This drawing of my fursona is by Amanda the Hamster and the background and shading is by Seth the Dragon. They did an amazing job and I couldn't be happier!

Their accounts here:
http://amandadahamster.deviantart.com/
http://seththedragon.deviantart.com/

The story of my fursona (and there is a big story that goes along with him) is something I have been slowly developing. He was born in a troubled place with a troubled tribe, and sought to gain status there as a tough warrior, which in the end was meaningless in said tribe. In his attempt to prove himself he gets himself banished from his tribe and is determined to be accepted back in one day even though he is unloved there. He is however taken in by the Shaháney tribe, a much more open-armed group of animals. He does not plan to stay there and is reluctant to have anything to do with them at first, but eventually he begins to grow fond of them all, and they quickly become his family as that is how they treated him since the first day he was taken in.

What happens next however is a turn he did not expect. The Shaháney people begin suffering from invasions and attacks from outside groups of animals. As the Shaháney fight to keep their precious home, the tribe discovers how great of an archer and warrior he is. The Shaháney give him a new name, "River Arrow" because he is the archer who came from the other side of the river (where his old tribe used to be). He finds that what he earns in his new tribe was far greater than any status he could have hoped for in his former home; now he had a loving family he was fighting for. This is not easy however, as the Shaháney tribe begin to loose territory, and he begins to fear for his beloved new family, as morale begins to weaken. Eventually they realize they must seek allies; other countries and other cultures that suffer or have suffered from the same things the Shaháney are suffering from. They begin a union of tribes and countries, diverse in language and customs, and all fight for the same cause, setting aside all differences. Along the way, he begins to fall in love with one of the healers of his tribe; a raccoon. After a long and painful journey in war, he temporarily returned with the tribe's village and marries his love, proposing to him by giving a great gift to his parents which his parents accept.

River Arrow, while not a leader of the warriors, grows to have a profound passion for protecting his loved ones, at all costs. He is fierce yet has a very loving heart. He is stubborn, sometimes impatient, but has to overcome his own pride to do what is right or to do what is smart. He has a short temper but learns to control it through the spiritual teachings of his tribe.

The story itself is written as him vaguely as the main character. The story is much larger than what happens just to this character, but I did not want to make this about some amazing epic leader who leads a massive army against another massive army, but rather from a perspective from a small, humble warrior from a small village who has in mind always his loved ones and that in turn reminds him of the loved ones all his allies fight for. I see too many stories where its just a bunch of leaders that never die, while there are a bunch of faceless soldiers/warriors doing a lot of the front line fighting. This story puts a face in the common warrior/soldier and tries to put it in a different perspective, not a romanticized war story where the soldiers majestically march onto battle for glory. Something else I want to do with this story is to have some homosexual or bisexual characters, River Arrow being one of them, where their sexual orientation is not front and center but rather what they are doing with their lives as warriors or whatever their life's work is. It always seems that in many stories both in books, movies, or TV shows, if there is a gay character, its always the most important thing about them is that they are gay, and I feel that is very shallow, because they do other things besides love people of the same gender. One last commentary to make is that, as you might already notice, these tribes are very much alike with the indigenous peoples of the Americas, which are my ancestry. In almost every mainstream portrayal of American Indians, they are either savages, or unrealistically brave warriors, or overly spiritual/environmental. While yes, River Arrow is someone you could consider a brave warrior, and he does care deeply about all life around him (plantlife included), he does have fears and concerns at a personal level, which is sometimes glazed over with mysticism in the mainstream's portrayal of the American Indian. Lastly to add to that, this is a story that unlike again a lot of the mainstream portrayals of aboriginal people (like Dances With Wolves and Avatar), there isn't a western hero as the main character that ends up joining a tribe and fights for them and becomes a spokesperson for them as if they can not do such things themselves. The characters of the Shaháney tribe in my story have no influence of outside contact and only regain allies by their own doing, and not with the help of some "advanced" westerner who taught them diplomacy or how to fight properly (see Cowboys and Aliens where Harrison Ford teaches the silly Indians how to fight because they don't know any war tactics).

Eventually I would love to finish writing this novel I am working on, and I hope it will be to everyone's enjoyment.