BlackClaw History, Page Two

Listen children, to the story of your mothers and fathers...and of their mothers and fathers stretching back to the beginnings of time.

There was a time...long ago...when men were men and tigers were tigers. It was a time of strife for all things. Gaia, saddened by the tribulations her wards were going through at the hand of the wyrm called out to her sister for help. And Selene, who's home rests in the sky far above her sister Gaia, looked down upon her fair sister, tears of sadness falling from her eyes when she saw her sisters distress.

Some of Selene's tears, black with despair, fell upon the jungles, and onto a troop of tigers playing in a clearing...and the tears of the mistress of the night sky painted these tigers with her colours.

Many, many seasons passed, and the unrest upon Gaia increased until Selene, in
her desperation to help her tormented sister, made a great race of beings...the Bastet...to help cleanse her sister of her illness. One of their leaders, a male Simba,
fell in love with one of the tear painted females...and took her to be his mate. They moved to a far-off land to establish their own territory...their own den realm. The tribe grew, and many with similar colouring to the female tigers were born to the tribe, and many other 'shadow tigers' joined this new tribe as word of it spread amongst bastet and kin.

These shadow tigers were feared by the local humans and were called devils, demons, satan's spawn...and other contemptable names spurred on mostly by fear. But this suited the BlackClaw's, as the tribe of black tigers came was called, because it kept those hostile person's away. But, as word of a group of BlackClaw spread so did curiosity. And since those things that are rare are coveted jelously...poachers started to seek out the prized pelts of the rare black tigers as word of the black tigers srpread.

The black Khan eventually came to call themselves the BlackClaw's, and in the north-eastern regions of the great continent they came to be feared by their opponents as fierce and ruthless warriors. Even then, individual pride members disappeared as poachers hunted them soley for their skins.

And so, the decision was made by a small group of the BlackClaw Council of Elders
to make the pride a nomadic one. When this news was passed on to the pride at large there was a great deal of dissent. Renegade factions broke off from the main pride, each small group going their own way...and they roamed the continent canvassing the north-eastern steppes, eventually traveling as far south as the mighty Him'Lai, and as far west as the western seas.

But there was foretold a great BlackClaw, one descended of the lineage of the BlackClaw chiefs...and it would he this male who would re-unite the pride, and make the BlackClaw again one people...make the BlackClaw the legendary Pride that it once was before.
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