<div class="floatleft">(http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g393/theredfear/MaleCharPics/n4dfe070e6bdae_large.jpg)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Valen Tenaz<br/><strong>District:</strong>12<br/><strong>Age:</strong>17<br/><strong>Gender:</strong>Male<br/><strong>Height:</strong>6'3<br/><strong>Weight: </strong>220lbs<br/><strong>Eyes:</strong>Brown<br/><strong>Hair:</strong>Black<br/><strong>Skin tone: </strong>Lightly tanned<br/><strong>Distinguishing Marks:</strong>Calloused hands, Scarred forearms from a dog mauling<br/><strong>Physical Description: </strong>He does his best to hide his physical stature with slouched shoulders, and oversized clothing but to see him shirtless you would never believe he emerged from the malnourished District 11. He is muscular, athletic, and clearly far more well fed than most of his neighbors.<br/><br/><strong>Likes</strong>: Fighting, Hunting, sleeping under the stars, Chess<br/><br/><strong>Dislikes:</strong>Panem. Peacekeepers. Canines.<br/><br/><strong>Fears:</strong>Canines in General. Wolves very specifically. . During one of his wilderness survival exercises he became separated from Cora. A desperately hungry pack of wolves picked up his scent and hunted him for two days. Every time he thought he'd thrown them off his trail they'd pick up his scent again and continue the hunt. On the second night they cornered him in a cave and forced him into a ferocious, desperate fight for his life. Only the ironic fact that the District 11 brat was better nourished than the wolf pack gave him a fighting chance. He was still badly mauled in the ensuing struggle. Though he emerged victorious the sound of a growl, snarl, or howl has sent shivers down his spine ever since. It was his first real brush with death.<br/><br/><strong>Personality</strong>: Valen has been preparing for this his entire life. He was been raised to hate the Capitol and President Snow for as long as he can remember. Though he questioned this for a time, he ultimately decided that it was right, and fair, and just to hate the Capitol and it's president. Perhaps more than anything else though Valen wants to make his mother proud, and avenge the injustices inflicted upon her. Ever since he learned how he was conceived he has harbored a sense of shame. Much of his motivation is an attempt to atone for the sins he feels that he inherited the night he was conceived.<br/><br/><strong>History:</strong>Cora was a ghost. The peacekeepers had come to her farm decades ago. She was the most beautiful girl in District 12. Surely such vigor and health and beauty must have meant her family was hording food. Food meant for the Capitol. That was the flimsy rationale those men used to justify their drunken gang rape that spiraled even more tragically out of control and culminated in the slaughter of her entire family and the razing of her farm.<br/><br/>Ever since that night, men occasionally whispered of seeing Cora in the dark mists of early morning when they went to check on their crops. And every time a Peacekeeper vanished, they whispered that Cora struck from beyond the grave.<br/><br/>Nine months after the myth of Cora began, a newborn baby was abandoned at a farm on the edge of the district. Along with a freshly slaughtered Deer. He had only a single word stitched into his diaper. Valen. The family almost turned him away, barely able to feed themselves let alone a new mouth. But that deer would feed them for a good long time, and they did not feel right taking the meat and abandoning the child. Over the ensuing years every few months a mysterious boon of food would be found on the farm. Sometimes a freshly slain animal. Sometimes food rations that could only have been stolen from the Peacekeeper's stocks.<br/><br/>Over the years to follow, Valen grew up stronger and healthier than most District 12 kids, thanks in no small part to the frequent Gifts his family received from their mysterious benefactor. But Valen was a bright young man and it didn't take him long to start puzzling the pieces together. Very often, a night or two before they received their Boon...or a night or two after...one of the local District Peacekeepers would vanish. "Reassigned"...that's what the other Peacekeepers would say. But people saw the fear in their eyes. People heard the whispers of the name 'Cora'.<br/><br/>These occurrences kept people distracted and ensured they had bigger concerns than the fact that the people on one particular farm seemed a bit better fed than most 12's. Valen asked his 'father' one day and confirmed what he suspected. The first Peacekeepers to vanish were the ones who burned down Cora's farm. All but one who'd been reassigned to the Capitol. Valen knew in his gut that Cora was no ghost. She was real. She was alive. She was out there....and she was his mother.<br/><br/>Whether or not the Peacekeepers knew the truth or believed the myth the end result was the same. They were scared. Scared enough to avoid the area where Cora's angry spirit was said to prowl. It created holes in their security network Valen could slip through everyday as the child went in search of his mother. And eventually he found her. Or she found him.  Same result.<br/><br/>Half of her face still held the beauty that once made her famous throughout District 12. The other half was claimed by the fires that had taken both her family and her soul. And all that remained where her heart once rested was a burning lust for vengeance. Against the Peacekeepers. Against the Capitol. Against President Snow. And against Guerra...the man who had planted Valen in her womb and been fortunate enough to be reassigned before she had sufficiently recovered from the injuries he inflicted that night.<br/><br/>Valen looked into the cold, haunted eyes of his mother and knew without words that a choice lay before him. Turn back...return to the farm and live like all the rest of District 12...or become a weapon in Cora's war. Victim or Avenger.<br/><br/>He chose Avenger.<br/><br/>They had no real weapons to work with. Snatching a bit of food was one thing but the Peacekeeper weapon stores were too well guarded even for Cora to risk. But then Cora had always found weapons weren't really necessary if you had sharp wit, and a strong resolve. The human body can do more damage than most people think if you can overcome your instinctive squeamishness and fully commit to the death or maiming of another human being. Cora quickly found that when she hid the disfigured portion of her face it was child's play to lure unsuspecting Peacekeepers close enough for surprisingly strong fingers and sharp fingernails to dig into his eye-socket or stab at his throat with poison-dipped twigs before he knew what had hit him.<br/><br/>Cora taught Valen how to look weak and draw his prey in until the moment to strike was at hand. She taught him to hunt. To craft his own crude but effective bows. Sharpen his own spears and arrows. Eat his own kills without the benefit of flame that would give away his position at night to patrolling Peacekeepers. But above all she taught him that at the end of the day all that truly stood between him and death was his wit and his body. Swords and Spears could break. Arrows throwing knives deplete. But his eyes, his fists, his feet, and his brain could always be trusted to carry him through the flame if he guarded for them well and trained them daily.<br/><br/>They never took the weapons from the Peacekeepers they killed. As long as nothing was stolen from the dead peacekeepers that turned up once or twice a year it fueled the myth of the vengeful ghost. Nobody bothers to search for a vengeful spirit. But if they think a real flesh and blood killer is taking Peacekeeper weapons to start an armed insurgency....that they search for.<br/><br/>So just as Cora had learned to fight without weapons, so she taught Valen. How to kill their enemy before they ever drew steel...or how to disarm their enemy when guile was not an option. How to kill with strikes to the throat. To blind with gouges to the eyes. To disable with broken limbs or blows to the kidneys. Cora always told Valen he would never need a weapon, because he would become a weapon. Her weapon. And he embraced his role as the instrument of his mother's vengeance. He felt it was the least he owed her for the shame of having had to birth her rapist's son.<br/><br/>Sometimes Cora would vanish for weeks, even months at a time leaving Valen to fend for himself with what she taught him. One day she returned from one of these excursions with a man. A man with information and influence. A man with his own agenda, but one that Cora had arranged a bargain. On his 17th birthday Valen would volunteer to represent his district in the Hunger Games. The resistance would give him whatever aid it could, but it would not be much. Valen's task was to disrupt the games as much as possible. All the better if he could even get the Game-Makers to send Peacekeepers into the Games after him. Because this year, the man in charge of Peacekeeper security detail assigned to the Hunger Games was going to be none other than Guerra himself. Father of Valen. Violator of Cora.<br/><br/>Cora intensified Valen's training in preperation for the games...including how to sabotage some of the technology he might encounter within the arena. Cameras. Microphones. Anything that might anger the officials enough to send in the Peacekeepers. Anything that would give Valen a chance to stare into the eyes of his father just before he dies. He never said so of course but Valen realizes this mystery man is using him. He has made his peace with the fact that he is likely not going to survive this. Whatever this man intends to do with the lessened security that Valen will cause if he is successful in luring Guerra into the killing fields is irrelevant to Valen.<br/><br/>As long as he gets to kill his father and avenge the violation of his mother and cleanse himself of inherited sins first he can accept this fate.<br/><br/>He can...but that doesn't mean he will.<br/><hr/><div align="center"><strong>Played by TheRedFear</strong></div>