Name: Zelda Akkron

Gender: Demigirl, she/they

Sexuality: Queer

Age: 25

Species: Bearded Vulture

Diet: Carnivore/Detritivore

Height: ~7 ft

Weight: 125 lbs (hollow bones!)

Physique: Top-heavy and well built

Appearance: Zelda is burly and intimidating. Her beak is sharp and her talons are even sharper. Even though her thick feathers make her look bigger than she actually is, Zelda is still a feat to behold. She trains hard and takes pride in her strength, using fitness as a healthy outlet. She has a head of rusty red and black feathers that are kept in a loose ponytail. Like many bearded vultures, she has tufts of black plumage surrounding her yellow eyes. They droop past her beak, and she refuses to clip them (or her talons).

Personality: Zelda tries to take her role as “big scary lady” very seriously, but can’t help but be a sweetheart. She uses her intimidation factor to keep trouble away instead of starting it. She loathes having to live in fear due to being an animal woman. Instead, she turned being an animal into her advantage. Her bark is truthfully worse than her bite, but she will not hesitate to defend herself. There is no doubt that Zelda is strong, but she puts great care into being careful and gentle around others- especially small herbivores. They tend to make her nervous. (“Oh my god, I almost stepped on you!”) She is very curious and excitable by nature and very easily impressed.

Backstory: Zelda grew up in New York, upstate and close to Canada. She’d always been a tomboy and a jock as a kid, so she spent most of her time going outside and poking her head anywhere it could fit. She would’ve loved to play sports, but most other children were afraid of her. However, she did befriend a human boy in her class named Ike. She and Ike were both social outcasts, but he was a bad influence on Zelda. Ike was a bit odd as a child, but he grew up to be unstable, verbally abusive, and generally reckless- but Zelda pitied him since she could relate to his loneliness.

As bad as Ike could be, the two still formed a close bond. In high school, the pair of them were often in detention together. Though Zelda was usually somewhat innocent, she was punished alongside Ike due to generally being disliked by the staff. She didn’t like the staff, either, and was fine with sitting in a room and doing nothing with her buddy. She hated school and treated suspensions as a free vacation. Ike was much like Zelda in the fact that he disliked school, but he was not content with “doing nothing”. He had plans for the sinking ship that was his life, and he was dragging her down with him.

One fateful autumn afternoon, Ike tricked Zelda into joining him while stealing supplies from the hardware store and setting fire to a car in an abandoned lot. The two were apprehended quickly, and were expelled from school. Zelda was not convicted of anything serious, but still punished for being an accomplice. Ike was taken to a juvenile detention center, and Zelda would not see him for a very long time.

She chose to run from her past. She did not complete high school and instead left for the big city- which was a risky move. However, Zelda was not inexperienced with the hardships of life and was able to adjust quickly. However, many employers turned her down due to her criminal record and lack of education. Zelda, desperate after a few years, turned to the only place that would take her in. The black market was far from an ideal job, but there was always some crime lord in need of some extra muscle. Zelda refused to hunt or recruit people, but she would fight if need be. She's very secretive of her involvement.

Class: Lower

Occupation:Constantly changing, bodyguard

Relationships:Family - Unknown, Ike - “friend”

Name: Ike

Gender: Cisgender male, he/him

Sexuality: Bisexual, aromantic

Age: 25

Species: Human

Diet: Omnivore

Height: 6’3

Weight: 150 lbs

Physique: Thin, tall, and gangly

Appearance: Ike is rather rugged-looking, and not in a good way. He obviously doesn't put much effort into himself, and rarely ever does. His small eyes are dark brown and sunken. Meanwhile, the lids droop over them. Dark circles that heavily contrast with his bronze complexion mark his face. His once thin, straight nose is now crooked from being broken, adding to his likeness to looking like a hobo. Ike's hair is black and almost reaches shoulder length when let loose, and his temples are tinged with a premature gray. Like the rest of his appearance, Ike's facial hair is very unkempt but usually somewhat trimmed. Sometimes it's a stubble, other times it's much thicker. Depends on how lazy he's been. Ike is tall, ungracefully tall- his limbs seem a smidge too long. He carries himself with awful posture, adding to his exhausted aura. Like himself, Ike's wardrobe has seen better days. He has a tendency to set fire to his belongings, so many of his clothes are second-hand and/or stolen. The only constant is his bomber jacket, which is looking a bit stained after all the years of use.

Personality: Ike is very dislikeable. He is unstable at the best of times and incoherent at the worst. Ike can and will take advantage of people, and is always on guard for others trying to do the same to him. He is filled with spite towards happy people. People who have settled and are content with their lives absolutely irk him. He absolutely loathes the thought of settling, for he feels like he's always got to be in motion. Ike doesn't even care where it is he is going in life, he just has to keep moving towards it. Quiet makes him anxious. If things are too quiet, Ike can and will do something about it. Wherever he goes, trouble follows- probably due to his awful habits and knack for causing fires. Ike is a pyromaniac and will enthusiastically admit it. He likes pulling stunts and seeing them on the news the next day.

Backstory: Ike has always had an affinity for trouble, even as a child. He started out as a rebellious child with a love for mischief, but as many things do, everything went wrong with him. Ike is the product of his surroundings and a few unfortunate predispositions to personality disorders. He was born into a neglectful home, where his mother didn’t care much and his father disappeared early on in his life. As he grew, he found the easiest way to survive was to be cruel.

Ike was a bully all throughout school. He stole, cheated, and generally harassed on a whim. In the beginning, it was about survival and a general lack of self-awareness, but he started to genuinely enjoy it. He was difficult to get along with but did manage to have some sort of friendship with a bearded vulture girl named Zelda. When she was around, she was Ike’s impulse control. Though, she couldn’t always put a stop to his antics. The two were arrested, and Ike became a convicted arsonist at the age of 15. He was held at a juvenile detention center for a while and was taken to a correctional school upon release. Ike hated his time there but complied in order to be let off the hook early.

Once out, and discovering that his friend has deserted him, Ike became furious. He had set many fires up to this point, but none would ever compare to the time he turned his mother’s trailer into an inferno. To escape, he stole a guitar and hitchhiked with a band of college dropouts to play music. This did not end well. Aside from enjoying the highs at after-parties, his time with the band was miserable. This was where he learned just how far people will go to take advantage of others. Enraged by the band's treatment of him, he took a tank of gas and doused the interior of the touring van before throwing in the flaming instrument. He hasn't touched music since and hitchhiked away to the city of New York.

There, Ike hopped between shelters and odd jobs. At age 19 he set his second fire when he was at a co-worker's apartment, presumably out of fear. After spending a very questionable night together, he turned the oven on. He purposefully left flammable household materials nearby when they left for work. This was the first time he saw his work make it onto the local news. Of course, he never made it to his job that day and instead had his first run-in with the black market. Ike, being human, was very unfamiliar with it. After hanging around, he found that it was a place with easy access to illegal drugs and decided to stay.

The story of Ike becoming the leader of a prominent animal gang called The Catalysts is an interesting one. They specialized in drug trafficking, so he became entangled with them pretty quickly due to his lifestyle choices. He was recruited mostly because he was human, and humans were “less suspicious”. Ike, for whatever reason, grew very close to the leader, who behaved somewhat like a father figure to him. The Catalysts’ leader was a middle-aged lion who enjoyed chemistry and power named Cedar. Cedar was murdered under mysterious circumstances when Ike was around 24. News of his death hit Ike hard, but he inherited Cedar’s position as leader of The Catalysts.

Currently, Ike is still grieving, but he has proven himself to be just as ruthless as Cedar could be. What Ike lacked in claws and fangs, he made up for with illegally modified firearms and a low tolerance for ANY bullshit. There have been murmurs and a bit of outrage of a HUMAN leading an animal-based organization, but Ike has made it a personal mission to forcefully remove anybody who dares speak against him. He is also recruiting bodyguards and mercenaries to protect himself. He recently recruited Zelda and is somewhat making an effort to mend their old friendship.

Class: Undefined

Occupation: Currently the leader of a crime syndicate (The Catalysts running the black market drug scene in New York)

Relationships:Zelda (Bearded Vulture) - “Friend”, Cedar (Lion) - Guardian (Deceased)