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NAME. Azari
ALIAS. Ari
AGE. 5 years
BiRTHDATE. Spring 2010
GENDER. Male
SPECiES. Timber Wolf

PACK. NA at the moment, he's hoping to found a new one
RANK. Loner for now

HEiGHT. 34 inches
WEiGHT. 110 pounds

PHYSiCAL DESCRiPTiON. To say the least, Ari is intimidating to look at. He's a large specimen, towering at 34 inches in height and weighing in around 110 pounds. Adding to his large structure, Azari is not a lightly colored wolf. He is a sooty black-grey, smudged through with silver highlights. The topcoat to Azari's pelt is primarily black and dark grey with the undercoat being light grey, though it only shows through as sooty speckles or smudges along his underbelly and legs. Handsome of face, Ari has a regal profile with a well formed muzzle, attentive ears and muddy amber eyes. He is not quite so showy or flashy as some wolves but there is an air of quiet regality that seems to shadow this wolf. He walks with his head up and a sense of purpose, even in times of mindless wandering and his dark amber eyes seem to quietly take in everything in his environment. Ari has an intense gaze and the posture of a wolf that's been around the block. His dense fur hides battle scars that tell the tale of a rough life spent fighting and being on guard at all times. His posture is always that of a wolf ready to stand his ground, his heft making him hard to move in battle.

PERSONALiTY. Azari is a very interesting wolf to get to know. He has perhaps the finest poker face of any wolf in the reserve. He has the sort of face and posture that makes you feel like he's seeing right through you, analyzing and understanding. This is a byproduct of Azari's formative years spent in a largely hostile environment where friend was most often foe. This means that first impressions usually lead to others seeing Ari as a very imposing, intimidating wolf that's ready to rip their throats out at a moment's notice. However, while Ari is capable as a fighter, this is most often a show for Ari. Once a wolf becomes accepted into his inner circle, Azari is a much warmer wolf to be around. He has a quiet smile, a fatherly love for the wolves that come close to him and a desire to teach. He can be playful and teasing on rare occasions but overall Azari is a fairly quiet wolf. He is one of wit, a fan of acts of intelligence and quite gentle for his size when handling those close to him. Azari is as calm and cool as a cucumber in times of high stress, handling battles and disputes with an almost detached ease. In these times of confrontation it's almost like someone flips a switch in Ari. Gone is the grandfatherly wolf playing with pups, the alpha rolling around with the young wolves in play fights or the wolf that loves to nap in the sunshine. Ari becomes frigid when faced with violence, confrontation or punishment. He is, usually, fair in his punishments and almost frighteningly efficient when it comes to putting down troublemakers, chasing off unwelcome visitors or dispatching enemy wolves. He views the whole business of violence as unpleasant but a necessary evil for maintaining harmony within a pack. Wolves that fight often, seek violence first and seek to invade must be dealt with quickly to avoid anarchy within a pack. To a certain level, Ari recognizes violence is natural in wolf packs. Young males must fight for dominance, betas must grapple to know who's boss and older wolves must occasionally take a pup by the scruff and show them their place. However, Ari keeps a close eye on these fights for any sign of unnecessary violence. Ari's pack is his family and he will allow now excess violence among them that may cause undue harm.

To say the least, Azari is a fan of the misfits and a friend among young wolves. He is a capable teacher with seemingly unending patience. If he's handling a younger wolf, Azari will wait all day for them to get something right or show them over and over what they need to do. This hands-on nature was once smothered by his father's rule but now is paramount in Azari's life. Wolves that are a little bit odd find Ari himself to be quite odd because sometimes his methods don't make sense right away. Ari however finds it quite fun to stump others while teaching them a lesson, preferring a battle of wits over beating a physical lesson into someone though he recognizes sometimes it's necessary. More than once he's scrapped with an angry young wolf so that they can get over whatever is running in their heads, though it's not his go-to method.

HiSTORY. Azari was one of the first wolves born when humans started really pushing wolf conservation. He and his two brothers, Verin and Nesir were born in a wolfpark that housed three packs on a massive expanse of southern Canadian territory. The three packs were, unfortunately, not well monitored despite the increase in conservation and often left to battle it out when food was scarce or the packs crossed paths near a territory border. Ari's parents were the alphas of the southern pack which held the most territory. It consisted of ten wolves, not counting the new pups, with Ari's father Rafael leading the pack. Rafael lived by the law of the fang, using violence as his solution for every problem. He had no single alpha female, simply females he used for pups. Any pups born in a litter that were not alpha material were killed, usually. The year Ari and his brothers were born the humans tranquilized Rafael and the wolves guarding the den. So, Ari and his siblings were raised by human hands for the first five weeks of their lives before being released back into the pack territory to see if Raphael would leave them be. Raphael chose to more or less ignore them, disgruntled at the humans' intervention. Still, the pups that were returned were strong and healthy so he didn't bother to kill them. Instead, Raphael left them to be raised by one of the she-wolves.

This isn't to say Ari's formative years were easy. Oh no, life was never easy in Raphael's pack. You learned to fight back or be killed rather quickly and there was at least one bloody encounter each night when the pack gathered to sleep. Fights over food, sleeping spots, mates, petty insults and the like were so common that Ari became skittish if he didn't smell wolf blood being spilled nearby. The wolves of Raphael's pack were as ruthless as their alpha, the males ready to fight at the turn of an ear and the females either submissive beyond all belief or vicious enough to rip your throat out as soon as look at you. Ari, though used to the sounds of growls and smell of blood, didn't so much care for this environment. He fought with his brothers regularly, scrapped with lesser males in the pack and once or twice had to pin a female and remind her that he was one of the alpha's sons for a reason. Luckily for Azari, fighting was not difficult with his size and strength but eventually it grew tiresome. He was tired of scrapping for everything and still getting beaten down by Raphael every time he turned around. Raphael feared his pups, feared how big and strong they grew and how he couldn't seem to separate them for good. The brothers kept close together at all times, wary of the rest of the pack and most wary of Raphael's fangs and cunning. Raphael hated it and would make a point to bite, beat or claw them whenever he caught one alone.

At three years old, Ari grew sick of Raphael's hassling. One night in late summer, a fight broke out between Raphael and Azari over a kill. Azari had tried to approach and eat before Raphael and the result was the bloodiest fight the pack had ever known. Everyone gathered around to watch, some wanting to jump in and join in the bloodshed and others cowering to see who would win, unable to look away. In the end, Azari killed Raphael and claimed the pack as his. In the coming days he and his brothers drove the blood-mad of his father's reign out of the territory. He gathered close the frightened and shaken, those most abused in Raphael's reign, and fostered a stronger pack. With his brothers acting as his betas, Azari changed the pack dynamics drastically. Any fighting that got too violent was put to a stop and wolves were encouraged to choose their own mates. Azari for his part, courted a lovely young wolf named Howl whom his father had been keeping as a future mate when she came of age to bear pups. Howl became Azari's alpha female and kept track of the pack she-wolves, organized hunting and showed her generosity and kindness to the lone wolves while teaching Ari diplomacy for when they met other packs. Ari loved Howl almost desperately, soothed by her presence and reassured by her calm nature. When spring rolled around, Howl and other she-wolves took to the dens, safe in the knowledge their pups wouldn't be slaughtered. As a result, there were three litters of healthy pups born throughout the spring, one of which consisted of Ari and Howl's two pups, a male named Nuka and a female named Siri. Nuka took after Ari, large in size and dark in color while Siri took after her mother, slight of frame and silvery-grey in color.

The success Azari experienced while leading his pack didn't go unnoticed. The humans monitoring the park realized that the success of the pack, while beneficial for that pack, was proving detrimental to the other packs that struggled for territory. The humans decided to redistribute the most successful pack into other parks that were still struggling with their wolf populations. Azari, his brothers and pups were transferred to Red Rock Rise shortly after the winter of Azari's fourth year, roughly a year and a half after he took over the pack. Azari went to sleep one evening beside his mate, his young pups sleeping nearby, and woke up later alone in a shipping container, drugged too much to move or even growl as he was jostled around. After what felt like days of being in a half drugged haze, Ari was set loose in the reserve. He was alone and confused, mourning his pack and shaken by the radical shift in his world. Unsure of if he is totally lone in the reserve or if anyone from his old pack came with him, Azari roams searching for anyone familiar and hoping he'll find someone, missing his mate and missing the close safe connections of pack life.