User:Rraah

''There are whispers, from Ratchet to Ashenvale, rumors of a pride of lions ruled by the black beast Humar and the fierce lionesses that followed him. The lion is a legend, the coveted prize of many hunters, and generations have passed with the young males unfortunate enough to inherit the dark coat of their great grandsire being caught, killed, tamed or sold for profit. There are rumors of the bloody vengeance of the lionesses on nearby settlements, coordinated attacks that beasts shouldn't be capable of, ranging for hundreds of miles from their territory following the track of the invaders that ravage their pride. There are whispers of a lioness that teaches her pridemates how to kill those that would take their cubs, or to kill for pleasure, her coat as black as her heart.''

sa'Rraah
Title: The Tearer Race: Night Elf

Gender: Female

Class: Druid

Guild: None

Rank: None

Nicknames: None

Religious Affiliation: None

Server: Server:Feathermoon

Appearance
sa'Rraah is rarely out of her feral forms, preferring the shape of a lioness nearly eleven feet long from nosepad to tailtip and four feet at the shoulder; if anyone had the courage to weigh her in this shape she'd be nearly six hundred pounds. She differs from the traditional nightsaber shape of druids by having small, rounded ears, a tufted tail and a boxier head, more typical of a lion than the sleek pantherlike forms druids are blessed with. Her fur in this form is short and unsuited to the cold and almost uniformly black; it pales to ashy gray on her belly, paws and muzzle but is otherwise without marking save the smattering of scars that a wild thing might earn through living.

In bear form, she is unremarkable, a sable she-bear that could be found in any number of forests. Most rarely is she seen in elven shape: dark haired, dark skinned and with a distinct feline cast to her appearance, she seems more beast than woman even when walking on two legs.

It’s exceptionally unusual that she can be found in night elf shape, but when she is, her body is lean and muscled, her breasts small, hair a wild mane of blackish purple and skin a dusky violet. She forgoes clothing most of the time, not understanding its purpose and finding her own natural defenses against the weather to be adequate. In this form, certain traits from her favored lioness shape carry over, such as short fur the same color as her hair in varying places, most notably on her forearms and calves, and teeth better suited to a wild animal, with strong fangs and shearing molars.

Traits
Most known for being a maneater and a tendency towards killing more than she can eat if she's hunting humanoids, sa'Rraah has for generations encouraged such bloody behavior in her pridemates, wrecking havoc in the Barrens and occasionally through Ashenvale and even the Stonetalon Mountains. This has forced more than one culling of her pride, but neither the Horde nor the Alliance have successfully been able to track down and eliminate this troublesome lioness.

Her behavior patterns tend to be dictated by instinct more than intelligent thought; in ‘her’ territory she’ll treat those who treat her like they know her as if they were part of her pride whether or not she knows who they are, but reacts with extreme violence when others seem nervous or frightened, driving out even allies if they do not act as if they belong where they are. She tends towards reinforcing social bonds through grooming, and there’s more than a few times where she’ll spend hours subjecting some unfortunate friend to a thorough feline cleaning.

Her bloody hatred of goblins leads her to killing them whenever she can find them, though over the years it’s slowly begun to sink in that not all of them are alike and some are okay to leave alone; the rest she’ll kill with bloody-minded disregard for how much she can consume. Sa’Rraah can be considered a cannibal; she sees no problems with eating other humanoids, though she will take normal prey as well. Like all predators, she keeps herself meticulously clean, and will see to it that her allies and friends stay similarly to make sure that prey can’t smell them coming.

Her Pride
Currently, sa’Rraah is a nomad, lacking a territory or a pride; although she considers Kaledevi Vagrantwind and possibly his extended family as potential pridemates, she has not found another location that suits her tastes after being driven from the Barrens by tenacious hunters determined to be rid of her once and for all.

The life of a nomad is one of disquiet and avoiding others – as such she has yet to firmly establish any ties to anyone at all.

History
Sa’Rraah was not born into a typical night elf family: where she comes from, who her parents were and how she came to be in a pride of lions is lost to time. But she’s been there for generations, her siblings with her, their pride not precisely flourishing under the guidance of these more cunning hunters … but not dying to rival prides or the predations of humanoids, either. Although she has never borne her own cubs, in typical lion fashion she has raised many, mostly her sisters’ and cousin’s, and was an enduring part of their pride’s matriarchy. Transient males that did not measure up to the exacting standards of the elf-blooded lionesses were shortly driven away, those that met their tastes allowed to stay for far longer than the few years most males stay, aiding these chosen males in driving away rivals .. even when the males grew gray muzzled and weak.

Although Rraah and her siblings were dark furred, the cubs they raised were often tawny; only occasionally was a dark cub thrown, these often caught and tamed or killed by hunters who prized their dark pelts. As decades passed, and their ordinary kin passed away through old age or disease, one by one her siblings succumbed to the predation of others as well; one sister killed in a violent scuffle with a rival pride, another trapped and dragged away by trolls intent on taming her spirit, a brother shot for his velvety black hide … as time passed, only sa’Rraah remained as proof that the legacy of her pride was a supernatural one. The realization that her closest family had been killed or trapped and taken away set her mind to true thinking, planning and scheming on how to wreak revenge on those who’ve done them harm. Rumors of the bloody massacres she led her pride into linger even today, using weather, stealth or sheer cunning to outwit and slaughter anyone who she thought had been involved in the decimation of her family.

As these things go it was not the brightest idea she’d ever had. The Horde, having dealt with the attacks of raptors, lions and more for years, decided to do something about the rampaging lioness, and put a bounty out on her hide; as one of the few black lionesses in the Barrens, detecting which one she was proved to be little difficulty, and the hunter rapidly became the hunted. It was during this time that she discovered the ability to change shape, abandon her lioness form and assume one on two legs with short claws and teeth and no power to speak of, or that of a large grizzled she-bear; with these additional shapes now usable to her, evading pursuit became a simple matter for the better part of a decade. It was during one of these efforts to avoid a troll hunting party looking for the dark lion that she fished in bear shape in an oasis, and came across Kaledevi Vagrantwind in a similar shape.

Having little concern for transient males normally, the pressure of losing most of her pride and being hunted in her own territory made sa’Rraah more hospitable to a stranger venturing where he didn’t belong, and although mistaken at first for a normal, wild she-bear, the Savagekin druid seemed to take pity on her lack of knowledge of what she truly was and took the time to attempt to, as he’d been taught, explain the purpose of things as simple as clothing. Curiosity – and a measure of desperation and lonliness – led her to follow his scent back to Ashenvale and the night elven communities there. The process of accepting that she might belong with these people, and that she should stay in the soft-skinned defenseless two-legged shape they preferred, has been excruciatingly slow, and civilized behavior even more difficult.

Briefly laying claim to a portion of the Stonetalon Mountains, her killing of the goblins there for their destruction of her new-chosen home lured the hunters there instead of in the Barrens and she was again forced to flee, led by a kindly-minded old woman from Ashenvale all the way to the human lands of the Eastern Kingdoms. Told she was best off pretending to be the pet of some hunter or other to prevent her from being killed, sa’Rraah was abandoned in Duskwood to fend for herself.

Her Current Life
Prideless, without a territory and without even a sibling to watch her back, sa’Rraah’s grown quicker to strike and even faster to run and hide, nervous and skittish when forced to return to human towns and cities for varying purposes. Unable to understand the human speech and with a deeply set hatred and fear of undead, attempting to find enough prey to feed her in Duskwood has proven to be a difficult task.