Ruslan

name: ruslan

age: six years

gender: cis male — he/him

sexuality: wouldn't you like to know

species: tundra wolf

rank: sovran

pack: the ghosts 

familiar: sera — a black raven

theme. voice claim. moodboard. 

personality: ruslan is a wolf who finds himself to be rather pragmatic and prides himself on this fact—everything he does he knows is right, for he does not believe he dabbles in hypotheticals but truth be told ruslan is guided utmost by his emotions, none more than his anger; it's a righteous thing he sharpens himself on and it's made him such a violent individual. but it has failed to make him an impulsive one. ruslan is calculative, highly valuing patience and intellect, and it's what makes him so ideal for the role of a leader in the manners that his inconsistent charisma does not. 

history: he should've been culled.

a sickly pup from the moment he took his first strangled breath, smaller than his siblings and avoidant of suckling, it was clear to his mother early on that he would die and, in another life, she would've snapped his little neck and called the act merciful. but it would be her luck that ruslan was the only surviving pup in her litter. no matter how pitiful he was, he was nevertheless the lone survivor and for the aging leader of her pack—her beloved successor, her biggest fault.

ruslan would be raised as though he was attached to his mother's hip and, for the longest time, he would be delighted to serve as her shadow; learning the way she led, breathed, thought. but as the young boy grew older and each year folded into the last, the state of the pack would falter, crumble; misguided attempts to expand territory and risky hunts onto the grounds of neighboring packs left many members unsettled with the leadership of his mother—ruslan included. the wolf he once looked to dutifully now lingered as a blight on the pack he would inherit. try as he might, he failed to steer his mother's decisions into sensibility and further did the pack divide... but it was with the dispersal of several wolves that ruslan realized his reign would need to come earlier than desired. 

believe him when he says he tried to make it civil. when he proposed the transition of power to his mother... he hoped she would step down without fuss, without complaint, but he expected an argument, a fight that broke no more than feelings. 

he never anticipated that she would try to lunge for his throat.

he never anticipated that he would have to snuff her out.

but it was a necessary evil. a wolf without sense, without logic, is no better than the lesser elk they hunted. a risk in no uncertain terms. she had to be put down.

if only the loyalists believed him. 

those who found themselves still devoted to her, refused not only his rise to power, but his residence in the pack at all. he tried to push back but found himself ever outnumbered... and, with nothing but the few wolves who sided with his actions, ruslan left his birth pack and the desert-stricken land in which he was raised. 

since then, ruslan has found himself hunting for a land to claim as his... but it's clear as the day is long that something has turned in the wolf—something truly, irrevocably wrong.