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Duke Raphael - Emotional

Personality:
Duke is insecure about himself, and often just likes to be by himself, doing something that will make him obscure and hopefully make people ignore him. He finds talking to others extremely difficult and hopes to avoid talking about himself at all costs. He doesn't like many people, and after the disappearance of his family, he found it hard to trust people. He is very quiet and shy, and is often seen just watching others from a distance, not understanding himself or them, and often contemplating what it would be like to go to them and ask to join in their activities. He hates to be touched, and the most you'd get out of him would be a handshake. He freezes up or even becomes violent whenever someone hugs him or tries to pull him along. His usual response to someone touching him or threatening him is to grab their fingers and start to bend them back until they decide it is best to leave him be.

Duke can loose his temper, and can resort to fighting if he feels threatened or backed into a corner. Duke's idea of a friendship is someone who will just happily sit with him in silence, unless there was something to say, and someone who wouldn't push him too hard for anything more. He wants to come out of his shell, but he finds the world outside a daunting place, and would much prefer to stay safe in his own image of the world which he created to protect himself.
Strengths:
Duke is a hard worker and will work and work until a project is finished. He is determined, and will achieve what he sets out to do. He is caring deep down, though it is hard to see through the pained, harsh exterior he has.
Flaws:
Duke hates to be touched, and as such, this can lead to him being quite aggressive if anyone lays a hand on him without his say so. He is intimidating, and tries his best to keep the façade.

Interest/Hobbies:
Duke loves to read fantasy and science-fiction books, his favourites being the Dark-Hunter Series. He also loves to paint, and, although his pictures are sometimes macabre and dark, he has a skill for human faces and showing emotion through any medium. He also loves photography, and will spend hours alone in the woods that edge his grounds snapping photographs and then tweaking them on his computer. Duke also loves music, and it doesn't really matter to him what it is, as long as the lyrics are good and the song is soft and calming or hard and head-banging, depending on his mood. He likes old and new songs, and has no particular band that he likes over the others, preferring the variety of music that he hoards.
Likes/Dislikes:
Likes
> Solitude
> Reading
> Watching movies
> Playing around on his computer
> Drawing
> Day-dreaming when he has nothing else to do.
Dislikes
> Being touched
> Being with too many people
> Being woken up early in the morning
> People questioning him.

History:
Duke was born in 1983 in Vienna, Italy. His mother was Italian, his father was from England on a trip to the country with his work. He had one sister, only 11 months older. The two were close from the beginning, sharing a bedroom in their small flat in Vienna, before their father received news from England asking for his services back in the country. Both Duke and his sister Jesse were 3 years old. The young family travelled to London, settling down into a larger appartment, where Duke and Jesse learnt their English alongside their mother, who had never travelled to another country before. It was a new experience for the three, and while their father brought in the money required to live, plus extras, the young children grew up fast in the bustle of the city.

Duke's life had finally started to settle, as, at the age of 5, he and Jesse were in the same pre-school class and learning quickly, aided by each other. The news from their father disrupted this though. They were being sent to a distant country, America, by their father's work. He had travelled up the career ladder and the sister company in America needed someone of their father's calibre to help them out there. He would be promoted and given a much better salary then he was receiving here. With much debate, the family was moving once again. Duke's little life was getting so confusing, and he hadn't even started school full-time!

The arrival in America was swift and easy. They had a home all prepared, the items from their home in England having been sent on ahead of them. Duke and Jesse were already enroled in a school, and their first day sped past uneventfully. Their father travelled further and further afield with his work till their mother eventually proclaimed she had had enough. The row the ensued lasted for a few days, neither giving and inch on what they believed was right. But it was finally agreed. The family travelled to Cape Fear just after Duke's 6th birthday. Duke's father set up his own business with the money he had accumulated over the years of work and even built their house from scratch on a plot of land he bought a little way from the main town.

The hustle and bustle of the cities they had lived in did nothing to help Duke and Jesse prepare for the slow, country life of Cape Fear. The two stuck close together, again in the same classes at school, and grew up pretty much independant of their classmates, though Jesse had a little more to do with the others then Duke did. She was more outgoing then her younger brother, and made friends easier. Duke stuck to himself or near Jesse when she wasn't with the others. He became solitary, and by their last years of High School had now left his sister at school, talking to her only at home.

By 16, Duke was secluded from a social life, mainly staying locked within his room. Jesse occassionally dragged him to social gatherings with her friends, though that wasn't all that often, as he found it hard to talk to her friends and was often the butt of their jokes. His rogueish attitude and good looks did get him noticed by the girls, but none were brave enough to near the 'Wild Card' of the Lo Contre family. Eventually he was branded as a swap in the hospital, as he looked and acted too differently from his family to be the true son of the Lo Contres'. Whereas his father and sister were light blonde and his mother darkish brown, he was black, though he did have the eerie silver eyes of their family. It didn't bother Duke too much though, and he let the insults roll off his shoulders, ignoring the other people in his class. Unlike his sister, due to his lack of speaking to others, Duke still held his Italian accent, whereas Jesse had picked up the American one. All of this eventually added up to Duke becoming less social and gradually lost interest in his school work and even his family life.

It was shortly after his 21st birthday that things started to change the daily routine of his life. His father sold the business, without the knowledge of the rest of them, or so Duke thought, and Duke's bank account started to soar as money from an anonymous source was poured into it. Duke's suspicions arouse, but he couldn't say to his father that a strange amount of money was appearing in his bank. His mother and sister were the first to go, though his father waved it off, saying they were staying over at a sick woman's further out, a friend of his mother's. He said they would come home later that week. And then he disappeared.

The story of Duke starts just after the disappearance of his mother and sister. His father still lives at the house.

Duke Raphael - Caracal Information

Body Length: 600-950mm
Weight: 10-18kg
Litter Size: 1-3 average
Life Span: 19 years

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Felidae
Subfamily: Felinae
Genus: Caracal
Species: Caracal caracal

The Caracal in appearance resembles the Lynx in having characteristic dark tufts on its large, pointed ears and is indeed often referred to as the African Lynx or Desert Lynx, however the caracal is not closely related to the true lynx species. Extending the visual comparison, the body of the caracal is slimmer and less stocky, its legs are thinner and its tail longer than the Lynx. It can grow up to 3 feet in body length and sport a tail about a third of its body size. Its coloration is generally yellowish brown to a darker red/brown, with the undersides of the cat, areas around the eyes and under the chin being white. The backs of its ears are black and the name 'Caracal' is derived from the Turkish word 'karakulak', meaning 'black ear'. Melanistic or all black caracal have also been reported.

The habitat of the caracal varies depending on the location within its range, which spreads from Central and Southern Africa (excluding the areas of dense tropical vegetation along the equator), through parts of the Middle East and Southern Asia across into India. The cat is found in dry savanna and woodland areas, scrubland and rugged terrain in mountainous regions, where it is known to live up to 3000 metres. Like other cats found in dry, arid or semi-dessert locations the caracal can survive for long periods without water, instead obtaining its requirement form the metabolic moisture of its prey.

Altogether there are seven named subspecies to be found in the African continent and only two in the Asiatic part of its range. Within Africa, the caracal is most abundant in South Africa (C.c.caracal) and in Namibia (C.c.damarensis), although populations in other areas of the continent are also believed to be of sufficient numbers to make the cat secure in most of its African range. Outside Africa, the Turkmenian caracal (C.c.michaelis) and South West Asian caracal C.c.schmitzi found to the extreme east of its range through to north west India are less abundant. There is some evidence to support the theory the Turkmenian caracal is not a valid subspecies and should be grouped with South West Asian form. However if separate subspecies are accepted then the Turkmenian cat is to be considered rare.

In hunting, the caracal is mainly nocturnal, but will also use the twilight hours to search out its prey. Diurnal activity has also been observed, specially in the hunting of bird. For its size the caracal is strong and fast, and as well as taking smaller prey such as jerboas, sand rat, ground squirrel and rock hyrax, it can also bring down the larger reedbuck and duiker. Much in the way of the Leopard, the caracal will sometimes cache its larger prey up in the lower limbs of trees and return to feed on its kill over several days. The caracal is also well known for using its agility and superior jumping ability to catch birds just after take-off ? here prey species include pidgeons and guineafowl.

In most parts of its range the caracal has no set breeding period and a female may often mate with up to three males .The litter size is usually between 1-6 kittens and they are born after a gestation period of approximately 71 days. The kittens have a daily weight gain of approximately 21g per day and although they reach maturity at about 16-18 months of age they are often independent from about 12 months.

Although an element of hunting for caracal skins takes place in parts of the Central and West Africa, the cat is not generally under threat from game huntng or poaching. However a significant number of caracal are killed by farmers in Southern Africa, where, outside protected areas the caracal is known to take domestic livestock.
((Taken from here))

Here are some other useful sites:
http://www.honoluluzoo.org/caracal.htm
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Caracal_caracal.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/11234/caracal_any.html

And here are some pictures: