shadow

Shadow has felt defeated, never the same since his injury. Since he was a kid his brain was unstable and always in an angry, aggressive headache. He inherited mental health issues from his father, Coal, and he is prone to getting stuck in delusional or harmful thinking patterns. A looming sense of black, cold, sticky death, the push and pull of fate against him and the way his loved ones participated and knew about it. Since his injury he spiralled even more into these thinking patterns. The way the world worked to him felt stuck there and humid and clung to his fur like clingfilm. He felt beyond the point of no return. There would always be an issue in the way his brain was, just like the injury that would always stay there. Half his face gone. I always wanted him to have an issue with starclan. A strange way of thinking about them. He believes in starclan fully, but that their great scheme is to cause cold sticky death and leech off of cat ghost’s spirits. He believes strongly that he can eradicate Starclan's grasp on the physical world and the minds of cats by killing them and manipulating them. He blindly wants to destroy all connection to faith. All preachers. The way he thinks and sees it doesn't have a lot of sense, but it crushes him and causes his destructive actions throughout the story.

Shadow is born into a family of street cats in a dirty alley on the outskirts of a city.
His father is Coal, his mother is Honey, and his siblings are four cats, all older than him and all Honey’s children with her late husband, Flame. The eldest (teenagers), Moon, Daisy, and Lightning, and a little one closest to his age, Scratch.
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Moon and Daisy resent Shadow. Coal is a mean and abusive stepfather to them, specifically Scratch. (Shadow has inherited mental health issues from his dad. A short temper, a fast changing mood, a proneness to believing silly stories of things lurking around corners dormantly, waiting to get him. Young Moon and Daisy believe Soot’s cruelty runs in his blood)
He hears them talk about how weak he is. How they’re morally superior because they don’t get these weird issues. Shadow turns to the only one who understands him for comfort and guidance, Coal.
Coal trains him to be strong, to be cruel to his siblings. He encourages Shadow’s delusions. The myths and the faith Blaze had guided his and Honey’s children to dream about and share stories about exist to antagonise Shadow. Faith is a mean comparison to him because he has a curse in his blood. (He just has genetic mental health issues guys)
Shadow gets strong and stocky and bullies his siblings. The eldest are too afraid to say anything or defend each other much aside from defending scratch. One day it goes too far and Scratch’s life is in danger.
Post injury, Honey is devastated. Lightning doesn’t want to see Honey in such a state and doesn’t want the abuse that will be cast upon them for leading Shadow to the railyard and playing with fate. She runs away. Lightning takes Scratch with her to protect him.
Soot sends shadow off to the clans because he knows that’s the only place they could’ve run to - off in search of cats that knew or were even related to Blaze so they could find a new family and live under Starclan’s warm starry sky.
Shadow hates their faith, hates how it compares to him. He then teams up with wisteria and her friends, he builds a group of evil cats and kills loads of cats in the search of defeating Starclan's grip on the physical world. He kills cats with strong connections, he kills cats that preach, he kills cats that have the cold, sticky aura of death that he has associated Starclan with. He knows he's hurting people and it's making him distraught, but he feels it's what has to be done, for him and for everyone.
There is a point in the story where Shadow comes face to face with Lightning again. A circle of chanting clan cats enclose them, chanting "finish him! finish him!" Lightning can't do it and lets him run into the forest, after which he has lost all allies, all means of eradicating faith.

→ Shadow cares a lot about his edgy and emo aesthetic. He likes to be dark and brooding and evil and sad! If he was human he'd be an emo guy
→ His favourite food is fish scraps!
→ Shadow only has one cat he'd ever considered his friend, Wisteria. She was cast out by her clan and is opposed to them as well, for different reasons.

Shadow is a fully black shorthair, half of his face is wounded. He has either green or red eyes. He's quite stocky and strong in his build, but a pretty average sized cat. Bigger than an average she-cat, not as big as some toms.

Though you'll often see him with half his face being torn down to the bone, me and my friends like to draw him that way a lot as a tribute to his old emo-er design :oj His canonical injury is a more realistic wound, his ear and eye is torn off and half his face is mangled and disfigured. It covers the area that the skull injury covers. If you wanna draw the silly emo one though go for it! It;s not an important detail.