Name: Ivy
Age: Unknown
Gender: Male
Race: Canine/Unknown
Status: Uncertain
Occupation: Uncertain
Height: 2.5 feet at
the shoulder
Weight: 93 lbs
Description[]
Ivy is a large-bodied, tall black dog of what is presumed to be many, many unknown breeds. His fur is long and plush, and has a faint wave in some spots, his legs slender but powerful, his muzzle long and lean. He has a very open, expressive face, and deep brown eyes that look and seem to see and understand anything and everything around him. His tail is long, thick, and bushy, and curls very slightly at the end. Opinions about his temperament are mixed, as he seems to get along marvelously with some people, and yet bitterly hates others, with no apparent rhyme or reason. Suffice it to say that he is a calm, gentle, highly affectionate lap dog to those he favors - and a potential death threat to those he does not.
Abilities[]
Although Ivy appears to be an ordinary canine - and indeed, most citizens believe him to be - he is not entirely what he appears to be. Even at that, what he appears to be is constantly changing. He is a very enigmatic animal, and few understand anything about his more unusual abilities, but through the aid of a few, some 'facts' have been established.
- Ivy was not born, as most dogs are. He was created, presumably by a person known only as Jenai.
- He has the unique ability to bond with the soul of his chosen master, thus becoming very close to them and, it is rumored, becoming a vessel for unacknowledged parts of their soul, whether they be secret dreams, unrealized talents, or other things.
- Ivy has the ability to speak mind to mind with other telepathic creatures (or utilizing comm lines), but the ability is limited in a peculiar way; having no voice of his own, the dog 'borrows' the telepathic voices of others, often using two or three individual voices to make a single statement - one voice for each segment of a phrase.
- It is rumored - though unconfirmed - that Ivy once worked alongside Death itself in cajoling deceased persons along into the spirit world.
- He is able to survive in many extreme conditions, though he is surprisingly sensitive to cold.
- He is very (some would say superiorly) intelligent.
- He has what Datharil, citizen of Laissez Faire, describes as a 'need to be needed'.
Before the Void[]
The person credited with creating Ivy claims that she truly knows very little about him, and that he was both her first and her last creation. Please note that all the following information comes either from Jenai herself, or Datharil, the current owner of the dog, as the dog was unable to provide testimony.
The dog was created by Jenai out of dust and drops of her own blood, in the latter half of her forty-fifth Gate - this is presumed to be a measurement of time, though the increments are non-standard. The apparent purpose of her creation was to serve as a companion to her son, who was struggling on his own as a young adult. She created the dog to help her son cope with his tumultuous emotions, though she never intended for him to do so by giving those emotions over to the dog and separating them from himself. She did not wish for the dog to be a permanent solution for the problem - she meant only to provide her son with a companion to ease his mind and heart until such time as he could learn to cope on his own, at which point the dog would fade back into non-existence, as though he had never been. Unfortunately, with her son's abandonment of those personal emotions into the dog's care, he was given a permanence of character that cannot be destroyed - or so Jenai believes - until her son is destroyed. The symbiotic relationship between them lasted a number of years that Jenai refuses to guess at, saying only that it was a 'good long time'. During this time, the dog traveled with her son on a vessel known as a 'dragonship' across multiple worlds through a magic portal, to eventually arrive, through means unknown, on Earth.
Life in the Void[]
Initially, Jenai's son and the dog landed their vessel in Meinville in early 2008. What fate their craft came to is unknown, because no one has ever found it. Little is known about this period in the dog's life - only that he accompanied his master on several missions back and forth to Laissez Faire, Roellen, and presumably many other locations. The next clear thing in the dog's history appears to be abandonment by his master; apparently, Jenai's son had reached a point where he'd had enough of the dog, and yet did not wish to take back the emotions he'd stored within him... and so he simply released the beast altogether, becoming angry and eventually violent when the creature refused to leave him. He at last succeeded in driving the dog away from him, which put the dog in a bind; having no soul of his own, he could not survive without attaching himself to the soul of another. If he did not soon find another companion, the dog would die. With nowhere else to go, the dog followed his instincts and returned to Jenai, who had by this time settled in Laissez Faire. His bond with his former master finally became severed, but the abandoned parts of his soul remained still firmly housed within the dog, removed from their original owner forever, and there in Laissez Faire, in the middle part of 2008, he bonded with a timid young khalai protoss - Datharil. Where he lacked confidence and the ability to keep a cool head in tense situations, the dog provided those things for him, proving an avid protector and companion - thus the dog's 'need to be needed' was fulfilled, and his continued life assured as long as this bond shall last. At some point during the last several years, he has sired two pups - Era and Maelstrom, the latter of which is blind, supposedly due to a head trauma when she was only days old. He has also acquired a name, gifted to him by Datharil in order to facilitate the bonding to him: Ivy.
Special Notes[]
- Datharil claims that he is particularly fond of salmon and veal, and of being scratched in the long part of his ruff, at the base of his neck.
- Despite his intelligence, Ivy can be reduced to panting, tail-wagging happiness by a thorough petting.
- There have been a number of lawsuits and civil complaints filed against Laissez Faire - and Datharil himself - citing extreme aggression in his dog, claiming everything from excessive growling and threatening postures to a couple of vicious attacks, one upon an unidentified protoss in the deep part of the city's wild lands, which a citizen witnessed from a great distance. These charges have consistently been either dropped or dismissed, due mostly to the powerful influence of both Sandrilene fa Toren and Dedicate Rosethorn.