IDRIS, ELDER

[idris]

` IDRIS !

[style=text-align:center;]'Truth reigns over my heart.'

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the generals

NAME Idris
AGE 80 Moons/6 Years 8 Months
GENDER Male
RANK Elder
PATRON GOD Helite
SHIFT RARITY Common
SHIFT FORM Peregrine Falcon
PICTURE(S) see Appearance for description

the personals

[style=text-transform:uppercase;]APPEARANCE

Idris is a silver tabby cat with a bullseye swirl pattern. His main coat color is a very light silver. Think of what storm clouds look like after all the rain has fallen from them - this is the type of light gray that his coat is. The gray is darker on his legs and grows darker towards the end of his tail and as you go along his face. Interspersed in the gray are large areas of white. He has a pure white underbelly. The area beneath his tail is also white. His throat area is also white, connecting with the underbelly. However, it extends over his throat and across his neck. The white becomes his regular light gray as you go along to his head. It is best described as a thick white collar of fur along his scruff. His tail gradually darkens to black at the tip and he has some black rings down his legs. His two back paws are completely white while his two front paws are the regular light gray. His bullseye looks like a brownish-black and curls along his spine to swirl in a bullseye pattern along the left side of his body.

Idris has a stocky build. Due to this, he moves very powerfully and he always gives the impression of having good musculature. He moves more like a warrior than a hunter, and this is not on purpose, either, for the tom actually prefers hunting. He just naturally walks with that fighter's swagger in his stride. His tail and neck are also unusually short, contributing to his stocky appearance. His whiskers are the only long attribute that he has. They are very sensitive due to this length and it is partly because of this that he loves hunting so much.He has fur that is of average length and fluffiness except for his underbelly fur, which is especially fluffy. His ears are the typical triangle shape of a cat's.

In his shift form of a peregrine falcon, a lot of his usual characteristics are retained. He obviously loses his feline features as he becomes the falcon, but his shift form is a perfect translation of his physical appearance. His feathers are that same light gray and his belly and the area around his neck are still white. His tail feathers darken from the light gray to black at the back and his legs are white with the black ringlets. When he extends his left wing, you can even see the bullseye swirl pattern there, curving from the middle of his spine once again to there. It is a distinctive feature of his that identifies himself to anybody who knows of him.

PERSONALITY

When you think of a scholarly cat, Idris is the tom that pops into your mind. This cat has always had a strong sense of curiosity since young adulthood. He is always asking questions about the deepest of things, be it the way of the world or how best to hunt a certain type of prey. He has questioned morality, freedom and faith throughout his life simply because he wanted to and not because of some outside force or tragedy forcing him to. As many curious cats are, Idris has a very pure heart. There is not a bad bone in Idris. He prefers peace to war and good to bad, but that doesn't mean he's not willing to fight for his tribe. He has average battle skills but vastly prefers the necessary act of hunting. In hunting, you are killing in order to feed yourself. There is nothing more noble than a necessary killing such as that.

Idris sees the world in black and white, though he does know deep on the inside that it should be seen in shades of gray. He believes in impartiality but has never harbored ill feeling for the way he was treated as dirt next to uncommon and rare shifters. Idris has a strong sense of truth. He believes that in all cases, the truth should be told. Lies are hard for him to tell and he knows that if he was lied to, he would hate it, even if it was for his own protection. This is why he believes so strongly that the tribe should be told that their previous leader was murdered. He doesn't believe in tricking them into thinking otherwise and has never quite been able to nod his head in agreement when somebody mentions the mysterious death - but no, not murder - of their previous leader. There are times when Idris just can't hold the truth in, and it is at these times that he becomes dangerously outspoken. As an elder he knows the true condition of the tribe and he knows secrets that have been kept from the tribe for "protection". He could betray all of it in an instant if prodded enough.

One of Idris's major weaknesses is that he loves debate and can even say things that he should never have revealed when that happens. If drawn into a good conversation, his mouth gets rolling and soon he won't know what information he may have revealed - he will just be living in the moment of discussion and debate, loving the feeling of it. It is because of this that Idris rarely gets into conversation with other cats. He prefers to be a loner, just him and nature and all of the wonders of it. On the inside he wishes he had the power to influence more decisions and be looked at as more of a leader among the tribe cats. This is why he prays to Helite - in the hopes of gaining a leadership ability or, even more hopefully, a mythical shift form that, in his opinion, will definitely get other cats to notice him.

Speaking of the gods, Idris has mixed opinions of them. He doesn't like his former patron god Soltaire anymore because of how the tribal system works. He believes that differentiating between shift forms causes rift and conflict and wonders why the gods would allow such a thing if they truly wanted peace for their cats below. After all, giving shift forms is supposed to show favoritism and encourage loyalty, but if certain cats are treated like dirt because of them, you won't have the loyalty of the majority of the populace, being the common shifters, due to the way they are treated. Idris admires some of the gods but detests others. He likes Frutia due to her feelings of impartiality and admires the leadership of Helite. He also likes his sister Milarea for going against the grain and standing up to his brother. On a completely unrelated note, Idris finds true peace in hunting and enjoys the act, especially in his shift form.

Deep within him, Idris wants to make changes. He wants to open the eyes of the tribe cats to the untruths that can be easily laid around them. He wishes they had some other, bigger purpose and the gods had thought of the consequences of their favoritism. He wishes particularly that he could forge a connection with another cat, male or female, of deep understanding so that he may feel fulfilled in his life. Not every cat reaches the rank of elder, especially common shifters, and he knows he has achieved more power than a regular common shifter could. But he can't help wishing for more from his life and more from the gods. He wants to know the truth of Valentine's and the previous leader's deaths. He wants to know as much as he can in the time that he has left. He is a truly sage cat with a lot to say if others would deem him worthy of listening to.

HISTORY

Idris has lived in the tribe his entire life. He has been there through its toughest times and been there through its most wonderful. He has experienced almost every aspect of tribe life. He has felt every twinge of faith and doubt in the gods and has even switched who his patron god was as time passed on and the moons changed him. His story is nothing spectacular but encompasses almost everything that could happen to a cat of his great age and suddenly important ranking.

Idris was born in a litter of two. His mother had been a rare shifter picked by the tribe leader to be the mate of another rare shifter. When Frutia blessed his mother with kits, it was expected that the kits born would be rare shifters like their parent. After all, the gods had clearly favored the parents, why not the children? Thus, when a litter of two was born the tribe rejoiced. Idris and his brother Adonis were treasured as much as any mother treasures their kits. However, as was traditional, they were handed over to their father at their fifth moon and they never saw their mother again. To Idris and Adonis, she was part of the past, and they quickly forgot their kit-like love for her as their father introduced them to the way of the tom in the tribe.

Idris and Adonis were as close as brothers could be. They did everything together and were rarely apart. As they slowly grew to master their shift forms it became apparent that Idris was a common shifter while his brother Adonis was a rare shifter. Idris's father therefore paid a lot more attention to Adonis. But Idris understood the reason why and didn't even question it. He wasn't even jealous of his brother's special treatment. From a young age, Idris knew that this would be the way he was treated for the rest of his life. He would get all the work nobody else wanted to do and the poorest choice of the females, and no amount of hard work would ever change that about him. Idris never harbored any sour feelings for his father, either. He instead treated his parent as a teacher, with the respect due to one and nothing more.

At twelve moons Idris and Adonis had both been instated as full members of the tribe. It was that day that Idris chose his first patron god - Soltaire, the founder of them all and one that Idris had always looked up to. It was by this time that Idris suspected his brother of having shape shift amnesia disorder. He had first suspected it when the two brothers started hunting together every day in their shift forms, practicing their skills. Adonis had been a lion and Idris a peregrine falcon, and when they worked together they made an unbeatable hunting team. But when Idris tried to recount their adventures with his brother, Adonis wouldn't remember certain encounters. And as time passed Idris realized that Adonis was remembering less and less of their adventures.When they finally became warriors Idris felt emboldened enough to mention his concerns to his father. After a short evaluation, Adonis was officially diagnosed with SSAD, rare for a cat born in a litter of two but not impossible.

Idris remembers briefly wondering if his status as a rare shifter would make up for having SSAD. To Idris, it seemed unlikely that he did. Adonis still got his first female at fourteen moons. It took Idris until his twentieth moon before he was paired with a common shifter female. They had a large litter of kits. Idris had no real relationship with the female. They were professionally courteous and when the kits were old enough he took them under his wing and taught them to the best of his knowledge. By this time, Idris had developed to be in the prime of his youth and had begun to question the life around him. He questioned why females were to be put below the toms in the hierarchy. He questioned why common shifters were seen as the lowest of the low. He questioned why, if the gods desired peace, they had made different ranks of shifters that would cause conflict in the tribe. He questioned the lack of freedom of speech against the gods. Why did they celebrate the gods?

As the moons passed Idris continued to question the god's actions within his own mind. Nurtured by his new experiences gained from training his own kits and nurtured by the experience of moons, Idris continued to question the world around him and grew curious. He never outrightly showed this curiosity, instead choosing to fade into the background as most common shifters did while he pursued knowledge. He mated with two more females, produced more litters of kits and trained them up. None of them had the disorder that had beset his brother. And speaking of Adonis, he had been steadily growing apart from his brother as his brother's abilities distanced them. Adonis was popular in the tribe and the she-cats all seemed to secretly desire his heart. But Adonis's condition crippled in. He didn't feel confident in his position of rare shifter because of it. His anxiety and paranoia - the paranoia that often accompanies SSAD - eventually degraded him to the point that he committed suicide. They found his body in a river, drowned.

Idris let the tragedy live in him. Now he understood the pain of losing the cat who had been closest to him. Idris did not let his brother's death affect him for too long, though. He moved on quickly and continued in the endless tedium of the tribe. He demonstrated intelligence and a good, strategic mind. It was this mind that got Idris retired to the common shifter elder's position when he died. He retired at seventy moons. At this time some of the problems of the tribe had been experienced. Valentine's teaching had settled deep into Idris's core and he had searched for a way to make them come into reality. With Valentine's death he saw the end of a promising future for females. Soon after Idris joined the elders, the Soltaire leader was murdered.

It was at this standing that Idris realized who he had become. He was a lover of truth and he wanted to tell the tribe the truth. He saw more problems if they lied, especially with assuming authority, especially if the tribe found out that they had lied. But he was smart enough to know that even now he had no power, and to step down and let the elders walk over him. This was when he switched his patron god to Helite. He had steadily been growing farther away from Soltaire anyway, as he questioned the tribe that Soltaire had created. Helite was the god you prayed to when you asked for leadership, and Idris wanted leadership. He wanted to be able to lead despite his common shifter status.

Now, Idris wars with his desire to tell the tribe the truth and his fear of what the elders and the gods will do to him if he does. For the first time in his life he actually has some power, but he's not sure if he wants to keep it if it means forsaking the truth. He intends to let at least one cat know the truth before he dies, even if that cat is the one that kills him. He has remained relatively distant from the cats in the tribe but knows that if the elders are to maintain power the truth must be told and if they refuse to do so then the tribe cats must be told. He also believes in the tribe's power to make their own decisions, and in the power of females to stand up for their own rights. But he is not outspoken, and his beliefs are not known.
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