❝ MARCHING ALONG LIKE A GOOD SOLDIER DOES. I’M SETTING SAIL WITH ANCHORS HOLDING ME DOWN. ❞
GENERAL INFO
NAME: Cynric Shaw GENDER/PRONOUNS: CIS Male, He/Him DATE OF BIRTH: October 28th, 1984 PLACE OF BIRTH: Sardis, Georgia CURRENT RESIDENCE: The Bronx OCCUPATION: Paramedic & Owner of Drop It Like A Squat FACE CLAIM: Ben Barnes
SUPERNATURAL INFO
SPECIES: Werewolf PACK POSITION: Beta
BIOGRAPHY
Trigger Warnings: Violence, guns, death, domestic abuse, physical injury, addiction, alcoholism, war
Born in the heart of rural Georgia, Cynric Shaw was raised on guns and gasoline. The son of Joseph Shaw, a retired Army Major, boxer, and longtime firearm enthusiast, his education started early; Cynric knew how to shoot a gun and wield a switchblade long before he ever learned how to choke up on a baseball bat– and even then, he wasn’t using the bats to swing at baseballs. He was more likely to bust a mailbox than to hit a game winning homerun. Little did he know how useful those tools would become once his world finally stretched beyond the red clay of Sardis, Georgia, and grew much, much colder. But to know how a story unfolds, it’s better to start at the beginning– when the days were long and the world was small.
His early childhood was fairly normal, aside from his father’s unusual set of pastimes. Cynric was the eldest of two and the pair of brothers were practically inseparable. Chaos seemed to follow them wherever they went, a side effect of being their father’s sons– they were wild, curious boys with undaunted spirits and penchants for trouble. Even at young ages, the Shaw boys had been hellbent on breaking rules in school, often resulting in suspension. But despite Cynric’s rebellious nature, it was during his formative years that he developed an unexpected appreciation for the arts, a trait many would attribute to his mother.
While violence and guns tended to be his father’s specialty, music was his mother’s. When he wasn’t learning how to fight or raising hell with his brother, Cynric was stationed at Gemma Shaw’s side, learning how to mold his fingers into different chord shapes and how to sing the harmonies of all her favorite hymns. In many ways, his mother was a moment of peace and quiet in an otherwise loud and chaotic world. She held the balance in the Shaw family, solid as rock and steady as a hammer. So when she was suddenly killed by a drunk driver on the family’s way home from church when Cynric was fourteen, the Shaws descended into chaos and nothing was ever as simple or as small as it once had been.
Joseph soon lost himself at the bottom of any bottle he could get his hands on, ultimately leaving the two brothers to their own devices. The only time he really paid them any mind was when he’d downed just enough Jack Daniels and wanted to fight. Cynric took the worst of it, hoping he might spare his younger brother from their father’s drunken rage, but no one was immune to it. The boys stayed away from home as much as they could and soon fell into dangerous crowds and patterns. In order to support both him and his brother, Cynric started street fighting for money, but over time, it began to take a toll on him, both mentally and physically. Cynric was running himself into the ground, and after one too many nasty trips to the emergency room following one of his fights, someone finally intervened. One of the nurses happened to be a family friend and pushed Cynric to join the military, begging him to use his talents for good before his self-destructive ways killed him. She couldn’t stand the thought of another Shaw being buried far too soon. At first, Cynric was reluctant– he couldn’t see what was happening to him and he knew he needed to be there for his brother– but over time, he finally relented, and at eighteen years old, he enlisted in the United States Navy.
The day he was shipped off to basic training was the last Cynric ever saw of his brother, and of Sardis. Shortly after, he began his training as a Corpsman– a medic. His years in the Navy were some of the most exhilarating as well as some of the worst he’d ever known. During his training, he took to boxing, much like his father, and earned himself a couple titles along the way. But once deployment hit, what bit of fun he’d had was over. Over the next ten years, he completed multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The loss of life was devastating, and as a Corpsman, Cynric had a front row seat to the worst of it. Men he’d gone through bootcamp with, men he called friends and family, had all paid the ultimate sacrifice and he’d been powerless to stop them. Over time, that caught up with Cynric, and in 2012, he was honorably discharged from the Navy at twenty-eight years old.
Free to start his life and dig new roots, Cynric decided on New York, knowing he’d never step foot back in Georgia unless he absolutely had to– and maybe not even then. He started working as a paramedic in the city and planned to save up enough money to eventually enroll in classes at New York University. After years of serving as a Corpsman, he dreamed of becoming a doctor, no matter how long it took. But that dream never had the chance to take flight. Shortly after his thirty-second birthday, Cynric was out on a call about an apparent drug overdose and was ambushed by a local gang in an alleyway. Outnumbered and unarmed, Cynric fought back as hard as he could, but was eventually left for dead. The events that followed the attack are still vague, even to this day. But one memory stuck out, and still does. At first, he thought he’d lost his mind, thinking that he’d actually seen a wolf hovering over him like some sort of savior, rather than a predator. Everything else from that point on still remains somewhat of an agonizing blur, but the scars lining his left shoulder blade do a decent job at filling in the blanks.
Before that night, Cynric had never dreamed that the supernatural were anything more than made up tales and spooky ghost stories told around campfires. Then to learn that they were real, and now he was part of that so-called fairytale? His world flipped on its axis, leaving him feeling more vulnerable and lost than ever before. Distraught, Cynric rescinded his application to school, and resorted to heavy drinking and fighting just to try and dull the swirl of emotions running through his head. It was what he knew, after all. No matter how destructive the fighting and the drinking became, it was his one taste of normalcy and Cynric clung to it. For as bad as it was, it was far from rock bottom. That came one night about a month later when he stood face to face with a fellow soldier in a friendly sparring match. Much stronger now, Cynric easily overwhelmed him without realizing and with one hard blow, his friend was knocked out cold. He rushed his friend to the hospital where he was later admitted with a critical head injury and no guarantees that he would ever wake up again. Horrified, Cynric vowed to never step foot in the ring again, not if it ran the risk of hurting someone as severely as he’d hurt a man he’d called a friend. From that point forward, Cynric blamed himself and fell even deeper into his self-destructive habits. True to form, he tried dealing with what he’d done on his own, but he never stood a chance. It wasn’t until he’d been pushed towards the local Pack again and again that Cynric finally managed to catch a foothold back in the real world, rather than the drunken stupor he’d resigned himself to.
Though he was slow to warm and even slower to open himself up to those around him, the Pack gave him a sense of balance he hadn’t felt since his mother had passed. It was the solid foundation his life had been missing. They helped him understand what he’d become and the responsibilities that came with his newfound place in the supernatural world. With the Pack supporting him, Cynric managed to slowly but surely clear his head and return to work as a paramedic. Eventually, he even returned to the fighting realm, but rather than enter the ring again and run the risk of repeating bloody history, he used the money he’d saved for medical school to buy out the local gym, Drop It Like A Squat. Now, some five years later, he hosts regular bouts and helps train other fighters in between his shifts on the ambulance, but has yet to step foot in the ring again.
