Tartr's wolf form is huge but hunched, looming over nearly every other humanoid at the Nidus and taking up more space against a dragon than one is used to. She has a dappled brownish grey fur that is darker along her skull and spine and paler on her legs. Her eyes are amber in both forms, pale enough to be a little unsettling. She possesses a full lupine form but is more comfortable in her middle state; the lupine form is the most difficult of all to shift to, and though she's spent most of her life in a human form, she feels small and weak in it, and is uncomfortable with the way people treat her.

It wasn't until her first sibling, Bacar, was killed for transforming into a 'monster' that Tartr realized that shapeshifting was verboten. She remained in hiding among the human village she'd been taken to even when the wolf hunts began. She lost track of her other sibling, Siltith, a year or two after she'd begun working her way into the princelet's general force of guards.

She didn't feel safe returning to the wilds for a long time, especially with what she learned humans will do to those things they fear. While she was meek and subservient with those around her, though, Tartr was a force in melee. Wily, springy, and with a strength that belied her tiny stature, she eventually took her training to help guard caravans through the very wilds she had grown up in.

Through luck, she ventured her way south and switched contracts and companies until she found herself at the Warren in time to be swept into a bonding ceremony. She didn't mean to. She was looking for other work that would take her on the next leg of her journey, and wound up more of a tourist than a deliberate candidate. Never the less, something called to her. That something was Kiye, a red hathian that has both taught her to be her own woman and to embrace the world as she really is.

It's been many years since that day, and the pair of them joined the Warren for a little while... however, when Mystic's war with the hydras truly began, Tartr and Kiye were injured badly enough that they nearly died. Because the Warren was too filled with the injured, the were taken to an allied nation in Avengaea to recuperate, which is how they made their way to live at Nidus Aven these days. Both have settled from their youthful vitriol, as they have had to. Nidus Aven underwent its own colossal tragedy of being lost in the mists that subsumed much of the Nexus for many years, separating planets once closely linked. Living in the uncertainty that they'd ever see light or be able to fly again was a trauma that had to be endured. What came out the other side, when the inhabitants Nidus Aven discovered their entire home had been deposited on an alien landscape, were a pair of subdued and hardened creatures.

Tart and Kiye are scouts, now, careful not to stray too far from the Nidus for fear of being stranded, but intent on making good on their well-honed skills.

In fact, when she and Tartr joined the ranks of the common soldiers in the Warren's desperate bid to outmaneuver the native hydra of Tris'Hath, and subsequently was gravely injured, Kiye refused to have her scars healed. Now, though she was brought from the brink of death she keeps those scars, and she tells stories about how she went toe-to-toe with some of the most dangerous creatures of the Nexus.

During their time at Nidus Aven, when it was lost in the Mists and everyone was kept more or less under siege, Kiye told these tales often enough to more or less exhaust her audience. She also terribly embarrassed her bond in the process, though thought it was nonsense that those who had never fought tooth-and-claw didn't respect their veterans. By the time that the Nidus was deposited, she was about as grateful to be rid of the constant company as they were to have space from her. These days she scouts with Tartr just to get some space, and to complain, and to perhaps, one day, return to the Warren to commiserate with other Hathians.

The one thing that Kiye would never admit to anyone is that the reason she simply hasn't picked up and gone is that she's afraid that she won't be accepted by her own kind. She harbours in her secret heart a fear that she is a coward and a weakling for having been sent away, unable to fight all the way to the end of the war or die trying.