DEVONSHIRE

[iris]

NAME. Devonshire.
GENDER. Male.
AGE. Two years.
CLASS. Serf.
MONARCHY. Eastern.

APPEARANCE.
Devonshire looks a bit of a dandy. He's a big cat, and surprisingly well fed for his social class. Despite his great size, though, he doesn't look like a fighter. He's a great hulking lad with long fur, gray tabby in color, marked by a white muzzle and belly. Each of his feet bears a white sock that gives him the appearance of wearing spats. His eyes are green, and look rather small and pinched compared to his silvery mane. If he didn't have such a friendly, demure look on his face, he would be intimidating from weight alone. As things stand, though, his look wouldn't frighten a mouse, much less another cat. There's something very open about his facial features, a bit childish and perhaps naive. He has a short muzzle and a broad pink nose, with long white whiskers that curl slightly at the tips. His ears are very large, as are his paws, although they are quite in proportion to his body.

In breed he would be referred to as Maine Coon. In truth, a lot of that stock does run in his blood, and in better times he could be among the founders of the line. He has all the marks of the breed, large size, very long luxurious coat, extremely fluffy tail. He's something over 20 pounds in weight, although since he has come to live in the monarchy he has dropped quite a bit of poundage. He possesses tufts of fur on his ears reminiscent to those of a bobcat, although much wispier. His fur varies based on the seasons - in summer it is often quite a bit thinner, while in the winter it takes on its full luxurious length. It is actually quite soft to the touch, at least in the places that Devonshire can reach with his tongue. Mats have formed in the pits of his arms and under his tail, as well as behind his ears, where he can hardly reach to himself.

The fact that his fur is in such good condition at all has much to do with his positive obsession with cleanliness. Though this may be a throwback to his history, he's extremely compulsive about his looks and his fur bears all the marks of excessive grooming. In some places the fur has fair been worn thin by his tongue. However, since the fur is so thick and copious it doesn't show too well. Had he been a short-haired cat, he might have licked himself half-bald by now. His compulsive cleaning hasn't exactly done wonders for his tongue, either, and occasionally causes him quite prodigious hairballs.

As aforementioned, not all of his significant weight is due simply to his size. Devonshire tends towards portly. Even stripped of all of his fur he would be considered large, and would have quite a bit of fat built up. He has lost most of this since becoming a serf, but overeating is quite in his nature, and if he could have all he wanted he'd be quite a fat cat indeed. He's actually quite short for his girth even normally, standing below a foot in height at the shoulder.
VOICE. Surprisingly high pitched, when you expect something low out of his big frame. Speaks rather quickly and airily, with highly rounded vowels. He sounds rather kitten-like. When not speaking, he's still very vocal - chattering, chirping, yowling, and expressing pretty much every sound that a feline can make except, for the most part, hissing.
GAIT. He's not a very graceful cat when going above a normal walk. He favors a ponderous, slow gait, rolling from one foot to the next. If he goes any faster he tends to appear very clumsy indeed, even at an all-out run he looks silly with his legs crossing and uncrossing. He's prone to tripping himself up and falling flat on his face. In flights down a steep place, he will often go head-over-heels like a rabbit will. He can move over ground as well as any cat, he just prefers not to.

PERSONALITY.
He's a gentle giant, for sure. In fact, his gentility makes him appear rather bovine at times. Dimwitted. He's actually quite intelligent, but oftentimes through no fault of his own tends not to show it. His naivety doesn't help him out any - he's quick to trust and will often believe anything he's told unless it blatantly conflicts with something he knows to be true. He detests fighting and views it as a practice for uncivil creatures, cats who are lesser than himself. That is, unless the fighting is against vagrants, which he views as the scum of the Earth, lower than rats. In the main, though, he's not a fighter, and when forced to it he's not very good at it in spite of his size and weight. He simply doesn't know what to do with himself in combat.

He's a friendly enough chap, the sort who will go up to anyone for a chat. He tends to ignore even body language in his approaches, and will trot right up to an arch-backed spitting creature with the same friendliness as one who is just lying there. He doesn't really understand social conventions yet, having lived outside of the monarchies for most of his life, and often forgets that he's supposed to treat those above him differently than those of his own class. He treats everyone basically the same way, which is with an openness and dumb friendliness. He just wants to be on good terms with other cats, and truth be told he is incredibly naive.

His naivety leads him to be quite gullible. He's intensely loyal to whoever convinces him that they should have his loyalty, but unfortunately it's not very hard to win that loyalty. He can't tell when anyone's lying, and will literally believe almost anything. He doesn't see the need to lie, himself, and seems to simply not think that anyone else would lie, either. Once a side, a cat, or some other entity has won him over, though, he tends to attach himself to it like a leech. He'll do anything to please his supposed masters, and will develop and intense hatred of anything that they do. He adopts the doctrine of those around him and will follow it to the end of time, an intensely passionate devotee.

He seems to have little free will of his own, and this is mostly true. He follows the pack, and rarely thinks for himself. However, he is intelligent. He's a good problem-solver and has a fantastic memory. In fact, this memory is his foremost trait. He can practically recall conversations verbatim, and never forgets names, faces, et cetera. His prodigious powers of recall are his foremost strength, and can be quite useful in certain situations. He would make an excellent messenger if he wasn't so slow in movement, in fact. Nonetheless, he hardly ever uses his memory to his own advantage. He's not extremely ambitious, he's a born second-or-third-in-command and perfectly happy on the bottom, at least for now.

All in all, he's a decent chap when you get down to it. At least, by nature he is. Under the wrong leader he could do horrible things with little remorse, feeding innocently off of what ever lies are given to him. He does not have a strong mind or moral guide of his own in the least, and has no strong convictions that have not been taught to him. He's not an original thinker, but he does exceptionally well when simply putting his education to work. One hopes that with more experience in the world of the monarchies he will learn not to believe everything that he is told... but for now, he has no such ability or knowledge.
SECRETS. He once lived among, and even served, the humans. He tends to hide this fact not out of any shame, but out of deep sorrow.
DREAMS. He dreams only to serve, but he hopes that one day he can rise to a position where he won't have to do any ridiculous chasing. His ambition mostly comes from his desire to have others hunt for him... since he's a fairly lousy hunter and can hardly keep himself as fed as he would like to be.
FEARS. Mainly that he will be turned away, that no one will like him... or worse, that history will repeat itself and that he'll be left alone again. He has no real fear of death, and lacks the natural fear of water - he'll swim quite happily, and seems fascinated by it. He does seem, however, to be afraid of disease - he's seen what it can do, and it is the major reason that he is so obsessive about his own cleanliness.

HISTORY.
Devonshire was born with the people of the mud, in one of the small human settlements within the Eastern Monarchy. The cats of the monarchy generally left the place well alone, of course, although it was a good enough place to hunt rats and that sort of creature. Boys with stones in the streets in those days served well enough to keep most at bay, and hunting poisoned rats could prove fatal. Devonshire was born under a barn on the outskirts of town, and probably would have been drowned had not his mother been an excellent ratter. Though the town was cholera-stricken and filled with much grime, the farm family had been fortunate in that both the mother and father were still alive, along with a son and a daughter and a sickly younger child whose life would flicker out all too soon.

As it were, the baby died shortly after the kittens were born under the barn, and thus when the daughter took a shine to little Devonshire her fancy was permitted. His mother, a large tabby molly called Mogs with a sharp eye and six toes on each foot, taught him to hunt and to climb. Mogs had a short temper and often turned on Devonshire, by far the clumsiest and slowest kit of the little, too well fed by the girl on table-scraps to really take any interest in hunting. His siblings, two other toms and a molly, were reckoned fine ratters, though, and soon went to live with others wanting of a good cat for catching rodents, so Devonshire alone was left.

He spent most of his time around the house, sleepinh. Though his presence had been at first permitted, when he started growing it was clear that her parents directed some little spite towards him for his laziness. Though the girl would defend him when she was home, whenever the parents would find him sleeping around the house or striding about as if he owned the place as he was wont to do, they were like to chase him out into the barn with a broom. Outside, he was liable to be chased and cuffed about by Mogs for his pains, scaring away rats and that sort of thing.

He led a very fine life, especially for a cat of the time. It was no work and all sleep for him, and he grew to be as fat and lazy as possible given the circumstances. He likely would have lived out his life in this state, had the plague not hit. It struck the town first, sending the people into a frenzy, locking up the houses and the barns and all else. But the doors could not stop it, and soon the whole family sickened. Devonshire, for the first time in his life, felt hunger and fear, and the dread of pestilence and plague.

His girl died first, one night, and he felt the breathing go out of her chest. The hook-beaked doctor came and took her away on a cart, though he was dying too and would soon vanish like the whole town. A few would survive, but there would be no place left for cats. Devonshire stayed by the house, living on what little he could catch, watching as the bodies accumulated. Some vague idea formed in his mind that he had to leave... but where would he go from here? Only where the girl had gone, and he shuddered at the thought.

So he stayed, and soon the dogs were the only ones left to clean up the bodies. He did, too, driven on by hunger and desperation, stumbling through some dark dream which composes one of the only dark spots in his prodigious memory. Mogs left long before he did. They did not love each other, and he did not know when she went away, only that she was not there any more. Winter fell and the dogs starved, and so did he. He went out into the wastes, walking towards the great white nothing beyond, no idea where he was going or how he would get there. He walked until he collapsed, not feeling the cold, not feeling anything...

It was then that he found the Eastern Monarchy. A serf looking for some prey in that barren winter came across him, half-starved but still massive. The cat must have figured that any creature this big must be of some use, and so led him back to a hidden den out of the wind and nurtured him to health. It was thus that Devonshire became a cat of the monarchy, coming to serve in what little ways he can. Having left the outskirts of the woodland where for a time he lived with his savior, hunting and doing what he could to aid that family, he is journeying to the castle, to the hub of the Monarchy, to learn what he can about this new world.

[/justify]

[&BLEU]

approved.