Josh Creek
Overview
Josh Creek, called Stoneheart, is leading Warrior of the Roadrunner Sept in northwest Arizona, and a stalwart leader in both peace and war. For someone supposed to be the ultimate warrior, he has a lot of sense and a surprisingly cool head, and his pack has more than once appreciated the skills of his Kinfolk wife, Rosie, who is a doctor of osteopathy. Josh carries an ancient klaive (actually, a macauitl, five feet long and four inches wide) with a hilt made from hardwood and a silver blade inset with obsidian Aztec-Tanoan symbols. He's tall, husky man with long black hair and piercing hazel eyes. In wolf form, the Ahroun is black with a slight fringe of silver at his temple. He bears a hairless scar across his abdomen in all forms.
Josh grew up in the sept and had the tutelage of an older Warrior, Joseph Holt. When Joseph was killed in a run-in with Pentex, Josh took it hard; he'd tried to save his mentor only to end up half-gutted himself. Joseph's widow, much younger than her dead husband, was Rosie. She healed Josh physically and spiritually, and after a long period of mourning, married him with the approval of the sept and Kinfolk.
The macauitl Josh carries may be centuries old. He and his packmates found it deep in the Echo Cliffs, along with what appear to be the remains of a lost Aztec colony, far from where scholars would ever expect Aztecs to have been. In addition to the macauitl, Josh and the pack found a set of scrolls, which may predate the so-called Florentine Codex, a series of writings about the Aztecs compiled by the Spanish friar Bernardino de Sahagún in the early sixteenth century. The language appears to be a dialect of the Aztec Náhuatl, but Josh and his sept mates have only translated bits and pieces of the scrolls. Even with a pile of dictionaries, several rites and not a few Gifts, it's been a difficult task because the language is as much metaphor and riddle as straight narrative. Josh is torn; his Warrior's heart burns to thoroughly ransack the ruins, hoping to find out who really lived there and what they were doing. The more calculating part of his spirit keeps him cautious and deliberate in investigating the ruins. He knows there's no telling who (or what) may have lived there... nor why the former inhabitants made such a hasty exit. Josh is considering the merits of discussing the ruins at an upcoming Great Council and possibly asking for some help from Uktena outside the southwest.
References
- WTA: Tribebook: Uktena, p. 97