The Schipperke
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| The Schipperke | |
| Player: @Warhound | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Defender |
| Security Level: | 21 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Arthur Pioli |
| Known Aliases: | Little Captain, Gizmo, Arty |
| Species: | Therianthrope |
| Age: | 33 |
| Height: | 5'6" |
| Weight: | 295 |
| Eye Color: | Brown |
| Hair Color: | Black |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American Italian |
| Occupation: | Full time Hero |
| Place of Birth: | Tampa, Florida |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | The Pioli Family |
| Known Powers | |
| Sonic resonance, Kinetic manipulation | |
| Known Abilities | |
| None known | |
| Equipment | |
| None. | |
| No additional information available. | |
This character was inspired by my pet schipperke Gizmo. He has an insanely loud screeching bark, and is a fast little bugger!
Contents |
General Appearance
The Schipperke is an agile, active watchdog and hunter of vermin. In appearance he is a small, thickset, cobby, black, tailless dog, with a fox-like face. The dog is square in profile and possesses a distinctive coat, which includes a stand-out ruff, cape and culottes. All of these create a unique silhouette, appearing to slope from shoulders to croup. Males are decidedly masculine without coarseness.
Head
Expression
The expression is questioning, mischievous, impudent and alert, but never mean or wild. The well proportioned head, accompanied by the correct eyes and ears, will give the dog proper Schipperke expression.
Skull
The skull is of medium width, narrowing toward the muzzle. Seen in profile with the ears laid back, the skull is slightly rounded. The upper jaw is moderately filled in under the eyes, so that, when viewed from above, the head forms a wedge tapering smoothly from the back of the skull to the tip of the nose. The stop is definite but not prominent. The length of the muzzle is slightly less than the length of the skull.
Eyes
The ideal eyes are small, oval rather than round, dark brown, and placed forward on the head.
Ears
The ears are small, triangular, placed high on the head, and, when at attention, very erect. A drop ear or ears is a disqualification.
Nose
The nose is small and black.
Bite
The bite must be scissors or level. Any deviation is to be severely penalized.
Neck, Topline, Body
Neck
The neck is of moderate length, slightly arched and in balance with the rest of the dog to give the correct silhouette.
Topline
The topline is level or sloping slightly from the withers to the croup. The stand-out ruff adds to the slope, making the dog seem slightly higher at the shoulders than at the rump.
Body
The chest is broad and deep, and reaches to the elbows. The well sprung ribs (modified oval) are wide behind the shoulders and taper to the sternum. The forechest extends in front of the shoulders between the front legs. The loin is short, muscular and moderately drawn up. The croup is broad and well-rounded with the tail docked. No tail is visually discernible.
Forequarters
The shoulders are well laid back, with the legs extending straight down from the body when viewed from the front. From the side, legs are placed well under the body. Pasterns are short, thick and strong, but still flexible, showing a slight angle when viewed from the side. Dewclaws are generally removed. Feet are small, round and tight. Nails are short, strong and black.
Hindquarters
The hindquarters appear slightly lighter than the forequarters, but are well muscled, and in balance with the front. The hocks are well let down and the stifles are well bent. Extreme angulation is to be penalized. From the rear, the legs extend straight down from the hip through the hock to the feet. Dewclaws must be removed.
Coat
Pattern
The adult coat is highly characteristic and must include several distinct lengths growing naturally in a specific pattern. The coat is short on the face, ears, front of the forelegs and on the hocks; it is medium length on the body, and longer in the ruff, cape, jabot and culottes. The ruff begins in back of the ears and extends completely around the neck; the cape forms an additional distinct layer extending beyond the ruff; the jabot extends across the chest and down between the front legs. The hair down the middle of the back, starting just behind the cape and continuing over the rump, lies flat. It is slightly shorter than the cape but longer than the hair on the sides of the body and sides of the legs. The coat on the rear of the thighs forms culottes, which should be as long as the ruff.
Texture
The coat is abundant, straight and slightly harsh to the touch. The softer undercoat is dense and short on the body and is very dense around the neck, making the ruff stand out.
Color
The outercoat must be black. Any color other than a natural black is a disqualification. The undercoat, however, may be slightly lighter. During the shedding period, the coat might take on a transitory reddish cast, which is to be penalized to the degree that it detracts from the overall black appearance of the dog. Graying due to age (seven years or older) or occasional white hairs should not be penalized.
Gait
Proper Schipperke movement is a smooth, well coordinated and graceful trot (basically double tracking at a moderate speed), with a tendency to gradually converge toward the center of balance beneath the dog as speed increases. Front and rear must be in perfect balance with good reach in front and drive in the rear. The topline remains level or slightly sloping downward from the shoulders to the rump. Viewed from the front, the elbows remain close to the body. The legs form a straight line from the shoulders through the elbows to the toes, with the feet pointing straight ahead. From the rear, the legs form a straight line from the hip through the hocks to the pads, with the feet pointing straight ahead.
Temperament
The Schipperke is curious, interested in everything around him, and is an excellent and faithful little watchdog. He is reserved with strangers and ready to protect his family and property if necessary. He displays a confident and independent personality, reflecting the breed's original purpose as watchdog and hunter of vermin.
Affiliations
The Paragonian Knights
Powers
Sonic Resonance
The Schipperke is able to produce supersonic, subsonic, and ultrasonic yelps, barks, and growls. These sounds have the capability to harm foes, render them unable to function, and blast them down with sound waves. These sounds are also used to warn friends of danger, and to caution potential foes not to mess with him.
Kinetic Manipulation
The Schipperke has the ability to manipulate the Kinetic fields around all moving objects. He can slow them down, speed them up, raise and lower density, and various other things having to do with bodies in motion.
Enhanced Senses
Smell
The power of The Schipperke's nose is derived, in part, by the large number of olfactory receptors (about 25 times the number we humans have), a much larger nasal cavity about four times larger than that of humans), and the larger olfactory lobe within his brain which registers and records scents (much larger than humans even though we have a bigger brain).
The Schipperke can sense odors at concentrations nearly 100 million times lower than humans can, and can detect scents as faint as one drop of blood in five quarts of water.
It appears that he can detect specific scents and actually "ping" on certain sub-sets of the scent. Very small trace elements in gasoline, for example, may be the real "scent" he is looking for, rather than the potpourri of scents we humans associate with petrol.
The Schipperke can follow concentration gradients of scent molecules to determine which direction an animal has gone, and the relative strength of the scent will tell him how recenty the animal went by -- the basis of all scent tracking by dogs.
Hearing
Sound is measured in vibrations, or cycles, per second, termed either cps or hertz. It is accepted that humans can hear 20 to 20,000 hertz, with the optimum range between 1,000 and 4,000 hertz. Agreement among scientists about canine hearing, however, differs. While it is generally acknowledged that dogs hear somewhat less in the ultra-low range and considerably more in the high-frequency range, actual numbers vary widely. Most experts cite upper limits of 35,000 to even 100,000 hertz! It is said that Pavlov (famous for making a dog salivate by ringing a bell) demonstrated that dogs react to sound at 75,000 hertz. Whatever the upper number may be, it is far greater than ours!
So having a high hearing range means that dogs are flooded with sounds. One impressive talent dogs seem to have is the ability to screen incoming sounds. If you've watched your dog sleeping soundly suddenly spring into alert at the sound of the can opener or the crinkling sound of a bag after sleeping through loud music, a blasting t.v., or the family wrestling match, you've witnessed sound screening at work.
Dogs also have the ability to locate the exact point where the sound is coming from. Which isn't really suprising if you think about it. A wolf or wild dog hearing the sound of a rabbit, but misjudging it's location by a few yards wouldn't make for a well fed dog.
Probably the most intiguing element of canine hearing is the mobile ear flap. Dogs can foucus and capture sounds with each ear independently. Police have learned to watch their dogs' ears for clues to a situation. Both ears focused in the same direction as the muzzle indicates a suspect in that direction, while one ear flicking repeatedly away from the forward direction to some other consistent position likely indicates a second person in the area.
Weaknesses
Color Blindness
The Schipperke, is a dichromat and has color vision equivalent to red-green color blindness.
Character History
Born into the affluent Pioli family, Arthur Pioli, better known as Arty, was a typically nerdy kid through high school. Picked on by jocks, ignored by girls, Arty took refuge in games. He was instantly fascinated by Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire the Masquerade, and Werewolf. His campaigns were legendary as his imagination grew during his formative years.
He quickly became enamored with real witchcraft and wizardry, and in his late high school years, spent quite a bit of his family’s money tracking down tutors, and instructors in the magic arts. He became an accomplished apprentice mage before leaving high school. He could not however, gain more skill. It appeared that you had to have some modicum of natural talent in order to become a true mage. He could stir a spell, but he could not use the spells he created.
During his freshman year at USF, he was introduced to a new phenomenon in gaming. Live action role-playing, or LARP for short. These were people who played his old fashioned role playing games in physical space. He was immediately hooked. He joined in on various Vampire and Werewolf games that were going on at the local campus. In his junior year, he was introduced to the beautiful Penelope Crawford. Penny had a feral air about her, she was a woman wholly owned by her passions. She took Arty aside and shared with him a secret. She said that she saw the true animal inside him, and that Arty’s failure with magic was not because of lack of mysticism, but because he was a Therianthrope… a shape shifter!
Diving headfirst into Therianthrope culture, Arty quickly found out that there were very few people in these circles who had achieved full physical transformation. Almost all of them simply spoke of taking on aspects of their animal. Of course, most of these people also claimed powerful and dangerous animals as their inner beast. Arty quickly learned to differentiate the wannabe’s from the real. With Penny’s help, he learned that he was a canine animal. Through many soul searching rituals, and magic rites, it was determined that Arty was a rare breed of Therianthrope. His inner animal was a small breed of vermin hunting Belgian dog named the Schipperke. Needless to say, Arty was a little disappointed in finding out that he wasn’t a wolf or an eagle. Taking this small blow to his ego in stride, Arty began breeding the small fox like dogs at his home in Tampa.
He fell in love with the animal. The Schipperke was a small dog; however they did not exhibit any “small dog” tendencies. They were very much like a larger dog, simply trapped in a small dogs body. After graduating from USF’s engineering school as a computer engineer, he began working for various companies around the Tampa Bay area. He started to drift away from the Therianthrope community, as it was difficult to get any true meanings from them. He had exhausted all of his avenues of learning with them.
During all of this time the Heroes were on the move. Arty was, of course, drawn to news of them; he was after all a nerd! At night, Arty dreamed of being one of them. Helping to fight crime and save humanity. Then, the Rikti came. The destruction and mayhem that was caused was catastrophic. Arty knew what he had to do; he immediately packed up and moved to the largest concentration of Rikti and Heroes. Paragon City. He volunteered anywhere he could. Homeless shelters, Schools, Food lines. He did whatever he could to ease the burden on the populace. He was of course, just one man, and a pretty mediocre one at that. It was during one of these volunteer efforts that he was contacted by his family again. Arty had left and had little contact with his family after high school. He freed himself from them by getting a small time job, and a degree which they did not approve of. They were amazed that their son had come to Paragon City to help the less fortunate. They offered him money to help establish a care center for those who had lost their entire lives in the war. Reluctantly, he agreed. He established the Pioli Center for working rehabilitation. This center specialized in helping people rehabilitate themselves for new lines of work. Shortly after opening the center, Arty befriended a young magic user named “Imp Pulse”. Imp was a specialist in electrical magic, but he knew of most of the magic using heroes in the city.
Once again the light of Magic use lit in Arties eyes. He began studying again during his free time. His focus this time was in physical change of the human body. He thought that perhaps, being a Therianthrope, he could somehow force a physical change to his body, releasing the inner animal. Unfortunately for him, he was more correct than he could have imagined. During Christmas Eve, on his 33rd year of life, he enacted a spell which had been almost 5 years in the making. This spell would give him the ability to shift his shape, like a werewolf, or in his case, a were schipperke! The spell worked! Sort of…
After the spell was complete, Arty was amazed at what he found. He could hear EVERYTHING, his sense of smell was amazing, His bark could shatter windows, and he could literally see everything move. Sadly, he had lost most of his color vision… Slowly, the realization dawned on Arty… He had no idea how to change back! Arty tried everything, and nothing worked. He was stuck in a half man, half dog body. After dealing with this issue. Arty realized that his dreams had come true; he could now fight crime like his heroes did! He quickly applied for his hero license, adopting the name of his animal, and the one he had turned into... The Schipperke!
Arty still searches for a way to reverse the transformation. Ideally, he would be able to change back and forth at will. Sadly, he has had no luck.
