Name: Warlock, also known as 'Number Seven'
Species: Norway rat, black self dumbo variety
Age: 5 months
Weight: 6 lbs or thereabouts
Birthplace: University of Iowa
Eye colour: pale blue
Markings: Pure black throughout. Has long black hair which has a blue-ish tint in the right light. He has black tufts of hair on his chin, elbows and extending down his back.



The most important thing about Warlock is that he is huge, rabbit sized, and well muscled. His head is huge, his paws are huge and he has a big thick tail. He has one notch, one rip and a tiny hole in his right ear, one rip and his laboratory ear tag in his left. He is the only rat in Faith's group who avoided having it ripped out. As with all the others, he has a scar of his number on his upper left arm. It is important to note that Warlock cannot sit upright on his hind legs in traditional rat way without something to support him. He is always on all fours. His hind claws are large and well developed but his front ones less so. He is half Norwegian and his coat is unusually thick for a rat. He also has a shorter muzzle than most rats due to the fact that he was bred to fight, i.e., bite and not let go.
In some of the earlier pictures of Warlock, he wears a mask.
In the early stages of the book, he did, so he can be drawn with or without it. I used to never draw him without it in the early days but then I started leaving it off so I could get used to drawing his face. I may, in future, start including it again from time to time.

General:
I use Warlock in two contexts, but the only one which would matter to anyone but me would be his character in my book. In the context of my book, Warlock is an ex laboratory rat, his allocated number was 7. He was bred as a fighting rat to be used in a rat pit. As such, he is hugely strong and easily provoked into aggression.
He has killed other rats.

A lot of his behaviours are down to his breeding. He had certain qualities bred into him to make him good sport in the pit, namely tenacity, stubbornness, aggression and a hatred of showing or feeling weakness. He was not bred for intelligence and as such can be a little slow. In actuality, he thinks very deeply about things, perhaps too deeply. He has a tendency to take a dislike to some rats for reasons known only to himself. The others in the group have come to terms with this, but upon meeting any new rat, they always have to wonder if Warlock will take exception to them. Its not wise to make any sort of physical contact with him until you know he's ok with you, and its definitely not advisable to stare at him. He can have quite drastic mood-swings, though sometimes he does it deliberately to freak out others.
He has a particularly good sense of humour, if rather puerile at times. He finds distasteful things to be rather amusing, but he can be bitingly sarcastic when he's ticked off. He also seems to be able to speak fluent Norwegian, though he�s pretty inconsistent about when he chooses to do so. More often than not he uses it when he's sad or distressed. He has a high prey drive and his favourite food is anything that was alive minutes earlier.

Perhaps surprisingly, Warlock is one of the most playful rats in the group, but due to his size and apparent obliviousness to his own strength, few dare to risk playing with him. He loves to wrestle and chase other rats, but if no-one will oblige, he'll play with a leaf, or a stone, or a dead mouse. He�s very good at keeping himself occupied, but has a fairly short attention span, so what is fascinating to him one minute can be discarded the next. Anyone who has ever owned a big, pushy, hormonal buck rat will have some idea of how Warlock is! As a point of interest, I always imagine him to speak a bit like Brian from Family Guy.

Warlock has chronic lung problems due to the fact that he is a lot bigger than a rat should ever be, and it puts strain on his organs. At the lab, he was on daily medication to help with this, but now he's free he doesn't have this luxury. He isn't expected to live much beyond a year. He has constant issues with his breathing, though typically for him, he'll never admit it.
His mother, no longer of any use, had her neck broken against the corner of a table by the lab workers when Warlock was only 3 weeks old. He witnessed it, which is something that has haunted him his entire life and may well be responsible for some of his issues. His father is a large handsome Siamese buck called Jared, whom he met up with upon his second time in the lab, and quickly decided he hated. He spent the remainder of their short time together abusing or else ignoring his father, despite Jared's attempts to be friendly. Unfortunately, Warlock tends not to trust readily and due to his past, is convinced that anyone he gets close to will leave him, so he is very guarded about becoming attached to others. But he was there when Jared died, and only then did he admit his true respect for his father.

Warlock is not a mean or cruel rat, far from it. He does not set out to harm anybody and, if left alone, he never troubles anyone. Unfortunately, due to his obvious novelty value, it seems that others cannot let him be so he is consistently put into situations that test his rather limited patience. But to those he knows well and trusts, he is the most devoted friend you could ever hope for.

A note on Warlock
Warlock is an important character to me. He was created as a combination of my rat Seven http://www.shadowrat.com/rats/sev.html Mick from Slipknot, and some bizarre crap out of my head. Thusly, Warlock is a very personal character to me for several reasons which I don't wish to divulge here. I use him in two contexts; one being my book/most of my art, the other being decidedly more personal. All I ask is that he is respected as being important to me, even if you don't understand why he is.