Melissa McCann- Shannon
Stats
Gender: Female
Age: 22
Nature: Wolf
Occupation: Student
Appearance: Melissa is on the short side, standing at about 5’3”. When she is healthy, her build is solid, though at the start of her life in Stone Mountain, she has the emaciated look of the newly infected lycanthrope. Her hair is a muddy brown, wavy and thick and hanging to mid-back. There’s a streak she’s dyed pink, though that seems unlikely to last long under the circumstances. Her eyes are large and gray. She has a perpetually youthful-looking face, which will probably cause people to card her long past her 21st birthday. She typically dresses in jeans and T-shirts, although just lately nothing quite seems to fit her anymore.
Personality: Melissa is a quiet girl who loathes conflict but seems to court trouble anyway. It’s in her nature to want to please people, and she does whatever she can to make people happy with her. She’s friendly, although more likely to hang back and observe others rather than leaping into the fray. She’s loyal to those she thinks deserve it, and she soaks up kindness and affection like a sponge to water.
That doesn’t mean she’s incapable of anger. It’s often slow to manifest, but despite her gentle nature, she can be fierce when sufficiently motivated. She tends toward cool, collected rage rather than a hot, short fuse of anger.
Her friends would also describe her as something of a social justice warrior. She has a Tumblr, on which she reblogs activist news, and she was very involved in various activist student groups over the last year. In fact, she lets out her passion through her writing. She’s been careful to keep her online and offline identities as separate as she can, because she’s fairly certain no one in her real life would believe she was capable of flights of oratory, and no one who knows her online would imagine that she’s so mousy and quiet in real life.
History:
Melissa grew up in St. Louis. Her parents were both fairly well-off financially. Her dad was a lawyer and her mother was a financial planner. They weren’t abusive, but they generally left her in the care of nannies when she was growing up, and were quicker to offer criticism than real praise. Still, the way she sees it, she’s hardly had the worst childhood out there, and her present is what’s probably going to end up giving her years of therapy.
At eighteen, she enrolled at the University of Missouri in Springfield. After excelling in all of her English classes, during her sophomore year, she declared a journalism major.
Then, just at the start of her spring semester, shape-shifters came out of the closet. During the last few years, her father had become something of a hobbyist survivalist, hiring people to grow a garden and tend livestock on the extensive acres of land he’s purchased. He also has been stockpiling guns and ammunition. Melissa thinks this is ridiculous, and during their last Christmas together, she pretty much tuned him out when he started talking about his plans for when the country eventually falls apart.
Then the shape-shifters came out of the closet, and a new manic gleam entered her father’s eye. He figured that if the world really was going to be overrun with vampires, then he’d better be as prepared as possible. Devon McCann was not going to be one of the human sheeple. No. He was going to become a Wolf.
He knew the risks. No one reputable would turn him. But eventually, he contacted enough people and greased the right palms, and a month ago, on the full moon, someone turned him. Whoever turned him wasn’t that important; he was a shifter who needed money and didn’t exactly have a Pack that was going to tell him no.
That might have been the end of it, except that Melissa happened to be at home during that full moon. She was taking a night walk, counting down the days before she could return to college, when she came upon her father and the other wolf. The lone wolf who infected her father took one look at her, saw nubile barely-legal young woman, and decided she would make a suitable mate for him. So he bit her, too. Her father stood there, stunned, and didn’t react fast enough, which is something Melissa has yet to entirely forgive him for.
While she was still capable of doing research, she did some Googling and found out about Stone Mountain. As it happened, her Internet friend Josh lives there with his partners, and so Melissa contacted him. She half expected he wouldn’t believe her story, but he did, and extended an invitation for her to move in while she waited to figure out if she was infected or not.
She packed up all her worldly goods, and every tickle in the throat, every joint ache and every mild headache made her wonder if it was an onset of the illness that presages becoming a werewolf.
She tried to convince her dad to come with her, but her father refused, claiming he’d be fine where he was. He has also not shown any of the lycanthropy symptoms, which makes Melissa wonder if the infection might not have taken in him.
Abilities: She’s a talented writer. And she considers her newly established empathic abilities to be a minor psychic power, though she has no idea yet that it’s standard operating procedure for a new shifter.
Weaknesses: She’s conflict-averse and often finds it better to go along in order to get along. She’s also found herself in a near-constant state of low-level freak-out thanks to her newly acquired lycanthropy. She has no idea what she’s doing, and doesn’t understand her sudden cravings for meat, or the low-grade pain she feels when she goes too long without touch.
Quirks: Since she’s spent a lot of time in her own company, she often finds herself muttering to herself when she thinks she’s alone.
Weapons: None except the ones someone will probably need to teach her to use.
Family: Her father, Devon McCann, and her mother, Gail, both NPCs.
Vehicle: A 2006 Toyota Carola.
Home: At the moment, she’s couch-surfing with Josh, Mica and Ben. She’ll probably move to the Pack house once she learns it exists.
Gender: Female
Age: 22
Nature: Wolf
Occupation: Student
Appearance: Melissa is on the short side, standing at about 5’3”. When she is healthy, her build is solid, though at the start of her life in Stone Mountain, she has the emaciated look of the newly infected lycanthrope. Her hair is a muddy brown, wavy and thick and hanging to mid-back. There’s a streak she’s dyed pink, though that seems unlikely to last long under the circumstances. Her eyes are large and gray. She has a perpetually youthful-looking face, which will probably cause people to card her long past her 21st birthday. She typically dresses in jeans and T-shirts, although just lately nothing quite seems to fit her anymore.
Personality: Melissa is a quiet girl who loathes conflict but seems to court trouble anyway. It’s in her nature to want to please people, and she does whatever she can to make people happy with her. She’s friendly, although more likely to hang back and observe others rather than leaping into the fray. She’s loyal to those she thinks deserve it, and she soaks up kindness and affection like a sponge to water.
That doesn’t mean she’s incapable of anger. It’s often slow to manifest, but despite her gentle nature, she can be fierce when sufficiently motivated. She tends toward cool, collected rage rather than a hot, short fuse of anger.
Her friends would also describe her as something of a social justice warrior. She has a Tumblr, on which she reblogs activist news, and she was very involved in various activist student groups over the last year. In fact, she lets out her passion through her writing. She’s been careful to keep her online and offline identities as separate as she can, because she’s fairly certain no one in her real life would believe she was capable of flights of oratory, and no one who knows her online would imagine that she’s so mousy and quiet in real life.
History:
Melissa grew up in St. Louis. Her parents were both fairly well-off financially. Her dad was a lawyer and her mother was a financial planner. They weren’t abusive, but they generally left her in the care of nannies when she was growing up, and were quicker to offer criticism than real praise. Still, the way she sees it, she’s hardly had the worst childhood out there, and her present is what’s probably going to end up giving her years of therapy.
At eighteen, she enrolled at the University of Missouri in Springfield. After excelling in all of her English classes, during her sophomore year, she declared a journalism major.
Then, just at the start of her spring semester, shape-shifters came out of the closet. During the last few years, her father had become something of a hobbyist survivalist, hiring people to grow a garden and tend livestock on the extensive acres of land he’s purchased. He also has been stockpiling guns and ammunition. Melissa thinks this is ridiculous, and during their last Christmas together, she pretty much tuned him out when he started talking about his plans for when the country eventually falls apart.
Then the shape-shifters came out of the closet, and a new manic gleam entered her father’s eye. He figured that if the world really was going to be overrun with vampires, then he’d better be as prepared as possible. Devon McCann was not going to be one of the human sheeple. No. He was going to become a Wolf.
He knew the risks. No one reputable would turn him. But eventually, he contacted enough people and greased the right palms, and a month ago, on the full moon, someone turned him. Whoever turned him wasn’t that important; he was a shifter who needed money and didn’t exactly have a Pack that was going to tell him no.
That might have been the end of it, except that Melissa happened to be at home during that full moon. She was taking a night walk, counting down the days before she could return to college, when she came upon her father and the other wolf. The lone wolf who infected her father took one look at her, saw nubile barely-legal young woman, and decided she would make a suitable mate for him. So he bit her, too. Her father stood there, stunned, and didn’t react fast enough, which is something Melissa has yet to entirely forgive him for.
While she was still capable of doing research, she did some Googling and found out about Stone Mountain. As it happened, her Internet friend Josh lives there with his partners, and so Melissa contacted him. She half expected he wouldn’t believe her story, but he did, and extended an invitation for her to move in while she waited to figure out if she was infected or not.
She packed up all her worldly goods, and every tickle in the throat, every joint ache and every mild headache made her wonder if it was an onset of the illness that presages becoming a werewolf.
She tried to convince her dad to come with her, but her father refused, claiming he’d be fine where he was. He has also not shown any of the lycanthropy symptoms, which makes Melissa wonder if the infection might not have taken in him.
Abilities: She’s a talented writer. And she considers her newly established empathic abilities to be a minor psychic power, though she has no idea yet that it’s standard operating procedure for a new shifter.
Weaknesses: She’s conflict-averse and often finds it better to go along in order to get along. She’s also found herself in a near-constant state of low-level freak-out thanks to her newly acquired lycanthropy. She has no idea what she’s doing, and doesn’t understand her sudden cravings for meat, or the low-grade pain she feels when she goes too long without touch.
Quirks: Since she’s spent a lot of time in her own company, she often finds herself muttering to herself when she thinks she’s alone.
Weapons: None except the ones someone will probably need to teach her to use.
Family: Her father, Devon McCann, and her mother, Gail, both NPCs.
Vehicle: A 2006 Toyota Carola.
Home: At the moment, she’s couch-surfing with Josh, Mica and Ben. She’ll probably move to the Pack house once she learns it exists.