...on Panthera Walkers versus Hunters versus 'dancers.

Ooh, ahh.

Again, SPOILERS for future history of the tribe. Good? Okay.

For your reference, all of the Panthera-verse information that I have so far. The rest is in my head.

Okay. A brief history of the Panthera: they are the fourth sentient race on the world of Aahu. (The other three races - wolftaur Lupos, tribal allies and patrons of the Panthera; humans, neutral-in-the-Elderwar traders and once-slavers of the Panthera; birdlike anthro Avans, cultured and sophisticated enemies of the Lupos and sometimes of the Panthera.) While the whole Elderwar thing was going on, the race was nomadic, savage, and primitive, living in socially-stunted tribes with no real culture that followed herds.

...or so everyone thought. The humans chose a seemingly docile, populous tribe and enslaved them for bodyguards and simple laborers, teaching them in the Lupos tongue - because if any ever escaped and ran to Avans for help, they'd be speaking the enemy's language and would be killed. (Humans either didn't think Panthera would run to Lupos or didn't think Lupos would succor them.) The Walker tribe, as the humans learned they called themselves, fought back as much as they could - but for all their physical prowess, they couldn't break the humans' rule.

Eventually, a small group broke away and fled into Lupos land unknowingly, where they were sheltered by three Lupos. They were guarded, they stole more of their people, and over years, established themselves in Kurajos - in Den - which was once part of Kieran Whitestar's territory (Lupos chieftain of the largest, strongest clan). They began recovering the culture that no one else realized they'd had, despite the humans' constant raiding and the Avans' occasional bounty hunting. The Walker tribe grew, and flourished, and became a very strong entity - as strong within the tribe as the Kieran clan, and once they sought the paths of life and defined them and began to train their young in them, their own masters were as fierce in battle and wise in lore as the best of the Lupos masters.

Plainstalker and Bonebringer, a beastwalker and bloodwalker respectively, became the arrowheads of the Walker tribe - the tribal leaders. The alphas, to Lupos, and the prime targets, to everyone else. Years passed, and the Walkers grew strong and numerous, and Kurajos grew proud and impenetrable within the walls. Young were trained from birth to mastery (which took them until anywhere from middle-young adulthood to middle adulthood, ie the primes of their lives). The masters began learning new techniques on the fly in combat and in the wild.

The culture expanded. So did the hostility of Avans and humans towards the Walkers. A handful of highly-gifted, intense, dedicated masters of all four paths forged back, out of Den, into the toes of the mountains to explore the extents of their paths and training and possibilities. A few less-fanatic Panthera joined them to balance them out, to hunt and craft armor and to keep them in clothing and weaponry. It became a very small village - no more than twenty at any time.

Years passed - only a few, this time. The hunters who had gone out to that little village requested a few students to train in the new techniques and methods they'd been discovering. So some select youths were sent into the mountains, and trained. This process continued, and the village grew, and...

...and then the elders, who were not old but simply very honored, who had started the village and the training, heard the drums of Kurajos relay to them a cry for help, under siege by humans. They did not allow the other villagers - the first crop of students nearly masters themselves - to assist. One of the near-masters, a beastwalker whom they'd wanted to be a bloodwalker, was named Nightdrifter. She, along with her companion, a spiritwalker named Dawnwaker, went to go aid Kurajos with their fellows anyways - a lifewalker elder stopped them. The lifewalker and Nightdrifter dueled, and Nightdrifter killed him - barely. She did so with an odd sort of tribal blood magic that some elders and some few students had been cautiously tinkering with. He was revived and the youths set out to aid Kurajos.

Plainstalker greeted Nightdrifter and the rest after the battle. She called them Hunters, and Nightdrifter immediately protested, saying no, no, they were still Walkers... but Plainstalker made her point brusquely and poignantly. The Hunter tribe had been founded, and for all that they were all Panthera, the two tribes were distinct now.

Nightdrifter returned to the village and was challenged for leadership of the newly-christened Hunter tribe by the same lifewalker elder. She won, again with a mixture of her beastwalker training and the unpredictable, maddening, chaotic blood magic. Those who watched swore she danced, rather than fought - it was a fluidity of movement and an inherent rhythm that was seen in all who dabbled in the blood magic. They became known as blooddancers.

Time passed. Nightdrifter and Dawnwaker became the heads of the Hunter tribe, fiercely loyal to and defensive of Kurajos and the Walkers, but also accepting of their individuality as a tribe. They cultivated it. The Hunters were more combat-oriented, fiercer, less attuned to the Lupos gods and more devoted to the faceless, genderless deity they called The Hunter (a Pantheran 'god'). They were less stable, less focused on domestic life and therefore much less settled and balanced and grounded than the Walkers. And they were wild.

Blooddancers grew in number - for a while. They controlled pain through blood, and their enemy through pain - but their enemy's pain was their own, and their enemy's blood mingled with theirs, and when the enemy died, they were nearly dead, as well. They danced because they heard the music that underlied the stitching of the world and of all life, because that music was so loud to them that they could not move out of rhythm with it. It drowned out all else, all thought, all vestiges of control, until all that was left was the music and the dance, and the pain of blood stolen and painted.

Blooddancers went mad. At first, those who delved into the path learned at an amazing pace from experience itself, what they could do and could learn to do. But dance after dance, they lost another measure of control, and the music that breathed life into the world became one less length distant from their spirits. After a while, madness seized them, and they either died in the dance or killed themselves. A rare few slaughtered their fellows and were taken down brutally. Nightdrifter, a blooddancer in her own right, stopped learning and stopped dancing to preserve her own sanity so that she could continue to lead the Hunters.

Time went on. Some Panthera seemed destined to be 'dancers and could not dodge the blood-magic for all their best efforts. Most died in madness. Time went on - and one, and then two, and then three Panthera made it to mastery... as blooddancers. They controlled their dancing, though the music controlled them. They explored further techniques, and became not only master beastwalkers and bloodwalkers and lifewalkers and spiritwalkers ... but master 'dancers as well. It was largely unbelieved that they even existed, but a scant few managed the impossible.

Years passed, a few. The blood-magic became highly frowned-upon, despite a few startling successes in mastering the madness and rage that came with that chilling power.

Years passed. The Hunters became a more balanced tribe, capable of sustaining themselves entirely with no aid or supplies from Kurajos and the Walkers. For their part, the Walkers still maintained Kurajos as a cultural and emotional center, their domestic life so fine-tuned and healthy that their masters and youths were shining examples of their race and chosen path. The Hunters were still more fiery, more vindictive, more violent - but Nightdrifter's fellow leader, Dawnwaker, brought the sense of home, of den, back to their village. She made it a heart, not just an outpost. With that central root to branch out from, the Hunters were more deadly than ever - and more secure in their power.

The Lupos, once they got wind of blooddancers, called them cultists. Even after the blood-magic became taboo, even in the fierce Hunter tribe, the Lupos still insisted there were cultists. And they were right.

One here, one there. The music swept up from the bowels of the earth to claim them, but not through blood this time - through their paths. Spiritwalkers were the first to succumb, living as they did half in the spirit realm and half in the now. And in truth, Walkers and Hunters alike didn't quite notice the gradual shift of one or two spiritwalkers into spiritdancers. The fluidity, the grace, the rhythm - were all low-key, toned down.

Lifewalkers and bloodwalkers succumbed next. Beastwalkers seemed immuned to the music, loners that they were, touching as they did nothing ethereal. Lifewalkers got eyes on them immediately for the walking-in-dance, as did bloodwalkers. The attention swept to include spiritwalkers. The handful of individuals who could hear the music at all times - not just while dancing with the ancient blood-magic - became scrunitinized and, to an extent, shunned by both tribes' populaces.

Nightdrifter held a Hunter-wide gathering in the village. Bonfires and feasts, drumming and shows of power and skill. When the moon reached zenith, she called for her tribe's attention. She and Dawnwaker stood across the fire from each other, and in the silence of their tribesmen... began to dance. And in doing so, the beastdancer and the spiritdancer called the music into the night for all to hear.

The population of Panthera of both tribes still feared and ostracized 'dancers. For all that the Hunter leaders were sane, mostly-stable 'dancers who heard the music (and in Nightdrifter's case, could still use the blood-magic) without going mad and killing cubs... for all that the other 'dancers were not a threat to their own... they were still reviled. "Cultists" became as popular a word as 'dancers.

'Dancers, for all their desperate attempts to hide their knowledge of the music of the world, and to preserve their sanity, were farther along the line of intensity than even Hunters. The music pounded with their hearts, flooded their veins, and charged the air they breathed. When they fought, the ferocity and passion that they inherently lived with became conduits for the dance and the music - and their power was drastically increased. Even when they merely walked the paths of the forests, the music hummed beneath their skin and colored everything they perceived.

'Dancers lived more fully, more wildly, and more - in many ways - savagely than even Hunters, who in turn were more intense and ferocious than Walkers. They were unpredictable, amazingly powerful if they embraced the dance, and to be utterly feared in battle. And at the same time, their sanity and logic and rationality suffered for the immersive, fiery way they lived. Whereas Hunters had become a splinter tribe of the Walkers, there was no way a tribe solely comprised of 'dancers could ever be stable and strong - so 'dancers are not Dancers.

In the most "modern" timeline of the Panthera-verse, the Hunter tribe is established and wickedly powerful and fiercely loyal to the Walker tribe, which is huge (twice the size of Hunters, easily) and very grounded and very balanced and altogether healthy. 'Dancers are not common by any means, but there's always one or two for every fifty or hundred others, and they're often masters or close to mastery by the time they reveal willingly to anyone that they are 'dancers and not 'walkers. (Yes, those of the Hunter tribe are still called 'walkers, ie beastwalker. Heritage.) Most Panthera have come to begrudgingly tolerate 'dancers - some hate them, many fear them, some are neutral towards them, some even extend a hand of friendship and truce to them. The fact that Nightdrifter and Dawnwaker are both master 'dancers as well as master 'walkers is a major factor in all positive relations with 'dancers. It's been speculated that Bonebringer, the rarely-seen but much-feared second leader of the Walker tribe, may be a 'dancer of some sort - but few are privy to his battles, and no conclusion has been reached there. A great many 'dancers are, honestly, something to worry over - barely sane, unstable, and immensely powerful. At least as many, however, are walking a fine but steady line between insanity and sanity, between music and silence. Blooddancers in the blood-magic meaning of the term (rather than bloodwalker -> blooddancer) are shunned and taboo... but are not nonexistent. Nightdrifter has wisely led her tribe away from the lure of blood-magic, though she herself still has the skill. But there are always exceptions.

And then there's the rare 'dancer, like Nightdrifter and Dawnwaker, who can bring the music from something that boils in the blood to something that drifts on the winds and can be heard by all nearby... and can compel those listening to some degree, to fury, to defense, to pride...

...

Told you it was long. =3

Does that answer you, birdzilla!? 'Cause if not, I can write more. Believe me. There are nuances and details that I didn't even TOUCH on here. *cackling* Just remember - you asked for this! XD.