:: BASICS
Name: Revenant’s Symphony
- Overall Meaning: “An elaborate musical composition that was written by someone who returned (supposedly) from the dead.”
- Revenant — Named in reference to the rest of his family, who have names in a theme of different ghosts.
- Symphony — Wraith’s hopes for him to create something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Also in reference to his siblings, who all have musical names as well.
Nicknames: Revenant, Symphony, or Rev
Formerly Known As: Silencedobscurity
- Overall Meaning: The “Silenced Shadow,” who stuck on the outskirts of his Clan and kin. Often ostracized, never using the insults as a way to define him (though...was it a self-fulfilling prophecy?)
- Prefix: Silenced — Self-chosen or given as an insult, he doesn’t remember. Represents his ‘silenced’ personality after Wraith was exiled.
- Suffix: Obscurity — ‘darkness’, ‘the state of being unknown’ or ‘difficult to understand.’ Represents his nature as someone to hide and to blend into the shadows along with his overall pedantic nature when speaking.
Sex: Male
Pronouns: He/Him
Age: Unknown, younger to middle-aged
Group: Clanless
Rank: N/A
“They say that soon I’ll cease to hear
The very music of my soul.
What should be the sense most perfect in me — fails me, shames me, taunts me.
A silence haunts me.”
— A Silence Haunts Me, Jake Runestad and Todd Boss
:: - PHYSICAL
Species: Domestic Cat
Description: A large, long curly-furred feline with blue-silver classic tabby tortoiseshell bicolour fur and blue-grey eyes. Polydactyl. Tennessee Rex mutation.
Design Notes:
- There are two larger scars on either side of his legs, going all the way down from the shoulder to the base of the leg. He can optionally be drawn with nicks across his ears. He has no other scars except the wounds in his mental battles.
- Revenant’s scars are optional, since they are most likely covered by fluff. It’d be really cool if you do draw them, though!
- Eyes can be drawn either sectorally heterochromatic with light blue and dark grey-blue, solid grey-blue, or blue with a silver ring around the pupil.
- Yes, the tail is supposed to be just as big as his body is.
Disabilities:
- Hyperacusis: He has had it from birth, but it intensified at a young age after an incident with a lightning storm striking right next to him. He can’t explain it very well, but it impacts him quite significantly. While Belugabark has hyperacusis as well, her condition is milder (mild-moderate) compared to his (moderate-severe). He doesn’t know what to make of it, though. He almost feels that his perception of the world is so flawed that it makes him a worse person, since loud sounds, especially sudden ones (a “spike” from the baseline), can cause significant amounts of pain for him.
- Autism: He didn’t have the words to explain this until very recently.
“God, am I Prometheus?
Exiled in chains—for gifting humankind my fire?
Take my feeling, take my sight, take my wings midflight—
—But let me hear the soaring roar of air,
before I touch the ground!”
:: - PERSONALITY
Positive Traits
- Caring
- Quick-thinking
- Eloquent
Neutral Traits
- Defensive
- Unpredictable
- Reticent
Negative Traits
- Cynical
- Reactionary
- Deferential
Known by many names, and known yet by just one.
Revenant: a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead.
Has he truly returned to his former glory? No, because there never was glory to begin with. His life was — and is — defined by controversy after controversy, struggle after struggle, yet he always comes back. The quiet force behind immeasurable change, a guardian to the broken and helpless, and yet, The Silenced Songbird, whose strain only echoes of Sorrow.
On the surface, he is naturally callous, never really caring about those under his watch. Care is a fickle feeling to him — one that he may know about, but refuses to give and receive, unless it is to his guardians or those he guards himself. Even so, it is a struggle for him to accept it. However, Revenant has a soft side once a feline has gained his trust or become a target of his affections. His true personality — the one hidden behind his stone-cold, stoic mask — is one that is fiercely loyal, up to the point of laying down his life for those who he cares for. But make no mistake, Revenant is as quick to distrust as he is to switch from the stone-cold mask to something of a warmer disposition, and he will regard those who have betrayed him with an even colder, frozen temperament than what is normally expected of him.
He tends to defer to others whenever decisions are being made, though he is often a voice of reason (or intelligent sarcasm) whenever things are being done. He has a wicked sense of humor, but often doesn’t know how to time a joke to land just right. He often feels as if he’s the laughingstock of any group because of it, so he pulls back from groups like that as much as he can. His only true companion now is Wraith.
“And that is where our calamity lies. Those who promise that they are the eye of the storm,
but indeed are the storms themselves.”
— Revenant
:: - HISTORY
Revenant’s history is long, storied, and difficult for him to tell. He often doesn’t explain much of it to others, relying on his reputation to further its tale before he even enters the room. He doesn’t want to have it told, but it must be. He often is incredibly shaken by the idea of having to tell it all. His own accounts often leave out childhood entirely, moving after those horrible months towards when he gained his freedom and left the Clans as an adult, reunited with Wraith after years of waiting.
At birth, he would be acclaimed as his mother's little Symphony — Revenant's Symphony, to be more exact. Young Revenant — his true name bestowed by his precious mother as a reminder of the symphonies he can create from the ripples of his actions, and the massive ears he will never grow into — has yet to live up to the high expectations that were set for him from a young age. He was awestruck by lightning storms, but the little Revenant gained permanent damage to his nerves from the incident of going outside with one of the medicine cats of his clan. He was fragmented into so many pieces because of this situation that his eyes themselves appeared to have a cloud of nothing behind their formerly sparkling curiosity.
Wraith, in her fury after seeing the state Revenant came back in, went on the attack. She was exiled from the Clans after what she thought was a justified altercation with the healer, leaving with her own tail tucked into the deep winter snow, bloodied and scarred from the fight. She was nothing but precise, though, somehow lingering near the borders for so long — if only to give Revenant a flicker of hope.
Many thought that Revenant’s separation from his mother as a kitten would deeply impact him, but not many knew how deep that impact would scar. Revenant was devastated, and in the darkness of his grief he did not even bother to attend his own apprentice ceremony barely a month after these events. He pulled himself back from Clan life, afraid to be himself in a place that knew his best advocate as a traitor. Revenant was either given the prefix Silenced- as an insult, or he chose to give it to himself. He doesn’t remember, and he frankly doesn’t want to remember either.
Either way, the name change was most certainly a self-fulfilling prophecy. He continually pulled back, Wraith was more social than her son; Revenant refused to train with other apprentices, and he further refused to sleep with them, in practice mostly sleeping outside of a defined den but within the camp as a whole. Yet, he wanted to prove to his mentor and clan that he could become a capable warrior just like any other apprentice his age — and still work within his (to the outside eye) self-imposed constraints. It was in fact nerve damage, something that cats couldn’t quite explain, and the times that he’d flick his ear back and forth to shake off an invisible pain were just noted away by the rest of his clanmates as one of his quirks.
The Clan as a whole still didn’t know if he’d get the same impulsivity and fire as his mother just yet. He seemed quite calm for the most part, but even the antiquated clans knew that grief was difficult and experienced differently. He struggled with training, trying to get it done but the memory of seeing Wraith go on the attack made him give up his claws. He didn’t want to learn how to fight, only knowing how to flee. His proclivity for entering the shadows certainly dictated the shortlist of suffixes that his leader was going to give him, but only one could encompass both his unusual vocabulary (thanks, Wraith), and the way he dove out of danger no matter the cost.
Obscurity: The state of being unknown.
Nobody knew who he could have been, and nobody knew who he was now. Not anyone besides Rhythm (Wickedcadence), after all, because she was the one cat who took care of her own even if the others got rid of him. Melody seemed to get close to him whenever it didn’t matter much, but when it came down to brass tacks he’d abandoned his brother. Nightmare, on the other hand, could care no less than she did about him. She had disowned the rest of her family pretty quickly, going towards her aunt and uncle’s care. It made him isolated even more when even his family scorned him, but it gave him a purpose. He swore to find Wraith once more. To find that he was truly Revenant’s Symphony, not Revenant’s Silence.
But Revenant’s Symphony took on his promise like a mantle. It only grew, ever-more consuming, each day Revenant and Wraith were apart. Months apart had turned into years. And yet, one cold, winter night, he left the Clans under the full moon, and he stripped himself of the insulting title of Silencedobscurity. He was once more simply Revenant. And soon enough, Revenant found his Wraith once more, and his life was complete again.
The light had returned to his eyes, and he wandered as Wraith withered. The pair swore to remain in contact, together, forever. So they did, travelling as a pair and acting as a pair of wandering strays. Wraith as the soldier, Revenant as the poet, both of them solid heads as kings. They hold the crowns of thorns they wear heavily, but with a quiet strength that tells others not to mess with them. Because of it Revenant and Wraith have become ad-hoc protectors of the lost and damned, housing passersby in abandoned cabins and sharing in their food supply. They don’t want to go back to the Clans, not ever, but wouldn’t mind going back and being part of a group again soon. Their flock of strays is company enough.
“So now, as leaves of autumn fall, I make my mark, and sign my name
And turn again, to touch my flame of music to the world—
a broken man, as best I can.”
:: - RELATIONSHIPS
Relationships in strikethrough are believed to be deceased or otherwise not kept in active contact.
Mother: Wraith
Father: —
Siblings: Melody’s Haunting (Haunting???? / Melody), Nightmare’s Composition (Daydreamvision / Nightmare or Composition), Euphony’s Crypticism (?????? / Euphony), Spirit’s Rhythm (Wickedcadence / Rhythm)
:: - CREDITS
Application - The Sacred Light
- Art - Ritz1125
- Biography - Ritz1125