Irith
Long time anthro rper getting back into the field.
Location: BC, Canada
Contact Information:
PM for more immediate contact info...I don't yet have an email addy that doesn't have my full name in it.
Irith Stormborn

Name: Irith Stormborn; Commonly called: Iri
Gender: Male
Age: Roughly 15, in his prime
Species: Plainswalker unicorn
Most Likely Found: On the Mare's Back, usually between Alma's Heart and the Near Plains.
Abilities:
Family: Miara (mother); Ashern (sire); Lip (half-brother, same sire); Shywren (cousin)
Other Relations:
Description: Short-backed with sturdy, compact limbs, Irith has the build of one meant to run for many leagues. His neck is finely arched and he has his sire's strong features, though his eyes favour his mother, being the same hazy blue. His coat is primarily the rich dark gold of wheat fields in autumn, running closer to copper on his back, and darkening further to umber on all four of his legs. His mane and tail are mingled reddish copper, gold, black and white, broken into chunky segments. His ear tassels and beard are a shade darker than the reddish gold of his face. A pale silver-blue band runs around all four of his legs at the knees and hocks, and the same silver-blue is scattered over his rump and flanks. His horn and hooves are slate grey.
Personality: Irith is as mellow as his colouring, with a shy sense of humour and a wide pragmatic sensibility. He's content to live a quiet life meandering the Mare's Back, but has given thought to visiting the Vale and the Hallow Hills. He likes a good story, whether listening or telling, and deeply enjoys meeting others at Longdances. He keeps loose ties with his blood-kin, trying to gather with his half-brother and father once a season, and his mother whenever he happens by the thinly-grassed plain before the desert, where she lives with a small herd. Irith is happy to travel alone, but prefers to run with others in a small band.
Background: Irith was born following the short tryst of lifelong friends Miara and Ashern. His parents were foalhood companions who, after a summer romance, decided mutually that they were better as friends and running companions. Ashern stayed with Miara and Irith for the next two years, travelling together in a band made up of their three and Miara's half-sister and her foal, Shywren. When Ashern left in the company of another mare, it was with Miara's blessing and to Irith's devastation. Too young to understand the common way Plainswalkers dealt with love, Irith had difficult understanding why his father would leave him to be with another mare, and more difficulty understanding when, just a year later, he and Miara travelled to meet Ashern and his newborn foal, Greylip. A summer spent with his father, Lip, and Lip's mother helped Irith come to grips with this aspect of Plainswalker culture. He moved between his mother's small band and his father's growing one, and later struck out with Lip and Shywren to wander the Mare's Back as young unicorns.
Irith fell in love once while wintering his Lip and his shoulderfriends in Alma's Heart. Lyra, a bronze and rose-grey piebald, charmed Irith with her easy laugh and inquisitive mind. She would dare him to approach a gryphon resting on a crop of rocks, or to slide on his hocks down an icy hill, and he would. They danced the Longdance as one many times, though no foal resulted from it. After nearly two years as sole companions, their love for one another waned. Irith began to find Lyra's incessant need to lead bossy, and she found his desire to stay near the Near Plains stifling. They parted ways on rocky terms.
Presently Irith is running with his cousin Shy, journeying back to Alma's Heart to meet up with Lip.

Shywren

Name: Shywren; Commonly called: Shy
Gender: Female
Age: Roughly 13 years
Species: Plainsdweller unicorn x Dayan
Most Likely Found: Alma's Heart
Abilities:
Family: Laera (mother); Rhonar (sire, Dayan stallion); Brynar (half-brother, same mother); Irith (cousin); Lip (cousin)
Other Relations:
Description: Leggy and slim, Shy is nearly Irith's opposite in build. They share the same graceful neck and are nearly of-height. Shy is fleet of foot, made in a dancer's image despite her dayan blood. Her eyes are the colour of dark amber. Shy's coat is the colour of cranberry splashed over with bright gold. The gold begins at her whithers and curves down across her left flank, turning into a bright stocking on her leg left. Her other legs are dark mulberry from hock and knee to each black hoof. She has a slim silver stripe down her muzzle, and a freckling of silver that matches Irith's across her rump and flanks. Her horn is red-purple. Shy's mane and tail are like those of full-blood unicorns, long and silky. Both are an even mix of black, silver, and gold. Because her father was Dayan, Shy lacks beard, ear, and hoof tassels.
Personality: Despite her name, there is little flighty or shy about Shywren. She keeps the name to honour her mother, but a more suitable moniker would be 'Lion-leap.' Bold, energetic, and always ready to laugh, Shy keeps busy in Alma's Heart by engaging in races and mock battles with her cohorts. She enjoys wandering, but only in the company of her cousin Irith, whom Shy has harboured a steady infatuation on for most of her life. In fleeting periods of recklessness, Shy has danced the Longdance with newly-met stallions, only to return to Alma's Heart the next morning forlorn and ill from pining.
Background: Shy's life has been fairly untroubled -- she grew up with Irith and his mother on the plains near the Hallow Hills, and moved to Alma's Heart with her mother when Irith left the band to live with his sire. When her mother went off with Miara to live near the desert, Shy stayed in the Heart, making friends and growing into adulthood.

Greylip

Name: Greylip; Commonly called: Lip
Gender: Male
Age: 11 years
Species: Plainsdweller unicorn
Most Likely Found: The Far Plains and Alma’s Heart
Abilities:
Rivertass (mother); Ashern (sire); Irith (half-brother, same sire); Shywren (shoulderfriend, considered cousin). Family:
Other Relations:
Description: Lip takes after his sire, much like his half-brother, Irith. He is short-backed and long-legged, with a compact and sturdy frame-not unlike that of a Scout of Halla, though Lip is of height for a plainsdweller. His mane is rather shaggy, falling over his crest and crown in jagged tufts. Lip’s beard, feathers, and tail are short, but the strands are fine and silky.
Lip’s coat is primarily the colour of freshly-turned soil, a rich dark brown fading to grey dun at his tender points. His legs and flanks are brindled with pale blue-grey. True to his name, Lip has a dash of light grey over his top lip, broken off from a thin grey snipe running crookedly between his eyes. Lip’s mane is a deep silver-grey with the faintest hint of blue, the colour of a raincloud threatening to let out a downpour. His tail tassel, ear tufts, and feathers are white, while his beard is tawny amber. Lip has a small white blanket freckled with dust-coloured spots across his rump-his horn and hooves are the same dust-pale. Lip’s eyes are a clear green.
Personality: Lip is true to his name—always ready with a clever offhanded remark. He feigns an air of good-humoured indifference regarding anything deeply emotional, but smart-alecky waters run deep. Despite his desire to turn nearly everything into a joke, Lip has the fragile soul of a romantic. He feels deeply but rarely makes mention of it, beyond the constantly running string of thought in his head. He doesn’t care overmuch for silence and tries to fill up empty air with observations—even while alone. Lip is a loyal and considerate friend, and a strong shoulder for others to lean upon despite his lightheartedness. He deeply admires his older half-brother, Irith, often patterning his decisions on what would impress Irith.
Background: Lip was born the second son of plainsdwelling stallion Ashern and his mate, Rivertass. They lived together as three on the plains, staying near the great river that ran through the fields. When he was three, Lip met his older half-brother, Irith. The latter’s calm confidence filled Lip with an admiration that quickly grew to hero worship. Whenever Irith came to stay with the small family, Lip would become his shadow, following the older stallion on long day jaunts. When he grew older enough to venture out on his own, Lip raced to Alma’s Heart to find Irith, and spent nearly a year wandering with his half-brother and heart-cousin, Shywren.
Since then, Lip has split his time between Alma’s Heart and the warm valleys and high hills of the Far Plains, venturing far enough once to scout the outermost territories of the Hallow Hills.

Blueowl

Name: Blueowl
Gender: Mare
Age: Eight
Species: Unicorn (plainsdweller)
Most Likely Found: Far and Near Plains
Abilities: Healer’s acolyte
Family: Sunkite, aunt (mother’s sister); other positions open
Other Relations:
Description: Lean and still leggy with youth, Blueowl has a slim build and slight frame that belies her strength. Her coat is a bold royal blue and pale gold paint, although the gold in her coat mimics the sabino pattern. Her left leg and right hock are gold-splashed, while the opposite legs are blue. The gold starts behind the base of her right ear and appearances in curving patches across her back, belly, and flanks. Blueowl’s mane and tail broken into uneven segments of darker gold and blue, while her beard and feathering are only blue. Her horn and hooves are azure, and her eyes are dark grey. Like her aunt, she wears a single red hawk tail feather in her mane.
Personality: Finds humour in everything, which comes off as her lacking the ability to take anything seriously. However, Blue’s quick-to-laugh attitude cleverly hides the mare’s racking insecurities around her decision to be her aunt’s acolyte, and her inability to react “normally” when approached at a dance. Blue has a sort of wisdom to her—she understands suffering to be brief, and love to be important, but it’s all sort of wrapped up in an “what am I doing what am I doing I’m terrible at this!” mindset.
Background: Born the second foal of a mare with a dawn-splashed coat and winged name, Blueowl was raised in the tradition of the Free People—nomadic, free loving, and peaceful. Her dam was a dedicated Longdance attendee, where her sisters were often in attendance; along with Sunkite, Blueowl came to know her other aunts. Her mother rarely found a partner to hold her attention longer than a moon phase—those Blue can remember were often handsome, if young (her mother had something of an eye for those “first time” dancers), and unfailingly in love with the roguish mare who’d won their hearts with her skilful dance.
By the time she was four, Blueowl was often seeking the company of her mother’s elder sister Sunkite, a gentle and stern mare known amongst the plainsdwellers as a healer especially skilled in midwifery. Blueowl began to attend her aunt as a fairly inept assistant, but by the early days of her fifth year, was a ready help to her aunt’s doctoring. Blueowl begged Sunkite to take her on as an acolyte, and when the latter acquiesced, bid farewell to her dam and began her travels as a healer’s apprentice in earnest.
Blueowl still sees her relatives frequently when she and Sunkite attend dances, but rather than join in the frivolities, prefers to hang back and enjoy the sights.

Sunkite

Name: Sunkite; once called Faere (pron. Fair-eh), meaning “love’s heart” by a past lover
Gender: Mare
Age: Seventeen
Species: Unicorn (plainsdweller)
Most Likely Found: Near and Far Plains
Abilities: Healer
Family: Blueowl, niece; others open
Other Relations:
Description: A mare well-grown into her prime, with shapely curves and graceful limbs. Sunkite is a quiet beauty, her charms mild and therefore aging well. Like the mares of her line, Sun’s coat is splashed with dawn colouring—only in her case, her entire coat is reminiscent of a dawn sky. Her coat is a reddish gold and pale pink tobiano; her legs are all entirely the gold, while the pink splashes her chin and neck, whithers, rump, belly, and tail. Sunkite’s mane and tail are pale terra cotta, while her feathering is mingled rose and pale red. Her eyes, like Blueowl’s, are grey, only a lighter silver. Sunkite’s horn and hooves are white.
Personality: Placed among her sisters, Sunkite appears rather taciturn—she is a ready listener and quick to offer a comforting shoulder. Kind and stern, Sunkite is both exudes an “in charge” vibe, although she is charming enough not to appear bossy. She is a rather quiet flirt, and quick to banter, if the companion is right. No stranger to the Longdance, Sunkite often gravitates toward mildly-tempered stallions rather than their brasher cohorts. She loves deep and well, and is an enthusiastic teacher.
Background: Born the first of Robinrun’s foals, Sunkite received her mother’s exuberant and at times overbearing attention for the first three years of her life. A true homebody (if family is home), Sun stayed on with her mother even as a halfgrown, keeping watch over her younger siblings while her mother dallied at a Longdance. By eight summers, she finally grew curious enough to set out on her own, going as far south as the Moondancers’ Vale, which her kin believed to be an amusingly stifled place. Lingering in the Pan Woods one morning, Sun heard the thrash and clatter of a unicorn lost in panic. She ventured further, happening upon a young stallion caught in a dense copse of rose bushes. Crying out with concern, the mare helped the beleaguered stallion extricate himself from the roses, wincing as she looked upon his cut and bleeding frame.
"Those will sting mightily for a fortnight at least."
The stallion puffed out a breath and regarded his scratches. “Nay, I know an herb that can be made into a salve. It’s good for cuts.”
He—Arlo—was one of the pied healer’s acolytes, a halfgrown stallion who had turned lost while foraging for plants to keep his teacher’s stock well-laden.
“There’s a storm amidst our herd,” Arlo muttered darkly.
Sunkite nodded. “Aye, others reck this king of yours to be ill-luck.”
The stallion looked puzzled. “Your king? Surely you mean our king, Jan’s sire, Korr.”
She let out a merry laugh and tossed her head. “Nay, acolyte. I bow to no king—your Jan’s sire or not. I am of the Free People; Renegades, your folk reck us.”
Arlo gaped, and Sunkite thought him surely to bolt. But he stayed. For hours, until the sun crept low and he feared being missed, Arlo stayed.
He made her promise to meet him the following day. Sunkite did, learning alongside the healer’s acolyte in the dark woods housing the pans, taking in Arlo’s teaching as surely as he took in Teki’s. Only that winter, when the storms were so furious in the south they seemed like to swallow the Moondancers and their Vale, did Sunkite leave off meeting Arlo in the Pan Woods. Come spring, when there was whispered word the prince of the Ring had returned from a place of fire, did Sunkite go looking for Arlo under the shadowed boughs. He met her—gaunt and trembling with weakness, he met her.
Sunkite led him away to a Longdance a day’s run from the woods and his Vale, and there they frolicked like foals and danced the dance to its end. In the morning, he asked her if he was a renegade.
Again she laughed, “Alma knows no renegades—your laws are not her doing. Love here, with me, upon the plain, and we will summer together in Alma’s Heart, and winter in the north. I will bear you a fine foal, and tie a feather in your mane, my renegade.”
Arlo gaped. “I must…I need to think on this. I’ll have your answer on the morrow—wait for me amongst the roses where we first met.”
She did as he asked. This time, he did not meet her.
For a time, Sunkite lived as far north as she could of the Vale, until the Moondancers and their prince took back the Hallow Hills. Then she took to the south, keeping near Alma’s Heart and cultivating the healer’s lore she had learned in the Pan Woods. Of Arlo she did not speak another word, not even to her sister’s daughter, the closest Sunkite has come to a foal in all her seventeen summers. At each Longdance, she dances with the others, but not once more has she danced til the end.

Koso

Name: Koso; Truename: O’alakoveso, meaning ‘the laughing shadow’
Gender: Male (stallion)
Age: Newly full-grown
Species: Unicorn; Affiliation: Moondancer
Most Likely Found: Hallow Hills or the Mare’s Back
Abilities: Fencing, hill-step racing, dancing
Family: Alarco (dark grey-brown dun with pale cream stockings) ; Dam: Pae (sooty spotted rose-red); Siblings: Karev (brother, cream-grey with rosy points), Paela (sister, light rose with cream stockings)
Other Relations: Aroro (shoulderfriend); Remashkar (wingfriend)
Description: Koso is the least ‘rosy’ of his kin, with a coat of mingled slate and brown, darker on his points, and with a smatter of bold black spots on his hind quarters and shoulders. He has four irregular black stockings on his legs, with sooty-brown coronets around the tops of both front stockings. His mane and tail are a blend of ash-grey and black, while his tassels and beard are straight black. Koso has a sooty brown face with a jagged cream stripe down the middle. The only hint of rose is the faint sheen on his underbelly, when the grey fades faintly to a redder shade. His hooves and horn are pale cream, and his eyes are bright, brilliant amber. (ooc: think ‘hyena’ when you think of Koso)
Personality: A keen observer possessing of a subtle wit, Koso has a rare smile and an even rarer laugh. He keeps mostly to those he knows well, and will engage in friendly conversation only if pushed.
Background: Koso’s dam and sire pledged young, and seemed truly surprised when their pledging dance yielded a strapping colt the following spring. As well as they could, Alarco and Pae reared Koso, but more often than not, they approached their first-born as friends rather than parents. Koso had a sense early on that his parents would be of little help in guiding him, yet could find no kin to turn to, having lost one set of grandparents to Korr’s winter, and another to the Battle of Endingfire. When his brother was born a year after Koso’s weaning, the grey-brown colt realized he would be called upon to tend the family while his parents spent long days gamboling upon the plains.
So, whether by birth or circumstance, Koso grew into a serious and stern foal, tending to his brother—and then his sister—with a quiet mien and sharp air. Though not truly humourless, Koso suppressed his impulse for frivolity in favour of responsibility…when around his family. Apart from Alarco, Pae, Karev and Paela, Koso indulged in his shadowed side, improvising pranks in the wooded slopes of the Hallow Hills, and honing his biting wit on his cohorts. The young colt soon entered into the tutelage of one of the light-hooved stallions amongst the Moondancers, and soon learned to gallop along the slippery grasses and jagged edges of the Hills, dancing on the lip of a cliff, or fencing on uneven ground. He became known as the Grey Goat amongst his fellows, for his balance and speed went unmatched.
Still, it was difficult to escape the responsibility of tending to his brother and sister while living in the Hallow Hills. In his half-grown years, Koso announced to his parents that he intended to spend the next few seasons on the plains. Baffled, and more than a little put out with their son’s decision, Alarco and Pae tried to cajole Koso into staying. But with Karev entering his half-grown years and Paela nearly horned, Koso saw no reason to remain a nanny to his parents’ other offspring. Dismissing their arguments, the grey-brown stallion went to the plains in the early spring.
There he met Aroro, the cinnamon-dun son of a Scout of Halla and a plains-born unicorn, and Rema, the runt distant cousin of Illishar. He has not been back to the Hills since.