User blog comment:SalemtheCruel/Character contest/@comment-3462718-20130424194333

Name:Orynnie Shankshaft

Species:Sparrowhawk (comparatively small but fierce bird of prey)

Gender: Female

Weapons: Talons and Beak

Appearance: Somewhere between slate grey and greyish-brown in color, with the cream barring pattern of the species. Fully-grown: she's just shy of being middle aged, and is very tough in appearance. Has extremely long talons. Also, the needle-like feathers at the tops of her legs (all birds of prey have these) are unusually long and prominent. Wears no clothing. Has a very big featherless scar running from the back of her neck, over her head, and down her face onto her chest.

Personality: Has a grudge against landcrawlers, thinking them only in terms of potential food or potential hunters and nest-raiders. Thinks it easier to kill potential threats than to deal with them calmly. Has a volatile temper and is almost never in any other mood.

Backstory': Orrynie's father was the leader of a group of sparrowhawks that inhabited the far northern mountains. He was temporarily allied with several other groups of northern birds of prey, but when they rebuked his vile temper and overrode his objections to helping goodbeast landcrawlers during a clan meeting, he left the alliance in a huff, taking his mate and all his birds with him. Unfortunately, they were totally unused to areas outside territory and as a result they were systematically hunted and slain by an opportunistic band of ragged river rats.

Orrynie was hatched during these events, and witnessed the annihilation of nearly all her fellow sparrowhawks, most of her nestmates hatched the same time she was, and eventually her aging parents, before she had fully fledged. Once she was old enough, she and her two surviving brothers, all too young and reckless to know any better, avenged themselves on the rats one fateful midnight. They completely decimated the river rats, leaving only a pawful of fleeing survivors who scattered. Orrynie had a long but non-fatal slash inflicted on her by a rat's sword during the encounter. Both her brothers were killed.

Orrynie now lives alone by a tiny stream near the northern fringes of Mossflower, hunting anybeast small enough to eat that dares to cross into her territory. She volubly tells every creature she meets that she "neither trusts nor fears anybeast living!", and has learned enough of the art of stealth attack since the disaster which scarred her to be be a formidable and deadly foe.