Malachi Kalderon

Intro

• Basic Info

  • Name: Malachi Kalderon
  • Gender: Male
  • Played by: Ashfall
  • Race: Wolf
  • Class: Omega
  • Alignment: Neutral Good
  • Eyes: Pale Green
  • Scars: Four across muzzle
  • Relationship Status: Single
  • Personality: Insightful, Just, Empathetic, Determined, Proper, Wary, Private, Sensitive, Perfectionist

• Biography

  Malachi was born second in a litter of five to Isaac and Sarai Kalderon of the Blackwood Vale in a winter both deadly and cold. His elder sibling perished shortly after birth, along with one of his younger, and left Malachi in the position of the Kalderon's firstborn son, a worthy and respected title in his natal home. His parents committed themselves to raising him in the propriety of their culture and faith, as they did all their children, yet a heavier responsibility weighed on his shoulders as he grew in his puphood.
  
  From the start he proved a determined and passionate child. While he sought to respect his parents, he often butted heads with his father, who held ideals Malachi sometimes called to question. Regardless, he held a a high regard for both his parents, and learned much under their care. Eventually he sought to learn the ways of a chronicler and committed himself to the telling and retelling of the history of the pack.
  
  Their land remained a haven from external threats, but danger had begun to grow within the Vale even before Malachi and his siblings had been born. The bountiful valley attracted rival predators, and such arrivals soon became the packs' largest threat. Malachi and his siblings were taught the combat of the cats who settled there, as best as a wolf could be taught the movements of a feline. One attack led by the wolves proved much too ambitious, to Malachi's fault, and the cat escaped on his error. However, it soon returned in a vengeful strike against the Kalderons and attacked their most vulnerable at night - Sarai's two-month-old litter of three. The Kalderon's chased the cat away, but when Isaac called for another strike against the predator, he barred Malachi from coming with them for the attack.
  
  No matter how Malachi argued, Isaac remained set in his resolve, but after they had left Malachi slipped from his watch and set after the cat, determined to kill the beast who nearly killed his younger siblings. He found the cat upon the mountainside and attacked. Unknown to him, his brother had followed him from the den. The rains proved heavy that night and drowned the already vulnerable ground. The cat tore at Malachi's face just as his brother came upon the scene, and when the cat lunged, his brother charged an interception. But the rocks and the dirt shifted beneath their unbalanced weight, and before either could move, the mountain slid from beneath their feet to become a flowing river of muddy undergrowth. Both cat and wolf disappeared beneath the floe, while Malachi bled, dazed and semi-conscious, on solid ground paces from where his brother had fallen.
  
  They found his brother's body in days to follow, and the cat's shortly after. Bearing the scars of his failure, Malachi helped his family relocate to a secure location within the Vale, but his family no longer looked upon him with the affection they once had. In its place rose a bitterness from his sister Adah, and disappointment from his ever doting parents. With the completion of their move came Isaac's suggestion Malachi leave the Vale. A banishment shrouded in gentle words, but Malachi understood and set off with only guilt and shame as his company.
  
  Three months later, he met a woman in the South - Tuwawi Sveijarn - who offered him a place in her forming pack. Seeing his own family in hers, and longing to amend his wrongs, he pledged himself to her cause and helped found Duskfire Glacier under her rule in late summer. For a while Malachi enjoyed his new life there, and though he could never shake the guilt of his brother's death from his heart, he began to find a family in the Sveijarns.
  
  Yet the past reared its head when, shortly after settling into their Glacier home, a lynx raided the densite and stole Tuwawi and Njal's youngest son. Njal disappeared in pursuit of the child, and the pack began to search for their lost members, but to no avail. Malachi, too, searched fervently, but he did so with the refusal to involve anyone in his leads. The memory of his brother would not leave him, and he would not put another in danger on his account. In late October, Tuwawi disappeared, presumably in search of her missing family. Without leadership, Malachi took the role as Alpha, yet only to ensure the pack's survival. He led with the intention of forfeiting the position once the Glacier's rightful leaders returned, certain they would reunite with the Glacier pack with their son in tow.
  
  But when the Sveijarns returned, their son remained lost. Tuwawi had changed deeply from her hardships and the loss of her family, and while hope budded when Malachi came across a wolf who claimed her pack had Tuwawi's son in their charge, this hope proved short lived. The wolf's words were ones of deception, and led to Malachi's ultimate fall. He concealed what information he gleaned, unwilling to give Tuwawi false hope and afraid of the actions she would take if she discovered the information he possessed. Yet the news reached her in the end, along with the declaration of war from the very pack who claimed possession of the Sveijarn's lost son.
  
  Overwhelmed with guilt, and unable to withstand the pressures that mounted against him, Malachi let Duskfire slip back into Tuwawi's paws and left the pack without a word. He intended to find a peaceful end to the war, but failed in his endeavour, unable to find the sea wolves in time to bargain. He was near Duskfire when the war broke out and joined the fight too briefly to be noticed. Despite his ire against the wolves of the sea, and his drive to attack those who threatened his family, he saw in these enemies wolves much like himself. He could fight for neither side, and so he fled a traitor with broken conscience, and disappeared from the land in a shamble of anger, shame, and fear.
  
  Some months later, Malachi struck North again in hopes of finding redemption among his family in the Blackwood Vale. His efforts were thwarted when he stumbled upon Dante, leader of Blacktail Deer Plateau. Though hesitant to join the pack, Dante's offer of a home swayed him and Malachi pledged himself to the long standing pack and their welfare, hoping for a fresh start and another chance at redemption. Yet he remained stuck in the past, and shortly after joining, tensions with another pack, as well as a fire in their forest, led to the pack's relocation to a grove near the shore. The sea proved a constant reminder of the sea wolves, and stirred an anger and vengeance in Malachi that he feared would lead him down a road he did not wish to travel again. He grew distant and withdrawn and eventually left the pack out of fear of what he would do if he remained.
  
  The months that passed proved a time of introspection, in which he came face to face with his cowardice and sought, this time, to face it without running. So when a time of famine fell upon the land, Malachi sought the Plateau family again. Though the sea still stirred him, he faced the ocean full on, for he counted the wolves he had left there willing to fight for. Yet his sudden departure marked him an unwelcome prodigal in the eyes of the pack's Alpha, and he was forced from the land. Yet while shame still filled him, Malachi now saw how it continued to destroy him. Though he left his old pack without a word against them, he did so with the firm resolve to reject the self-loathing that continued to rule him, and to move on from everything in him that led himself and those he cared for into trouble and pain, so that he might one day become the firstborn protector his parents had always hoped him to be.
  
  Yet the road would be long. Malachi left the land of the Plateau and of Duskfire and travelled far, until he reached a place he had never seen, a land he did not know and that he hoped did not know him, where he could start a life free from the burdens that the ghosts of yesterday brought.