Balun - Nightrunner

[Illu]

Name: Balun – “The Dead”
Species: Horse – Half Nightrunner
Gender: Male
Age: 2


Appearance: Cremello Champagne. Balun is icy white horse with a pearly, metallic sheen, who would be utterly flawless where it not for his permanently ribby appearance and red eyes of the devil.
He is breathtakingly handsome, even for a two year old, and his overall fitness is ideal - not a scrap of excess fat on him - but underlying his exterior is his fragile health, which is a family trait the NightRunners keep a secret from the 'Others'.
Balun is strong and sturdy without being either bulky or slight-framed, and very fit, with long, hard, clean legs and neat hooves. His conformation is overall very good, with a broad chest, deep girth and strong back and loins, which gives him quite a bit of power when rearing or kicking out with his hind legs. His neck is long, mobile and arched, with a well-defined crest. He has smooth, sleek muscling, full mane and tail, slightly long, pricked ears and a firm, masculine appearance to his head.


History: Balun considers his heritage a mixed blessing. On the plus side, being widely considered a death omen, a demon, and a fairytale is frightfully amusing, but the lengths to maintain it hardly seem worth it. A life of stalking and secrecy, stuffy, hidden valleys and a quiet existence and the somewhat scary knowledge the only mares you will ever get are your sisters, mother, and numerous aunts.
Balun was the first horse born of the Nightrunner’s experiment to get new blood to save their dying breed. He suspects his mother was a chestnut thoroughbred of some sort, he barely remembers, and to date she’s the only mare he knows of to have survived the herds traditional mad gallops in the pitch dark long enough to bear a foal. She died when he was a few months old, succumbing to the broken legs that usually strike a mare on their first run with the legendary demons of the dark. The miracle is not that she died, but merely she lasted so long in a land belonging to horses of the unseeing night.
Balun was not content with the Nightrunner life. His mother had told him stories of the sun, away from the forest they lived in so thick there was no light or breeze. She told of a life of danger, fighting for ones herd and mares, galloping along and endless plain and not of merely weaving through sticks waiting to trip you like deathtraps and black trees. Of men as well, she had belonged to them, the life of a stockhorse, the thrill of pitting your blind against the lumbering cattle and the wild joy the brumbies found in escaping and outwitting the humans with their ropes and guns. She detested the life of a Nightrunner, but she could not escape, and seeds of such a notion were planted in Balun’s brain even after her inevitable death.
He turned two. The herd was no longer strictly necessary for him as he was no longer a foal. Desire to wander grew. Desire to find his own herd. So, Balun left. Just like that, using all his knowledge to ensure he wouldn’t be found by his own kind.
He wasn’t gone long when he found what looked to be at first glance his mirror opposite. In the strong light of the morning a golden colt with a mane and tail of the sun appeared over a ridge, almost dancing and growing stronger with the light; a a stark contrast to what he was, a horse to whom the sun was still strange, and an enemy.
The Nightrunner and the strange yellow and and gold colt ended up travelling together. Stories of the Moon Fillies the Sun Colt brought with him initially interested Balun - horses like him perhaps? – but he discovered they would hold little interest for him in numbers more than one. He wanted a rainbow for a herd, a herd of many colours - reds and blues and browns and yellows - so unlike the one he left behind, and that’s what he’s determined to get.


Genes: ee/aa/CRCR/CHCH/ff


Extra Comments: I blame everyone but me.