if not clever, she convinced Harrek that this zoo could provide easy cover, plus a place to actually store their own goods and pups if needed, if.

If. If. If. Whether it was 'natural' or not, the child that they conceived while the ground breaking was going on for the Bok Northern Animal Foundation was going to be amazing. Turned out he was. Too amazing, really. When he was two, and the zoo was in full swing and gaining traction for her family to open another in their home Zone of Astel, she brought Haad back out to the snowy wilderness. She only wanted to show him off, but the moment Harrek spotted him he very nearly ran off with the boy in his mouth. R'ly had to briefly remind him: this was her child, not a Rogue's, and thus even if he was to be a Budak in order to remain well-controlled and politically inactive, he was... her son. The Gerr name given to him would probably plague her, but it was better than losing the bargaining piece she'd worked so hard to get, to the wild wolves in that rogue's pack.

The wolves, and Harrek, would continue to come around, they were still welcome. They just had to know their place. Maybe some day she'd have another child for them. She would however occasionally... provide them with sport in the form of nosey Membayar looking for paperwork that she refused to fill out, oops that vacation spot really was a dangerous one wasn't it?

With this child though, she had to be careful. He would definitely show much more promise than he ought for a Budak. She entertained him as he grew up with imagined scenarios where he used powers that he did have at his disposal... and was grievously injured, terrified into retreat; if he used those powers, he would regret it.

She didn't let him really do much aside from the occasional help around the zoo or keeping the other Budak entertained. Her illusions and emotion control were pared down in him, but still present in a strange manner, so she made sure that he used that ability to her advantage. While she worked on those ready-to-sell projects, he distracted them with thoughts of open skies and pleasant beaches - they would all but forget the burning pain of their skin tone being altered into a brighter shade, or their facial features tweaked a bit here and there to look much prettier than they had any right to be genetically. The traces of these powers would fade long before the effects would wear off, anyway; it might be a year before some of them realized that their 'trophy servant' with the big beautiful eyes and perfect teeth was... really not all that perfect.

R'ly couldn't help it if people were so shallow that that was what they looked for in a Budak. She didn't hesitate to play into it though.

And then one day, this other wolf girl came into their lives. Tall and furry, blue and grey - and wet? This woman and her mother were on the prowl for something, and R'ly didn't know what. Water rights? Who cared about that? Apparently they did. There was no problem with the zoos waste, it was all handled properly! It was not polluting the area, that was actually true. But the extravagant use of it in some spots? That was a problem? People wanted nicely crafted grassy hillsides to watch the frolicking animals, they wanted deep clear pools with shining fish and diving birds that they could view from the safety of an underground atrium. Was that so wrong?

Apparently it was. Apparently also... This wolf girl turned out to be rather important to the Izraethi clan. Did she realize that the Rogue element, dy'Izraethi - the cast-out from the family - were here in Bok still? Or lurking hundreds of miles away in Astel? Was this a coincidence? Or were those wolf-people really that pervasive in this area and she had been too busy for the last decade to realize it? Turned out yes, that was definitely the case. Lheevdho showed up with that waterfall-hair and faintly wet-dog smell fresh out of her own water park in the eastern side of Bok's wilderness. If R'ly had known that the girl was also a shapeshifter, she might not have tried to force her to leave the zoo.

Lashed out in anger, when presented with an illusion of attack, this Izraethi girl turned into a puddle-wolf, sprang into action, rather than running away like the proper Ice Wolves would. It was only when this happened, that Haad realized the danger his mother was in, and acted selflessly - maybe he'd pay the price, maybe using these weird powers would kill him in the end. He triggered a power that altered reality.

It wasn't just his power, it was hers too: R'ly knew it came from her own line, but had never mastered it, had never even tried to get it to 'behave'. She'd seen visions of worlds that were distinctly not Zekira... and some that were but not the same, they were filled with people she didn't know or had odd beasts around them - big ones. Really big - some had wings, there were no such massive creatures on Zekira as far as she knew. The power her son tapped into drew from those memories from before he was born.

They didn't die. He didn't die or even suffer particularly much, nor did R'ly. But they all vanished from Bok's Animal Foundation in a flash, and wound up somewhere else entirely. And it was a good thing that Lheevdho was able to control that water power of hers...