🪦 Muninn

Muninn is a silver-blue tabby cat with heavy scarring from his past and present — both physically and mentally. He is charasmatic and able to try to worm his way into conversations to gain information, all the while keeping his past a mystery with twisted or vague tales. If he’s telling the truth or not is unclear.

It’s almost as if they wear a constant smile with amusement in their voice. Muninn often watches, but loves to talk — it can wear a cat out with all that he has to say. It’s clear he’s intelligent with his wisdom and knowledge in medicine, but his track record isn’t as pretty.

Muninn has blood on his paws from his previous group — with his mentor convincing him to experiment on dying patients for experimental treatments; Muninn hungered for knowledge and to learn, meaning this malpractice was fed to him without much resistance from the impressionable young Muninn.

Muninn resides in The Arc after being exiled from his old colony and wandering for roughly a year. Stumbling across Melchior and Achlys, he joined alongside them to help found the colony, meeting cats like Odalys that he got to know better. At first, he resisted the urge to get close to them — but soon enough he found cats he wanted to protect and keep safe. Though, he still can’t bring himself to talk about his past…

Muninn was born alongside his brother, Huginn, to his mother Minerva. Minerva was a loner who fell in love with a leader of a group called ”The Watchers”. The leader, Zanza, was a cat who was quite absent in the two’s lives, even after Minerva had brought the brothers to him because she couldn’t take care of them — reasonably assuming that The Watchers would be able to protect and feed her children.

Muninn trained under a particular cat after he caught his eye. Ivor was the healer for The Watchers, bringing herbs in and out as he passed by Muninn — eventually taking notice to the younger tom. When he offered to be Muninn’s advisor, Muninn was ecstatic and accepted the proposal.

Muninn was the knowledgeable one of the brothers, while Huginn was more adept at combat. While they were younger, they enjoyed it there. But as they got older, things got more and more miserable, until Huginn couldn’t take it anymore — he realized The Watchers were a manipulative group, taking in unfortunate cats to make into sorts of soldiers and hate the gods. He speaks to Muninn on it, but Muninn is in disbelief at the accusations.

”We’re brothers,” Muninn pleads, begging to rethink his beliefs. And Huginn holds his ground on the matter — trying to also plead with Muninn to leave with him so they can live peacefully with just the two of them. Muninn shakes his head, yelling about how Huginn was just upset their father was finally noticing Muninn out of the brothers — before he could finish, though, Huginn attacks Muninn, slashing a large gash across the tom’s face. They both are shocked at the act, a pause of deathly silence as blood drips down from the wound and onto the earth, before Huginn leaves.

Muninn, now alone, put his heart away to work on what he does best: healing and experimenting. Ivor is always right behind him, watching and seeing what the younger tom — who was now a grown adult — was up to. Muninn had a profound interest in toxic plants and their properties, so it wasn’t an uncommon “experimental treatment” he conducted.

One day, however — he was taken for a trial in front of his group. Zanza was on a human shed, looking down at the tom with cold, slitted eyes — finally looking at his son properly. If only the situation were different.

They accused Muninn of murder; the colony had found one of the patients — a young ginger tom in which was doing better — had died, with poisonous berries by his mouth. Muninn tried to plead it wasn’t him, because it wasn’t. He was treating that child, and he was not standing for the accusations. However… Ivor speaks up against Muninn, asking for the tom to be exiled for his crime. And Zanza agrees, saying, ”If you were not my flesh and blood, you would not be shown this mercy.”

Muninn wandered for a year before encountering the captains of The Arc, their energy and way they composed themselves catching his instinctual curiosity. Perhaps he could learn things here…

To learn more about Muninn's time with the Arc, check HERE. (WIP)

TRIVIA

• Name originates from Odin's raven of the same name, meaning "mind" and "memory".
• Muninn's design is based on magpies, and their fur fluffs up similarly to a bird's.
• They are a distant ancestor of Sleetstone and Frostbite, through his brother.
• Representative animals: Eurasian Magpies, Death's-Head Hawkmoths, and Silver Foxes.
• Associated plants: Oleander and Forget-me-not.