Name:
Vireya

Age:
Four

Gender:
Female

Breed:
Alaskan Malamute

Role:
Team Dog

Appearance:

Vireya moves through the heart of camp like a shadow splayed across snow. Silent. Slow. Methodical. Her coat, black as pitch and dusted faintly with frost, drinks in the last light of dusk. She doesn't rush. Where others pant and pace, she moves with a fluid, deliberate grace. Her head hung low, tail trailing limp but poised. The female's muscles ripple beneath the dense double-layer of her fur; shoulders rolling with feline precision, her paws pressing down just enough to disturb powdery snow beneath. Her limps stretch and reach like clockwork, every tendon taut and every movement measured.

Firelight ahead flickers and catches on her coat, revealing a hidden array of silvery underlining speckling her spine. It dances along the fine ridge of muscle between her shoulders and across her broad, tapered flanks, painting her in the faintest trace of shimmering ghost light. Her eyes are the same color as the edge of the flames, amber coals roaming over every motion in the camp like a circling vulture. She doesn't look at anyone. She looks through them.

Personality:

And then she settles, just beyond the final arc of firelight where the snow grows blue with shadow and the forest presses close. Vireya lowers herself slowly, not out of weariness, but intension. First, her hindquarters, then her forepaws, tucking in with a quiet huff as she sinks into the cold. Her tail curled tight across her flank out of habit, shielding herself.

She oft' watched from a distance, not out of distrust, but disinterest. The others chatter and snap, tumble through snowdrifts, perhaps even test one another's strength like pups playing at war. Their noise doesn't disturb her, no. It's a world she left behind long ago. She learned early that a dog can either chase the pack or become a thing they chase. And Vireya? She chose the latter. It leads her to track every movement, every scuffle, every laugh and bark. Not jealousy, nor envy, but understanding. She reads the body language of the team like a script: who's posturing, who's testing rank, who's getting tired and pretending they're not. She files it away without effort. This is what she's good at: watching. Waiting. Knowing.

And if tomorrow brings the crack of harnesses and the scream of sled runners over ice, she will rise without complaint. She will run until her lungs burn and her paws bleed. Not for glory. not for praise. But because that was what she was made for.

Strengths:

1. Mental Fortitude
Vireya possesses an iron will, capable of pushing through brutal storms, pain, and exhaustion without breaking stride. She's emotionally self-contained and doesn't crumble under stress, marking her incredibly reliable in critical moments. Like most Alaskan Malamutes, she has been built for stamina over speed. Vireya can run for hours through biting winds, deep snow, and rough terrain without complaint or collapse.

2. Environmental Awareness
Highly attuned to scent, sound, and subtle shifts in weather or terrain, Vireya is often the first to detect incoming danger or opportunity. She reads body language and team dynamics like a seasoned tactician. She can read tension, weakness, or imbalance within the pack and adjust accordingly.

Weaknesses:

1. Social Ineptitude
Vireya does not indulge in small talk, camaraderie, or playful bickering. This makes her difficult to approach, especially for those seeking comfort or emotional validation. She struggles to form emotional bonds, often keeping even the most well-meaning packmates at a distance. This emotional barrier can create friction or misunderstandings within the team, especially with younger or more social dogs.

2. Rigid in Routine

Like many working dogs, especially Malamutes, Vireya prefers structure. Sudden changes in hierarchy, route, or leadership may not break her, but do unsettle her and affect her work ethic. She has already been through loss and team collapse, and these experiences have hardened her into skepticism. With a sudden shift, those memories are triggered, and she can become withdrawn or irritable.

Mate:
N/A

Crush:
N/A (Open)

Pups:
N/A

Kin:
N/A

Team Affiliations:
TBA

Other:
I do love Malamutes but I am a labrador retriever fan. (Also if this sign up sheet is formatteed weird, I apologize. It's been a long time since I've used a forum.)

Reserving a team dog please ^^

Here we go :D

~

Name - Nikolai

Age - Slightly under 3 (2 and 7/8 perhaps?)

Gender - Male

Role - Team Dog

Breed - "Alaskan husky" mutt

~

Appearance -

Nikolai wears a slightly off-white coat that forms a natural gradient along his side to resolve in a light brown that covers his stomach and hindquarters. This continues down his tail to form a black tip of it.
The brown flows down his legs, but abruptly changes to four short gark grey (almost black) socks.
Nikolai's underbelly of light brown continues up the underside of his neck, to stop just below the jawline. Here, his cheeks are a continuation of his off-white coat (which also covers the top half of his neck), but he has a greyish-black cap that tops off his head and his ears.
Nikolai sports dark yellow eyes. Set in his off-white coat, this goes in contrast to the rest of his face.
Nikolai's build is slightly more compact than the average dog's build in terms of the rest of the sled team. He stands slightly smaller than average, which he doesn't really like. Often, his fur will be slightly ruffled, partly due to his personality, and partly due to him wanting to appear slightly larger.

~

Personality -

Nikolai has remarkable stubbornness when it comes to things. Once he's set his mind to doing something, it's remarkably hard to change his mind. This trait has been evident since his early years, and often drove his parents up the wall. This trait isn't as evident as it was before, but is still rather prominent in terms of his personality.
Despite this, he can also be rather socialable. Not to the point of "I'm the coolest in the region and you all know it", but simply being able to have positive interactions with his fellow pack-mates, and viewing them with mutual respect for their abilities - no matter who they are. He has integrity - and loyalty too, for that matter. Nikolai is willing to follow an alpha, or be loyal to, anyone that he believes is doing the right thing. When they're not doing the right thing, however... Nikolai prefers to more or less kind of stand off. Unless it directly affects him (and this applies to much more than alphas), he will just kind of stand off and be the silent observer and judger.
Nikolai, as stated earlier, also often comes with ruffled fur. The first part is his compact build - the second is that due to his compact build, he is more likely to try squeeze through smaller, tighter gaps simply because he can. While a larger, older dog would have difficulty in doing so, it only gets Nikolai's coat ruffled.
Doing such things has evoked a natural curiosity in Nikolai. He gets curious about the more minute aspects of life, and things he finds along his way. He simply wants to know more of the world around him. This contributes to his appearance, by either usually appearing rufled, or slightly dusty.
He has a lively nature in the way he approaches life and how he goes about it; he's pretty much firmly on the side of "just enjoying" life and what it gives. Long story short, Nikolai's just happy until he's not happy because of one of his other traits.
However, he has an innate possessiveness of things that he thinks are "his", for example, a sleeping spot that he classifies as "his". This is where many of his main disputes will come around - his stubbornness contributes to the feeling that "this is mine and you can't touch it!" Mainly small trivial things, it rarely slops over into major disputes, but occasionally can.
Nikolai, in terms of standing and mindset, is a very much "in the middle" kind of person. In terms of dominance, he'd usually sit somewhere in the higher ranks, but not enough to garner a special role or position. He's fine just living life as the main pack, but he'd sit somewhere in the higher sections of that role.
And in terms of mindset, he's very... neutral. If the pack wants more progressionism, he'll accept it. If it's more conservationalism, he'll accept it. In terms of progression versus conservation, he sits almost exactly in the center of it - he just doesn't want to get involved in the disputes. He's fine where he is, and with no need to endanger anything by going either side, he's content to sit in the middle - and usually quite unwilling to budge from his position. This may attract attrition from both sides for him, but as long as he doesn't get on anyone's bad side majorly, he's content.

~

Strengths -
- Curiosity. Nikolai is naturally curious about the world, and this trait persists far past his puphood. This is simply something he is naturally doing, and not something honed. This usually makes him more of a scout-type of role.
- Defending - both mentally and physically. Nikolai is physically capable of defending things that he loves, and is also mentally equipped in verbal battles. While built on the more compact side of things, Nikolai is still able to try pack decent punch against things he deems threatening.
- Mediating, as long as he's a neutral party. Nikolai's just a happy guy going about what he does. Like where his allegiances lie, it's dead-center as long as he tries, and usually neutral parties help, right?

Weaknesses -
- Stubbornness. Nikolai is remarkably stubborn (as stated before) when it comes to things. Once he is completely convinced that something is right, it's remarkably difficult to get him to change his mind. He gerenally judges people significantly harder on first impressions, and with a stubborn will, will continue to judge them similarly, despite if they show otherwise.
- Unnecessary (and often trivial) things.
Nikolai, on occassion, will be bogged down in his thinking by the most trivial matters. Rather than accepting it and going on, he will try to find a flaw in it (as his stubbornness shows). When everyone has already moved onto another topic, Nikolai will still be attempting to nit-pick the previous argument, and so on.
- Being too annoying. This is a real pitfall in Nikolai's personality - he can get too happy and too into what he's doing and go from being nice to being annoying. Usually he doesn't firgure it out until it's too late, when he's been yapping for too much and only just realizes it. His face when that happens-

~

Mate - I don't really mind, open I guess?

Crush - Ditto

Pups - Hell no. He's not yet 3.

Kin - Open too I guess

Team Affilations - filled out later I guess

Other - Somehow Nikolai resembles an Austrian Pinscher in a few ways. Wow, that's also my favorite dog breed.