Player Name: Dora

AIM Contact: WsdmsPryde

Character Name: Raul Alonso de Rocha

Date & Place of Birth: 17 April 1976, Evansville, Indiana

Character Type: Lukoi

Character Occupation & Skills: Raul is a New Orleans paramedic (EMT-P). His original plan as a young man was to practice internal medicine, but he contracted lycanthropy during his first year of med school and as a result dropped out -- the likelihood of any hospital hiring Dr. Werewolf, or patients coming to see him, seemed slim to none. After a two-year hiatus where Raul started to put his life back together and learn the ways of the lukoi, he decided to keep his lycanthropy under wraps and look into work as a paramedic, which was subject to less scrutiny and just as many opportunities, albeit of a different sort. As such, he is very familiar with human anatomy and has a fairly in-depth knowledge of general medicine.

Because Raul is a top-tier paramedic, he is also licensed to practice a limited degree of pharmacology at work and knows several small surgical procedures (yes, he can do that awesome pen-in-the-trachea thing you see on all the medical shows). He got a job when he moved to New Orleans with no difficulty at all thanks to the post-Katrina setting and economy. Raul has made a point of using his professional position to not just take care of people in general -- he's always liked being the caretaker -- but also keep an eye out for lycanthrope attacks or new weres in need of tending.

Abilities: As an alpha and an Ulfric, Raul is more than possessed of the typical array of lukoi abilities. His senses are increased to a degree that took him some time to cope with; Raul's sense of smell is so acute that he can often read emotions via scent, his hearing so good that he can pick up on a change in heartbeat. His strength and speed have been augmented to lukoi levels as well. He has, of course, the usual sensitivity to silver and must change into his wolf form at least once a month during the full moon, no ifs, ands or buts.

There are things which make him different from other wolves, however. He has the power and force of will to control other shapeshifters' changing. Raul can either force or prevent a change if he so desires, provided that the lukoi in question is not equal to or above him in strength. This is not something he puts to use particularly often, as it can be a violent experience. He has only once tried to force a wolf equal to him in power to change, and the results are not something Raul is willing to talk about. Those few members of the Lazarus who were there for his fight with the Legendbreakers' Ulfric have refused to speak about the incident.

Raul's control over his inner wolf is near-absolute. He has been known to mask his beast to an almost imperceptible degree before, and to those familiar with lycanthropes it is not completely unusual for Raul to "pass as normal". He somehow manages to give off a proverbial ocean of calm around his wolves, and it is through this zen-comfort schtick of his that he's helped the pack to bond with one another as well as their Ulfric. The Lazarus pack has grown quickly since its inception, and it's with Raul's help that the pack has managed to stay fairly tight-knit. Raul is a sea of Prozac, and that is only intensified with physical contact, which is why the more submissive, needier wolves tend to scamper about his ankles at any given opportunity. Raul is as good as warm milk, some fresh cookies and a blanket in front of the fire.

Appearance: By nature Raul is a tall man at 6'2", although that is certainly not the most distinguishing thing about him. He's well-built with some decent definition to him, long of limb -- the man has hands that should be playing a piano, not trucking around gurneys -- broad of shoulder and the like. Facially he looks like the pinnacle of all New Orleans' muddled genes having been perfected; obviously, Raul is what the city has been working on for all these centuries. At his worst, Raul is interesting-looking. At his best, random strangers have been known to proposition him.

His hair is recovering from the way he murdered the dreads he used to have, and is currently on the shaggy side, dark with some inadvertant lightening from sun exposure. His forehead is broad, his mouth the kind most women hate Angelina Jolie for, and the blue-green eyes that set it all off have actually stopped traffic once (although he was covered head to toe in a patient's blood at the time, too, so perhaps it was that). When the man smiles, the world is a better place. Most of the time, however, he looks slightly preoccupied, if not mildly worried. Raul has two styles of dress: "casual", and "boxers", the latter reserved for when he's at home (usually). He somehow manages to look annoyingly laid back even in a suit and tie, although most of the time he's more of a jeans and button-downs type of guy. His wardrobe passed lupa clothes-horse Jael's inspection only because Raul grew up with fashionistas for sisters.

As a wolf, he is a riot of color and shading. His eyes go from their normal blue to more typical wolf shades, in this case something between amber and yellow. His chest and ruff are shades of auburn, his underbelly and flanks bleeding into biege and his back a wide swath of brindled black. Raul's legs, ears and face are all are a dark shade of black, and seeing the whole mess together sounds ridiculous, but is actually quite arresting. Size-wise he's a monster, dwarfing most of his pack by standing about 4' tall at the shoulder. Raul is the wolf that was built for standing on top of his rivals and ripping out their throats, and it shows from his heavy forequarters. In the half-form which so few people see him in, he tops out at an insane 8'+ tall, but there is a reason Wolf-Man does not show up for parties. Raul's come to terms with who and what he is, but he's not willing to turn halfway all too often out of concern for damage potential.

Personality & History: The third of five children, Raul de Rocha grew up in a home so completely all-American that he should probably have gone into politics rather than wolfing it up with a pack of delinquents. His childhood in Indiana was blessedly normal -- two parents who loved one another (most of the time, and the kids wisely didn't mention the broken dishes or shouting to Mom or Dad, thanks), and the nice, comfortable pattern of boy-girl-boy-girl-boy. Raul was seated firmly in the middle, and played the part of sibling mediator with a skill that ultimately saw the lad getting what he wanted as opposed to, you know, actually resolving his brothers and sisters' fights.

This eventually mellowed out into teen years that took Raul from beautiful-but-spoiled child to gangly, pubscent high schooler. It was during high school that Raul experienced his first big loss with the death of his father from colon cancer, and what had started out as a fair interest in his science classes turned into an obsession with medicine, saving people, and possibly fixing the ozone layer if he couldn't cure cancer first. He dropped his place on the school track team and turned into a bit of an introvert during his last two years of high school. Raul was never the type to do things half-assed, and so he was planning out his list of colleges and medical schools even while he lectured the de Rocha family on their eating and exercise habits.

It was as obnoxious as hell, but it was how Raul coped, and it was this obsession that got him into college on a mostly free ride. During his sophomore year, he found that he could keep up the crazily-focused thing for only so long before crashing. Although grief from losing his dad never left, it did soften. His plans of being an oncologist waned in the face of what kind of stress he could and couldn't handle without cracking up, and several long talks with a guidance counselor and his mother later, the future Dr. de Rocha had settled on internal medicine. This way, at least, he could still help people. So he graduated, and headed off to med school. And towards the end of his first year, the all-too-eager and opportunistic Raul offered to gofer at a free clinic and was promptly jumped on by a patient who was, oh-by-the-way, a werewolf.

The wounds Raul received were hardly anything compared to what the authorities did to the shapeshifting woman who'd attacked him. And false negatives were not unheard of for subsequent lycanthropy tests. But needless to say, Raul did not initially deal well during that first blackout several weeks later. Once he woke up in his then-destroyed apartment, there was a combination of shock, tears, rage, and the addition of more broken objects. He was familiar enough with what happened to shapeshifters if they "came out" -- who hadn't heard about how those people disappeared? Deciding he had no other option -- the smell of blood was like the smell of a woman's perfume to him at that time, as erotic as it was cloying -- Raul dropped out of med school, much to his family's horror. The previously tight-knit group were alternatively disappointed, horrified and disgusted (Raul's older brother Julian thought he was acting like an ungrateful little shit, and the two mostly stopped talking after that), and the new lukoi made a point of driving just enough of a wedge between himself and his family that they wouldn't be stopping by during any full moons.

Vaguely aware of what he had to do, Raul then set up shop in Indianapolis, where he searched out the local Legendbreakers pack. For the next two years, he dedicated himself to getting his life back in order. Raul had no shame, no embarassment, and asked for help from anyone he could. Like every other time in his life, once he had a goal in mind, the rest was just dogged determination until he saw it through. By his twenty-fifth birthday he had met his beast and embraced it in a balance that caught his Ulfric's eye. Rather than fighting for dominance within the pack, though, Raul turned his attention to the real world again, and looked into work and training as a paramedic. He had a habit of kind of floating throughout the pack and its business, stopping just long enough to network with other wolves, flash a smile, and see to it that most folks thought of him in a fairly positive way. He survived, if not necessarily flourished.

Raul's tenure with the Legendbreakers lasted for a total of six years, until he was just shy of thirty. His EMT training complete, he had then looked back fully to his fellow lukoi. Although Raul had never been particularly impressed by his Ulfric or lupa, he'd let things go for some time, willing to accept their better wisdom on pack decisions. But the longer Raul watched, the more he realized that there were abuses going on within the group that were unforgiveable. He'd taken a goodly number of wolves under his proverbial wing as time had gone by, willing to lend them his protection. Raul had no title within the pack, but his power was strong, his body was able, and he had stopped numerous issues through force in the past. He confronted his Ulfric, Sam Rimes, and their discussion quickly turned into a display of power where Raul forced the wolf king into his four-legged form amidst Amrita the lupa and a handful of pack members. It was a violent change as well as an unexpected one that shocked all parties including Raul. Later that night Amrita would approach Raul, alternatively threatening and cajoling.

In exchange for not going Fenrir and killing the Ulfric, Amrita told Raul that she'd give him as well as any wolves siding with him leave to go, to leave Indianapolis as well as the Legendbreakers. His willingness to leave in addition to his silence would buy the lives of many lukoi. Raul being Raul, he gathered those loyal to him and left town within 24 hours. He took them to New Orleans, his mother's home in her youth, and the city he'd heard of since his own childhood. Once there, Raul petitioned the local Rat King for permission to live in the city. After meeting with the Ulfric of the pre-existing pack of lukoi, the newly-dubbed Lazarus moved in and set up shop. Since then, he has wheeled, dealed, and done everything in his power to keep them safe and mostly happy.

Raul is nothing if not a caretaker. His greatest ambitions in life were to be a life-saving doctor with a lovely wife and a couple of kids. That he wound up with a pack of mixed-bag wolves is about as close as he's likely to get to normality nowadays. He has long ago come to terms with this, and so he treats his pack like the family they are. On average, he's a mellow kind of guy, almost frustratingly calm on the surface until you do some digging and realize that he has a mortgage to pay, a pack to support, and a set of blood relatives that he needs to juggle so as to maintain his dirty little wolfy secret. Further down he's prone to worrying and is probably on the road to developing an ulcer.

His beast is never too far from his human side, and the two tend to intermingle in a way that causes folks to think of Raul as the big family guard dog. He is physically demonstrative, affectionate to his wolves in a way that involves near-constant contact; there is always someone in Raul's bed at night, and almost never for the type of act he'd prefer (the idea of sex with the majority of the Lazarus pretty much horrifies him; they are his siblings, his children, and even sex with Jael tends to be more metaphysical thanks to their relative newness with one another, so the guy is wound tighter than he lets on). A fairly stern upbringing alongside what he saw with the Legendbreakers gave Raul a lot of life experience. He has never hesitated in putting his paw down on the throat of someone who misbehaves. Just because Daddy Ulfric smacks you down occasionally doesn't mean he doesn't care, after all. It just means you need to quit mouthing off and behave before you get a beating, okay?

The man is still finding his feet as the Ulfric of a 300+ pack of wolves. But he's determined that the Lazarus be secure, and so he breaks his back to do everything humanly -- doggedly? -- possible. He's a big advocate of everyone pulling their own weight, though, and so if you can't get a job, then you damn well better find a way to make yourself useful. Freeloaders need not apply to the Lazarus, thanks so much. As an Ulfric, Raul's not a bad one. As a man, he's admirable. As both? Well, he hasn't quite perfected the science of that one yet.