The above picture was made by Wilk Fiadh, found either here on FurAffinity or on Weasley.

Physical Description
Standard Build
Ryan is a male border collie with unusual coloration; his piebald coat is not symmetric, with the standard tricoloration being altered with a white right face and arm and black left leg. His eyes are emerald green, and his hair is blond.

Ryan’s physical build is always athletic, though how beefy he is depends on how well he’s been managing his various neuroses at that time and setting. Average tends to be a gymnast build.

His personal scent, to those species able to identify individuals by scent, is vanilla extract.

Typical Clothing
Ryan prefers loose baggy clothing that can hide his build. He’ll wear form fitting clothing when the situation requires it, but brings a cover up if possible. His color preferences are black and emerald green.

World Variations
Ryan, despite being my oldest characters, doesn’t have a lot of world variations floating around of him out there on the set. This is because the border collie incarnation of him is new. He used to be a white cat with a black left ear, but even then he didn’t deviate very much from the established template athletic anthro fur.

Personality Summary
General Attitude
Ryan appears stern and reserved at most times. That doesn’t mean that he is emotionless, but instead means that he reserves the expression of that emotion for things that matter. People matter, of course, so he’s most often seen expressing emotion to his friends and family. But total strangers are people too, so just because he doesn’t know someone doesn’t mean he won’t smile, snarl, or sigh at them. The point is that it always comes in metered doses.

Part of the reason for this is that Ryan himself is metered into three parts. Ryan’s baseline supernatural is that he’s a mental cerberus, giving him three distinct minds that are all him prattering on inside his head. One dominates his courage, forcing the issue to not back down. The second is honor, holding himself to his strict code of conduct both in body and mind. Finally the third is passion driven, driving home that fact that even a reserved person like Ryan still has the adrenaline filled heart of a ten year old boy.

Berserker Button
Ryan’s normal behavior gets thrown aside when someone is in danger. When he’s acting as someone’s protector, everything he is gets thrown into the roll, leaving no room for any emotion at all. It might seem a redundant state of mind given his normally stoic behavior, but having no emotion infinite different from not expressing one’s emotion. With no emotions you don’t feel fear, you don’t feel anger, and you don’t feel mercy. Seeing him destroy those who threaten his charge is not uncommon, but any violence is secondary to the protection itself.

Typical Talents
Mundane Abilities
Ryan tends to have the general technical competencies for the sentient of his age in his current setting. Beyond that Ryan tends to specialize in constructive physical activities. In some settings this means being a smith, in others a personal trainer, and very rarely he may be a surgeon but those are normally on the edges of the bell curve.

Universally it can be said that Ryan knows how to take care of his body during times of rest, and force his body past normal limits during times of danger. Mind over body, his pain tolerance is unbelievable and his strength is disproportionately larger that his muscle mass suggests. In any setting where combat training is appropriate you can expect him to excel in melee combat; in settings where is it not appropriate for him to have any training he can at least be considered a natural in physical endurance.

Part of Ryan taking care of his body also means he knows how to cook. He doesn’t consider it a high art or an essential skill, but he is more at ease when he’s controlling what is coming into his body and there are few ways to do so more than cooking it yourself.

Power Potential
Ryan’s supernatural abilities tend to favor magic. Arcane knowledge and runes of power are his bread and butter. Incantations tend to be a weak point, but in settings where that is the only means of spellcasting he can at least be considered knowledgeable. Ryan’s overall preference is to combine runes of power with physical construction to create his own weapons and gear, but base skill to reach that specialization normally covers several other skills.

Element wise, Ryan aligns with darkness. He is silent and reserved during the best of times. He is cold and merciless during the worst of times. This affinity stretches though his personality to his powers, and making the magic of darkness either his preference or only option depending on the setting.

Creative History
Character Origins
Ryan was my first real character on the internet. He was born as a mostly white cat with a black left ear, on a furry MUCK based off of the Supermegatopia webcomic. In that small close knit community he developed as a character as I developed as a player. Soon after getting him settled there, I migrated him to a community based around the Gaming Guardian webcomic. That setting is part of where I developed my love of making the meta of the story part of the plotline, even if it’s not the strongest example.

From there, things developed. As I played MMOs or RPGs, I would name appropriate characters Ryan Galen, or some variation like Rylent Gallent. In addition to that I was lacking a fursona for several years out of a desire to get it right on the first try, and during that time Ryan was my handle on many sites. He was never me, though, if only out of obstinance of wanting him to be better than I saw myself and to not carry my burdens on top of his own.

Eventually everything dies, particular if one has anxiety issues that can scare one self away from a community out of a sense of failure. The Gaming Guardians are still going without me, and SMT MUCK... exists though it’s bleeding heavily what with the death of the related comics as even an archive outside the wayback machine.

Looking back at his journey, I’m proud of where Ryan had gone, for all but two thing. One, he was always in squeezed into other people’s creations and had never had one of his own. Two, he was my first character... and as such many of his traits were rushed. So I reevaluated everything... one of the most dramatic things on the chopping block was his species, but it was also the most rushed. Ryan’s a dog, he always has been... just didn’t realize it before.