Anzhelo stands a mere 13hh at full growth, his growth stunted by early malnutrition and neglect; he will always be lean and find it difficult to keep weight on, often appearing malnourished. His body type resembles that moreso of a deer than an equine; his long legs perch on cloven hooves, a body built for speed and grace leading up to a slender neck and an arabianesque face, large rounded ears attached to the slightly dished face his supposed ancestry is famous for.

His base is a faded golden buckskin, appearing almost dull in sheen; purple & blue roaning makes it appear as if there are constellations of bruises across his body. Dim cremello-ish tovero markings layer atop the roaning, painting his legs, face, and parts of his body. He has what appears to be a 'chimera splash' of black on his left shoulder; no one is entirely sure where it comes from, as it is one of the few things that differentiates him from his mother, who he is a near-clone of.

Many scars cover him; from the heavy, easily noticed scarring on his shoulder to barely-noticeable lines on his shoulders and neck, it is clear that the young stallion has had a rough life. If you ask, he'll simply say they were from fighting and refuse to elaborate; however, a few have been gained during his adventures in Elysium. One of these scars is on his left hind leg in the mark of a wolf's teeth, gained during the exodus event when heretic's dire wolves attacked the crowd. In addition to this, there is a long, ugly gash on the underside of his stomach where theodosia was delivered by c-section.

He has small antlers; only two or three points in his young age, they will grow with him, molting like a deer and regrowing every spring until he reaches full maturity at around four years old, at which point small bits of lapis lazuli will begin to grow on the antlers. Unlike his antlers, the gems will grow his entire life, eventually crystallizing his entire rack.

At ten years old, he will begin to develop cataracts and go blind.

Perhaps the first thing someone might notice about the deer-boy is the fact that he always seems ready to make friends, although perhaps he might hang back and wait for another to initiate contact -- even so, he always has a kind word and a cheerful greeting for anyone he encounters when he is out-and-about on his duties. He is loyal to a fault when it comes to those he calls his friends, always willing to lend a hand -- he has an intense need to please other people that perhaps leads him to trouble more often than not, although his moral compass is equally as strong. When wronged, it can be noticed that his anger is reserved, a quiet, bottled sort of disappointment and bitterness that he swallows down in the interest of keeping the peace, as he has never been taught how to properly regulate (or rather, express) some of his emotions.

He is amazingly resilient, although many people may not realize it just by looking at him -- even so, the trauma he has suffered (and the fact that he has rarely been allowed to confront and heal from it up until he met the Gang) has led to him being afflicted by C-PTSD. He cycles between periods of being full of energy and sociable to periods of extreme self-loathing, fatigue, and suicidal thoughts; few triggers are known, but one known trigger is that of his scars/wounds being touched. In times of violence involving himself, it is more likely for him to disassociate and simply allow the abuse to happen -- however, when faced with violence to another, he will throw himself to the mercy of the abuser as a distraction, fed by the need to be the sort of savior he wished he had when he was younger. As a defense mechanism, his mind has taken to brutally repressing the worst events of his past and downplaying them to himself, and it is likely that he will need an extensive support network in order to face these ghosts without causing himself further mental trauma.

Since he was a young child, he has suffered from insomnia and nightmares, leading him to seek companionship in first his older brother and then friends he had made along the way. After his treatment at the hands of Thyterios, however, he finds himself unable to trust others near him in what might be his most vulnerable time of day, unable to find any sort of rest should he not be alone, and even then often unable to sleep until he simply collapses from exhaustion.

EARLY LIFE

His story starts with a young bully, a stallion arrogant and who believed the world would bend to his whims; including the pretty daughter of the herd nearby, a mare as gentle as she was beautiful. It begins on a moonlit night when the mare finally fell for the rogue and spent the night with him; and with the rogue being found by her herd when news of a pregnancy begins to filter through the gossip vines, forced to take her as his mate while still in his prime.

It begins with an older brother named Tobias, and his father becoming more withdrawn and snappish; no longer a charming young man, but a reluctant father who cared little for children and only showed interest in his firstborn son when it made his mate happy. His brother is shy and quiet, graceful and beautiful; Tobias is a jewel in his mother's eye, and even the distant father will admit that his son is a good one.

His part in the story comes about with an unplanned second pregnancy; with a bright autumn day when a mare found herself bleeding out after a difficult gestation -- when a colt was born and spent only a few hours before his mother passed away from the damage he had caused. He was the nearly-spitting image of his mother; and his father turned away from him in grief, unable to reconcile the loss of his mate with this son he never wanted -- bound by a promise to his mate, he found the child a nurse mare, but otherwise showed no interest in the son his late mate had named 'Anzhelo'.

Once he was old enough to wean, his father's grief had turned to denial; he herded the two colts away from the herd, taking to a deeply wooded forest and keeping them isolated from all other equines. Tobias was still the favorite; the quiet one, content to create beauty -- but Anzhelo was the failure, clumsy and too talkative, kept for his resemblance to his mother but a walking reminder of the loss the stallion had suffered.

When Anzhelo was young, his father sometimes showed him affection -- but as he grew, affection turned into aggression; he found himself as his father's punching bag more often than not, told that he was the reason his mother had died and that he was worthless -- he learned that he took up too much space, he said too many words; that he would never be anything.

LIFE IN ELYSIUM

His father's rage turned into fury one summer night, a sudden charge ripping open flesh and throwing his small body into the nearby trees when the antlers connected; barely managing to climb to his feet, the now yearling colt ran for his life... and ended up in Elysium lost, starving, and in pain. He was found nearly dead in the Immortal Gardens by King Vander and Io Kairavi, who worked quickly to heal the young child and bring him to the safety of the Eternal Woods and the Crucis herd. he found himself quickly adopted by the fatherly Vander and became a part of the Crucis herd once he was fully healed.

As a new year dawned, he began to explore his new home and found himself as part of one of Mother Mabel's expeditions, this time into the depths; he was part of the group that discovered the Hall of the Dead, a place that soon grew to fascinate the young fawn. Soon after meeting and befriending a melancholy stallion named thanatos in the claiming grounds, Anzhelo found himself caught up in yet another event; this time, the firstborn's exodus event, in which Heretic turned upon the group (and was subsequently slain); in this portion of the journey, he found himself caught in the jaws of a retreating dire wolf, hopping on three legs for the last part of the journey. However, it was well worth the trouble; he was one of the few whose wish was granted by the Everbeing, a wish to meet his mother for the first time; a meeting that was seemingly never meant to be.

Rediscovered by his father, Anzhelo quickly lost any sense of the independence he had been learning, reverting once more to the scared, quiet boy he had been. As tensions heightened between Crucis and another herd called the Heretics, his father began plotting to remove his son from the Eternal Woods and get him fully under his control without the influence of Vander and Io Kairavi. Nikolai's chance occurred when the Heretics called upon their god and set fire upon the eternal woods using the queen's pet dragon. As others ran to either confront the enemy or flee the flames, Nikolai quickly herded young Anzhelo away from the others, shoving him through the flames towards the land they had both come from.

His disappearance did not go unnoticed, however; Thanatos and a stallion named Kenji that he'd begun to have feelings for had noticed that he was gone and followed the trail that the two had left behind. While they confronted his father, he was told to run and find Io -- he doesn't know whether any of them survived the encounter or not.

He ran far away from Elysium and the fire that had seemingly consumed everything he loved, searching for Io, but instead found himself lost and alone once more.

TIME IN CAELESTE

Anzhelo is discovered by the cast-down god Thyterios, a charming and arrogant man who quickly takes the young boy under his wing as both one of his servants and one of his lovers. Introduced to the other maidens and his new life in Dead Horse Ridge, Anzhelo quickly settles in to his new life before a strange call summons him to the Silver Pines. There, he continues his tradition of getting caught up with the gods & their games, being sent out on a scavenger hunt before facing down Shishira's dragon. knocked out and concussed in the beginning of the battle, he awakes in time to witness the victory and be gifted the prizes.

Thyterios was kind and charming, if somewhat brusque at times, and with wandering eyes that made the young boy feel uncomfortable -- but he had taken him in, and the young stallion did his best to make his mentor happy. After the battle with the dragon, Thyterios began spending more time with the boy, whisking him away to his chambers where he plied the naive Anzhelo with opium and mind control, playing on his need to be loved until the former god got the “prize” that he wanted, and then discarded the young man for his more experienced maidens.

Reeling from the betrayal and reintroduced trauma, Anzhelo sequestered himself inside his room, where he found himself growing steadily sicker as the weeks progressed. An early morning walk to attempt to clear his head led to him nearly fainting and being found by the shaman Vivian, who took him home with her and treated his nausea. She also diagnosed his sickness -- pregnancy, aided by the magic of the lands, was putting extra stress on his already malnourished body.

Instead of returning home after such a revelation, Anzhelo found himself praying to the Goddess of Spring for clarity and the strength to protect his unborn child the way he had never been able to protect himself. Vasanta sent him on a quest to the Dragon Isles, the same place he had faced the dragon, and there he found a dragon scale awaiting him -- one the creature had shed long before it was under Shishira’s dominion, a reminder of strength and courage that he and others had shown in confronting the dragon. Ever since, he has worn the iridescent scale around his neck.

Theodosia’s birth was nearly his death -- if not for the quick actions of Vivian in performing a c-section, she would have killed him in her attempts to escape his body. He adored his daughter from the moment he laid eyes upon her, vowing to himself that he would do whatever it might take to keep her safe.

Thyterios was less-than-interested in his newborn daughter, favoring his other, god-like children rather than his half-mortal spawn -- perhaps the kindest thing he ever did was arrange for a nurse-mare to help the fragile Anzhelo care for and feed his newborn daughter, since due to the c-section, he could barely move. That didn’t stop Thyterios from demanding chores from the young deer-boy, some of which included sending Anzhelo into the city on errands.

On one such errand, his life would be changed. Theodosia had followed him around the marketplace as he limped, her little hooves clattering on the cobblestones, and they never noticed the shadow-colored mare whose eyes never left the pair until they were suddenly herded into an out-of-the-way alley. Maternal instinct had been his first instinct, lowering gem-sharpened antlers at the mare before she offered compassion in a hushed whisper, and salvation if Anzhelo could only be brave enough to accept the offer of safety from Thyterios. He would have to join the Gang, of course, and help them out when they needed him -- but it was a price he was willing to pay for the safety of his daughter. Elysium was her name, and she led them away from the Celestial City that very day, stopping whenever Anzhelo needed to rest and muttering angrily under her breath whenever she saw the state the fragile male was in.

She brought them to a motley crew of horses that lived out in the forest, out of the reach of the laws they rarely agreed with. There, he raised his daughter amidst the misdeeds of the Gang, allowed to physically heal from the draining birth and for the first time in a long time, given the space to start the healing process mentally, as well. Elysium drafted him as a spy and messenger, using his naturally slight build and speed to their advantage, and he found himself working and enjoying himself, learning how to thrive without reliance upon others.

The day came that Theodosia decided to stretch her wings and fly the nest, and while he was saddened to be losing his little girl, he knew it was time for her to explore the world on her own. He bid her farewell with fresh flowers for her hair and a kiss to her forehead, a bittersweet pain in his chest as he watched her recede into the distance. Soon after, he bid his own farewells to the Gang, wishing to strike out on his own as well and unknowingly following his daughter to the lands of Novus.

Dragon Scale Necklace -- An iridescent dragon scale that shines like an oilslick, looped around his neck on a simple silver cable. The scale itself is about the size of a matchbook, tapered at one end, with the once-sharp edges dulled by time and the elements. It is a reminder of the strength and courage in which Anzhelo and all the others fought their way to the Dragon Isle and did a task that would have been impossible if not for the help of every single living being who had come. It is blessed by the very deity that sent Anzhelo on his quest, and serves as a reservoir for his courage for when he might need help standing up for himself or for others.