Dark / Horn

Description

Dark is a goat with long, glossy fur as black as soot. He has a carefully groomed goatee and a fine pair of curved horns, one of which broke in a terrible fight. Angry and sad, he resents the whole world and often withdraws to brood in his stronghold.

Horn was born a black lamb to Mrs. Bloomunday, a ewe of good stock, and her husband Mr. Bloomunday. With his little goatee, small horns and strange look, he was the laughing stock of the region, and his brothers and sisters mistreated him. In the end he left.

On the road he met Casper, a cunning and very learned fox, who never managed to convince him that he was not a sheep. The two traveled together for a long time, part minstrels, part petty thieves.

One winter evening, at a remote farm, an all-black goat, Mrs. Bighorn, recognized him as the child she had abandoned. She had built a new life and asked him to leave. Horn fled in tears, and Casper, running after him through the icy night, suffered a fatal fall.

In a single night, Horn had lost both his families and his best friend. For weeks he hid deep in a dump of the big-bare-butts, striking the walls with his horns. When he took to the road again, he called himself Dark.

At the far end of the world, he became the most dreaded and ruthless of mercenaries, then a captain at the head of entire companies. Weary of serving others, he has returned to the borders of the Kingdom of Cats, this time as a conqueror. His Black Horns camp at the top of the dam in the Misty Valley.