User:Wolf skinchanger

=Anor-Roc Goldflame=

Phys. Description
Anor-Roc is a coyote with shining golden-colored fur. His relatively short hair is of a darker golden red, and has a tendency to grow up and back, giving him a gelled look that he does not particularly like, but can do little with.

At his full height, Anor-Roc stands 5'8 and weighs a lean 190 pounds. His eyes shine with an emerald light when they are looked at directly, but fade to a dull, mossy green from the side.

A variety of clothes can be found in the closet of Anor-Roc's plane. His daily outfits are chosen based on the weather and for their function rather than to satisfy any aesthetic sense, but given the choice, he tends to wear bright greens and blues. He is often seen wearing navy-blue fingerless gloves, and always carries a sheathed long knife on his belt, the blade of which is shaped vaguely like a shark's pectoral fin.

Personality
Anor-Roc does not trust easily, but those who have only just met him won't notice. When he is asked about himself, especially about his past, he tends to answer in half-truths, which are disguised by an open, forthcoming manner. If his bluff is called, he will simply say that he's not really proud of his history, but he's not going to let his past rule him, either. It's done, and it's time to move on.

Those who wish to know him will notice almost immediately that his honor is unquestionable; he never leaves a debt unpaid, no matter how trivial it may seem, and when he makes a promise, he makes it his life's work to see that promise fulfilled. The select few who earn genuine friendship from Anor-Roc will further recognize an unswerving, selfless loyalty; if he calls you his friend, it means you can count on him for just about anything.

The coyote has a thing for good food, and particularly enjoys what he calls an egg scramble in the morning, which is simply bacon and sausage bits thrown into scrambled eggs. He also has a fondness for chilled root beer.

Background
Anor-Roc Goldflame was born Anor Rocalland on December 5th, 192, to Toruk and Ikyata Rocalland. Anor's mother died in childbirth; Toruk, unable to raise the baby on his own, was forced to leave Anor at an orphanage on Cidade.

At least, that was what the young coyote kept telling himself. He knew from listening to the older kids how his mother had died, but he flatly refused to believe that his father would abandon him without good reason to. So he convinced himself that Toruk hadn't had the money, or the time, to care for him, and that one day the front door would open and Toruk would be standing there, ready to bring him home.

Anor was always a quiet child, and had few friends in the orphanage. His best friend was a hare named Arcturus, who had been born just a few weeks before the coyote. It was not uncommon to see the two of them sitting side-by-side on one of their beds, flipping through an aeronautical science book and discussing the mechanics of the various aircraft depicted within.

At the start of the summer after he turned thirteen, Anor finally got sick of waiting for his father to come back. Stuffing a few essentials into his backpack, he stole away in the dead of night, stopping only long enough to stick a brief note into the pocket of the shirt Arcturus had set aside for the next day.

Thus began the hardest time Anor had ever lived through. For two solid weeks, he roamed the skyland on his own, seeking out some clue as to where his father might be. Finding places to sleep was easy for the young 'yote, but staying out of the rain while he slept proved near impossible. Only a kind handout here and there kept him from starving.

After two weeks, Anor found that he was hoplessly lost. There was no-one to help him, as few people would even look twice at him anymore; his clothes had been worn to rags from sleeping rough, and everybody recognized him for the runaway that he was. With no food in him at all, and desperate for a sheltered place to sleep, he stowed away in the cargo hold of a Bullfrog and promptly lost consciousness behind one of the crates.

He awoke in a cage with the man who had owned the plane, both of them captives of pirates. The merchant was allowed to take his plane and go, sans a third of his cargo, but the boy was another story. Anor didn't know what the pirates intended to do with him, but by applying the technical knowledge from the aeronautics books he and Arcturus had flipped through, he was able to make himself useful as a mechanic's apprentice, and stave off his fate.

Anor came into his own when the modified Bismark that the pirates were using as a mobile base of operations suddenly, or subtly, developed an engine fault... in midair. Of all the mechanics on board, only the coyote was small enough to patch the busted hyraulic fluid line without disconnecting three different pipes to get at it. It was a relatively minor repair, and over in five minutes, but Anor had saved the pirates the trouble of landing so they could fix it themselves, and was presented with a long knife as his reward, which was shaped like a shark's fin. When the pirate captain asked the coyote his name, Anor was understandably nervous. He had managed to stutter out "A-A-Anor R-Roc--" before the captain impatiently said, "Alright, then, welcome to our world, Anor-Roc Goldflame."

The newly renamed Anor-Roc lived with the pirates for over a year, and grew lean and strong on the work and the food that they gave him. The most notable change in him, however, was in his mind. With his new name came the realization that he couldn't live his life waiting for the past to find him, and that it was time to stop deluding himself otherwise.

Eventually, the pirate band was captured and jailed, and Anor-Roc found himself in the arms of the law. With no legal identity attached to his new name, and only the thinnist circumstantial evidence linking this lean young mechanic to the child who had disappeared the previous year, it was decided that Anor-Roc would be enrolled in the Echo Flight School a little early, since his fifteenth birthday would be coming fairly soon anyway. He was allowed to keep the knife he had earned; though everyone on the local police force suspected where the blade had come from, there was no way to prove it, as Anor-Roc had taken impeccable care in keeping it maintained.

Entering flight school for the first time made Anor-Roc more nervous than the pirates ever had. For his first week, the coyote was incredibly shy and reserved, speaking only when spoken to, and not much even then. Then, quite by accident, he spotted his old friend, Arcturus.

There were a few hard feelings between them, but they had always been friends first, and made up fairly quickly as they exchanged stories. Arcturus had been adopted as well, shortly after Anor-Roc had left. A family of badgers had noted that the hare was quieter than most boys his age, and taken an immediate liking to his inquisitive mind. Upon arriving in his new home, he had been given some chores and a weekly allowance of fifteen squigs. Most of that money had gone toward model airplanes, and newer aeronautics books.

The two of them stayed in contact throughout flight school, becoming friends all over again. When they got their first planes upon graduation, it was agreed that each would name the other's. Anor-Roc dubbed Arcturus's plane the Friendly Ear, while his own was called the Skyfire.

Even in the skies, Arcturus and Anor-Roc were near inseperable. The two of them worked together to find the most profitable trade routes, each hoping that their partnership would keep them both in the air. It wasn't long, however, before Anor-Roc's field experience with the pirates gave him the edge over Arcturus's theoretical knowledge, because the coyote was better at recovering from unexpected pitfalls.

But there was one surprise that Anor-Roc never fully recovered from. Unknown to the coyote, Arcturus had become jealous of his old friend's success, and in an effort to keep up, the hare had begun taking side jobs solely for the extra squigs, with little or no regard to the risk involved. It often fell to Anor-Roc to keep both of them from being shot down by pirates.

One day, Anor-Roc stepped onto the airfield of the skyland he and Arcturus had stayed on for the previous night, only to find the Friendly Ear had disappeared. With some dificulty, the coyote was able to get Arcturus's projected flight plan from the tower, and follow him.

Anor-Roc caught up to Arcturus while the latter was losing a dogfight, and entered the fray without hesitation to protect the hare, but it was a lost cause. Though he was successful in driving the pirates away, a large portion of armor had already been torn away from the Friendly Ear's cockpit, and there was blood on the pilot's seat when Anor-Roc flew down to investigate.

Arcturus was able to confess his jealousy before he slipped away, and the coyote decided he would fly the flag of a warrior, as a warning to pirates everywhere. He would not waste his resources seeking them out, but none would escape if they tried to mess with him. With that in mind, Anor-Roc enlisted in the Crimson Armada as soon as he was able to reach Fuseli to do so. Upon joining up, he quickly apprenticed himself to fellow Armada airman Nathaniel "Blade" Skydancer, and remains such to this day.

As often as he could, he has traded in his old plane for the next one up. As a tribute to his late friend, all of the coyote's planes to date have shared the name Skyfire. He has recently decided that he favors Hauler-class aircraft, and currently captains a Kingfisher, which he runs like the mayor of a small city.