PHYSICAL.
EYE COLOR: Light Blue
HAIR COLOR: Blond with a dyed red streak
HEIGHT: 5’7”
BUILD: Lanky, moderately thin, somewhat effeminate, lightly muscled. Also quite pale with sunken eyes and dark bags under his eyes, somewhat sickly.
SCARS: On his face, around his lips, chin, and a large one on his left cheek. Various scars of different sizes over most of his body, most notably his torso. Some scars along his arms and hands/fingers, thighs, and feet. A notch out of his left ear.
MARKINGS: Black shapeshifter markings on his jaw, neck, with thinner black markings down his torso, arms, and legs.
VOICE: Male, but definitely youthful and juvenile, basically sounds like Yukine / Micah Solusad. Almost always speaks with telepathy, rather than his actual voice.
HAIR COLOR: Blond with a dyed red streak
HEIGHT: 5’7”
BUILD: Lanky, moderately thin, somewhat effeminate, lightly muscled. Also quite pale with sunken eyes and dark bags under his eyes, somewhat sickly.
SCARS: On his face, around his lips, chin, and a large one on his left cheek. Various scars of different sizes over most of his body, most notably his torso. Some scars along his arms and hands/fingers, thighs, and feet. A notch out of his left ear.
MARKINGS: Black shapeshifter markings on his jaw, neck, with thinner black markings down his torso, arms, and legs.
VOICE: Male, but definitely youthful and juvenile, basically sounds like Yukine / Micah Solusad. Almost always speaks with telepathy, rather than his actual voice.
Abilities.
COMBAT: At one point, he was most comfortable with a light sword or dagger and shield. While growing up on the streets of Abah’s Landing, Kytes used to use a makeshift shield made out of an abandoned cooking pot, and a fire poker he wielded like a sword, because these two otherwise worthless items were some of the only weapons he managed to keep without someone stealing them from him. Since Reno took him in, he's become well-acquainted with using a magic staff, and shows a slight affinity for magic, both Destruction and Restoration.
STEALTH: Proficient at being quiet and stealthy. He makes for a natural thief, as well as assassin, though he hesitates a bit more with killing than he does thievery in many cases even though he’s good at both. Many past people have also had a tendency to overlook him or say things around him they normally wouldn’t, as some falsely believe his broken speech is a reflection of his intelligence and ability to understand as well. SHAPESHIFTING: Wolf. Hawk. Indrik (deer). However, Kytes is mostly familiar with and able to transform into a wolf (the irony of being able to turn into his greatest fear is not lost on him, but expect him to deny being a wolf). TELEPATHY: An extension of his shapeshifting granted by Reno's strain specifically. He's rarely been able to isolate his thoughts / telepathy to a single target, which has caused a great deal of problems with some of the things he says about or to people, but he's started to grow into the ability more. Suffice to say, he generally doesn't isolate his telepathy with most people unless its at Reno specifically, even though he's begun to learn how with some consistency. |
Disabilities.
CONGENITAL HEART DEFECT: Prone to premature exhaustion, and strong emotional reactions (positive or negative) that raise his pulse strain his heart, with the potential to cause cardiac arrest if left unmediated. Shortened lifespan.
(Note: vampires can probably hear his irregular heartbeat) ANEMIA: Highly susceptible to getting cold and suffering in cold temperatures. This also plays into his exhaustion levels, low stamina, and heart arrhythmia, and is a large part of why he generally looks pale all the time. SPEECH APHASIA: Caused by a traumatic brain injury in early childhood. Can read, write, & understand written / spoken language just fine, but has trouble forming coherent sentences without skipping words entirely or stuttering over certain sounds, with harsher sounds (T, Ch, K) being more difficult than others. PROSOPAGNOSIA: -or "Face Blindness". Kytes generally has a difficult time remembering people and especially faces. HYPERSEXUALITY: Mainly sex-repulsed, but suffers intrusive urges due to a combination of his age and past sexual trauma. Mostly healed now, and whatever actual attraction he suffers is targeted pretty exclusively at Reno. C-PTSD: Physical abuse, sexual assault, and canines/dogs. DEPRESSION & ANXIETY: Deep insecurity, anti-social, self-defensively hostile and antagonistic, prone to depressive episodes, though he's generally gotten over his self-harm / suicidal tendencies. EATING DISORDER: Doesn’t tend to eat much, and doesn't trust food offered or made by others, especially meat. When he does eat, he tends to favor fresh fruit. He’s largely suspicious of meat, as he’s gotten horribly sick from it before, and will usually only accept it if it comes from Reno. |
Personality.
At his core, Kytes is scared of others, and this fact is not difficult to identify. He often prefers to stay silent if he can and let others believe he's mute when he can get away with it, but he's often forced into answering by social expections and he's more willing to engage now that he has telepathy than he used to be before. Still, even when he does interact with others, its often hostile or antagonistic, somewhat out of pure habit, somewhat deliberately to make others leave him alone when he's uncomfortable as he doesn't believe simply expressing his discomfort is enough to make others back off.
Kytes doesn't tend to use his voice because he fears others discovering his speech disabilities and taking advantage of or mistreating him because of it, viewing him as weak and stupid, since that's the treatment he got most of his life. The Telepathy his shapeshifter strain grants him has somewhat lessened that fear since he can respond to people properly now - in full and coherent sentences - but unfortunately some of the mentality that people don't want to hear what he has to say remains out of conditioning, so what he has to say is more often than not less than helpful.
Watchful and clever in most matters of survival, Kytes is a skilled thief, who steals often and without shame when he thinks he can get away with it. He'll kill if he has to, but he's a bit more hesitant to take life than he is to steal, depending on the situation. He tends to take offense to others trying to dote over him or treat him as incapable of doing things on his own, though he does grant Reno a little bit more leeway where that's concerned.
When he's not putting up a tough and aloof front to protect himself, and when comfortable around another person, he can be quite delightful and warm, receptive to what they have to say and deeply interested in what they're doing. His true colors beneath all the roughness and jaded distrust is that of an excitable extrovert, undyingly loyal and affectionate, and a little bit mischievous.
That said, his sense of self and confidence are fragile, and its easy for him to become jealous when too much attention is on others by people who are important to him, and just as easy for him to fall prey to crippling anxiety and self-doubt about his own inherent worth. This couldn't be any more true than with Reno, who Kytes centers his whole reality around and uses to define who he is and where his place in the world lies, unhealthy of an obsession though it may be.
Due to a mix of his poor attitude and relationships with most people, as well as his disabilities, Kytes has a difficult time remembering individuals unless he's had a lot of exposure to them. He especially has a difficult time remembering individual faces, and often knows people better by other defining traits like their voice, hair, and what they wear. Its also uncommon that Kytes remembers names, partially because of disinterest and the belief that most people he meets will hold no permanence in his life, so those who make enough of an impression to be remembered are often given some form of nick-name, whether they want one or not.
As a child, Kytes was attacked and mauled by a dog belonging to one of the guards who previously worked the streets of Abah's Landing, giving him most of the ugly scarring that can be seen on his face. He's cripplingly terrified of dogs or anything distinctly canine, to the point he will blindly hurt any canine that gets too close to him. Reno has tried to help him overcome his phobia with having him help take care of some wolf pups, but its been slow-going and met with a lot of grumbling and complaints along the way.
While he hasn't had an episode in a long time, Kytes has also suffered deep bouts of depression and self-hated, even having tried to end his life several times unsuccessfully, but so far he's gone more than a year now without incident.
Kytes doesn't tend to use his voice because he fears others discovering his speech disabilities and taking advantage of or mistreating him because of it, viewing him as weak and stupid, since that's the treatment he got most of his life. The Telepathy his shapeshifter strain grants him has somewhat lessened that fear since he can respond to people properly now - in full and coherent sentences - but unfortunately some of the mentality that people don't want to hear what he has to say remains out of conditioning, so what he has to say is more often than not less than helpful.
Watchful and clever in most matters of survival, Kytes is a skilled thief, who steals often and without shame when he thinks he can get away with it. He'll kill if he has to, but he's a bit more hesitant to take life than he is to steal, depending on the situation. He tends to take offense to others trying to dote over him or treat him as incapable of doing things on his own, though he does grant Reno a little bit more leeway where that's concerned.
When he's not putting up a tough and aloof front to protect himself, and when comfortable around another person, he can be quite delightful and warm, receptive to what they have to say and deeply interested in what they're doing. His true colors beneath all the roughness and jaded distrust is that of an excitable extrovert, undyingly loyal and affectionate, and a little bit mischievous.
That said, his sense of self and confidence are fragile, and its easy for him to become jealous when too much attention is on others by people who are important to him, and just as easy for him to fall prey to crippling anxiety and self-doubt about his own inherent worth. This couldn't be any more true than with Reno, who Kytes centers his whole reality around and uses to define who he is and where his place in the world lies, unhealthy of an obsession though it may be.
Due to a mix of his poor attitude and relationships with most people, as well as his disabilities, Kytes has a difficult time remembering individuals unless he's had a lot of exposure to them. He especially has a difficult time remembering individual faces, and often knows people better by other defining traits like their voice, hair, and what they wear. Its also uncommon that Kytes remembers names, partially because of disinterest and the belief that most people he meets will hold no permanence in his life, so those who make enough of an impression to be remembered are often given some form of nick-name, whether they want one or not.
As a child, Kytes was attacked and mauled by a dog belonging to one of the guards who previously worked the streets of Abah's Landing, giving him most of the ugly scarring that can be seen on his face. He's cripplingly terrified of dogs or anything distinctly canine, to the point he will blindly hurt any canine that gets too close to him. Reno has tried to help him overcome his phobia with having him help take care of some wolf pups, but its been slow-going and met with a lot of grumbling and complaints along the way.
While he hasn't had an episode in a long time, Kytes has also suffered deep bouts of depression and self-hated, even having tried to end his life several times unsuccessfully, but so far he's gone more than a year now without incident.
History.
Trigger Warnings: Rape mention, pedophilia mention, child abuse, ableism, suicide, age gaps
Kytes doesn’t remember any parents or family, having spent all of his life that he remembers on the streets. There were some faces more familiar to him than others in the beginning, but they’ve become too blurred with time to remember who they were that raised him at his earliest years when he was too young and dependent to look after himself.
Even had he not been on the streets, Kytes was not born a healthy child, but instead one with a heart defect. He grew tired more often than was normal even for most other children, excitement and stress wearing him out frequently so he spent a large part of his time sleeping, and being more susceptible to getting cold (anemia) and coughing fits (respiratory distress). Those who knew or learned of his weak heart predicted he would most certainly die young, something he heard people say on many occasions and eventually came to believe himself as he grew older.
When Kytes was still young and developing but old enough to start fending for himself and speak, he fell from a height and hit his head hard in the fall. His head injury was treated by local healers, but it jumbled his speech and made him near impossible to understand, rambling and stuttering over every word he tried to speak. The healers who treated his injury said his heart condition and bad blood flow was likely a contributing factor, and that he would either improve with time or be stunted and “dumb” for the rest of his life after the injury, however long his life would even be.
Kytes’ speech did eventually improve little by little, but he still couldn’t form proper spoken sentences, sentences fragmenting with missing words or stuttering over and getting stuck on certain sounds and syllables mid-sentence (hard sounds like K or T are especially tough for him, but it can be anything), with his speech impediment fluctuating worse on some days and better on others. While Kytes’ speech was forever damaged (speech aphasia), his understanding and knowledge of words and language remained in-tact just the same as if he never had the injury, but it didn’t stop others from treating him as though it was his intelligence that was damaged.
It started with others pitying and doting over him, offering more help than he needed when he was still fairly young, but eventually led into other things. Others refused to trust him with even basic tasks he was fully capable of doing, a small nuisance at first, but then a large problem when he couldn’t find work others would give him to earn money or food when there were others seen as more capable and smarter than him and--as they saw it--less likely to screw up.
Growing bitter and desperate to prove he could look after himself, he turned somewhat rebellious. He sought opportunities on his own and turned to things like theft when those opportunities didn’t pan out. When people did start offering him opportunities for work, those opportunities often turned bad, people with ill intentions picking him out as an easy target to make do dangerous work that would likely get him killed or victimized for their own satisfaction or thrills. Sometimes this led to sexual assault.
Kytes learned quickly that his word against others and pleas for help or vengeance for the abuses he suffered carried little weight as a street-rat with nothing, and even less weight from someone who physically couldn’t speak up for themselves properly. He eventually realized too that it was for exactly that reason certain types of people targeted him, and so he eventually grew to trust no one and view everyone with paranoia.
While Kytes managed to survive his time on the streets, his body became decorated in various different types of scars. The scars on his face and part of one arm were from a dog mauling when guards caught him stealing and he fled. Others are from multiple times where he’s been beaten, stabbed, burned, or jumped and assaulted, sometimes from guards when he got caught breaking the law, other times by people he pickpocketed or stole from, or merely people he pissed off for one reason or another.
He grew almost semi-feral, like a skittish stray cat that would bolt at the sight of others and refuse to even take charity on the suspicion it would come with some expectations for a favor, or payback, or a temptation to seek after and follow someone who would only seek to hurt him or sell him into slavery, which he only barely dodged several times.
By chance, Kytes and Reno crossed paths while Kytes was breaking and entering shops to steal, refusing Reno’s offer to stay with him and only reluctantly taking his offered gold to get rid of him. Reno mentioned he would return to check on him, though by the time he did, Kytes had already forgotten, more focused on scraping by day to day. Reno returned to Hew’s Bane to check on him several times, bringing gold with him each time, but leaving Kytes be since the boy refused to go with him.
Eventually, Reno returned to find Kytes on a rooftop where he limped off to hide after getting caught thieving again and was beaten by the local guard, his weak heart struggling from the injuries and his poor living conditions. Too weak to refuse or resist, Kytes was taken to Reno’s home in The Rift to recover. Reno was sure he wouldn’t make it through the night, though make it through the night he did.
Dissuaded from running off on his own by the unfamiliar, cold region far from his old home, Kytes stayed with Reno day after day, then days turned into weeks.
Eventually, Reno introduced him to the Dark Brotherhood as an initiate, and took on the role of mentor and protector for the homeless boy. Kytes started to stay more willingly with him where it was safe, though it took a few months for him to properly trust that Reno wasn’t just out to use and hurt him as well.
Reno later introduced Kytes to the Kråke Clan, but so far he’d been hesitant to warm up to all the new faces, and reluctant to care about the group, even more so after seeing betrayal within the Brotherhood that led him to drift away from them.
Over time, and over the course of many disputes and relapses--some where Kytes attempted to hurt himself, others where he ran away--Kytes eventually came to tell Reno about what his mentor had already started to suspect from some of his leeriness, that Kytes had been a victim of rape while living on the streets, something Reno swore to help him heal from.
Reno also made many attempts to make Kytes take interest in the Kråke Clan, with little luck, but what did catch his interest was taking up work in the southern lands of Elsweyr, the location of a Dragon Crisis that had sprung up months earlier, joining up with a newly re-formed Dragonguard led by Sai Sahan.
Having been with Reno nearing a year, and slowly starting to mingle with members of Kråke and the Dragonguard a little bit more at a time in a long-term attempt to socialize him, Kytes started to develop intrusive feelings of attraction towards Reno, mentally unable to separate his past conditioning of abuse from his newly experienced feelings of being around someone genuinely safe and caring. Patiently, Reno tried to steer Kytes away from him with gentle refusals and guidance about what healthy relationships between adults and teens were supposed to be, with mixed results and often a lot of distress on Kytes’ part.
Because of Reno’s constant rejections and Kytes’ own injured feelings around it, attributing his refusals with paranoid reasoning about not being “good enough” for Reno, seeing himself as “damaged goods” only good enough for those who wanted to hurt and use him, he started taking on risks with strangers as an outlet for his intrusive urges that only grew worse the more he tried to ignore them.
Reno discovered Kytes’ risk-taking straight away. Enraged by Kytes’ past abusers leading him to allowing others to hurt him or wanting to hurt himself, Reno traveled to Abah’s Landing with Kytes to hunt down and assassinate everyone that had ever sexually assaulted him in his childhood. Reno ended up burning some of the buildings to the ground and Shifting to tear people apart in the streets before fleeing with Kytes back to his home in the Rift. Its for this reason Reno became exiled from and Wanted in Hew’s Bane.
Concerned about Kytes being able to protect himself in Reno’s absence, as well as giving his body an immunity to illness that could ravage his fragile health, Reno offered to pass along his shapeshifting abilities to Kytes, which Kytes accepted with some reluctance after months of consideration, and took on the form of a wolf (he has the ability to turn into other animals as well, but hasn’t yet figured out how).
This also passed along a linked ability to perform telepathy and bypass the language barriers caused by Kytes’ head injury and resulting speech aphasia, though he still has trouble articulating what he wants to say to others besides Reno due to long-term conditioning and dismissal rather than a physical inability to do so, fully believing others don’t care for what he has to say.
While the transition was successful, it wasn’t without its own complications, most tied into the nature of being a wolf shifter. At first it was a lack of recognition of who Reno was as his body and mind adjusted, as well as an inability to shift back without magical intervention at first. Then it became heightened co-dependence and distrust of others not part of Reno’s “pack”---which was anyone not sharing Reno’s shifter bloodline, i.e. everyone except for him and Reno.
Reno also made the (unintended) mistake of Turning Kytes during winter, mating season for wolves, which further exacerbated the problem of Kytes’ hypersexuality and intrusive feelings. Reno again refused Kytes’ attempts many times, on the grounds that Kytes was far too young for him.
In early 2E 588, Reno decided a birth date for Kytes to have one to celebrate, since Kytes had never known a birthday before then, marking it as the 15th of First Seed (March), when Kytes would be 17, to everyone’s knowledge including Kytes’ own.
Reno eventually, reluctantly, caved to Kytes’ wishes when Kytes unintentionally triggered his own debilitating trauma tied to his former mate dying young, telling Reno he would “wait as long as he needed to until he was an age Reno would accept, but he doesn’t know that he has that long to wait”, owing to his heart condition and shortened lifespan. Panicking at the suggestion that death would take Kytes away from him too soon as well, Reno gave in to his wishes if it would “make Kytes happy”.
Though Reno technically agreed to become Kytes’ mate, it was still with great hesitance and reluctance, never initiating anything first or taking control of intimate situations, not even on Kytes’ insistence to do so, for fear of hurting or re-traumatizing him, as well as the fear that Kytes would again seek out someone else that would hurt or kill him if he kept rejecting him.
After a few minor incidents of conflict between Kytes and members of Kråke Clan, Kytes was separated from Reno against his will by one of the Clan Heads, Spyttebrann, in an attempt to condition him to the presence of others without being afraid of and dependent on Reno for his protection against them.
In time though, there would be more conflicts between him and members of the Kråke Clan, some more productive than others, but most of them more triggering for him than anything, reinforcing his ideas of distrust in others.
Around the time that Kytes began to, tentatively, warm up towards those in the Clan with whom the tension was highest, those same individuals fell out of the Clan permanently and weren’t seen again, again reinforcing an idea of non-permanence about others in his life save mostly for those out to harm him.
It wasn’t long after, with the Clan’s involvement in Western Skyrim dealing with a recent uprising of Reachmen and vampiric dangers, that a large battle saw Reno returning with an injury that left him blind in one eye, something Kytes was both mournful and outraged by and led to a newfound distaste towards vampires.
While already mates under Hircine’s sphere of manbeasts, Reno and Kytes were officially wed in a private ceremony under Mara’s blessing in the Temple of the Divines in Alinor at the start of autumn in 2E 588.
After some more tension between Kytes and the Clan due to some life-threatening injuries Reno received fighting a war against the Nozarga orc cult in the north, the Clan’s healer Ster suggests Reno help Kytes’ insecurity by finding him some sort of task or job special to Kytes alone. Give him some purpose to focus on and build his confidence through accomplishment.
In the spring, Reno and Kytes explored the Gold Coast during Reno’s off-time from Clan duties, finding an old Ayleid ruin located halfway between Anvil and Abah’s Landing, exploring the ruin that was mostly uninhabited save for scattered wildlife and some old, glass greenhouses and a windmill at the top. Seemingly long-abandoned, Kytes and Reno decided to make it theirs.
While clearing the ruins of old debris, overgrown plants, and wild animals, Reno and Kytes spotted a ghost--specifically, that of a cat, which led them to a hidden grave site with several tombstones and a single skeleton. Kytes managed to find an old journal of the ruin’s previous owners, who had used the greenhouses and coast to grow apothecary herbs for potions and poisons, and crops to grind in the windmill. While most of the former residents had been buried, the last one--an Orc who had passed of old age--had had no one to dig his grave, the one who’s skeleton lay exposed over the other graves.
Deciding to make use of the old structures left behind, Reno and Kytes plan to use the greenhouses to grow crops like wheat and herbs, and discuss opening a business, including “(not so) honestly obtained” goods. To support their new enterprise, they order in lumber to build a dock closer to the coast for boats and ships, and get to work.
It takes some weeks, but the two of them manage to build their own dock out into the water, Reno pushing Kytes into leading the endeavor as Ster suggested, since Reno is more a blacksmith than carpenter. Kytes struggled with it a bit, but called on the knowledge he’d picked up observing and working at the docks of Abah’s Landing when he was younger.
Reno later shows Alekt their progress and arranges with him for opening a smuggling trade port to be Kytes’ role within the Clan to bring in gold and have more of a purpose, something Alekt approves of and lends a bit of aid in having some defenses and equipment shipped in.
Somewhere around mid to end of summer, Reno took Kytes before Hircine to undertake a long-overdue Hunt to prove himself an Alpha, as the mate of a Champion and pack alpha, and technically an alpha in his own right. Hircine tasked Kytes with traveling a dangerous stretch of the Hunting Grounds known as Wolf’s Fall, marking his quarry as a pack of wolves; Kytes own greatest fear.
Hircine gave him an ultimatum for the Hunt; he would demand the head of a wolf presented before his altar by the time it was completed; Kytes’ targets, or his own.
While Reno promised to be there for him, Hircine forbade him from attending the Hunt, blocking his access since he would more than likely interfere and help Kytes complete his hunt. Instead, Hircine assigned a spirit in the Grounds to be his guide. One of Reno’s past lives, Cinead, who would only be there to offer basic advice and observe.
Kytes first had to travel through deep underbrush, to the edge of a foggy lake filled with all manner of dangerous animal and daedric creatures lurking in its waters, many of which tried to chomp him as he made his way over a narrow floating bridge of fallen trees and rocks, then over cliffs where large, aggressive mountain goats tried to block his passage, and again through the brush to fight off boars and badgers. All with Cinead heckling at his heels the whole way.
As his path took him into the mountains, a misstep over a thick covering of ivy dropped him down into a hole, knocking his head on the rock on the way down and falling unconscious for a couple days. When he awoke, he barely remembered where he was or what he was doing, but knew at least he had to get out of where he’d fallen. He managed to find a hidden path behind another tangle of brush and ivy, traveling a maze of caves before coming across one where a sabre cat lay in wait.
Unwilling to fight the sabre cat despite Cinead’s insistence, Kytes tried to flee, only to end up trapped under it. In a moment of panic, Kytes instinctually Shifted into a hawk for the first time and flew away from the cat, up into the mountains, although he needed some help from Cinead to Shift back.
At long last, Kytes managed to find a wolf, unseen as it passed him by to find water. Kytes snuck up on the wolf, managing to slay it with his staff, and collected its head to present to Hircine.
As Kytes tried to find his way back, he and Cinead stumbled right into a wolf den--with many more wolves, all angry at his trespass and going for the attack. Outnumbered three-to-one, Kytes was forced to Shift to defend himself as a wolf. After a long, grueling fight that almost cost Kytes his life, he managed to--barely--prevail, killing the pack and surviving with serious injuries. He also went out of his way to kill a young yearling wolf that went to investigate after the fight was done, before trying to find his way back.
He didn’t make it very far, as Cinead showed him a path over a fallen tree and he collapsed at the base of the trunk, howling for Reno. With the Hunt completed, Hircine finally allowed him into the Grounds to find Kytes injured, treating the wounds as best he could in the moment. While laying there, a few small pups from the den approached, lucky that Kytes was too injured to attack them as well, still on-edge from the fight and fear-blind.
Reno comforted Kytes and helped him Shift back into a Mer, taking him to the Clan’s Sanctuary to heal from his injuries, and then home. While Kytes did start to physically recover, he was plagued by nightmares, as being mauled by dogs/wolves was one of his greatest fears, almost come-true in the Hunting Grounds.
As autumn began, Reno and Kytes attended a large market gathering at the Leyawiin docks in Blackwood, contacting the Golden Gryphon Company through Dannoch Thousand-Scars to try and land their first business partner, making arrangements to meet and see the location of Kytes and Reno’s smuggling operation.
After fully healing from his injuries, Reno took Kytes before Hircine again to claim his prize for a completed Hunt, a plant-like mount in the likeness of a camel. However, Hircine declared that while Kytes had fulfilled his task to bring a wolf’s head to his altar and proven himself Hunter, there was still one more thing to do. Two pups from the slaughtered pack remained alive, and Kytes was to do with them as he saw fit.
Traveling back to Wolf’s Fall, Reno and Kytes found the pups, debating what to do with them. While Kytes’ first choice was to kill the pups, Reno convinced him to keep them alive and take them home with them, hoping to have Kytes help raise the pups and hopefully conquer his fear of them.
Even had he not been on the streets, Kytes was not born a healthy child, but instead one with a heart defect. He grew tired more often than was normal even for most other children, excitement and stress wearing him out frequently so he spent a large part of his time sleeping, and being more susceptible to getting cold (anemia) and coughing fits (respiratory distress). Those who knew or learned of his weak heart predicted he would most certainly die young, something he heard people say on many occasions and eventually came to believe himself as he grew older.
When Kytes was still young and developing but old enough to start fending for himself and speak, he fell from a height and hit his head hard in the fall. His head injury was treated by local healers, but it jumbled his speech and made him near impossible to understand, rambling and stuttering over every word he tried to speak. The healers who treated his injury said his heart condition and bad blood flow was likely a contributing factor, and that he would either improve with time or be stunted and “dumb” for the rest of his life after the injury, however long his life would even be.
Kytes’ speech did eventually improve little by little, but he still couldn’t form proper spoken sentences, sentences fragmenting with missing words or stuttering over and getting stuck on certain sounds and syllables mid-sentence (hard sounds like K or T are especially tough for him, but it can be anything), with his speech impediment fluctuating worse on some days and better on others. While Kytes’ speech was forever damaged (speech aphasia), his understanding and knowledge of words and language remained in-tact just the same as if he never had the injury, but it didn’t stop others from treating him as though it was his intelligence that was damaged.
It started with others pitying and doting over him, offering more help than he needed when he was still fairly young, but eventually led into other things. Others refused to trust him with even basic tasks he was fully capable of doing, a small nuisance at first, but then a large problem when he couldn’t find work others would give him to earn money or food when there were others seen as more capable and smarter than him and--as they saw it--less likely to screw up.
Growing bitter and desperate to prove he could look after himself, he turned somewhat rebellious. He sought opportunities on his own and turned to things like theft when those opportunities didn’t pan out. When people did start offering him opportunities for work, those opportunities often turned bad, people with ill intentions picking him out as an easy target to make do dangerous work that would likely get him killed or victimized for their own satisfaction or thrills. Sometimes this led to sexual assault.
Kytes learned quickly that his word against others and pleas for help or vengeance for the abuses he suffered carried little weight as a street-rat with nothing, and even less weight from someone who physically couldn’t speak up for themselves properly. He eventually realized too that it was for exactly that reason certain types of people targeted him, and so he eventually grew to trust no one and view everyone with paranoia.
While Kytes managed to survive his time on the streets, his body became decorated in various different types of scars. The scars on his face and part of one arm were from a dog mauling when guards caught him stealing and he fled. Others are from multiple times where he’s been beaten, stabbed, burned, or jumped and assaulted, sometimes from guards when he got caught breaking the law, other times by people he pickpocketed or stole from, or merely people he pissed off for one reason or another.
He grew almost semi-feral, like a skittish stray cat that would bolt at the sight of others and refuse to even take charity on the suspicion it would come with some expectations for a favor, or payback, or a temptation to seek after and follow someone who would only seek to hurt him or sell him into slavery, which he only barely dodged several times.
By chance, Kytes and Reno crossed paths while Kytes was breaking and entering shops to steal, refusing Reno’s offer to stay with him and only reluctantly taking his offered gold to get rid of him. Reno mentioned he would return to check on him, though by the time he did, Kytes had already forgotten, more focused on scraping by day to day. Reno returned to Hew’s Bane to check on him several times, bringing gold with him each time, but leaving Kytes be since the boy refused to go with him.
Eventually, Reno returned to find Kytes on a rooftop where he limped off to hide after getting caught thieving again and was beaten by the local guard, his weak heart struggling from the injuries and his poor living conditions. Too weak to refuse or resist, Kytes was taken to Reno’s home in The Rift to recover. Reno was sure he wouldn’t make it through the night, though make it through the night he did.
Dissuaded from running off on his own by the unfamiliar, cold region far from his old home, Kytes stayed with Reno day after day, then days turned into weeks.
Eventually, Reno introduced him to the Dark Brotherhood as an initiate, and took on the role of mentor and protector for the homeless boy. Kytes started to stay more willingly with him where it was safe, though it took a few months for him to properly trust that Reno wasn’t just out to use and hurt him as well.
Reno later introduced Kytes to the Kråke Clan, but so far he’d been hesitant to warm up to all the new faces, and reluctant to care about the group, even more so after seeing betrayal within the Brotherhood that led him to drift away from them.
Over time, and over the course of many disputes and relapses--some where Kytes attempted to hurt himself, others where he ran away--Kytes eventually came to tell Reno about what his mentor had already started to suspect from some of his leeriness, that Kytes had been a victim of rape while living on the streets, something Reno swore to help him heal from.
Reno also made many attempts to make Kytes take interest in the Kråke Clan, with little luck, but what did catch his interest was taking up work in the southern lands of Elsweyr, the location of a Dragon Crisis that had sprung up months earlier, joining up with a newly re-formed Dragonguard led by Sai Sahan.
Having been with Reno nearing a year, and slowly starting to mingle with members of Kråke and the Dragonguard a little bit more at a time in a long-term attempt to socialize him, Kytes started to develop intrusive feelings of attraction towards Reno, mentally unable to separate his past conditioning of abuse from his newly experienced feelings of being around someone genuinely safe and caring. Patiently, Reno tried to steer Kytes away from him with gentle refusals and guidance about what healthy relationships between adults and teens were supposed to be, with mixed results and often a lot of distress on Kytes’ part.
Because of Reno’s constant rejections and Kytes’ own injured feelings around it, attributing his refusals with paranoid reasoning about not being “good enough” for Reno, seeing himself as “damaged goods” only good enough for those who wanted to hurt and use him, he started taking on risks with strangers as an outlet for his intrusive urges that only grew worse the more he tried to ignore them.
Reno discovered Kytes’ risk-taking straight away. Enraged by Kytes’ past abusers leading him to allowing others to hurt him or wanting to hurt himself, Reno traveled to Abah’s Landing with Kytes to hunt down and assassinate everyone that had ever sexually assaulted him in his childhood. Reno ended up burning some of the buildings to the ground and Shifting to tear people apart in the streets before fleeing with Kytes back to his home in the Rift. Its for this reason Reno became exiled from and Wanted in Hew’s Bane.
Concerned about Kytes being able to protect himself in Reno’s absence, as well as giving his body an immunity to illness that could ravage his fragile health, Reno offered to pass along his shapeshifting abilities to Kytes, which Kytes accepted with some reluctance after months of consideration, and took on the form of a wolf (he has the ability to turn into other animals as well, but hasn’t yet figured out how).
This also passed along a linked ability to perform telepathy and bypass the language barriers caused by Kytes’ head injury and resulting speech aphasia, though he still has trouble articulating what he wants to say to others besides Reno due to long-term conditioning and dismissal rather than a physical inability to do so, fully believing others don’t care for what he has to say.
While the transition was successful, it wasn’t without its own complications, most tied into the nature of being a wolf shifter. At first it was a lack of recognition of who Reno was as his body and mind adjusted, as well as an inability to shift back without magical intervention at first. Then it became heightened co-dependence and distrust of others not part of Reno’s “pack”---which was anyone not sharing Reno’s shifter bloodline, i.e. everyone except for him and Reno.
Reno also made the (unintended) mistake of Turning Kytes during winter, mating season for wolves, which further exacerbated the problem of Kytes’ hypersexuality and intrusive feelings. Reno again refused Kytes’ attempts many times, on the grounds that Kytes was far too young for him.
In early 2E 588, Reno decided a birth date for Kytes to have one to celebrate, since Kytes had never known a birthday before then, marking it as the 15th of First Seed (March), when Kytes would be 17, to everyone’s knowledge including Kytes’ own.
Reno eventually, reluctantly, caved to Kytes’ wishes when Kytes unintentionally triggered his own debilitating trauma tied to his former mate dying young, telling Reno he would “wait as long as he needed to until he was an age Reno would accept, but he doesn’t know that he has that long to wait”, owing to his heart condition and shortened lifespan. Panicking at the suggestion that death would take Kytes away from him too soon as well, Reno gave in to his wishes if it would “make Kytes happy”.
Though Reno technically agreed to become Kytes’ mate, it was still with great hesitance and reluctance, never initiating anything first or taking control of intimate situations, not even on Kytes’ insistence to do so, for fear of hurting or re-traumatizing him, as well as the fear that Kytes would again seek out someone else that would hurt or kill him if he kept rejecting him.
After a few minor incidents of conflict between Kytes and members of Kråke Clan, Kytes was separated from Reno against his will by one of the Clan Heads, Spyttebrann, in an attempt to condition him to the presence of others without being afraid of and dependent on Reno for his protection against them.
In time though, there would be more conflicts between him and members of the Kråke Clan, some more productive than others, but most of them more triggering for him than anything, reinforcing his ideas of distrust in others.
Around the time that Kytes began to, tentatively, warm up towards those in the Clan with whom the tension was highest, those same individuals fell out of the Clan permanently and weren’t seen again, again reinforcing an idea of non-permanence about others in his life save mostly for those out to harm him.
It wasn’t long after, with the Clan’s involvement in Western Skyrim dealing with a recent uprising of Reachmen and vampiric dangers, that a large battle saw Reno returning with an injury that left him blind in one eye, something Kytes was both mournful and outraged by and led to a newfound distaste towards vampires.
While already mates under Hircine’s sphere of manbeasts, Reno and Kytes were officially wed in a private ceremony under Mara’s blessing in the Temple of the Divines in Alinor at the start of autumn in 2E 588.
After some more tension between Kytes and the Clan due to some life-threatening injuries Reno received fighting a war against the Nozarga orc cult in the north, the Clan’s healer Ster suggests Reno help Kytes’ insecurity by finding him some sort of task or job special to Kytes alone. Give him some purpose to focus on and build his confidence through accomplishment.
In the spring, Reno and Kytes explored the Gold Coast during Reno’s off-time from Clan duties, finding an old Ayleid ruin located halfway between Anvil and Abah’s Landing, exploring the ruin that was mostly uninhabited save for scattered wildlife and some old, glass greenhouses and a windmill at the top. Seemingly long-abandoned, Kytes and Reno decided to make it theirs.
While clearing the ruins of old debris, overgrown plants, and wild animals, Reno and Kytes spotted a ghost--specifically, that of a cat, which led them to a hidden grave site with several tombstones and a single skeleton. Kytes managed to find an old journal of the ruin’s previous owners, who had used the greenhouses and coast to grow apothecary herbs for potions and poisons, and crops to grind in the windmill. While most of the former residents had been buried, the last one--an Orc who had passed of old age--had had no one to dig his grave, the one who’s skeleton lay exposed over the other graves.
Deciding to make use of the old structures left behind, Reno and Kytes plan to use the greenhouses to grow crops like wheat and herbs, and discuss opening a business, including “(not so) honestly obtained” goods. To support their new enterprise, they order in lumber to build a dock closer to the coast for boats and ships, and get to work.
It takes some weeks, but the two of them manage to build their own dock out into the water, Reno pushing Kytes into leading the endeavor as Ster suggested, since Reno is more a blacksmith than carpenter. Kytes struggled with it a bit, but called on the knowledge he’d picked up observing and working at the docks of Abah’s Landing when he was younger.
Reno later shows Alekt their progress and arranges with him for opening a smuggling trade port to be Kytes’ role within the Clan to bring in gold and have more of a purpose, something Alekt approves of and lends a bit of aid in having some defenses and equipment shipped in.
Somewhere around mid to end of summer, Reno took Kytes before Hircine to undertake a long-overdue Hunt to prove himself an Alpha, as the mate of a Champion and pack alpha, and technically an alpha in his own right. Hircine tasked Kytes with traveling a dangerous stretch of the Hunting Grounds known as Wolf’s Fall, marking his quarry as a pack of wolves; Kytes own greatest fear.
Hircine gave him an ultimatum for the Hunt; he would demand the head of a wolf presented before his altar by the time it was completed; Kytes’ targets, or his own.
While Reno promised to be there for him, Hircine forbade him from attending the Hunt, blocking his access since he would more than likely interfere and help Kytes complete his hunt. Instead, Hircine assigned a spirit in the Grounds to be his guide. One of Reno’s past lives, Cinead, who would only be there to offer basic advice and observe.
Kytes first had to travel through deep underbrush, to the edge of a foggy lake filled with all manner of dangerous animal and daedric creatures lurking in its waters, many of which tried to chomp him as he made his way over a narrow floating bridge of fallen trees and rocks, then over cliffs where large, aggressive mountain goats tried to block his passage, and again through the brush to fight off boars and badgers. All with Cinead heckling at his heels the whole way.
As his path took him into the mountains, a misstep over a thick covering of ivy dropped him down into a hole, knocking his head on the rock on the way down and falling unconscious for a couple days. When he awoke, he barely remembered where he was or what he was doing, but knew at least he had to get out of where he’d fallen. He managed to find a hidden path behind another tangle of brush and ivy, traveling a maze of caves before coming across one where a sabre cat lay in wait.
Unwilling to fight the sabre cat despite Cinead’s insistence, Kytes tried to flee, only to end up trapped under it. In a moment of panic, Kytes instinctually Shifted into a hawk for the first time and flew away from the cat, up into the mountains, although he needed some help from Cinead to Shift back.
At long last, Kytes managed to find a wolf, unseen as it passed him by to find water. Kytes snuck up on the wolf, managing to slay it with his staff, and collected its head to present to Hircine.
As Kytes tried to find his way back, he and Cinead stumbled right into a wolf den--with many more wolves, all angry at his trespass and going for the attack. Outnumbered three-to-one, Kytes was forced to Shift to defend himself as a wolf. After a long, grueling fight that almost cost Kytes his life, he managed to--barely--prevail, killing the pack and surviving with serious injuries. He also went out of his way to kill a young yearling wolf that went to investigate after the fight was done, before trying to find his way back.
He didn’t make it very far, as Cinead showed him a path over a fallen tree and he collapsed at the base of the trunk, howling for Reno. With the Hunt completed, Hircine finally allowed him into the Grounds to find Kytes injured, treating the wounds as best he could in the moment. While laying there, a few small pups from the den approached, lucky that Kytes was too injured to attack them as well, still on-edge from the fight and fear-blind.
Reno comforted Kytes and helped him Shift back into a Mer, taking him to the Clan’s Sanctuary to heal from his injuries, and then home. While Kytes did start to physically recover, he was plagued by nightmares, as being mauled by dogs/wolves was one of his greatest fears, almost come-true in the Hunting Grounds.
As autumn began, Reno and Kytes attended a large market gathering at the Leyawiin docks in Blackwood, contacting the Golden Gryphon Company through Dannoch Thousand-Scars to try and land their first business partner, making arrangements to meet and see the location of Kytes and Reno’s smuggling operation.
After fully healing from his injuries, Reno took Kytes before Hircine again to claim his prize for a completed Hunt, a plant-like mount in the likeness of a camel. However, Hircine declared that while Kytes had fulfilled his task to bring a wolf’s head to his altar and proven himself Hunter, there was still one more thing to do. Two pups from the slaughtered pack remained alive, and Kytes was to do with them as he saw fit.
Traveling back to Wolf’s Fall, Reno and Kytes found the pups, debating what to do with them. While Kytes’ first choice was to kill the pups, Reno convinced him to keep them alive and take them home with them, hoping to have Kytes help raise the pups and hopefully conquer his fear of them.