Mystic Shadows

Bio

Basics

Name: Mystic Shadows (Mystic)

Breed: Very mixed, but the main ones are Spanish mustang x Trakehner x Andalusian x Arabian

Age: 9 years

Gender: Mare

Alliance: Unallianced

Coat Color: Black Overo

Mane and Tail Color: Black

Genetics: E_/aa/nO

Markings: White patches due to her coloring, 4 stockings, white down her face encompassing her blue eye then narrowing toward her nose

Hooves: Peach

Height: 15.3 hh

Physical Conditions: A collection of battle scars, none affecting her senses or gait, she's infertile but doesn't know it

Mental Conditions: None

Personality

Mystic was bred and trained to be the perfect weapon, and it shows. She moves with deadly grace, and is well trained in both stealth and moving quickly across dangerous terrain. She has the confidence of a horse who was taught that she could deal with anything, and thus fears little. To her, fear is a result of weakness - of not being strong enough to handle the current situation - and she believes herself to be above such things. The only thing she fears is losing her freedom, in whatever form that might take. With her extensive combat and survival training and natural athleticism, her confidence is usually justified. 

But Mystic very rarely comes across as the focused, cold-blooded assassin. It takes a lot to get her to take anything seriously. Her cavalier attitude can partially be blamed on her natural confidence (why take anything seriously if she knows she can handle it?), but she also really only has one goal in life, and that's to have fun.  She’s a rather laid-back mare, with almost no temper to speak of, as she doesn’t believe in letting petty things ruin her good time. It also helps that she gives approximately zero fucks about what others think of her and say about her. It's hard to get under somebody's skin when they just think your attempts to do so are a great source of amusement. After all, Mystic’s first concern is always herself: her own safety and her own enjoyment. She takes care of herself, and it’s not her problem if other horses are too weak to do the same.  Still, she'll happily offer assistance to others if she finds them or the task to be particularly entertaining. It's a mercenary "what's in it for me?" sort of attitude, but applied to somebody who values entertainment over nearly anything else, with new experiences and novel challenges being the most tempting prize. Mystic is typically very outgoing and casually friendly, and doesn't usually care if whoever she's talking appreciates that or not as long as however they're reacting to her is amusing. She genuinely likes to hear others' stories and learn about things they've experienced, even though her motives are selfish, and, while she doesn't usually go so far as to totally lie about who she is, her methods can vary from gentle curiosity to pushing somebody's buttons until they reveal something interesting. 

All of the horses Mystic interacted with growing up, other than her own mercenary band, were either ones she had known since birth, captives, or about to be dead. Therefore, her grasp of social norms is rather tentative at best. She's a quick learner, though, and by now most of her rough edges can be attributed to the fact that she just doesn't really care about fitting in enough to bother following those social norms. Normal moral standards are also very much outside her reach. The idea of being a "good" or "bad" individual is entirely foreign to her. She definitely understands that others will be upset by certain actions, but that doesn't connect at all to a sense of moral right and wrong. It’s all just a system of choices and consequences to her. While she certainly wasn’t raised to see a problem with causing suffering and death, and feels no guilt for anything she has done, she doesn't seek it out. Other horses are more entertaining alive than dead, and she's too experienced with violence for it to be an exciting new experience. 

Though her confidence and way of finding enjoyment in life can come off as cocky or immature, Mystic is no idiot. She doesn’t see the point in taking unnecessary risks (although her definition of "necessary" might only make sense to her), and her assurance is rooted in experience and skill, not blind arrogance. When she’s challenged enough to actually put thought into things, she can be cunning and a rather brilliant strategist. Once Mystic decides she wants to do something, she takes great pride in doing it well. Primarily because she thinks it’s a fun challenge to do some things as flawlessly as possible, but also because there’s definitely a work ethic buried under all that self-centeredness. She is definitely capable of being serious and professional, it's just an incredibly rare occurrence.

History

Mystic’s story starts generations before her birth, with a power-hungry stallion in a far away land who decided to transform his herd into an unstoppable war machine that would bring all the surrounding herds to their knees before his might. He worked to achieve this goal through a combination of harsh training and selectively choosing mates for the best fighters of his herd, but conquering the surrounding herds was just a start. His project was a legacy that would be carried on by his sons; a tradition of selectively breeding and training horses in an attempt to create the greatest army in the world. However, through generations, the army evolved into a group of feared and deadly mercenaries. Instead of a unit conquering new lands for their leader’s glory, a quicker profit was made from doing whatever “dirty work” other horses, usually rulers of herds, requested in exchange for a few mares or foals, or the use of part of their land. Despite this change, the herd’s goal of producing the deadliest fighters never wavered.

Young Mystic Shadows, the product of a system of selective breeding that had been taking place for generations, never knew her mother. She was given milk by a some unrelated and insignificant nursemare, and even the games she played as a foal were geared toward battle and survival: play fighting, swimming in fast currents and racing up and down steep cliffs were normal childhood entertainment. Mystic and those the same age as her were weaned young and immediately started training. The fights became real, and the tests of survival skills had deadly consequences. She learned to kill, to cause as much pain as possible without killing, to survive storms and floods and mountains and deserts and jungles and predators and anything else the world could possibly throw at her. Those who became injured or ill received no rest, those who died were dismissed as too weak to be worthy of life in the herd.

Through a mixture of cunning, agility, and natural hardiness, Mystic was one of the few fillies graduated from training at the age of two, battle-scarred but very much alive. As a full-fledged member of her herd, her job was simple: kill (or torture) whomever her superiors told her to. And she was very, very good at it, never failing an assignment and rarely even losing practice fights against others from her herd. The missions grew harder, and Mystic loved the challenge of it all, living for the pride that came from a job well done. But eventually the pleasure faded: it was just the same old thing day after day: go out, fight whomever, win, get the next assignment, wash the blood off, and repeat.

Then, when she had barely turned six years old and was basking in the pride of singlehandedly finishing off a band of five young bachelor stallions (finally, actual work!), her superiors had to ruin it all by ordering her to return to the lands of the herd to bear the next generation of fighters. She was already pretty bored, but this was the last straw. There was no challenge involved in sitting around popping out foals; even the weak, helpless mares that she slaughtered on a regular basis could do that. Besides, the idea of having another living thing growing inside of her and feeding off of her energy and stuff was just seriously gross. Who wanted to be pregnant and weak and helpless due to some life-sucking parasite? Not her, that’s for sure. And then the messenger revealed that he was the first stallion she was assigned to breed with and tried to do the deed right there and then while Mystic was busy being done with her herd in general. So, naturally, one thing led to another and the unfortunate boy ended up dead before he could even mount her. Even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t go back to her herd any more after that, so she just picked a direction and started walking, off to seek new and different challenges somewhere else.

Bonds

Parents: Unknown x Unknown

Siblings: None that she's aware of

Partners: None

Children: None

Herd: None

Store Items/Other Notes

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