Post by STREAKZ on May 27, 2013 17:45:54 GMT -5
NAME! Adderstep
AGE! 38 moons.
GENDER! Tom
CLAN! Thunder
SHORT DESC.! Thin gray tabby tom with green eyes
FULL DESCRIPTION!
Adderstep is at a glance a tomcat of only average size. Neither of extraordinary height nor of a smaller stature, the tomcat hovers exactly in the middle. He has a narrow set of shoulders, taking more after his mother than he would care to admit. He is a tad bit on the thin side, despite many of his broad-shouldered peers. From the tip of his nose to the end of his arching tail Adderstep has a near feminine build, and certainly doesn’t make up for it in the length of his legs. Due to his merely average height he can be mistaken as smaller than he is – it certainly doesn’t help much that he tends to hunch his shoulders in any case – which tends to lend the cat a dour expression.
His face is nearly narrow, tapering to a fine muzzle and a lovely display of whiskers that he seems to be almost ashamed of. He is a gray tabby cat – short haired – all the way to the ends of his very pelt are hues of gray. Even the lighter parts of his muzzle, and the pale color on this throat, is more of a pale silver than a white. This theme is broken only by the green of his eyes, a trait that is (once again) inherited from his mother.
Due to his petite build, Adderstep isn’t the most substantial of opponents when it comes to grappling. His physical prowess lies in speed and fancy footwork – hence his warrior name – and when caught in a wrestling match he is almost always going to end up under the paws of the other cat. Such is the curse of being a bit on the scrawny side.
PERSONALITY!
For as long as Adderstep can remember he’s had his hackles raised. Defensive, brooding and quick to irritation – there is in this tomcat a difficulty to make friends. He seems to almost always be in some sort of sour mood, and even when he’s not he is prone to acting as though he is just to put on something of a front. To cats that do not know Adderstep well he seems little more than a brute, rude and prone to sulking off in the corner. He seems the sort more ready to head for the hills and abandon Clan-life, how does one dislike the closeness of others and live around them constantly?
Of course things are rarely as they seem, and Adderstep is no exception. Brusque and a bit on the growly side, Adderstep may seem as though he’d just as soon cuff cats left and right as look at them but he’s got a heart of gold buried deep under that barbed-wire exterior. He’s the sort that’ll tell you what you need to hear – sure in a slightly snarly voice, and with a lash of his tail, but he’ll be there to let you know what’s what.
Like a grizzled old father-figure, Adderstep has a soft spot for the young. He’s particularly protective of kits and apprentices, and in the event of a raid on camp one can expect to find him near there to try and keep them safe. He has a difficult time talking with them, of course, since he’s got an image to uphold but darnit if they don’t get him with their cute little whiskers and twitchy little tails.
On the lonely side, Adderstep tends to seclude himself and then mope because he’s secluded himself. A rather self-defeating cycle that ends up making him miserable. He’ll sit in corners and sulk and feel unhappy unless he’s had some sort of conversation. Sure his conversation can be gruff, and a bit on the snarky side, but that doesn’t mean he hates talking to others.
Oddly enough Adderstep prefers groups to solitary conversations with cats. Little more makes him uncomfortable than finding himself suddenly with one cat and no one else. This is simply because he can’t quite grumble and sulk when he’s the only cat talking can he? The dour tomcat, when thrust into one-on-one social time is prone to creeping shyness and bolting like faced with something that is actually frightening to him (teasing him about it is bound to get a few good growls).
More bark than bite, Adderstep garrumphs and growls but rarely ever actually loses his temper. Even though he seems to be in a perpetually bad mood he’s relatively level-headed, and the sort to think things through thoroughly before letting his emotions get to his head. For this reason Adderstep’s relationships can move at a snail’s-pace. StarClan help the cat that falls head over heels for him the instant they meet him, because Adderstep will drag his paws all the way down when falling in love – hell he’ll fight it.
Most “romance” is met with a slight snort and little else when concerning Adderstep. Perhaps if a cat had enough patience they could get to him, as it is he seems to have no desire to emotionally tie himself to anyone at all.
Considering they are his only “friends”, Adderstep feels particularly close to his family. Sure he acts gruffly toward them too, and can be growly and grumpy, but with his family he feels loved and understood. See they’ve had time to warm up to him (thirty-eight whole moons) and he’s not liable to throw that all out of the den. Gruff he may be, irritable and grumpy as well, but loyalty comes like second nature to Adderstep. He’s quick to defend the word of a sibling, and ready to stand at the side of his brother should he ever be needed for it.
Quick-thinking is Adderstep’s strongsuit, along with his physical grace. Considering his petite size he has put a lot of time and effort making sure that he can match up to warriors – if not surpass them – with his speed and sure-footedness. He is not prone to bragging about this, if anything he’s prone to keeping anything he considers as a “talent” to himself. The fact that he was named Adderstep irritated him in part (though he didn’t dare protest) simply because it boasted his abilities while he himself did not want to.
Sensitive about his petite build, Adderstep is self-conscious about his more feminine shape and tends to act the “manly man” when he can. Hence the rather gruff attitude. He’s spent so long building that up that he’s simply forgotten what he might have been before, “I’m gruff and tough” what a shame.
HISTORY!
As far as a past goes – well, Adderstep is a Clan cat. To be honest with you the lives of cats born in their little society tend to be, more often than not, uninteresting things as a whole. Oh there’s the struggle that most Clan cats go through – but again that is most Clan cats. Most of them do struggle, because living in the wild means a fight for survival. Most of them face things that would, to perhaps a housecat, seem foreign and strange. But were they to line up together, side by side, they’d find that many of them had pasts that were similar. It was, of course, the fault of living in a place such as theirs. Warriors lived where they lived, paws were not allowed to cross borders without consequences, and as such a cat could hardly expect to have that much of a variety in their lives. Oh there was some, to be sure, but all in all…
Adderstep, as far as he knows, is like most warriors. He was born into ThunderClan to a queen named Streakfeather at the side of three other siblings – ah and here in lies his difference. Not that Adderstep is aware of it, for what it was worth. Two of his siblings weren’t siblings at all, but rather his cousins, hidden among the litter as though they had always belonged. If cats were to know the truth it’s uncertain how they would react, Adderstep himself probably wouldn’t care. Family was family.
Born in the time when the Moonstone first crumbled and fell, his association with StarClan was, from the very beginning, different from Warriors before him. The feelings brought forth when cats talked of StarClan was no longer reverence but nervousness, fear and wariness. Misfortune seemed to plague the Clans pawstep for pawstep, no matter how they tried they couldn’t seem to escape the way it hung over their heads like the threat of a spider’s web.
Perhaps this is what gave birth to some of the cynicism with which he entered his apprenticeship. Under the mentorship of Earthwhisker – a formerly Rapidfalls born tomcat – Adderstep found himself struggling to learn from a cat that was prone to massive lapses of silence. He thought that Earthwhisker was… weird. It didn’t help that, while his peers grew to be broad-shouldered and strong, Adder remained… petite. Like a female.
His mentor was helpful in that he taught him that intelligence could be just as powerful, if not more so, than brute strength. With his steady patience and guidance Adderstep finally reached the point where he could stand tall and take his Warrior name. The pride he felt was only soured by the irritation at the name chosen for him – ‘step’ boasted his ability to move carefully and fluidly. Not only did grace, in his opinion, seem like something more suited to a she-cat but it also meant that cats knew what to expect from him if they were smart enough to dissect his name.
A name was a name, and though he was prone to his grumblings about the subject he certainly wouldn’t approach a cat to complain outright. Life after that went about as smoothly as one would expect it to – that is to say, he had his days as a warrior set out in front of him. It was difficult to say how he felt when Wolfstrike gained his new leadership status – pride? Yes, that was there, but there was the slightest hint of jealousy too – of course, Adderstep could hardly even be considered for the position. Due to his grouchy demeanor he hadn’t yet even taken over the apprenticeship of another cat. His talents were thought to be best suited elsewhere, considering how unsocial he happened to be.
Despite what envy he felt for Wolfstrike he vowed to be of assistance to his brother – the Clan as a whole, suddenly, was more important to him than it had ever been before. Oh he had been a loyal enough tomcat, but with family near the top as it was he found himself wanting to strive hard to keep the place safe. To make his brother proud, as he was of him.
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