he's holding the answer he loathes, -General Information Durand Olden, born and occasionally going by Carmine Durand Olden is a previously human shifter of royal caste and twenty-seven years, approximately four of which have been spent in their current biological state. Hailing from the Haven Federation, Durand retains her citizenship though currently lives in a subcorvette craft serving as a crude but functional home. Currently lacking conventional employment, they have until recently scraped by through participation in contraband trafficking and what was once a large sum of money kindly donated by a stranger while impersonating a government official. Possessing an ambiguous and fluctuating sense of gender identity and presentation, his tone of voice often changes from day to day and varies in timbre, though the slightest hint of celtic pronunciation is a constant. -Physical Appearance Given their ability to morph their own features, Olden’s appearance frequently changes in subtle ways. It’s not uncommon for someone to see her one day only for their height, build, and even visage to appear off the next time they meet. Generally speaking, his features most often align at least somewhat with the description of a lean, ginger-haired individual of uneven and waxy complexion of arguably androgyne presentation, standing anywhere in between 5’4" and 6'2”. As gender presentation fluctuates, so does the degree to which she retains normalcy in relation to the expected appearance of a human. Normally upfront and honest about their status as an infected, they sometimes show this with odd, occasionally lopsided body proportions. Limbs that are too long in comparison to their height, a few too many or too few fingers and teeth, eyes just a touch smaller or larger than they ought to be, a slightly elongated neck, all while possessing a sense of satisfaction at others’ reactions to these features. While she owns a variety of somewhat expensive clothing items from times that her ”occupation” allowed her to afford them, their overall fashion sense isn’t what anyone would call sophisticated. Frequently seen in loose, comfortable clothes such as baggy jackets or thin shirts and tops, they seem to enjoy nicely made clothing that refrains from making him look haughty or “high-class”. Durand possesses multiple ear and facial piercings, including an intraocular jewelry implant in the form of a small metal star floating static in the white of his eye. Spoiler: Appearance [made with picrew,me by https://twitter.com/1w1_y] -Personality Outgoing and crass, though perhaps less so now than the months after their infection, Olden is highly social, though perhaps just as highly disagreeable. Getting along best with those who take her high-energy sociability in stride and getting along the worst with anyone she deems to be too self-serious, his sense of superiority doesn’t mesh particularly well with anyone else’s. They possess a muffled sense of empathy and a deep, passionate resentment for their lot in life post-infection. They are occasionally prone to violent outbursts and often won’t hesitate to instigate a fight with someone that she perceives to have been slighted by, though he trends towards targeting those that are in his mind weaker than him, underestimation notwithstanding. While inclined towards petty altercations, they have no intent to seriously maim or kill, and are more likely to offer a handshake and a grin after the fact regardless of whether or not they came out on top. Still, she has the capability to be particularly vindictive to those that they have deemed to have seriously hurt her, and even those who have committed particularly heinous acts. While they hold individualistic and anti-authoritarian views, Durand possesses little to no knowledge of the theory or concepts at the root of their beliefs and will not pretend otherwise. Very rarely would they be interested in any form of constructive discourse with those that he disagrees with. These views, and their negative sentiments against the Haven Federation’s governing have softened since the attacks on the Corrav district by the Ascended Superhive and the district’s subsequent razing. The more time passes, the more sentimental they seem to become about her home. -Background Born on the ninth of September, 3262 to a working class family in the Haven Federation’s Corrav district, Durand was given a modest upbringing in a barely-practicing Christian household. Their parents were for the most part healthy and kind in the rearing of their child, who was given as much guidance and care as either of them could manage between inconsistent scheduling and long hours. Despite their best efforts however, she would still find herself in frequent conflict with her peers and was often antisocial towards those not within his own circle, a social circle that would eventually find them intertwined with the Corravian gangs that would grow to dominate the streets of the district. It was falling in with these groups and the experiences it brought her that formed the lens through which they see the world to this day. Despite having done his best to move away from that kind of life a few short years before the attack on the district, it’s still where they formed their earliest friendships, learned to aspire past their lower class standing, to throw a punch, to handle a firearm, even if the latter was a skill she rarely needed to rely on himself, if at all. Infected in the early days of the outbreak of the Shifter virus, Durand spent their last few days as a human in their meager, recently acquired apartment hoping to rest and ride out whatever it was that she had come down with. The decision to visit an old, far better-off friend of theirs after seemingly getting over the worst of whatever it was allowed them to dodge the initial quarantine, and was the only thing sparing him from the fate of the over four million other citizens that had succumbed to and were sacrificed to contain the virus. Staying in the Capital district now rooming with this friend of theirs, she learned of the true nature of her condition and subsequently became the largest headache that their roommate would ever experience in her life, as well meaning as she may have been. Attempting to navigate the process of coping with their new reality, he finally picked up the drug habit that they had managed to avoid in their upbringing and went, in a word, completely off of the deep end by way of spending her days locked away under the effects of several substances while rambling endlessly on public nexus chatrooms. It was only after being threatened repeatedly with eviction and finally being kicked out that Durand slowly managed to pull together a halfway stable life. Stable by nobody else’s standards, but an improvement to him. During their few years of meandering about and taking small positions in larger smuggling schemes in order to stay afloat, her condition caused her identity to slowly morph from what it once was, and they for the most part dropped their first name and chose to go by his middle. -Relationships TBA.
