Andromeda

_{Introducing, one of my oldest and most famous characters,}

ANDROMEDA, THE KILLER QUEEN

"SHORT" BIO:

Lived as a human blacksmith's assistant and occasional arena gladiator for years before escaping into the wild. She joined a feral empire of other escapees and became their blacksmith, working to outfit them with armor before a terrible illness swept through the land, destroying most of the leadership. One lynx, named Soren, rose to become leader, and asked Andromeda to be his second. Since she had already trained a capable apprentice to be a fitting replacement, she took up his offer to be his Silver Gladiator, and the two formed a close bond.

Many years and adventures later, word reached camp that Soren had been slain and his body taken. It was only the day after the two had become official mates. In a grief stricken and revenge-driven rage, Andromeda took control of the empire and became ruthless to their enemies...the opposite of Soren's "second chance" style of leadership that offered forgiveness to their nemesis. It took many years for Andromeda to accept that Soren was dead, and move on with her life, in time taking her old friend Brutus as a new mate. 

Eventually, talk of a war was sparked, one that would pit all of the empires against their shared enemy. Andromeda offered her empire's assistance, not allowing the opportunity to cripple the Hunters slip away. Not when it could be the very thing to destroy them and allow the empires to live freely in peace. And peace was all that she wanted, now that she had new cubs to protect within her empire. Andromeda closely trained a group of her most promising gladiators to become assassins; cats that were ready and willing to kill any and all Hunter enemies that crossed their claws. The idea didn't sit well with many of the empire, but Andromeda knew they would be instrumental in the empires' victory against the Hunters. 

But spies had been planted within the empires, so when the empire's legions closed in on the human city, the Hunters were waiting in ambush. The battle across the city was the bloodiest the land had ever seen, and both sides suffered heavy casualties. Even though Andromeda and her team of assassins made it out alive, the return home that should have been so happy...was anything but. 

They arrived at their home camp to find that a Hunter patrol had attacked it while the majority of the gladiators had been out. At least three were dead, many (including Andromeda's daughter, Antares), were injured, and others (to include Andromeda's son, Polaris), were missing. This war...it had not been a victory for anyone. 

But a leader cannot afford to dwell on things for too long. The search for a safe new camp undetected by Hunters began almost immediately, and the empire had a chance to get their strength back by the time Antares accidentally found what would become the new camp. Once the move was complete, Andromeda decided to step down from leadership, as the stress and burden became too much and she wanted more time with her remaining family. She hated the way the members of her empire looked at her now, as they blamed her for the deaths and kidnappings from the war they had been so apt to participate in. Slowly, the seeds of animosity grew. She broke things off with Brutus, believing that he deserved someone better than the cold-hearted snow leopard she had become.

In time, leadership passed from one leader to the next. For some reason, the next leader that was selected was but a child, inexperienced and full of folly. Although she was adored for her kindness by the empire, she did not have Andromeda's respect as a capable leader of warriors. As the Hunters began to reemerge and start picking fights with the empire's neighbors, the young leader became antsy, afraid that their camp would be found. So in the midst of heightened Hunter activity, she chose to move the empire to a new camp, against Andromeda's advice. The journey proved to be too much for Andromeda's elderly mother, Eos, who died shortly after reaching the new camp. Furious at the child's refusal to heed a veteran's warning, Andromeda decided she would not live with the empire in their new camp, and would instead continue to live in the hidden camp she had fashioned years before. Some close friends of hers followed, living with Andromeda in the otherwise empty camp. There, she gave birth to a litter of snow leopard cubs, fathered by another member of the empire who had been a breeder when he was a city captive. She hid the cubs away, refusing to allow them to walk the bloody and war-torn path of an empire cat.

It wasn't long after that that she chose to leave the empire altogether, knowing that she would never again fit in with the cats who thought of her as a monster. She knew there was no way to get rid of the Hunters, and she realized she could not bare to stand by and watch her former empire crumble under weak leadership. And so, Brutus, Andromeda, and her new cubs set out as nomads to search for a safe place to live; a Promised Land, as a mysterious passer-by had once coined it- and he claimed that it was just across the sea. Along the way, the group came upon a ghost from the past; Soren in the flesh, weak and marred with scars, had survived his encounter with Hunters many years past, and had been making his way back to her. She caught him up with everything that had happened, and he knew his home was with Andromeda, wherever she may roam. 

It had only been a few months into their journey when they found out that their former empire had been destroyed, burned by a forest fire and torn asunder by Hunters. Although they took time to grieve, they pushed on, continuously searching for that golden horizon of The Promised Land.