Red Moon

     Dave here with the final character blog befor the release of the book and it’s a doozy! This is the last character blog but there’s much more still in the book.

     This character file is the ancient animal sage, The Colotal.

     In Red Moon, Mox and Daeden must seek this mystical sage to find answers to Mox’s visions of destruction. As you can see this is not your garden variety animal sage.

     The Sages are known in the animal world as Masters of Regions. They oversee the happenings throughout their region and help guide the lives that live within, settling disputes and advising group decisions that would otherwise disrupt the balance of nature.

     The Colotal was once a normal millipede — thousands of our years ago — until she was chosen in a very special way to be the Master of the Yurru Region, the land between the East and West Oceans, south of the frozen Regions of Barrah to the north and north of the tropical Regions of Tihree on what we know as the North American continent.

     Being chosen as Master of a Region brings special benefits. Colotal is not as affected by age as most living things are, it is slowed and nearly imperceptible. Growth however, is not. As a Sage she continues to grow until her reign as Master is over. She continually adds segments and now has an uncountable amount of legs. Her most notable asset though is a honing plate that has grown from the back of her head. It heightens her senses and abilities beyond that of a natural being.

     All Masters have special abilities unique to each individual; Colotal’s is healing. She can mend bones, remove wounds, strengthen flesh and, in rare cases, revive a lost soul… if soon enough after passing.

     But her abilities are only a back-up when her immense knowledge is not enough to help the situation. She was an intelligent millipede to begin with, but the thousands of years experience has made her almost infinitely wise.

     Find out what Mox and Daeden discover when they encounter the mystic Sage Colotal on their journey in RED MOON.

Dave

     Dave here with a final human character blog. Although it’s short, this one should open up the story even wider.

 It’s the General.

     Yes, the military is involved at some point in the story of Red Moon! But don’t worry, they arent the bad guys like in so many animal related stories. They might be a little slow and a bit rough around the edges, but their hearts are in the right place.

     The General is in charge of the military operation that intercepts Mox’s Mission and is the keystone in the relationship between the animals and the humans.

     The General is pretty typical military fare: tough and no nonsense, almost to the point of stubborn, but he’s got a level head that isn’t easily clouded by his emotions, be it anger or joy. He’s quick on his toes, physically and mentally. His judgement is, more often than not, the right thing or, at the least, the best thing to be done.

     And given the judgements he must make in Red Moon, that’s good for all of Mankind.

Dave

     Dave here with another character blog. The last one introduced Mox’s family, the Taylors. Well I’m continuing the human character blogs (since that’s really almost all that’s left with any major parts), but these humans are a bit different.

They’re SCIENTISTS!

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     Hopefully this will begin to show you the scope of the story I’m trying to tell. Unfortunately I can’t tell you a whole lot more except that they make a major discovery for the humans in the story.

     The main character for the scientists is Bailey Parrell. She makes the initial discovery that leads to interraction with Mox and his visions. She is quiet for the most part but knows when to speak her mind. Being a scientist she’s naturally inquisitive and subsequently very deep emotionally.

     Her co-worker and co-discoverer is Addisen Gregg. He has worked closely with Bailey for the previous 6 months before the discovery and has gotten a good feel for when Bailey is serious and when she’s not. Although intensely smart and serious about his work, Addisen is BIG nerd. He spent most of his high school and college weekends playing D&D with his other nerd friends.

     Bailey and Addisen are workers in the system. Gordon Peterson heads the facility they work in and it’s him they ultimately turn to with their discovery. Gordon is the fatherly figure at work, stern but fun to be around, with a good sense of humor. Until it gets serious and then it’s nose to the grindstone.

     The scientist don’t hold a huge chunk as far as number of pages in the book but what’s held within those pages is pretty devastating.

For Mox and the rest of the world.

Dave

Dave here with another character blog and it’s another human.

     At one point in their journey to find answers to Mox’s visions, Mox, Daeden and Kitch must stow away on a fishing boat. Well that fishing boat is captained by a lovable old seagoat by the name of Captain Sammy!

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     Captain Sammy charters a boat for landlubbers wanting to taste the thrill of night fishing. Sometimes the best catches can only be caught at night.

     Captain Sammy has been on the sea for 40 some odd years and can’t see doing anything else. His only wish is for his “bones to be found at the wheel of his ship a thousand leagues down!”

     He’s worn and weathered, his skin like a well oiled boot. His fingers are gnarled and knotted and his teeth are mostly gone, but he’s got a bounce in his step and not an ugly word one for the worst of folk.

     He started with his uncle when he was 19, working a tuna boat in the North Atlantic. Twelve boats and 20 years later he found himself penniless at the bottom of a bottle of Black Bottle. He slept on docks, fought with anyone and everyone and nearly ended it all before a chance encounter with an old matey gave him a second chance. He picked himself up, threw his whiskey bottle into the ocean along with his ornery attitude and never looked back.

     Captain Sammy’s owned his own vessel for nearly 13 years now and loves her dearly. He knows every nook and cranny of the woman of the sea he lovingly calls… “Blue Moon”.

Dave

     Dave here, back with a character blog. Red Moon is an animal adventure story but I don’t want to give you the idea that it’s totally set in the animal world. Just as in real life, the animals do interact with the humans. In fact, without giving too much away, they must.

As you may or may not have realized, our hero Mox is with his family in the beginning.

This is their story.

     The Taylors are a pretty normal family with a pretty predictable lifestyle. Ed and Marie have been married for 7 years and have a wonderful home in the suburbs with two rambunctious kids, Charlie, 6, and Catherine, 4.

     Ed is 36 and an IT tech at a large marketing firm in the city. He loves his job and his co-wokers. The only thing he likes more than watching sports on the weekends is taking in a round of golf with his buddies.

     Marie is 32 and has an interior decorating business she runs out of the house. The kids are a full time job in itself but she manages to balance them and the business fairly well most of the time.

     Charlie is a handfull. He does fine in school but tends to think he knows a bit more than he actually does when he’s around friends. Of course, being the older brother, he loves to pick on his little sister.

     Catherine is shy and introverted, but not so much so that she isn’t also pretty funny when she wants to be. Charlie’s harrassment is taken, but only to a point, then she fights back with a vengeance no 4 year old should know.

     Ed and Marie knew when they started a family that they wanted their kids to know the joy of having a pet around the house growing up. They both had many pets when they were younger. So, about a year after Catherine was born they felt it was time to bring a new member into the family.

     They all went to the local shelter and found a quiet little black and white schnauzer mix that wouldn’t get too big or stay too small. They fell in love with him immediately and knew he was the one. When they told Ed and Marie that the little pup’s mother had just passed away a few days earlier, their hearts melted. Charlie wanted to hold him and Catherine just watched and laughed at the squiggling pup.

     They brought little Mox home and after Charlie had mentioned that the puppy had a ‘scruffy mustache like Granpa’ they knew then what they were going to name him.

     Even though he was only a few months old when they adopted him, it took a while for Mox to get used to being called Scruffy.

Dave

     It’s Dave again with another character profile. Like I’ve said before, we’ve pretty much mined the main cast of Red Moon so I’m working on peripheral characters now, and this one you’ve actually already met.

     Alk is the defending crow in the first Red Moon prequel web comic but he also plays a significant if not very large role in the graphic novel itself.

     As you may have read in the first prequel web comic, Alk’s family has headed the largest flock in the region for generations, but Alk’s inherited reign wasn’t as easy a transition as maybe it should’ve been.

     When Alk was just a fledgling, his father, the reigning flock-leader, was killed in a territory dispute with a dog.  Alk knew he was too young and inexperienced to lead a flock but also knew that if the flock didn’t have a leader soon it would fall apart. In an unheard of move by such a young flock leader, he appointed his mother and grandfather (retired from the leadership role but still a member of the Flock Council) as co-leaders until he became experienced enough to take over the role.

     No one in the flock disagreed but at the same time it was argued that if he’s smart enough to know to appoint new leaders then he’s probably pretty close to being smart enough to lead the flock himself.  The appointment went off without controversy and he eventually did take over with a lot of popularity within the flock.

     He’s smart and strong, confident and as honest as a crow can be asked to be. Aside from the death of his father, his upbringing was tailored to his leadership role and he led well… until the seemingly chance meeting of a rather dangerous and devious raven named Krigg.

Dave

     Dave here. It’s time for another Character Profile! This one’s for a character you’ve already kind of met in the “Script to Final Page” blog. Shanir is the one-eyed cat that Mox and Daeden meet in the park early in Red Moon.

CLICK HERE for the full size version.

     Shanir was born mean. He’s a stray Calico cat that has lived his entire life in the streets. He’s the second in a litter of six orphaned kittens. His mother was killed crossing a street when he was seven weeks old and the litter was forced to survive on their own earlier than usual.

     At 3 months he fought all of his brothers and sisters for a fallen Robin egg… and won. He was now the strongest of the litter and feared by his siblings. They soon abandoned him one night as he slept.

     Away from his siblings, Shanir allied himself over the next few years with some of the biggest and most feared street vermin. And not just cats; at one point palling around with the likes of Vallek, a raccoon the size of a bobcat, claiming a home range of nearly 17 suburban blocks connected by and centralized in a maze of sewer and drainage systems. Shanir helped Vallek bully other animals in the region for a while until he got greedy and tried to take a step up into the leader position. His plan backfired and Vallek nearly killed him when he realized what Shanir was doing.

EARLY CONCEPTUAL SKETCH

     Since then he’s just been staying clear of Vallek’s territory and making new alliences with a dream of one day claiming a territory of his own as great as Vallek’s. Maybe Vallek’s territory itself.

A PANEL FROM “RED MOON” FEATURING SHANIR

     Oh and then there’s the story of his scarred-shut left eye. Well maybe that’s a story for another day.

Dave

     Dave here with another character profile. I’ve pretty much hit all the main characters without spoiling too much so I’ll move to the secondary characters.

     Early in the story, Daeden, not knowing fully what to think about Mox’s visions of the Red Moon, takes Mox to an old friend, Kaalem.

For the full sized version, CLICK HERE

     Kaalem is a coyote that lives at the outskirts of town. He’s very much the interim character that knows as much about life in the city as he does about life in the woods. He lives fully in the wilderness except when food is hard to come by, then knows exactly how to get it from the streets of the city and get out.

     Scavenger is a very appropriate word for Kaalem, in every aspect. He plays dirty and keeps it to himself. He sneaks and scuttles but says what’s on his mind and does what he wants. He’s on his own and likes it that way.

     Kaalem has a special relationship with Daeden and it goes way back. Daeden looks up to Kaalem as a mentor and a friend, but trust is a thing that Kaalem himself taught Daeden to never fully commit to with anyone, not even him. “Trust and friendship are two things that deserve their own levels of respect. Unseen circumstances can affect either at any time,” he would say. “You must see all to commit to trust. No one sees everything.”

     Daeden learned a lot from his time with Kaalem. Maybe a bit harsh, bordering on unfeeling, Kaalem, however, is extremely smart. Cunning is also a good word for him. Once, he outsmarted an entire wolf pack on a particularly cold winter’s evening when a human hunter had lost track of his kill. Many wolves still hold a grudge to this day for the humiliation.

     Needless to say, Kaalem probably has more enemies than friends, but he does consider Daeden to be one of those friends. And Daeden considers him to be a friend too.

     Now how much they can trust each other is another matter entirely.

Dave

     Dave here with another character profile. As Mox and Daeden go on their journey they get help here and there along the way. Sometimes by the animal sages themselves, sometimes by the animal sages’ helpers. One of those helpers is a little 17 year cicada named Kitch.

     A 17 year cicada is a flying insect, often confused with a locust or grasshopper, that lives mainly in the northeast and midwest states of the US. They are the insects that make the loud buzzing noises in the late summer and leave their shedded skin-shells hanging on trees. They are called 17 year cicadas (there are also 13 year cicadas and then some non periodical cicadas who’s lifespan is just one season.) because once born, the larvae drop from the tree branches they hatched from to the ground where they bore down and feed on the roots and nutrients of the tree… for 17 years. At the end of this cycle they rise up out of the ground, attach themselves to the nearest tree trunk or other vertical surface, molt like a butterfly into the flying insect that we know. Over the next few weeks they mate and then die. Entomologists don’t know the significance of this lifespan.

     That being explained, Kitch is a bit different. He’s been the assistant of The Master Sage of the Third Region for dozens of his brethren’s life cycles. One of the perks of the job is, ironically, a lengthened lifespan. He’s humble yet strong. He’s very well-mannered and proper. Plus, over the years he has gathered an abundance of knowledge and insight by being a Master’s assistant.

     He’s not a Region Master but he’s the next best thing. He’s an extra set of eyes and ears. He’s a keeper of records and a holder of laws. He’s a messenger and a leader.

     One of the most interesting facts about Kitch is that when the Master of the Third Region asked him to be her assistant, he was nearly twice her size.

     That, of course, is very much not the case anymore.

Dave

     Hi everyone, David here with another character profile for Red Moon. All good stories have to have a good bad guy.  The badder the better. In Red Moon our protagonist is a shy, sheltered, suburbanite schnauzer with only a small idea about the shortcomings of Man’s World.  The antagonist in Red Moon is, in every sense, the opposite of Mox.

     Krigg is a weathered and worn, fight-scarred raven with all-too-much knowledge of the worlds of both Man and Nature.  He’s a nomadic and solitary bird, preferring the casual, controlling relationship with others of his ilk, or none at all.

     He learned early in his life that he wasn’t like the other ravens and crows. He was smarter.  He could easily understand things that others couldn’t at all.  He knew Man’s  languages; he could grasp the reasons (or lack thereof) for their actions and their subtle mannerisms.

And he grew to despise them.

But hatred doesn’t come from knowledge, it comes from pain.

     Krigg was shunned by his parents and brutally tormented by his siblings and the flock for his malformed beak.  They never imagined he could survive past fledging.

     But he did and his banishment from the flock only made him stronger… and smarter.  His brother, Jadd, once tried to trick him into being food for a rather nasty barn owl with a taste for Corvids, but Krigg figured it out at the last second and switched positions, sending his brother into the talons of the owl instead.  The owl didn’t care… and neither did Krigg.

     He became more and more bitter and despondent in time until one morning when he found a wooden-framed cage full of crows and ravens.  Inside was most of his former flock… including his parents and sister.

     His intelligence had grown higher than most animals.  He knew it was a crow trap from the humans and he knew almost immediately how to free them… but he didn’t.  In a bitter, selfish anger he left them there, laughing at the thought that his ‘deformed’ beak is the perfect tool to free them.

     It was only later that he understood.  After the two farmers came with their shiny metal sticks.  It was only after the booms louder and longer than any thunderstorm that Krigg understood his feelings towards Humans.

     It hits him that his parents, sister and all those crows and ravens are dead.  And although he hated them all for what they did to him, he couldn’t have killed them all.  He wouldn’t have killed them all.  Not all of them.

     Krigg was less than one season old when that happened.  When he appears in Red Moon he’s 17.  Most crows and ravens don’t  see 25 seasons.  (This is Animal Knowledge not Human Knowledge.)